NC (Kristin Lodge-Miller) Husband wants killer to stay behind bars
Mark Fenster
By Beth Velliquette : The Herald-Sun
bvelli...@heraldsun.com
May 2, 2003 : 9:04 pm ET
CHAPEL HILL -- Erik Miller balled his hands into fists and pushed them
against his eyes as he remembered the horrible telephone call he
received on July 15, 1993.
"I was in San Diego," he said. "I was on the phone with a guy from Eli
Lilly, and I had been trying for three weeks to get a hold of this
guy. It was a really important call for me."
One of the co-workers in the office interrupted him and said there was
an important phone call for him. He tried to ignore her, but she kept
insisting.
"She said, ‘You have to take this call. It’s the Chapel
Hill Police Department, and it’s about your wife.’ "
Miller was married to Kristin Lodge-Miller, who was living at the
Shadowood Apartments in Chapel Hill while he spent the summer at a
company called IVAC in San Diego doing an internship as part of his
studies at UNC for an MBA degree.
Miller took the call, and the caller told him something had happened
to his wife, but he didn’t understand what the man was trying to
tell him. "I must have been in denial," Miller recalled. "I said,
‘Is she OK?’ and then he said, ‘No, she was attacked
and killed.’ And then my life ended."
On that July day nearly 10 years ago, 26-year old Lodge-Miller had
taken her morning run with her keys and a small canister of pepper
spray in her hand. Her usual route was down Estes Drive for 1½ miles
and back.
As she neared the end of her run about a quarter-mile east of Airport
Road, Anthony Georg Simpson, an 18-year-old summer student at Chapel
Hill High School, jumped out of some bushes and attacked her.
Simpson had a gun. "Knowing my wife the way I did, I know she was
scared out of her mind," Miller said. "She got away and then Simpson
gunned her down. He expelled a bullet that got jammed, and then he
executed her."
During the well-publicized trial that followed, testimony showed that
after Simpson grabbed Lodge-Miller, she pulled away from him and began
to run across Estes Drive when he fired several shots at her. When she
fell in the street, he walked up to her, put the gun to her head and
pulled the trigger.
After the jury convicted him of second-degree murder, the judge
sentenced Simpson to life in prison. But because it was a
second-degree murder conviction, Simpson was eligible for parole after
10 years on prison.
And that’s why Miller came to Chapel Hill on Friday. He
doesn’t want anyone to forget what Simpson did.
"I think he’s a predator. I think he’s a bad, bad person,"
Miller said. "He took Kristin, who was a beautiful person inside and
out, a productive member of society, and who was just on the verge of
truly doing what she wanted to do professionally and personally."
Miller asked: "Do you want him walking free?"
Miller and his wife had met in Iowa in a bowling class while they were
in school together. "It was love at first sight," he recalled. "I
never thought I was good enough for her, but I was madly trying to be.
I read Shakespeare plays and sonnets. I was trying to make myself more
cultivated. I wanted to be better for her."
The couple married in May 1989, and moved to Chapel Hill so he could
complete his studies. They were hoping to start a family once he
graduated and found a good job, he said. Kristin worked as a speech
pathologist specializing in helping children and older people who had
suffered a stroke and were trying to learn to speak again.
They had a life full of plans and shared many things in common,
including their love for physical exercise. In 1993, they were
training for a marathon, and Lodge-Miller liked to get up early and
run that 3-mile loop from their apartment near the intersection of
Airport Road and Estes Drive.
Simpson’s defense team claimed that Lodge-Miller sprayed pepper
spray on their client, which angered him and caused him to shoot her
in a rage rather than in a premeditated manner. The jury’s
verdict of second-degree murder, rather than the expected
first-degree, shocked and outraged Miller and his wife’s family,
as well as many in the community.
Under old North Carolina law, which was in effect 10 years ago, if
Simpson had been sentenced to life in prison for a first-degree
murder, he would not have been eligible for parole for at least 20
years instead of 10 years.
