It took Joseph Robert Miller-a short, pudgy, convicted killer of prostitutes-just a few months of freedom to become this river town’s first serial killer, according to police.
In June, after serving 15 years in prison for murdering two women in Chicago, Miller moved into a quiet, friendly public housing building with 80 elderly and disabled residents.
He had injured his foot in prison and was living on disability benefits from the government.
By October, the naked bodies of three women believed by authorities to have been prostitutes had been found in drainage ditches around Peoria, and an elderly woman who had hired Miller to do odd jobs was missing.
In Peoria, a city with a reputation as the quintessential American town, even murder is becoming more commonplace, according to some residents.
“It’s almost old hat, even here: `Oh well, there’s another murder,’ ” said Pennie Williams, a 47-year-old hair stylist.
On Friday, Miller, 39, who is charged with killing the three women, was ordered held on a $2 million bond. Investigators don’t know why the women were killed.
“It’s internal; it’s a person’s thoughts,” said Peoria County State’s Atty. Kevin Lyons. “He attacks people who ply a sexual trade.”
Miller was jailed in October after being charged with burglarizing the home of the elderly woman who had hired him. Police spent the next three months building murder cases against him, and charged him Thursday. They still are trying to link him to the elderly woman’s disappearance.
Miller appeared before a judge Friday via video screen hooked up to the Peoria County Jail-standard procedure in the courts here.
Dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, unbuttoned to accommodate his waistline, Miller seemed annoyed.
When confronted with the six counts of murder-two for each victim-Miller grew sarcastic. “It’s kind of hard to do the same thing twice,” he said.
In one sense, that’s exactly what police think he did.
In 1978, Miller, who at 23 already had a long police record, was convicted of killing two Chicago-area prostitutes and was sentenced to 15 to 30 years in prison. He was paroled after 15 years, ending his term last April at the Illinois River Correctional Center in Canton, about 35 miles from Peoria.
A prison minister there, who had befriended Miller, suggested that he move to Peoria after his release, law enforcement officials said. One of his new neighbors, Rubye Glover, was one of the few in Peoria who knew of his criminal record. As a member of the Peoria Housing Authority board of commissioners, she was told of his murder convictions after he applied to become a tenant.
Worried at first, she grew comfortable with him, even when he came into her apartment alone to pick up some food. “I wasn’t afraid,” she said. “He didn’t bother anybody. He was always friendly, always saying hello.”
Miller’s apartment was tidy and amply decorated with furniture donated by the prison ministry, Glover said. “There was every kind of appliance you could think of in there.”
When six elderly women went to a nursing home to pray for the residents there, Miller went along, and it was he who led the prayers. “My, he could pray,” said one resident who was there.
Over the summer, he went door-to-door in a Peoria neighborhood soliciting odd jobs. One door he knocked on belonged to Bernice Fagotte, a petite 88-year-old widow who had been born in the white clapboard house and who lived there her whole life.
In September, a paper boy noticed her papers and mail had piled up.
Police were notified, and they found her car parked near Miller’s apartment building three weeks later, on Sept. 23.
Her whereabouts remain a mystery.
“I miss her,” said Vicky Allen, 39, who lived next door to Fagotte for 30 years. “I keep hoping that maybe she’s out there, that maybe somebody’s taking care of her.”
Police got a break when an employee at the Illinois River prison read news accounts of the prostitutes found slain in Peoria and recognized the crimes as being similar to those for which Miller had gone to prison.
The employee notified Miller’s parole officer, who said Miller had settled in Peoria, officials said.
Authorities won’t detail their evidence, but have disclosed that their case against Miller is based on witnesses and DNA tests that link Miller with Fagotte’s car and the bodies of the three prostitutes.
“It’s a cumulative thing,” State’s Atty. Lyons said. “It’s like fitting together the pieces of a puzzle.”
Miller is well-known to Chicago-area authorities. He has been arrested a dozen times for crimes ranging from grand larceny and auto theft as a teenager to sexual assault and murder, according to court records in Chicago, Skokie, Downstate Bloomington and Virginia.
In most of the cases, he was convicted of lesser charges, plea-bargained down from serious felonies. He seldom went to jail.
The 5-foot, 8-inch Miller, who weighs 210 pounds, is an Illinois native. Although he has used a number of aliases, he was born on Jan. 15, 1955, as Joseph Robert Tarczon, according to records provided by Skokie police. The FBI lists his birthdate as a year earlier.
On Oct. 25, 1977, Martha Ryan, 31, a Chicago woman with a history of prostitution convictions, disappeared.
She was last seen by friends, who recalled to police that Ryan had a “date” that evening.
Ryan, wearing blue jeans, brown high heels with open toes and a red jacket lined with a fur collar, was last seen getting into a man’s orange Vega station wagon.
Eight days later, Ryan’s body, wrapped in a blanket, was found in bushes near a liquor store at 4300 Old Orchard Rd. in Skokie.
Miller, already familiar to authorities because of his past convictions, was sought for questioning.
Detectives went to his home, a condominium complex at 10110 Old Orchard Rd., just up the road from where the body was found.
During the search for Miller, a Chicago prostitute questioned by police a day after a second body was found identified Miller and his wife, Marsha Lynn Miller, saying she had been paid to have sex with both of them.
Joseph Miller, who was arrested five days later, confessed to killing Ryan, and he was sentenced to 15 to 30 years in state prison. The sentence was served concurrently with convictions on other crimes, including the killing of a prostitute in Chicago, authorities said.
Prosecutors also eventually tied him to an armed robbery in Skokie, a kidnapping elsewhere in Cook County and aggravated battery in Du Page County, according to state’s attorney’s records.
Police also say Miller had been a suspect in at least three other murders as well, including a killing in Waukegan in October 1976.
On Friday, Peoria County prosecutors said they will seek the death penalty for Miller. That’s the same thing Cook County prosecutors said in 1978.
