Bad Romance: Love at First Click

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20/20 45 min 6 speakers 7 chapters transcribed

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What case is being discussed in this episode?

Brad Milkey 0:00

Hey, it's Brad Milkey. This week on the Crime Scene Weekly, we're talking about a mom who gained national attention for faking her own kidnapping. Sherry Papini is back in the spotlight, but now she's changing her story and trying to change her custody arrangement with her kids. Listen to the latest from the case on the Crime Scene Weekly.

What is the warning about love at first click?

Unknown Speaker 0:40

You can't believe everything you see on the internet. The one you think is the love of your life may turn out to be the death of you. And that's not just an expression here. Beware of love at first click.

Unknown Speaker 1:03

This is a story that is about manipulation, cheating, lust, You've got salacious emails. You've got X-rated videos. Sheree Miller is accused of using sex, lies, and the internet to get men to do what she wanted them to do, even if it meant breaking the law.

Who is Cherie Miller and what is her story?

Juju Chang 1:27

So we need to add call. Tell me the number. So like that, right? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:31

All right.

Juju Chang 1:33

Hi, is this Sheree? Yes. Hey Cherie, it's Juju Chang calling, how are you?

1:38

I'm good, how are you?

Juju Chang 1:41

I'm on the phone with Cherie Paulette Kitley Miller, a mother from Michigan. And right now she's an inmate at the Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility. But her attorney says she's only guilty of creating a complex online fantasy life.

Unknown Speaker 1:58

Most of it was sex chat. It would get very graphic and very detailed about going through sexual encounters over the internet.

2:05

I spent hours upon hours online talking to people. It's sex. Like, I wanted to be in control of everything, obsessively in control.

Juju Chang 2:19

You were an online sex addict.

2:22

Very much. It was like a video game in each Cherie's story begins in Flint, Michigan, once a vibrant center for the car industry. When I grew up, Flint was booming.

Unknown Speaker 2:55

And there were upwards of 200,000 people here. The plants were going. We had over 80,000 General Motors jobs. And then when General Motors pulled out, things turned.

What led Cherie to online chat rooms?

Unknown Speaker 3:03

It's a factory town. I think it's seen better days, but the people there are very resilient. Growing up where I grew up, it was like your normal middle-class neighborhood. Every summer, they sent us to Florida with my grandma and papa, where that was my safe space. She had a hard childhood, product of several divorces that her mom had, different men coming and going in her household. She talks about being sexually abused.

Juju Chang 3:35

How old were you when you were first sexually assaulted?

3:36

I want to say probably three or four. As kids, you take on, like, everything is your fault.

Unknown Speaker 3:45

Well, she was a typical flint-wild child. Bars, karaoke, bowling alleys, just... partying. She moved out early. She got married when she was 17 to her first husband. They ended up getting a divorce. By the age of about 27, 28, she had been married twice and divorced twice.

Juju Chang 4:04

Cherie is a single mom raising three kids, working multiple jobs to make ends meet. She's a sales rep for Mary Kay Cosmetics and works at a nursing home. She also starts doing the books at a local scrapyard, B&D Auto, owned by a man named Bruce Miller.

Unknown Speaker 4:22

Bruce Miller was born and raised here in Flint, Michigan. He did what a lot of people did as soon as they got out of high school, went to work for General Motors. Always into cars. He traded a horse for his first car at 16, 17 years old, and was always into trying to race cars. He was a huge NASCAR fan. He just was a hard worker, went to work every day. In fact, he stayed working on third shift, which is a hard shift to work 30, 40 years. He was really close to retiring from General Motors and he would have just had the junkyard to fall back on and do what he liked to do. To have a salvage yard with all those parts and all that stuff for him to play with was just his idea of heaven. He also went through several marriages. He was married three times before. And he always told me he knew where the courthouse was.

Unknown Speaker 5:18

Bruce Miller was a lot older than Sherry, and he met her through the work at the salvage yard.

Juju Chang 5:27

So what was the spark? Who pursued whom? I pursued him.

Unknown Speaker 5:33

It was a short courtship between Sherry and Bruce, maybe four months. He was 20 years older than her. They weren't wasting a lot of time. As soon as they started dating, she moved herself in with the kids.