Editor’s note: This article mentions suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, resources or someone to talk to, you can find it at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline website or by calling 800-273-8255. People are available to talk 24/7.
(NewsNation) — A video obtained exclusively by NewsNation shows the strife between Mica Miller and her husband John-Paul Miller weeks before her suicide. Mica went to East Coast Honda in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina after her tires had been slashed, when she got into an argument abruptly with her husband.
NewsNation correspondent Rich McHugh calls the video “a window into everything that we’ve been … guessing — the struggles that they had been having the previous two years.”
McHugh also obtained reports from the Myrtle Beach police department showing at least eight contacts by Mica Miller with officers in the weeks before her death.
Mica Miller was found dead April 27 at Lumber State Park in Lumberton, North Carolina, about 70 miles north of Myrtle Beach. The Robeson County, N.C., medical examiner ruled her death a suicide.
In those police complaints, Mica Miller accused her pastor husband of stealing her car, installing a tracking device and hospitalizing her against her will. But the most damming thing she told police is that her pastor husband started “grooming” her when she was 10 years old.
John-Paul Miller’s attorney pushes back
John-Paul Miller, who is 14 years older than Mica, has fiercely denied that allegation. His attorney, Russel Long, issued a statement Thursday saying the “grooming” idea “couldn’t be farther from the truth. She moved to Myrtle Beach at the age of 15, was married to another man at the age of 18 and divorced at the age of 21.”
Mica Miller’s sister, Sierra Francis, believes John-Paul Miller did “groom” her sister, but not that young.
“I would guess that she probably meant 2010, not ‘10’ (years old),” she told NewsNation’s “Banfield.” Francis said her sister told her the “grooming” began when she was 14 or 15.
John-Paul and Mica Miller were married in 2017. They had been separated since January of 2023.
Long’s statement repeats authorities’ conclusion that Mica died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, a finding that “completely exonerates Pastor Miller of any wrongdoing.”
Long is also demanding that media outlets stop “perpetuating these harmful falsehoods. Any further dissemination of defamatory and libelous statements will be met with legal action,” the statement said.
Mica Miller’s family, however, is not backing down. The attorney for Sierra Francis, Regina Ward, says the family is contemplating some sort of civil action, perhaps against Solid Rock Church, of which John-Paul Miller is the de facto owner.
“He went after everything that meant anything to this young woman,” Ward told NewsNation. “She was brainwashed by this man. He abused her in every possible way that there is.”
Also releasing a statement Thursday was Angela Brian Clark, who says she was a close friend of Mica Miller. She says her friend’s death “has created a wave of emotion, speculation, hurt, brokenness, sadness … for me. The stories that Mica shared with me personally are horrific.”
Clark notes John-Paul Miller’s denial of being involved in his wife’s death but says “you don’t have to physically pull a trigger to be responsible for someone’s death.”
A police timeline shows Mica Miller leaving her home April 27 just before noon, buying a gun, then three hours later calling 911 and threatening to take her own life.
The sheriff’s office said John-Paul Miller was not in North Carolina the night before or the day of Mica Miller’s death. Surveillance video captured him in Charleston, South Carolina, at an athletic event.
Man may have heard suicide
In another Thursday development, a man says he heard cries and a gunshot at the park during the time when it’s believed Mica Miller died.
Johnnie Jacobs revealed to NewsNation affiliate WBTW that he found the 30-year-old’s fanny pack with her ID inside and heard crying followed by a gunshot, then silence.
“I heard a cry — a faint cry. Heard it for about two or three minutes, then the crying stopped,” Jacobs said. “If it would have been a person out there crying where I could see them, I’d have checked on them all day long.”
Also this week, a food server told NewsNation that John-Paul Miller left her a large tip and wrote his phone number on the restaurant bill — which led the two to exchange flirtatious messages. That occurred two months before Mica Miler’s death.
The server, whom NewsNation agreed to identify only by her first name Christiana, says she and Miller then exchanged texts after Mica’s death.
He repeatedly asked Christiana to send pictures of herself, including bikini pictures, and called her “super-hot.” The pastor never asked to meet in person, she said.
One more revelation from police reports: Mica Miller was the suspect in a now-closed theft investigation in which nearly $1,200 in donations meant for the Solid Rock Ministries’ missionary efforts in Africa were reported stolen.
Mica was suspected of taking the money from a church account and putting into her personal account.
Police said the investigation was closed April 8 after the city attorney determined that there was no probable cause and that the case was a “civil matter between [the] involved parties.” Miller’s name did not appear in the police report, but police confirmed that she was the “offender.”