Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
- You're listening to an Ono Media Podcast. Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Into The Dark Podcast. I am your host, Peyton Morland, and I am so happy that you are here. If you are watching on YouTube, please thumbs up, turn on notifications, leave a comment, helps me out so much. If you are listening and can leave me a review, I would love it. If not, you guys,
I am just happy that you are here. I hope you guys are all having a really good Wednesday or whatever day it is while you're listening to this. Yeah, I just want us all to have a good week and be happy. This is crazy. Hey, everybody. Just wanted to pop in. If you don't know me, it's okay. You don't need to know me. If you do know me, hi. Hope you're doing good.
have an amazing day. Trigger warning. This episode includes discussions of domestic abuse and suicide. Please listen with care. Thank you.
So before we jump into the episode, I have 10 seconds to do. And that was my husband, Garrett. If you don't know, he does 10 seconds over on our other show, Murder With My Husband. And yeah, everyone, including me, wanted my own 10 seconds. So we do it over here. Okay, so I'm just going to give you guys like a little bit of a throw up, 10 seconds. So I've still been doing my walks. Everything's going good there. I was at the gym today and I think I decided that I want to...
like do boxing or jujitsu or like something because I feel like punching and kicking and hitting would be therapeutic for me. No, I'm not weird. Okay. I just think that that would feel good. And also plus side is, um, if I'm ever walking alone at night and I know how to beat someone up, that would definitely benefit me.
So I don't know, I don't know. I'm thinking about it. I just feel like it's a hobby that I wanna start and so I've been looking into it. Next thing is, as you guys may have heard, I cut out coffee.
in January, I guess it was January. It was basically Christmas actually. So a little bit before I cut out soda, um, in Christmas and I kind of cut out ice cream a little bit, not really on purpose, but then I had ice cream twice last week and it
No more ice cream. No more ice cream for Miss Patey, okay? We are done. So you guys better hold me accountable. We are done with ice cream because the things that come out of me when I eat ice cream are concerning. It's very concerning.
and I gotta be done. I gotta be done with it. I never feel good after, and it's one of my favorite things, but I'm done. I'm done, okay? I did the coffee, I did the soda, that was hard. I proved to myself I could do it, and now I'm done with the ice cream because I never feel good, and I think physically it is a health hazard for me. All right, that's my 10 seconds. Today we are going to be covering a case study
that you've probably heard of. It's recent, it's happening now, and I just wanted to get into it on here. So as Garrett said, this episode does include discussions of domestic abuse and suicide, so please listen with care. So we're starting right away. It's April 27th, 2024, literally last month.
A 30-year-old woman's body was found in North Carolina's Lumber River State Park. Now, the original reporting was pretty vague and it didn't get into a lot of detail about how or why this woman had died. But the news did say that her cause of death was a gunshot wound to her head. And the deceased was later identified as a woman named Micah Miller.
She was the wife of John Paul Miller, the pastor of a church called Solid Rock at Market Common. Now, this is kind of crazy for a pastor's wife in North Carolina to show up dead with a gunshot wound to her head.
John Paul, her husband, was also the person who later wrote Micah's obituary. And according to that obituary, it said the two of them met in 2009 when Micah was just 15 years old.
And John Paul was 29. Now, I don't want you to think that I'm ignoring that age gap. So we are going to talk about it more later. But for now, I just want to note that according to Micah's obituary, she and John Paul connected right off the bat. Even though she was a high school student and he was a 29-year-old man, they had these great conversations and they ended up talking every single day. They started out as friends and eventually began dating.
and they were married in 2017 when Micah was 23 and John Paul was 37. Now Micah was very committed to John Paul and to the church's work as a whole. Remember she's a pastor's wife and she takes this role very seriously and again I'm all of this is according to the obituary written by her husband.
It said that Micah was John Paul's assistant and ran programs at the church for women and youth. She made graphics and helped plan worship services, which she also sang in. And from the sound of it, she did this in part because she loved and admired her husband so much.