When a prisoner is eligible for parole, the members of the parole
commission review a file to determine whether the offender should be
denied or investigated for parole. Some of the factors considered by
the commission include the nature and circumstances of the crime, the
previous criminal record, prison conduct and input from court
officials, victims and other interested parties.
While there is no official hearing, each commissioner reviews the file
and makes an independent decision. Victims or their families are
allowed to make an appointment to present information for the
commissioners to hear. Miller and his former mother-in-law, Janet
Lodge, have an appointment on Tuesday morning.
Miller, who now works as a marketing director for a small medical
supply company in San Diego, hopes that the community will help make
sure that Simpson stays in prison. According to N.C. Department of
Correction records, Simpson has committed 28 infractions since he was
sent to prison, with the last infraction occurring Dec. 24, 2002.
"Would you want this person back on the streets?" Miller asked. "What
are the chances that he would become a productive member of society?"
Miller wants local residents to write the parole commission.
"I’m hoping the jurors write in from their perspective and say
that in a trial, they convicted him of second-degree murder. I’m
hoping Judge Battle writes in and says, ‘Hey, I sentenced him to
life in prison for a reason.’ "
Time has moved on since Lodge-Miller was killed. Several years after
her death, Miller met a woman named Amy at an airport in Tampa, Fla.
They fell in love, married and now have a 4-year-old son named Eric
Scott Miller Jr.
Amy Miller understands that her husband still loves his first wife,
Miller said. He calls himself very lucky because both of the women he
married are strong, independent and caring.
"I’m here because I still am in love with my first wife, and I
believe that if she could be alive and I could never see her, I would
still want that to be because she could still add to other
people’s lives," Miller said. "She was a wonderful person."
Miller hopes that people in the community will remember that a young
woman who went out jogging one summer morning in July 1993 was
attacked and killed along a busy street.
Although Miller believes he’s repressed some of the painful
memories about his wife’s death and Simpson’s trial, he
remembers clearly the last time he saw her. He had just returned home
to Chapel Hill after a long, grief-filled plane trip back to North
Carolina after he had heard the news that his wife was dead.
"I saw her the next day because I had to," Miller said. "That was the
most horrific experience in my life; seeing her with a bullet lodged
behind her right eye. She had this little round chin, that’s
what I remember, her little round chin."
tinydancer
"Mark Fenster" <Fenster_2...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:b5e42449.0305...@posting.google.com...
> Husband wants killer to stay behind bars
I remember this case, it was horrible. To think that scum of the earth is
up for parole. Everyone knew he shot her point blank execution style. It
was horrifying. She was a lovely young woman.
td
Jagdeep Cruellruby
"Bart Bailey" <bar...@nethere.net> wrote in message
news:3eb373b3...@bart.spawar.mil...
> On Sat, 3 May 2003 02:24:27 -0400, "tinydancer"
<tinyd...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >Everyone knew he shot her point blank execution style.
>
> Lying in wait, etc. should have been a 1st degree, what happened?
>
> Bart
The jury must have decided he lay in wait to assault rather than
kill her, and bought it, like the article said, that he became
enraged at the last minute and shot her because she pepper-sprayed
him. That's all I can think of. Isn't her husband wonderful, for
still thinking of her and her family at this time, rather than
putting it out of his mind and concentrating on his 2nd wife and
child. I really like the way he put it, that even if she hadn't been
with him, he'd still want her in this world for the contribution
she'd make (paraphrasing). What a man.
JC
tinydancer
"Bart Bailey" <bar...@nethere.net> wrote in message
news:3eb373b3...@bart.spawar.mil...
> On Sat, 3 May 2003 02:24:27 -0400, "tinydancer" <tinyd...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
> Lying in wait, etc. should have been a 1st degree, what happened?
