Bryan Miller has been found guilty of murdering two young women, Angela Brosso and Melanie Bernas, in Phoenix 30 years ago.
The verdict was delivered Tuesday by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Suzanne Cohen, who presided over the bench trial without a jury. It closes a chapter in the decades-long"canal killings" case, which shocked the region in the early 1990s.
The trial was dominated by accounts of Miller's childhood, particularly the abuse he suffered from his mother, who died in 2010.But the defense wasn't accepted by Cohen, who declared Miller guilty of kidnapping, murdering and attempting to sexually assault each victim. Cohen deliberated alone in the jury room.
He testified that he went out looking for her a few times, then called a friend, and then the police. A forensic examination later found evidence of sexual assault and determined she had died from a stab wound to the back that pierced her lung and aorta. The next morning, a cyclist called 911 after riding through a pool of blood by the I-17 underpass at Castles N' Coasters, close to where Brosso's head had been recovered 10 months earlier.Drag marks led to where Melanie's body had been moved and eventually dropped into the water, drifting 12 feet before coming to a stop in some brush.
Prosecutors argued there was plenty of evidence of Miller's desires: in the violent porn he consumed, the BDSM sex he engaged in with his ex-wife, and in a document he wrote as a teenager detailing a plan to kidnap, mutilate and rape a girl.
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