Rodney Miller
Appearances
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
When I went to work, I went to work to work. I didn't go to work to goof off. I did my job. My record would speak for itself.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
It was about shift change. He told me when I come back to work after my two days were off, I'd be going back on a night shift. And I said, that's not going to happen. They came the next morning and told me that they wanted my cars, my gunner badge and my keys. Then I was terminated.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
I knew there was a boy missing, but I did not know it was Adam until I came home from Pennsylvania from a trip. And then my wife said, well, do you know who the boy is missing from Stanley? And I said, no. And she goes, it's Adam Chase. And all I said to her was, well, where's he going to go? He doesn't have that many friends to go anyplace.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
When I went to see them, Lyndon asked me, what's up? And I said, well, I come to help you find your son.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
When she got confirmed with that photo, that was her gay friend. There were little things that were being told that raised a lot of suspicion.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
I wasn't asking for any financial money or nothing. I just went there to tell him that I thought I could help him find Adam.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
The day I went to see her, when I pulled in and I went up and introduced myself, we were at the side of the house. There were two porches on that house. There was a side porch and then there was a front porch. When I was a youngster in school, that was one of my hangouts, that house. The family that used to live there, Lippincott's, were very good friends of mine. It's still are to this day.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
She's sitting on this back porch. She's facing towards the house, and she's looking right into the window of the cellar. She's sitting on the steps, and I used an old trick that I was taught. I got close to her, and I touched her on her shoulder, and she shook like a leaf. And I got right down, and I'm right beside her face, and in a whisper, I say to her, Rose...
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
I know about the fight that you had upstairs in the hole in the wall. And she trembled for maybe two, five or 15 seconds. And all of a sudden she springs right up, turns around and stands right in front of me and says, I'm sorry he walked out of the house and I didn't see which way he went. And I looked right at her and told her to her face, I think you killed him.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
I left her house... and went to the sheriff's house, sat on his porch with him, and told him that I don't believe he ever left the house.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
He couldn't tell me what they'd done or were doing because that was none of my business, which I understood. I wasn't asking him for that. I was telling him what I felt. And he said, off the record, we think he committed suicide. We're going to find him out in the woods or the fields. And that was the summer we were having two to 100 and some degree days.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
And if he was in the fields or the woods or the buzzards, would have told us where he was. And I disagreed with him and told him that. I don't think he ever left the house.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
She was outside again when I pulled in, walking around with her and her son. I introduced myself again. She said she remembered me. And I asked her if she'd pop the trunk of the car and I could make sure that Adam wasn't in there. She did that, and then I asked her if we could go inside and walk through the house. And she told me I could.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
She showed me the hole in the wall, and she showed me where he played his games and stuff, and the house was literally a mess. They weren't the best of housekeepers. As we're walking back down, the boyfriend's sitting on the couch about 15 feet from me, and that was Mark Broadhurst.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
I asked Rose, can I go down the basement? She said, no, it's flooded. And I said, well, at least let me look. And she opened the door and turned on the light, and the basement floor was as dry as could be. And I said, do you mind if I go down? And on the third step, I smelled him.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
They were like a dead squirrel and I forget what was there, but there was a couple of carcasses laying on the floor. And she said, I have a lot of road problems in the house.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
The back part of the basement, she'd taken all the lights out, and that did have a little water on the floor, enough to wet your shoe.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
There was a chest freezer in the one corner of the basement, and I asked her to open it so I could look in there, and that just, I think, relatively was empty.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
We walked back up and she came back out and she's walking in the yard with me. And she's walking beside me. And I have a specific question I want to ask her. I'm looking for an answer. I said to Rose, what are you going to do if one of these nights Adam comes home, walks in the house, and you're in bed with another man? And she says to me, she starts to say, he ain't. And she caught herself.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
And she goes, I'm not taking him back. But she said what I wanted her to. He ain't coming back.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
I went to Sheriff Pavel's house again, sat right on the porch beside him, and I said, I can't prove that he's in the basement, but I know he was in the basement. I said, Phil, I smelled him on the third step, but I couldn't find him. I could smell him, but I couldn't find him.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
He's a private person. There was nothing wrong with Adam except Adam was Adam. He wasn't a real sociable person other than around family. He loved his family.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
There came a point when I walked away from it. I had things to do around the farm. I burned wood for my heat. I knew winter was coming. I had to get some of my stuff done. And I actually got burned out about Adam.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
It was a snowy, cold day. And when I come home, my wife said, I sat in the lounge chair and my wife said, what are you going to do? And I said, I don't know. I'm running out of things to do. And if the weather changes, we're not going to find him.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
But then I got a phone call. It was Adam's father, Lyndon. And his father said, the Sheriff's Department fucked us. And if you don't help us find our son... We ain't going to find him. That hurt. He said, why'd you give up? I said, you never give up. And I said, I didn't give up. I said, I just had to get away from it for a while because I walked a lot of miles looking for Adam.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
After that conversation, it kind of fired me up and I went back at it a lot harder than I did in the beginning.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
I called Sandy and I said, will you help me? She wanted to know what I wanted. I said, well, when Rose comes to pick up her son tonight, I want you to tell her so that you don't get in trouble that you heard it from another one of your customers that there's a break in the case and they're going to make an arrest and charge somebody with murder.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
There was nothing there to make an arrest, on my end, other than the bluff.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
And she didn't call me. I told her not to text me because I don't read texts. But anyway, she texted me. But it came quarter after 5, and I knew she picked him up at 5 o'clock. She didn't call me. So I called her, and I said, Sandy, did she pick up? Yeah, she goes, didn't you get my text? I said, I told you not to text me. But anyways, she said, you should go.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
She said when she left here, she was as white as a sheet, and all she could say was, oh, shit, oh, shit.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
I was all ready to go. I'd had my coat on and I was ready to go to her house and that's what I did.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
When I went there that night, she came out on the front porch and sat down, and I said, Rose, I've had enough. You've got to give him up. You're never going to be at peace until you tell me what you did with him, and I want to know where you buried him. And just like that, she took her hands away from her face and looked right at me and said, I didn't bury him. I said, well, then where is he?