>
> Bart
IIRC I think this was the one where his mother was maybe in the military,
can't quite recall, but I think his mother had 'status' of some sort and
worked very hard to 'humanize' the scum. I remember the incident quite well
but can't quite get a handle on the background of the case. It was one of
those 'my poor son wouldn't have done this 'if not for'........... they
actually tried to blame the victim for 'spraying him with mace'. The victim
fought really hard for her life, to get away from the scum sucker. He was
after rape, trying to get her off the street where she was running. I think
there may have been a witness or two, it was early morning, people just
beginning to be on their way to work.
Mark Fenster
Some additional information on the case...although not a factual
account of the crime, a considerable amount of information can be
found at:
Full document available at:
http://www.ibiblio.org/copyed/colwell-proj.html
In the document (but not the short excerpt below), it was stated the
judge didn't think the defendant would get out of jail in 10 years.
Fenster
*******************************************
Murder and the Media:
What the case of Kristin Lodge-Miller can teach us about how the news
media cover crime
By Sylvia Colwell
Knight Copy Editing Fellow
Fall 1997
Early on the morning of July 15, 1993, long before the full force of
the summer sun reached the neat and pretty college town of Chapel
Hill, N.C., the lives of Kristin Ann Lodge-Miller and Anthony Georg
Simpson collided in a shockingly violent way. Minutes after the two
crossed paths along leafy Estes Drive, Lodge-Miller, a young woman
building a promising career as a speech therapist, lay dead in the
street and soon Simpson, a troubled high school student, was shackled
and facing a murder charge.
The murder was a cinch to become a major media event. It had all the
elements of drama: a pretty, sympathetic victim gunned down while
running along a popular jogging trail as horrified bystanders watched;
a defiant teenage suspect who embodied society's worst fears about
youth crime. It was a crime of black against white, male against
female. And not least, it happened in a town promoted by its Chamber
of Commerce as "The Southern Park of Heaven," a town whose heart and
soul is the University of North Carolina, where thousands of parents
send their children each year.
Over the next few months, and as Simpson's murder trail unfolded in
the spring of 1994, the case became fodder for hundreds of newspaper
articles and television and radio broadcasts across the state. It was
mentioned in articles about rising crime rates, about falling crime
rates, about violence among young black males, and about the
difficulties of serving on a criminal jury. The residents of Chapel
Hill, most of whom knew about the case only what they heard from their
neighbors and gleaned through the media, were stirred by the case, and
many were outraged when the jury found Simpson guilty of
second-degree, or unpremeditated, murder. Letters to the editor, most
condemning the decision, flooded local newspaper offices. Gun control
became a red-hot local issue, and Chapel Hill's town council
subsequently passed the toughest gun restrictions in the state. A
plaque was erected in Lodge-Miller's memory, and the public donated
more than $2,000 to a fund set up in her name to benefit victims of
sexual violence. Three Orange County women's agencies teamed up to
hold public forums to allow people to vent their feelings about the
case and to look for solutions to crime.
Jury foreman Stephen Pizer remembers his involvement as one of the
unhappiest parts of his life, and prosecutor Carl Fox says the case
was the most divisive he's handled in his 13 years as district
attorney for Orange and Chatham counties. Even four years later,
people in Chapel Hill remember what they were doing when they heard
about the murder, much as people remember what they were doing when
they heard President Kennedy had been assassinated.
In this context, my aim is to use the Lodge-Miller murder as a case
study of how effectively the media cover crime, to examine the
fairness and relevance of the local coverage and whether it helped or
hindered justice and public understanding. I have done this through
the anecdotal observations of some of those involved, directly or
peripherally, in the case; through a review of the coverage in two
local newspapers, the Durham Herald-Sun and the Raleigh News &
Observer; and through a study of pertinent sociology, criminology and
media-studies literature. My ultimate goal is to gain a better
understanding, from an outsider's point of view, of how those touched
by a crime are affected from what we in the media do, and to learn how
we can use our influence to most beneficial effect.