So yeah, the obituary John Paul wrote after his wife was found dead made a point of saying how great Micah, his dead wife, thought he was. It also said that she was down for just about anything, even outside of her marriage and her career. Micah was known as someone who lived life to the fullest. She liked outdoorsy activities, extreme sports, including skydiving, and sometimes she'd change her whole life more or less on a dare.
Once Micah stuck to a vegan diet for a year just because someone else said that they weren't sure she would do it. Basically, it seemed like she could overcome anything she set her mind to. So now, in April, it's a total shock for her to turn up
It was also shocking to see the way that her husband responded to her death. And you're going to understand right now why this case has gone so viral. So Micah turns up dead and all the news spreads. And then the next Sunday service, after Micah's body was found, John Paul, her husband, does something that goes viral on social media.
He gets on stage and announces to his congregation that Micah had taken her own life. And he adds that she had been struggling with her mental health for a while. He and his children needed everyone's prayers while they dealt with their grief. I got a call late last night. My wife has passed away. It was self-induced. I'm just kind of...
going on adrenaline right now. - John Paul also told the congregation not to discuss the death amongst themselves. He didn't want people gossiping. And keep in mind, he also preaches. Like he does his usual job as a pastor and then kind of just drops this bomb.
So even though he asked people not to talk about it, this was a huge bombshell and it didn't take long for Micah's story to start going viral online. A lot of people thought that her death seemed a little suspicious, that it did not sound like a suicide. Maybe something had happened to her. In fact, there were rumors going around that Micah had been shot in the back of the head. And this is obviously an angle that would be
Hard to be self-inflicted, if not impossible. And now this speculation wasn't all coming from strangers or casual acquaintances. Micah's own family openly alleged that she had been murdered. So did her closest friends who told the press that they could not accept on any level that Micah had taken her own life, despite what her husband had preached on stage.
One friend actually told a reporter, this has to be at least looked into deeply because, yeah, a tragic life was lost and it's not as simple as mental health issues. Now, a lot of these friends and relatives all said that the killer was her husband, John Paul.
So how do we get here? Like, how does Micah turn up dead and then everyone thinks it's John Paul? We obviously need to go back and dig into their marriage. So as it turned out, before she died, Micah's relationship with John Paul had been pretty complicated.
It sounds like there may have been some cheating going on. Neither of them said so explicitly, but John Paul did make some comments to the congregation about how he'd texted another woman. And recently a waitress has come forward to say John Paul texted her while he was married, telling her she was hot, asking for nudes. So it's unclear if this woman was the same woman he spoke about to the congregation, or if he was maybe flirting with multiple people.
Either way, as the news starts coming out, we learn that Micah filed to separate from her husband, John Paul, on multiple occasions. And she also filed for divorce back in October of 2023. Now, the divorce process did not go smoothly. Micah apparently believed that John Paul was going to extreme lengths.
to stop her from leaving him. So on February 8th, 2024, John Paul had Micah involuntarily committed to a mental health facility. And according to John Paul, he said,
She had to get treatment because of her ongoing emotional problems. Every year around Christmas time, she apparently went off her meds and she began behaving in risky, reckless ways. This is according to him. She'd spend money without thinking about how it impacted their budget and she just wasn't making good choices. So he says he admitted her to stay in the clinic for her own good.
Well, when it was time for her to check out, Micah found out that the doctors and nurses didn't have her purse anymore. They couldn't give it back to her, even though she'd left it with them when she was first admitted. And when she went to where she left her car parked, it was gone too. So it turns out John Paul had taken them both, had taken her purse, had taken her car and left her there.
So Micah called the police and reported that her husband had stolen her car and her purse. She also said that John Paul had been manipulating her and controlling her almost from the beginning of their relationship. She also said that her stay in the mental health facility was just his latest attempt to keep her under his thumb. Micah claimed she didn't need any treatment at all and he'd been lying about her mental health problems to everyone.
She also hadn't actually stopped taking her medication. She had just switched to a lower dose after confirming with her doctor that this was okay. So according to Micah's report to the police, she and John Paul had first met when she was 10, not 15, like what her obituary said. And either way, she tells police she was too young to be dating an adult man, but that didn't stop John Paul from grooming her. That was her word. She said she'd been groomed.
