Donald Gene Miller

Donald Gene Miller (born December 28, 1954), known as The East Lansing Serial Killer or simply Don Miller, is an American serial killer and rapist who committed a series of six attacks in East Lansing, Michigan from 1977 to 1978. Four of these resulted in fatalities, to which Miller would later plead guilty and received a lengthy prison sentence with a chance of parole.

Biography Donald Gene Miller was born on December 28, 1954, in Lansing, Michigan, one of three children of Gene and Elaine Miller. His parents, who lived in a middle-class neighborhood of East Lansing, were considered upstanding, religious, and law-abiding citizens who took good care of their son.

Throughout the early 1970s, he attended East Lansing High School, where he was regarded as a good student who played the trombone in the school's marching band, was a youth minister at his church and was considered popular. During this period, he met a girl named Martha Sue Young, who would become his girlfriend. After graduating from high school in 1973, Miller enrolled at the Michigan State University, where he studied criminal law. He continued his intimate relationship with Young and, in his spare time, worked part-time as a construction worker.

Murders In late 1976, Miller proposed to Young, which she accepted. However, in December, she broke off their relationship and refused to marry him. Three days later, she met with Miller on New Year's Eve, 1977. During the early hours of the morning, he assaulted and strangled her.

After Young did not return home, her parents contacted the police, who began an investigation. They eventually located witnesses who claimed that Miller was the last person to see her alive, whereupon he was detained for interrogation.

On June 15, 1978, Miller attacked 27-year-old Marita Choquette, an assistant editor at WKAR-TV, whom he stabbed 17 times. Miller cut Choquette's hands off, later telling investigators this was because he could not remove the handcuffs he had restrained her with. Her body was taken to a property in Alaiedon Townshipand covered with cinderblocks.

On June 27, he killed his third victim, 21-year-old MSU student Wendy Bush. While investigating her disappearance, authorities found witnesses who claimed that they had last seen her on campus with a young, tall white man who was unknown to them.

Following the attack, Miller attempted to drive away in his brown 1973 Oldsmobile Cutlass, but numerous witnesses managed to remember his license plates and appearance. After providing this information to police, it subsequently led to his arrest at his own apartment mere hours later, with Miller being charged with the attempted murders. A plethora of evidence linked him to the crime, including semen samples and fingerprints left on household objects and on the victims' bodies, but despite this, he refused to plead guilty. Miller claimed that he suffered from multiple personality disorder, and due to this, his attorneys filed a motion to have him undergo a psychiatric evaluation. The results of the examination concluded that he was sane, had a relatively high IQ and even attempted to manipulate the psychiatrists during the procedures.

His offer was accepted, and three days later, Miller was transported under escort to Bath, where he revealed that Young's body had been dumped in Priggooris Park. Upon examining the unconscious woman up close, Miller realized that she was not Young and attempted to help her up. However, as she was unconscious and bleeding profusely, he ultimately strangled her and loaded the corpse into his car, whereupon he drove to Clinton County and left it in a drainage ditch. The relatively lenient sentence and the plea deal itself caused outrage in the state and across the country, with victims' relatives criticizing prosecutors for accepting it. From then until 1997, he applied for parole six more times, but was always denied. In 1997, an organization named the Public Awareness and Protection Committee, spearheaded by Martha Young's mother, Sue, was created in order to uncover all the wrongdoings Miller had committed while imprisoned. Their first discovery was that three years prior, during a search of Miller's cell at the Kinross Correctional Facility, jailguards discovered and confiscated a shoelace that could have been used as a murder weapon.

Upon discovering this, Sue Young contacted representatives of the Chippewa County Prosecutor's Office who, after reviewing the investigation, filed charges against Miller for illegal possession of weaponry. In response, his victims' relatives and many members of the Ingham County Prosecutor's Office created a petition protesting his release and presented it to the Department of Corrections. After reviewing his case, the Parole Board denied Miller's application and barred him filing any further claims until August 2021. Chris Gautz, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said in a statement that the parole was denied due to the fact Miller denied his guilt during the 1998 trial on the weapons charges. In early May 2022, Miller again applied for parole, but due to protests from victims' relatives and the severity of his actions, he was denied. The next time he will be able to file another application is August 2027. If Miller serves out his sentence in full, his projected release date is on March 24, 2031.

In the media and culture In 2020, a retired sheriff's sergeant from Eaton County, Rod Sadler, released a book detailing Miller's crimes, titled "Killing Women".