The Prosecutor: Manipulations Cause misconceptions
Murder does not come often to Chapel Hill, so when Carl Fox, the
district attorney for Prosecutorial District 15-B, heard a jogger had
been slain on Estes Drive, he got in his car and drove there, arriving
just after the body had been removed. He says he had no idea the case
would turn out to be such a big one. And, although he can understand
why people were interested -- they could relate to the victim because
they were familiar with the street, or because they jogged themselves
-- he believes the media attention given to the case was overblown, at
times insensitive, and may have interfered with the job of the
criminal justice system.
For example, he says, the press presented Kristin Lodge-Miller and
Tony Simpson as opposing archetypes rather than human beings: "The
case became called 'the jogger case,' and her name became secondary to
the fact that it was related to ... someone being a jogger. He could
be viewed from his picture as being somewhat of a menacing ...
teenager. Juvenile crime was beginning to be on the increase and it
was easy to relate him to the problem of juveniles occurring in our
society. That's what the two of them represented. ... They used it to
sell papers."
Continues for pages and pages
Mark Fenster
Some additional information on the jury's deliberations which resulted
in the conviction for second degree murder...
http://newsobserver.com/news/story/2509580p-2331965c.html
Saturday, May 3, 2003 6:13AM EDT
Killer up for parole
1993 murder shook Chapel Hill
By ANNE BLYTHE, Staff Writer
CHAPEL HILL -- For the past decade, Erik Miller has repressed many of
the gruesome details of that morning July 15, 1993, when his wife was
gunned down by an angry teenager while jogging along a main Chapel
Hill road.
He allows the good thoughts in -- memories of her big blue eyes, her
warm, caring personality, her love for children.
But now with Anthony Georg Simpson, the killer of Kristin Ann
Lodge-Miller, up for his first parole review, Miller has returned to
the Triangle, and to the worst time in his life.
"What I'm trying to do is raise awareness," Miller, 37, said Friday in
Chapel Hill after taking a red-eye flight from California, his home
now. "There is a pretty slight opportunity that he would get out this
time, but if he did, I think the people of North Carolina wouldn't
like that."
The state Parole Commission is set to review the case May 13, which
would have been the couple's 14th wedding anniversary. Janet and
Milton Lodge, the victim's parents, and Miller plan to speak to the
commission Tuesday.
"For our own personal loss, nothing is going to change," said Janet
Lodge, a retired school teacher. "The best hope that we have is that
he would stay in jail."
Simpson, who turned 18 only 13 days before the crime, is now 27. He is
in Pender Correctional Institute, a medium-security prison in Burgaw,
serving the life sentence he received for second-degree murder. The
crime occurred before sentencing laws changed, so he is eligible for
parole after 10 years.
Since his incarceration, Simpson has logged 28 infractions, according
to state Department of Correction records. The last, a sexual offense,
occurred Dec. 24, according to the records.
"Kristin had her whole life ahead of her," Miller said. "If he were to
get out now, he would have his whole life in front of him. We were
talking about starting a family. She never had that opportunity."
The phone call
Tears pool in Miller's clear blue eyes when he reconstructs what
happened July 15, 1993, the day that turned his hopes and dreams
upside down. He was in San Diego on an internship between his first
and second years in the UNC-Chapel Hill graduate business
administration program. He was on the phone at work, unaware that a
crisis counselor with the Chapel Hill Police Department was on the
other line.
He took the call. What happened next was a blur.
"I remember waking up and seeing my wife's eyes in the clouds when I
was flying," he said. "She had big, beautiful blue eyes."
Awaiting him in Chapel Hill was the grim task of identifying his
wife's bullet-ridden body, details that even today mute his voice with
torment. Miller, remarried with a 4-year-old son, is a marketing
director for a pharmaceutical supply company in San Diego.
"I miss Kristin very much," he said. "I've always said since the
trial, if we could have her back, even if it wasn't with me, the world
would be a better place. ... The unfortunate thing is, few people got
to know her here in Chapel Hill."