The allegations were very alarming and upsetting, and when the police went to John Paul to ask him about everything, he denied it all. He insisted he didn't even know Micah when she was 10 and certainly didn't pursue her until she was an adult.
He even said he and Micah weren't actually separated. Apparently they'd reconciled in February and the divorce wasn't going to happen anymore. He also claimed that he had to take the purse and the car away until Micah proved that she was stable enough to use them responsibly. If Micah had access to the car, according to John Paul, she'd just sell it for cash.
So all in all, he chalked everything up, all those accusations that she'd made to her mental health problems. So she goes to police looking for help. Now, in fairness, since they were still married and because he and Micah owned the car together, John Paul legally couldn't steal it. It was his. So the police dropped the stolen vehicle investigation right then and there, ignoring everything Micah had asked for. But then...
Micah comes in again to file another complaint. This time it's on March 11th. She was out driving around when her tire went flat. It held up long enough for her to get home and when she looked at it, she saw a piece of metal in it. She says it looked like someone had slashed the tire on purpose and this was the second time she'd gotten a flat that week. So she called the police who helped her change it for a spare and she also reported that
She feels like once again, her husband was sabotaging her. She knows they didn't believe her the first time, but she's like, listen, my husband did this. And he even showed up later when Micah and a police officer drove to a gas station together and he tried to talk to Micah and she was not having it. She even pulled out her phone and threatened to record John Paul and show the world everything he was up to. He took the threat seriously. He got in his car and he drove away.
After that, the police left and Micah went to a dealership to get the spare tire replaced with a permanent one. And then John Paul showed up there too. Walk away. Do you want to go to jail? Alrighty, you'll be in jail in a few hours.
Walk away. Micah calls the cops again, clearly feeling unsafe, and he drives away before they can arrive. But this time around, the officer who responded to the scene watched Micah get an incoming phone call from an unknown number, and so she answers it in front of the cop.
And surprise, surprise, it's John Paul. So at that point, the police officer got on the phone with him and told him, hey, she does not want to contact you. You need to leave her alone. John Paul hung up and the police officer chatted with Micah a little more. And she tells him flat out, listen, I am afraid for my life. And the officer made a point of putting that down in his report on the incident.
And then Micah called the police a third time later that day. Apparently, while the mechanic was working on the car, they had found a tracking device on it. This is how John Paul knew to find Micah at the gas station and then at the dealership. Obviously, she hadn't told him where she was going. She had no interest in talking to him.
And interestingly, this wasn't the first time that Micah had found a tracking device on her car. It wasn't the second either. It was the fourth. Okay, you guys, let me guess. Your medicine cabinet is crammed with stuff that doesn't work. You still aren't sleeping. You still hurt and you're still stressed out. That's
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pros.com dark go on take the quiz see what they come up with take your free consultation get your one-of-a-kind formula and see the difference custom hair care can make with 50% off at pros pros.com dark let's get back into the episode so Micah got her car fixed and then went to the police station to take out a restraining order against her own husband and reportedly he
He apparently showed up again while she was there. He didn't get out of the car, but Micah said she recognized his white Honda Accord when it cruised past. So it's pretty clear that Micah felt like she was being controlled. She was constantly surveilled. She was filing for divorce. He was, you know, admitting her to a hospital. He was tracking her. It sounds like pretty good reason.
So on March 18th, just one week after all of this happens, Micah posts a very alarming video on Facebook. It was three and a half minutes long, and she talked about how she'd been dealing with some undisclosed issues for years. These were issues that she couldn't tell anyone about other than a few close friends and family members. But she hinted at the nature of those problems in another video that went up on March 22nd.
And this is when Micah said, quote, God hates divorce, but why? God hates divorce, but why? According to everybody I've asked and the scriptures that I've found, it's because it hurts people. But does abuse hurt people?
Now, she didn't come right out and say that she was experiencing abuse firsthand. Micah framed this video as sort of a general advice for anyone who was trapped in a bad marriage. But that didn't stop people from reading between the lines, thinking John Paul was hurting her and this was her roundabout way of asking for help. Then obviously, as you know, she ends up dead.
