MILLMONT, PENNSYLVANIA: A woman in her late 70s has been sentenced to life in prison for killing her third husband after stealing his life savings for the last several years. According to NorthcentralPA.com, the victim's family lambasted the murderer on Friday, July 21, in a series of victim impact statements delivered at the Union County Courthouse.
“We spent a lot of money,” the killer, Myrle Evelyn Miller, testified during grand jury proceedings that saw her indicted for John W Nichols’ death. She also told investigators she wrote out the checks which her then-husband signed.
Who is Myrle Evelyn Miller?
Myrle Evelyn Miller, 78, was found guilty of several crimes regarding the swindling and fatal poisoning of the 77-year-old in April this year, including murder in the first degree, forgery, fraud, perjury, theft by deception, and dealing in proceeds of unlawful activities. Miller was sentenced there to a mandatory term of life in prison for Nichols’ murder by Lehigh County Senior Judge Edward Reibman, along with an additional sentence, to be served consecutively, of between 148 and 294 months for the five additional theft-related felony offenses.
Miller and Nichols married on December 2012. Since then she began her yearslong process of duping her then-husband’s cashbox but Nichols' family members eventually began to suspect Miller's evil motive. According to The Daily Item, the couple was visited by an agent with the Union-Snyder Agency on Aging in April 2018 who responded to complaints that the woman was committing fraud to steal and spend Nichols’ life savings.
Nichols, who thought his accounts were fine, initially agreed to a probe but he quickly decided to end the investigation at his wife’s request. As per a grand jury report obtained by The Patriot-News, Miller was overheard instructing to stop the inquiry less than a week later. The victim believed he had some $257,000 spaced across three separate investment accounts during the investigation but investigators discovered that it was Miller who had drained those accounts. She even took out a $19,000 loan against his life insurance.
What did the victim's family members say?
“Your soul is just too dark to feel anything.” Nichols’ daughter, Lori Hedding, reportedly said as she looked at Miller's direction. “I believe, Myrle, you are the true definition of evil.” Another daughter of the victim, Tammy Lawton described Miller as an “evil thing,” and at least three other victims referred to the convicted killer as "evil." “Instead of leaving after taking all of his worldly possessions, you took his life,” Lawton said, according to the outlet.
Myrle Evelyn Miller was accused of attempting to kill her first husband
On April 14, 2013, Nichols died from heart problems at the couple’s shared home on Lamey Road in Millmont. According to his obituary, he was a union carpenter and his first wife, Edith Nichols was the love of his life. The duo was married for 41 years before she died in September 2000.
Miller soon married her fourth husband following the death of Nichols. She was accused of attempting to kill her first husband by poisoning his cocktails back in 1986 but was later acquitted in 1988.
How did Nichols die?
An autopsy report claimed that Nichols had various drugs in his system at the time of his death. It included a fatal amount of Verapamil, a blood pressure medication that had not been prescribed to him but it was Miller who had prescribed the drug to Nichols. She obtained two 90-day supplies of the pharmaceutical in the three months before he died. “The defendant was systematically emptying her husband’s bank accounts, and upon being found out, made the deliberate and intentional decision to kill him,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry said after Miller was convicted earlier this year. “It is hard to fathom acts more cold, calculated, and self-serving.”
Miller was convicted following a one-week-long trial on April 23 after initially being charged in May 2021. Following her conviction and sentencing, Union County District Attorney Pete Johnson took the opportunity to lash out at the defendant, who refused to speak on her own behalf, excluding one time when she called the charges “ridiculous” and “[not] true” during her arraignment. “You saw the reaction of a sociopath to the verdict,” the DA said. “She was blank-faced.”