Shattered village
The killing of Lodge-Miller, 26, a speech pathologist, tugged at the
hearts of a college community that had 12 homicides in the 1990s. It
occurred at a time when gun violence was in the national spotlight.
"It is hard to believe that 10 years have passed," said Ralph
Pendergraph, the Chapel Hill police chief at the time. "I remember
just being stunned that someone could be attacked so brutally in such
a public place."
Lodge-Miller had gone out about 6 a.m. for a run along Estes Drive, a
heavily traveled jogging path that she and her husband had taken many
times before. Simpson told detectives he was on his red-and-black
bicycle that morning in search of food.
Lodge-Miller, according to police testimony, was shot five times by
Simpson -- the fifth shot in the back of her head after unjamming the
gun. Almost immediately, the case became a catalyst for gun-control
advocates and women's safety groups. People saw Lodge-Miller as an
everywoman -- their daughter,
sister or wife.
"I think part of what was alarming to a lot of people about the
situation was that a young black man shot a young white woman," said
Mark Chilton, a Town Council member at the time. "I don't think people
necessarily meant to be prejudiced or racist about it. But I do think
that was going on."
Families destroyed
In a county where many people oppose the death penalty, District
Attorney Carl Fox sought capital punishment when he brought the case
to trial 10 months later.
Prosecutors tried to convince the jury that Simpson set out with a
loaded pistol to rape and kill Lodge-Miller -- charges that could have
brought the death penalty. Defense lawyers argued there was no
premeditation, that Simpson fired the fatal shots during a fit of rage
after Lodge-Miller sprayed pepper in his face.
The jury deliberated 11 hours over three days. Shortly after getting
the case, one female juror who knew the landscape said she was sure
Simpson had gone to the remote part of the jogging path to rape the
victim -- a revelation that troubled other jurors.
"That didn't set right with me, somebody trying to set that boy up
like that," Doris Bynum, a juror, said this week. "From then on out, I
had a hard time in that jury room, but I stuck to what I believed.
That was never proven that he was waiting to rape that person."
Because Simpson had confessed to the killing, the main sticking point
in the jury room was what constituted premeditation.
The jury's first poll broke down along racial lines, with the white
jurors voting initially for first-degree murder and the black jurors
holding out for second-degree.
"That would have made Kristin so angry to see that," Miller said. "She
was not a person who wanted to see divisions based on race, social
status, socioeconomic status. That was not within her. If she knew she
was going to be killed, if she could have chosen her murderer, it
would have been somebody who looked just like her."
Facing the possibility of a hung jury and a mistrial -- and then the
possibility that a different jury might not convict Simpson of murder
at all -- the 12-member panel settled for second-degree.
"I have very considerable regrets about the law, but I have no regret
about the jury decision, because essentially, we needed to follow the
law," said Stephen Pizer, the jury foreman.
The verdict touched off a public furor.
Bynum said that although she lost several friends afterward, she has
no regrets. "I'm a social worker," Bynum said. "I think that boy was
young and his family was troubled and he needed a second chance. ... I
felt it was a sad day, that two families were destroyed."
Miller says he is the kind of person who internalizes problems before
dealing with them on his own. In the weeks after the killing, he went
on a cross-country road trip by himself, talking to no one and
sleeping in his car.
In the year after the murder, he completed the MBA program, he said,
because his wife would have wanted him to. There were lonely times, he
said, when he would wake up in the darkness and walk out to Estes
Drive where Lodge-Miller had taken her last run, sit on the roadside
and fall asleep thinking of the tall, bright, big-hearted woman he had
met outside a University of Iowa bowling class.
Although he initially thought of the case as a cut-and-dried
first-degree murder, he said he's not angry at the jurors. "I think
they were confused about what would happen if they were a hung jury,"
Miller said. "In general, though, I don't fault anyone."