Now, about a month after that video went up, Micah files for divorce again against John Paul. This was on April 25th, just two days before she died. As it turned out, the filing from October never went forward, and it's not clear why. John Paul claimed it was because they got back together, but obviously there's room for debate there.
Either way, this time around, Micah actually seemed excited to see the divorce through. Her family didn't think she was suicidal. She was thinking about the future. She was feeling optimistic for the most part, but she was also apparently still afraid for her life. At one point during this time, days before she turns up dead, Micah even told her relatives, if I end up with a bullet in my head, it was not by me. It was JP. Now, JP was what she called John Paul. She was using his initials.
It's chilling that she specified a bullet to my head when just two days later, she would die that way.
In another conversation this time on the phone with a friend, Micah seemed to predict how she was going to die again. She said that John Paul had threatened to shoot her in the past and Micah believed that he might get away with murdering her because he'd act like it was a suicide. Remember, he'd already forcefully admitted her to the hospital. These were her literal words. He's going to say, I killed myself, telling the entire church, every sermon, every opportunity he gets that I have a mental illness.
It was like she'd already heard the eulogy that he would eventually give. So because of all this, once Micah's body was found, people all over the world became convinced that John Paul was an abusive, controlling stalker that couldn't be told no, and that he'd murdered his own wife rather than letting her leave him.
In fact, after Micah's death, John Paul's church had a memorial service for her, but Micah's family refused to attend. They had a competing event at the same time. It was a rally titled Justice for Micah. More than 100 people showed up, all to show that they weren't buying the official story. They were confident that Micah had died at someone else's hands.
Now, the whole situation is obviously getting very ugly, very fast. People were pointing fingers at John Paul, who was still insisting that the death was a suicide. It was getting very difficult to pick apart who was telling the truth and who was lying. And from the sounds of it, law enforcement officials were concerned about all of the speculation and misinformation that was spreading online. So on Tuesday, May 7th, they released more information about Micah's death.
So they did this in the hopes that it would help settle the matter and maybe stop some of the inaccurate gossip that was spreading on social media, because I'm not going to lie, things were getting crazy. People were talking about their personal life, just definitely going into things that maybe didn't need to be talked about.
So it turned out that on the day that Micah died, John Paul was out of town. He was at some kind of sporting event with a woman that he was reportedly dating. There were other people around all day to corroborate that he was there and his car was never anywhere near the park where Micah passed away. It would have taken him three hours to get from that athletic event to the park where she was found.
And frankly, there's no window where he could have even gotten there and back without someone noticing. So he did have a very solid alibi. And as for Micah herself, the ring camera at her home showed her leaving at 1138 a.m. that morning. So a little over half an hour later after she leaves, she goes to a pawn shop. And again, the police had the surveillance footage to back this up.
The investigators even had videos showing Micah at that shop buying the bullets and the gun that did eventually kill her.
The footage clearly showed that she was alone. There was no one with her forcing her to make the purchases. Micah actually called 911 a few hours later at 2.54 p.m. She told the dispatcher that she was planning to take her own life and she wanted the police to know where she was so they could find her body. Then she hung up before anyone could talk to her or try to help.
The dispatcher sent some police officers over right away, but they were too late. Before they could find Micah and save her, someone else called 911 to report that they'd found a body in the park floating in the pond, and it was Micah. She was already dead, and all that was left for the police to do was recover her remains.
Now I mentioned earlier that there were rumors that Micah had been shot in the back of the head. They were just that, rumors. Her injuries were, in fact, according to police, consistent with a self-inflicted gunshot. Her phone also showed that she'd googled the park where her body was later found, like she was looking for a place to take her own life. And there were receipts in her car, which was parked nearby, for the gun and ammunition that killed her.
They also found a gun case that matched the serial number on a firearm found near her remains. The police even located an ear witness. This person didn't see what happened to Micah, but he was fishing when he heard what sounded like a woman crying and then a gun going off.
