(C) Wisconsin Watch
This story was originally published by Wisconsin Watch and is unaltered.
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What happened to Christopher Miller? Family frustrated by police response to disappearance [1]
['Lucas Robinson', 'Wisconsin State Journal', 'John Hart', 'State Journal']
Date: 2023-05
Tammy James has not seen or heard from her son in six months.
She last spoke with Christopher Miller on Nov. 18 after he learned there was a warrant out for his arrest.
James told her son to take care of his legal problems. But early the next day, the Wisconsin State Patrol tried to pull him over for speeding and Miller, 27, of Madison, tried to get away. After leading a trooper on a high-speed chase, Miller ran into the countryside off Interstate 90 just south of Janesville. He was wearing only a sweatshirt and jogging pants on a night when the temperature dropped to 19 degrees. He left his cellphone behind in the car.
Confused about which way he ran, police missed their best chance at apprehending Miller. A coordinated, multi-agency search for him would not take place until more than 48 hours later.
Whether he simply eluded police and is now in hiding or died that night, no one knows. He was never heard from again.
Since that night, holidays and birthdays have come and gone. Miller missed the birth of his fifth child. James’ happy memories of her son fixing her car or their plans to start a business together have become painful.
Frustrated by what they contend was an inadequate response by police, family members have led search parties through rural wooded areas of Rock County. They’ve hired a private investigator, made media appearances and staged protests at law enforcement offices, the governor’s mansion and the state Capitol.
“I’m trying to stay focused and try not to break, literally,” James said. “I’ve been more emotional now as the days continue to pass by.”
The family requested information on the case to learn as much as they could about law enforcement’s handling of the case, including internal State Patrol dispatch audio and text messages.
What they found only compounded their grief: The records show dispatchers appearing to get exasperated with the family’s frequent requests for help. In texts on the phone of a State Patrol sergeant, someone said Miller’s family should “work on their grammar” and that the family should look for him in “Chiraq,” a slang term for Chicago that suggests its level of gun violence is equal to that of Iraq.
The messages and documents have led James and her family to believe that authorities aren’t looking as hard for her son because he is Black.
“If Christopher was white, they would still be looking for him,” she said. “The outrage would be tremendous. I just feel like they didn’t care.”
Miller’s family doesn’t dispute his legal troubles. At the time of his disappearance, he had a warrant for his arrest because he hadn’t submitted a DNA sample to comply with the terms of a plea he made to a previous charge of resisting arrest in April 2022. As part of the plea, charges of possession of marijuana, battery and disorderly conduct were dismissed. When he ran from the State Patrol in November, he also had about 2.2 ounces of marijuana in his vehicle.
But that doesn’t make him undeserving of efforts to find him, his family said.
Rock County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Mark Thompson, whose agency led the initial investigation into Miller’s disappearance, said there is no bias against Miller or his family. He said the concerted search for Miller did not begin until days after his disappearance because it happened over a weekend when resources are thin.
“Him not having contact with his family has always been concerning to us, but at this point we don’t have much further to go,” Thompson said, adding that a renewed search for Miller might start this spring.
The chase
It was just past 2 a.m. on Nov. 19 when State Patrol Trooper Derek Ketelboeter spotted Miller driving 94 mph in a silver Mazda. When Ketelboeter turned on his emergency lights, Miller sped away and turned off his vehicle’s headlights, according to video of the chase given to the Wisconsin State Journal by his family. Miller’s Mazda had fled from another State Patrol officer earlier that month, a sergeant said in dispatch audio.
“I’m like, ‘He’s done this before. He ain’t no scrub,’” Ketelboeter is seen on video saying to fellow Trooper Lawrence Horwood minutes after Miller had disappeared. “He knows what he’s doing.”
The pursuit lasted about seven minutes and reached speeds of 123 mph, according to Ketelboeter’s report and dashcam footage. While briefly getting off the interstate to change directions, Miller crashed into a stoplight. Back on the interstate, with one tire blown out, Miller’s car came to a stop on the right shoulder just south of Avalon Road.
Ketelboeter jumped out of his cruiser, gun drawn, and yelled at Miller to turn the engine off and come out with his hands up. Instead, Miller ran. Ketelboeter didn’t run after him because he didn’t know if anyone else was in the car, according to footage.
“You ever wonder if it’s things like this where, then they have to get out and suffer through the cold, that they start wondering whether or not they made the right choice in life?” Ketelboeter said to Horwood in the video.
During a search of the vehicle, troopers found about 2.2 ounces of marijuana. While possession of marijuana is illegal in Wisconsin, Ketelboeter remarked that “it’s not an insane amount of weed.”
Ketelboeter referred the case to to Rock County prosecutors for possible charges, including possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, recklessly endangering safety, hit and run, resisting arrest, possession of drug paraphernalia and fleeing an officer.
Miller was charged with a series of traffic violations which were later dismissed at the request of the Rock County District Attorney’s Office.
In response to a request for comment from the State Journal, the District Attorney’s Office said prosecutors are still reviewing the 6-month-old case for possible additional charges.
Miscommunication
Rock County deputies arrived at the scene within minutes of Miller’s escape and set up a perimeter to find him. But miscommunication between Ketelboeter, dispatchers and deputies about whether Miller ran to the south or west caused the perimeter to quickly get “busted,” or compromised, Deputy Joshua Peterson can be heard saying in a bodycam video.