Staff writer Anne Blythe can be reached at 932-8741 or
abl...@newsobserver.com.
Jagdeep Cruellruby
>
> http://newsobserver.com/news/story/2509580p-2331965c.html
> Saturday, May 3, 2003 6:13AM EDT
> Killer up for parole
> 1993 murder shook Chapel Hill
> By ANNE BLYTHE, Staff Writer
Very enlightening indeed. TYVM for posting. JC
Jeanne Ketterer
> in the conviction for second degree murder...
>
> http://newsobserver.com/news/story/2509580p-2331965c.html
>
> Saturday, May 3, 2003 6:13AM EDT
>
> Killer up for parole
> 1993 murder shook Chapel Hill
>
> By ANNE BLYTHE, Staff Writer
>
> CHAPEL HILL -- For the past decade, Erik Miller has repressed many of
> the gruesome details of that morning July 15, 1993, when his wife was
> gunned down by an angry teenager while jogging along a main Chapel
> Hill road.
> He allows the good thoughts in -- memories of her big blue eyes, her
> warm, caring personality, her love for children.
>
Adding to the horror, a passerby motorist tried to help by yelling to
her to get in her car, but evidently Lodge-Miller was terrified and veered
away. I still get chills whenever I remember reading this in the newspaper.
> The jury deliberated 11 hours over three days. Shortly after getting
> the case, one female juror who knew the landscape said she was sure
> Simpson had gone to the remote part of the jogging path to rape the
> victim -- a revelation that troubled other jurors.
>
> "That didn't set right with me, somebody trying to set that boy up
> like that," Doris Bynum, a juror, said this week. "From then on out, I
> had a hard time in that jury room, but I stuck to what I believed.
> That was never proven that he was waiting to rape that person."
This I couldn't understand -- she all but says the boy just about got
his life together when this awful thing happened. So what? he carried a
gun for the hell of it?
> Because Simpson had confessed to the killing, the main sticking point
> in the jury room was what constituted premeditation.
>
> The jury's first poll broke down along racial lines, with the white
> jurors voting initially for first-degree murder and the black jurors
> holding out for second-degree.
>
> "That would have made Kristin so angry to see that," Miller said. "She
> was not a person who wanted to see divisions based on race, social
> status, socioeconomic status. That was not within her. If she knew she
> was going to be killed, if she could have chosen her murderer, it
> would have been somebody who looked just like her."
>
> Facing the possibility of a hung jury and a mistrial -- and then the
> possibility that a different jury might not convict Simpson of murder
> at all -- the 12-member panel settled for second-degree.
>
> "I have very considerable regrets about the law, but I have no regret
> about the jury decision, because essentially, we needed to follow the
> law," said Stephen Pizer, the jury foreman.
>
> The verdict touched off a public furor.
[snip]
I remember feeling unbelievably horrified and so very very sad for her
and her husband. I remember feeling very unsafe. I didn't want to go very
far from home. I couldn't get the picture of this scum out of my head
deliberately targeting her and gunning her down. Troubled kid, my foot. He
knew what he was doing. Sad, sad case.
Jeanne
Mark Fenster
As expected, Anthony Georg Simpson was denied parole this year. This
was his first year up for parole. He will now come up for parole
yearly.
Fenster
********************************************************
Parole denied in jogger death
From staff reports : The Herald-Sun
new...@heraldsun.com
May 16, 2003 : 10:02 am ET
CHAPEL HILL -- The man imprisoned for the shooting death of a jogger a
decade ago was denied parole this week, officials announced Friday.
Anthony Georg Simpson, who killed Kristin Lodge-Miller as she jogged
on Estes Drive on July 15, 1993, will again come up for parole review
in a year.
In 1994, Simpson was convicted of second-degree murder and was
sentenced to life in prison. Under the law as written at the time,
Simpson became eligible for parole after 10 years and will have
another parole review each additional year.