So in light of all of this, it's not too hard to see why the police ruled Micah's death a suicide. That does seem to be where all the evidence is pointing. Even with all of that, though, they still did look at John Paul because of the history of alleged stalking and harassment, his strange behavior afterward, the fact that maybe she had been groomed.
But once John Paul proved he had an alibi, they figured the case was closed. It was clear that Micah had taken her own life. Still, even with all of this information, it did not stop some of the speculation online and amongst her friends and family. Basically, there were still a lot of questions on the table about Micah's quality of life and her state of mind. Was Micah a mentally troubled person who tragically died after her husband went to great lengths to get her help?
Or was she trapped in a toxic and dangerous relationship going to extreme and deadly lengths because she couldn't imagine any other way to escape?
A lawyer representing one of Micah's family members suggested that she took her own life in part because her husband abused her. He controlled her money, her phone, everything else. John Paul also reportedly pressured her to have sex with him whenever he wanted it, regardless of how Micah felt. He'd throw water on her to wake her up in the middle of the night if she turned him down earlier in the evening, or he'd blast music so she couldn't sleep.
Micah's friend said that at one point John Paul even posted revenge porn of her and tagged her in it on Facebook. But all of this is hard to prove because whoever posted it was using a fake name. I mean technically it could have been shared by someone else although Micah said John Paul was the only person with access to that specific picture.
That said, John Paul did reportedly send Micah an email where he apologized posting the photo. It said, "I'm sorry for putting a picture of you on the internet. It was for less than one hour and immediately taken down."
Now, I don't think anyone has been able to verify if this email is real, but if so, he did take credit for shaming his wife in an inappropriate, hurtful way. He also took the credit for slashing Micah's tires and putting the GPS trackers on her car. So when Micah accused John Paul of ruining her life and he countered by saying she was just going crazy or imagining things, sounds like maybe she wasn't. And that's all before we get into the allegations about a possible embezzlement, a
Apparently, Micah was helping to raise money for the church before her death. But an unidentified tipster called the police at one point to say that Micah took all of the donations that she'd secured and pocketed the cash instead. Basically, if this tipster was to be believed, Micah had helped herself to over $1,000 that weren't hers to keep.
Now the police did follow up on these reports and they decided there was nothing to them. There was no evidence that Micah had ever stolen a single cent. And they said the person who called in the tip was in some kind of personal dispute with Micah. But the police didn't say much beyond that. But I do know the tipster was not John Paul. The police reports describe her as a 56-year-old woman. Now it's possible that there's a lot more to this story and we're only hearing a small part to it. A
According to some of Micah's friends, she'd uncovered evidence that John Paul, in fact, was involved in some kind of financial scam. And when the police first investigated Micah for the alleged theft of the donations, they listed John Paul in the report as something they called an involved other person.
It's not clear what that means exactly or how John Paul may have been connected to this whole incident. It's also hard to say if the evidence Micah allegedly had against him had anything to do with it, or if either theft was even real. Honestly, it's hard to do much more than speculate. There's so little that we know about this alleged embezzlement.
But I do find it interesting that Micah's husband was reportedly stalking her, threatening her, slashing her tires, and telling all of her friends and family that she was crazy. And then add on these allegations about possible theft, it's clear Micah was under a lot of stress. It's not hard to see how all of these things could have left her in a bad place, mentally and emotionally.
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i have always loved good scavenger hunts and puzzles and of course we all know i love a good murder mystery and this is just the perfect marriage of the two right now i'm on chapter two i've been trying so hard not to use the light bulb feature to help me search for clues i seriously look forward to playing it every night discover your inner detective when you download june's journey for free today on ios and android but i do keep coming back to that comment micah made to her sister before her death when she said
if I end up with a bullet in my head, it was not by me. It was JP. Now there's a lot of compelling evidence that John Paul never pulled the trigger himself. He didn't actually kill Micah. But there's a lot of ways to hurt someone besides physically harming them yourself. And Micah might have been speaking truthfully when she made that statement. Maybe she wasn't trying to accuse John Paul of murdering her. But she was saying that if she did end up dead, even at her own hand, he had a role in it.
