A woman was walking through the parking lot of a shopping center towards her car when she felt a strong blow to her back, followed by excruciating pain, which caused her to fall on her face and almost lose consciousness. They had just stabbed her. When he turned around, the victim could see a teenager holding the knife just before he fled, so they were able to arrest him and send him to a juvenile detention center until he turned eighteen.
Over the next two decades, that young man immersed himself in apocalyptic stories until he created his own fictional character and called himself the Zombie Hunter. However, beneath that somewhat eccentric personality hid a potential murderer, who enjoyed inflicting pain on his victims with his multiple knives. His sadism had no limits, his crimes neither.
Bryan Patrick Miller was born on October 24, 1972 in Trenton (Michigan), although from a very young age he suffered one of the worst possible losses, that of his father. That made a big dent in him, even more so when his mother, an officer from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, blamed him for his father’s death and began to exercise all kinds of physical, emotional and psychological abuse against him.
These facts were confirmed by some neighbors of the Miller family, who claimed that Ellen was “a psychopathic mother” who had caused mental health problems for the little boy. In fact, as an adult she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and sexual sadism. He even made a “plan” to carry out all kinds of criminal actions, such as kidnapping, stabbing, mutilation and rape. He just had to put it into practice.
His first crime was committed at the age of fifteen when he stabbed a woman in the back in the parking lot of a shopping center. After his arrest, Bryan was sent to a juvenile detention center. He was released in the summer of 1990 after turning eighteen.
During the following years, our protagonist began in the world of horror, science fiction and Phoenix cosplay conventions, in addition to regularly dressing up as an apocalyptic character in the purest style of Resident Evil, one of his favorite video games.
Bryan appeared in these places wearing a helmet, a mask and glasses, in addition to carrying a simulated gun on him. Additionally, he proclaimed himself a Zombie Hunter, drove an old modified police cruiser with the words Zombie Hunter splattered in fake blood on the back, and carried a zombie mannequin in the back seat of the vehicle. Watching him patrol was quite a sight and he always caught everyone’s attention.
On November 8, 1992, Angela Brosso, 22, was riding her bicycle in a more secluded area of ??Phoenix when a vehicle hit her, knocking her to the ground. Bryan emerged from the car holding a knife. After dragging her out of the way, the young man savagely raped her, mutilated her body and after murdering her, severed her head. Before fleeing, Bryan threw the young woman’s body into the Arizona Canal.
The authorities found the bicycle near the trail and Angela’s body completely naked and battered. Eleven days later, divers rescued her head submerged in the water. Ten months later, on September 22, 1993, Bryan murdered again following the same modus operandi.
The scene found by the agents who located the lifeless body of Melanie Bernas was “horrible”: the body, although not decapitated, had multiple blows and cuts. They had even engraved some letters on her skin, as if it were a mutilation ritual. Finally, the young woman had very serious injuries from sexual assault. She was raped while she was dying.
In both Angela’s and Melanie’s bodies, the scientific police managed to collect biological evidence of her murderer. In this case, semen, whose DNA corresponded to the same suspect. Both crimes were connected, but there was no clue as to their perpetrator.
After the two murders, Bryan continued with his life, he had a girlfriend named Amy whom he married in 1997 and fathered a girl. The couple moved to Everett, Washington, although they finally separated shortly before 2005. According to Amy, her husband enjoyed watching her suffer from it. And she said it verbatim.
She was referring to the fact that, during sexual practices, Bryan used small knives, pins and any pointed object to make her bleed, in addition to telling her that he would kill her if it weren’t for how in love he was with her. His continuous physical and psychological abuse made Amy live under the yoke of terror until one day she abandoned him.
Amy fled after a woman accused Bryan of stabbing her in the back, leaving her with up to thirty stitches. The murderer was brought to trial, but was eventually acquitted. The judge had believed Bryan’s version: he claimed to be the victim of a knife robbery by the real victim.
Therefore, the woman’s injuries were due to a struggle between the two and not due to an attempted murder. This time her luck smiled on her, but not for long.
Despite more than twenty years that had passed, the cold case unit of the Phoenix Police Department had not stopped investigating the deaths of Angela and Melanie, although technology had not accompanied them. Until now.
In 2015, agents used genetic genealogy, among other tests, to identify semen samples collected from the victims’ bodies and found a unique match. It was Bryan Miller, a resident of the area where the crimes were committed.
After his arrest, one of the inspectors in charge proceeded to interrogate him. “How can you explain to me that your DNA is there?” he asked her. “Can’t. “I don’t remember everything I did back then, but I know I didn’t kill anyone,” the killer responded. The evidence said otherwise. Added to this was the testimony of a victim of his attacks who, after surviving and seeing her photo in the media, went to the police station.
The trial against Bryan Miller took seven years to hold because his lawyers alleged his mental incapacity due to a series of psychological problems. They sought to make him unimputable due to insanity. However, the forensic expert reports refuted this argument and confirmed that the suspect was mentally fit to stand trial.
The hearing began in October 2022 and, during it, the accused of two crimes of first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual assault wanted to address those present. “Today I am not looking for compassion. This moment is for the family and friends of the victims. “I can’t imagine the pain they have endured all these years,” he declared.
His words had no effect, nor did his defense arguments that insisted on Bryan’s “complex dissociative disorders” “based on the trauma” suffered during his childhood. For its part, the prosecution was also clear when requesting the death penalty for the defendant:
“The brutality of what he did, the impact it had on the family of these young women, what he stole from these young women deserves execution. And this will sound harsh. Angela and Melanie couldn’t choose when to die. They couldn’t choose the day, the hour, the moment. “This defendant deserves to know the day, the time of his death.”
In May 2023, Judge Suzanne Cohen sentenced Bryan Miller to life in prison for the murders of Angela and Melanie, and an additional 24 years for two counts of kidnapping and two counts of sexual assault. “The accused not only murdered them. “He mistreated them and evaded capture for more than twenty years,” the judge intoned during the reading of the verdict.
Currently, the inmate remains on death row at the Arizona prison awaiting execution. Meanwhile, the Phoenix cold case unit continues searching for another girl, 13-year-old Brandy Myers, who disappeared on May 26, 1992. Agents are convinced that the Zombie Hunter is responsible and they are not losing the hope of finding solid evidence that incriminates him.