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
I took him to my mother's. Where? He's in the burn barrel. Where are the bones? They're in the barrel. Then when I asked her, who helped you take him out of the house? She just said, I took him out by myself. I said, how? Piece by piece.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
It was a cool night. She wanted to go and get her coat and cigarettes. And I walked back into the house with her. She walks over into the side of the house again to the couch where the boyfriend, Mark, is sitting. And he gets up and he's standing in front of her. And she puts her hands out like she's looking for a hug. And she says to the boyfriend, I killed Adam.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
He was down on the floor playing with something and she squatted down, gave him a hug and said, Mom, he's got to go away for a while.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
Timmy Marks watches her on that Saturday carry this old burned door back down to the basement. He can't figure out what she's doing. And he's going to go help her, but his phone rings. But when he comes back out, he notices that she got the door in the basement somehow, and that she's carrying all this rotten wood.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
The same deputy, John Peck, goes to Timmy Marks' house. What can you tell us about your neighbor, Adam Chase? Well, why? John tells him he's missing. Oh, Timmy Marks says to John Peck, you ought to check the basement where she carried that door and wood. And what they did was nothing.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
And at that point... So after he shoved you, did he turn around and start to go back downstairs again? Yes.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
So you're sitting there, you're seeing him on the ground, you're thinking, screw him, I'm not getting him help. screwed me too many times, he's bringing our son into this whole mess, it's gonna be a hell of a lot easier if he just dies right there. Then if I get him help, he lives, then we gotta go through all this fighting again and custody and all that, right?
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
After spending the night at her mother's, Rose then dumped Adam's torso, limbs, and rotted tissue into the woods to be burned at a later date.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
They had to make a phone call to Yates County to make sure they had a search warrant. But my understanding is that they went to her mother's house that night to secure the scene.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
I'm happy she was convicted. We worried. When some of the testimony was replayed, it always puts that lump in your throat. But in my heart, I knew God was going to take care of me. He helped me find him. And I'm happy she's gone where she belongs.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
Anybody that has love for law enforcement, your dream is to always solve a major case. And to me, this was a major case. But I can honestly tell you, in the end, it's a gutless feeling because you know you solved it, but it's not a good ending. And unfortunately, it sticks with you. I don't hold any animosities. This wasn't a vindictive thing to come at the Sheriff's Department to get even with.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
All I wanted them to do was their freaking job. And they didn't. We never blame the Sheriff's Department for Adam's death. We blame the Sheriff's Department for that family not being able to bury their son.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
The only reason I ran against Philip Oliver was I asked him one thing, and that was to go and apologize for the Chase family for not doing his job. And quote, unquote, he says to me, I don't have to do anything you tell me. And he did. And he never, to my knowledge, he never apologized. I can tell you that the night that I found Adam, he called me, asked me not to talk to the media.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
I told him, I don't need to talk to the media. I want to talk to you. I want to know why he didn't believe me when I told you what I knew. And he quote unquote said, Rodney, we honestly thought he'd be home by Christmas. I said, well, you can't come home if you're fucking dead. And I hung up.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
I think two reasons. The dogs weren't worth what they paid for them, and the trainers weren't worth a shit. According to the sheriff, he did not know they were not certified dogs, but dogs in training. I was told that they'd walk by his body within two feet. That was told to me by Tantillo, the DA.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
I would have to say from what I saw his reaction, I don't think he did, but it's hard to believe that he couldn't, in the time that Adam was in the basement, that he couldn't smell it. I mean, that's a question that lingers on, and I don't think you're ever going to get an answer to it. But supposedly from what I heard secondhand, they did give him a lie detector test, and he passed that.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
Looney Mooney. That's what we called her, Looney Mooney. Not eating her fruitcake. I think the mom knew, too.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
The Sheriff's Department called her on Friday night and wanted to ask her questions instead of going to the house and asking if they could walk around and make sure that he wasn't hiding her in some place in the house.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
He asked me not to talk to the media. I told him, I don't need to talk to the media. I want to talk to you. And he quote unquote said, Rodney, we honestly thought he'd be home by Christmas. I said, well, you can't come home if you're fucking dead.
Sword and Scale
Episode 283
Well, my name's Rodney G. Miller. I'm 73 years old, but years ago in 1980, I got hired by Ontario County as a deputy.