Not that you can actually lay the blame at any one person's feet when someone dies by suicide. The human mind is complex and we don't understand it well, even today. But it was pretty clear that John Paul's alleged behavior had left Micah in a vulnerable place and that seemed to be by design on his part. According to Micah's family, the worst things he did to her may have actually been spiritual abuse.
See, Micah wanted to be a good Christian, and John Paul wasn't just her husband. He was the pastor of her church. He was someone she was supposed to be able to trust when it came to her religious beliefs. But instead, allegedly, John Paul used Micah's faith against her, making her feel like she had to tolerate his abuse if she wanted to be right with God. He let her start programs at the church that she cared about deeply, and then would threaten to discontinue those projects or put someone else in charge of them.
Basically, he reportedly put Micah in a position where she could only do the work she found meaningful and rewarding if she let him be in charge of her whole life.
According to an attorney representing Micah's family, John Paul even brainwashed her so she couldn't think straight. And it sounds like Micah wasn't sure who she could trust. Apparently she was afraid that if she told anyone the truth about what she was experiencing, it might hurt their faith too. Like if the people who attended the church knew what their pastor was capable of, they might have doubts about God as well. So it was an unreasonably heavy burden to bear.
Micah believed that she had to suffer in silence to save her friend's souls. And she only felt comfortable opening up when some people told her that they were thinking about leaving John Paul's church. It wasn't working for them for whatever reason, and they thought they'd have a better experience elsewhere. Those were the only people who Micah dared to be honest with, them and her family. It must have been an unbelievably lonely position to be in. Now,
Now I will note that John Paul is not currently working as a pastor anymore. As of May 5th, he was put on leave. Officially it was so he could grieve in peace, but given the amount of public criticism he and the church have faced, it seemed reasonable that they didn't want him to be a visible role after what happened to Micah. And I will say his behavior behind the pulpit was pretty odd after Micah's death, which is part of the reason all of this even went viral in the first place.
Apparently, after Micah's body was checked into the morgue, John Paul says that he tried to bring her back to life. I got this.
lay next to her body and spend time with her body about four times this week and each time it still didn't hit me um i thought she was gonna wake up you know i even tried to raise her from the dead one time this week and uh you heard that right in his eulogy for micah john paul said quote i got to lay next to her body and spend time with her body about four times this week
Now maybe he was speaking metaphorically. This might have been supposed to show how unreal Micah's death felt to him that he almost saw on some level he could undo it. It's hard to say if John Paul sincerely believed he had the power to raise the dead based on one comment. But I think it's hard to say if he really believed he had the power to raise the dead.
There are also some people who suggested that he said all of this to just put on a show, that he was playing up how sad he felt in an attempt to get people's sympathy. But according to Fitz News, after Micah's death, John Paul actually sent texts to her family members blaming them for the suicide. He actually said that they were at fault for encouraging Micah to leave him and to go off her meds.
That, on top of all the times he threatened them in the months leading up to Micah's death. Apparently, at least on one occasion, he kicked her out, and when Micah went to stay with relatives, John Paul said she needed to come back or he would show up with a gun. At one point, it was bad enough that Micah's sister actually called 911. You can kind of understand why the family...
feel so, so unsure about this case. Now I do want to end this episode on a note of hope because Micah's story didn't have to end this way. So if today's story especially resonated with anyone, whether it's because you or someone you know is in an unhealthy or dangerous relationship, or maybe you have thoughts of self-harm, there are people out there who love you, who care about you, and who want to help you.
If you need to talk to someone about an abusive relationship, you can call the National Domestic Abuse Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. You can remember it as 1-800-799-SAFE.
They can help you identify red flags and manipulation tactics. So even if you're unsure, maybe give them a call. They can help you make a plan to get out of a bad situation safely. And if you're in an emotional crisis and thinking about harming yourself, just dial the number 988. That's it. Those three digits, 988.
It breaks my heart that Micah passed away the way she did, but her tragedy doesn't need to be repeated. Her life had value, she had value, and so do you. All right, you guys, that was our episode, and I will see you next week as we go further into the dark together. I hope you enjoyed this case that's more of a recent case and kind of different than what we usually do. I'll see you next week.