“How did they not communicate that more effectively?” Peterson, who had a search dog with him, exclaimed to other deputies after a few minutes of searching, according to the video. “It was called out poorly.”
In a letter to Miller’s family afterward, State Patrol Supt. Tim Carnahan assured them that the search continued that night. Deputies with Dane and Rock counties looked for Miller for three hours, including with a drone, Carnahan said.
But that wasn’t true.
Dane County deputies did not participate in the search at the scene. A drone was not flown that night, and the perimeter to search for Miller was broken down after an hour, according to State Patrol and Rock County documents.
Rock County deputies did attempt to fly a drone. But department policy requires the pilot to clear the flight with air traffic controllers at the Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport, and no one there answered the phone, so the aircraft never took off.
In response to questions about the inaccuracies in Carnahan’s letter to the family, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation’s Office of Public Affairs said the letter was based on preliminary documentation and reports related to the search for Miller that had been filed with different case numbers.
“Because of this, they were missed during the initial records query,” the Department of Transportation said.
‘Disheartening’
Over the next two days, law enforcement showed a reluctance to look for Miller due to lack of resources and because he was a fugitive, not a missing person, according to dispatch audio.
At first, a State Patrol dispatcher told Miller’s family that troopers had had no contact with him and told them to call other law enforcement agencies. Later, the dispatcher told Miller’s fiancée that no troopers were available for a search effort.
In internal discussions, dispatchers and supervisors can be heard trying to sort out who has jurisdiction over the case and whether a search is being conducted while responding to increasingly anxious and tearful calls from James and Miller’s fiancée, Mallory Duerst.
But in one of the exchanges, the speakers can be heard laughing about sending U.S. marshals after Miller. “Yeah, go get him!” a female said.
Another dispatcher later called Miller’s mother “irate” and “not easy to deal with for everyone.”
Duerst called the dispatchers’ tone and comments “unprofessional” and “disheartening.”
“I was disgusted,” Duerst said. “To actually sit back and hear that. To hear them say that among themselves and almost laugh like it was a joke or that we were bothering them when we were concerned about our loved one’s life.”
That weekend, additional efforts were made to look for Miller. About 24 hours after the chase, Ketelboeter checked a field by the interstate and walked along railroad tracks to the southwest of where Miller was last seen.
In footage given to the family, Ketelboeter searched a culvert for about seven minutes and a ditch for about nine minutes.
In the afternoon on Nov. 20, the State Patrol flew a plane over the scene for about two hours and Rock County searched a nearby subdivision with a spotlight.
Effort builds
The next day, Nov. 21, more than 48 hours after Miller disappeared, law enforcement launched their most robust search for him.
In the next week, Rock County, the State Patrol and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources searched the area using drones, dogs and utility task vehicles, according to law enforcement documents. On Nov. 22, 28 law enforcement officers spent eight hours looking for Miller, Thompson said.
The searches on those days combed through a subdivision, a pig farm, a railyard, other private property and more.
In the end, the only piece of evidence collected was a piece of black fabric lodged in a barb wire fence about 200 yards from where Miller’s Mazda came to a stop on the highway, according to Rock County reports.
“I was actually surprised we were not able to find him,” Rock County’s Thompson said. “Usually when someone runs from us, they turn up a few days later.”
Miller could still be in the area, or he could have fled or been picked up by someone, Thompson said.
After days of searching, Rock County detective Dwayne Shaw and Madison police Capt. Kelly Beckett agreed on Nov. 28 that Madison would be the primary investigating agency, since his last known address was in the city, according to Rock County reports.
There were some efforts to find Miller after the initial search. The last documented search for Miller came on Dec. 19. That day, Rock County deputies searched a salvage yard in Janesville using a dog and UTV. They found nothing.
In early December, text messages on the cellphone of State Patrol Sgt. Adam Zoch obtained by the family briefly discussed Miller’s case. The exchange, which the State Patrol is now investigating for code-of-conduct violations, went as follows:
“They need to work on their grammar.”
“Mallory (Duerst) is pregnant (laughing emoji). Dude dipped.”
“There is a find Christopher Miller Facebook group. They were supposedly doing a search yesterday.”
“They should start in chiraq.”
‘Good and bad days’
Miller’s family continues to look for answers and last met with representatives from Rock County, the State Patrol and Madison police in mid-December, which took place before the bulk of records from the case were released to them.
Madison police closed the case in February in order to release documents to the family.
“There’s good and bad days,” Duerst said.
“We’re trying to stay hopeful, but we know if he were somewhere safe and had access to a phone he would have called,” she said. “At this point, we want him found regardless and we want to know really what happened to him.”
Searches of the area where Miller disappeared by family and volunteers continue, and a more than 1,000-person-strong Facebook group share tips and theories about the case.
“He is more than just another Black criminal like they paint him out to be,” Duerst wrote in the Facebook group recently. “He deserves more than this. The police failed him, his whole family and children. This shouldn’t have happened.”
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[1] Url:
https://madison.com/news/local/crime-courts/what-happened-to-christopher-miller-family-frustrated-by-police-response-to-disappearance/article_c5eed018-a1ff-5302-bec0-5a5da862faa9.html
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