- When cops found blood on a canal path, it led to a grim discovery
- A woman was brutally murdered – and then her killer struck again
- But it took police decades and a DNA breakthrough to find him
Angela Brosso was excited for the future. On the evening of November 8, 1992, she was just hours away from turning 22 and her boyfriend, Joe, was baking her a cake to celebrate.
The couple usually enjoyed a sunset bike ride along a nearby canal, and around 7pm Angela decided to go alone, promising to be back in time to watch their favourite comedy show.
So when Angela didn’t return home by 8pm, Joe started to worry.
Bloody drag marks
In the hours that followed, Joe grew more frantic and took his bike out to look for Angela, three times, in between calling her friends and mum asking if they had heard from her.
Joe then reported her missing to police.
The next morning – when Angela should have been celebrating her birthday – police found bloody drag marks leading from the canal path to a field where her body was discovered.
Horrifyingly, Angela was naked apart from her trainers. She had been assaulted and stabbed in the back. Even more shocking, her head was missing, and wasn’t found until 11 days later when a fisherman saw it in the river.
While police were able to get DNA from Angela’s body, there were no leads and the case went cold.
That was, until the killer struck again.
Ten months later, 17-year-old schoolgirl Melanie Bernas snuck out for a bike ride along the canal while her mum, Marlene, was out at dinner. Melanie never returned home.
The next morning, a woman cycling along the path spotted a huge puddle that looked like blood.
Doubling back, she noticed what looked like drag marks into an area not far from where Angela’s head had been found.
A woman spotted a huge puddle that looked like blood
She called police, and when they arrived they found Melanie’s body floating in the canal, dressed in a teal bodysuit – something her mum and friends were adamant she didn’t own.
Did Melanie’s killer dress her as part of their twisted crime?
Investigators were able to match DNA to that found on Angela. But again, they hit a dead end.
The case became known as the Canal Murders, and it’d be 20 years before investigators finally got a break.
It was 2014 when a forensic genealogist put the DNA into a database, and came up with the name Miller.
On the list of more than 600 persons of interest in the case, there were six Millers – but one stood out to investigators.
Bryan Miller, who was 20 at the time of the crimes, had a juvenile record for stabbing a woman.
By the time police narrowed in on him, he was a divorced single dad to a 15-year-old daughter and working at Amazon.
A sci-fi and horror fan, he was known as the ‘Zombie Hunter’ at cosplay conventions and would dress in a mask and goggles, carrying a large fake weapon.
To see if he was their guy, police set up a ruse where he was invited to a restaurant for what he thought was a meeting about a job.
Undercover detectives then took his cup to collect his DNA.
When they ran it through the system, it was a match.
Miller was arrested in January 2015 and charged with two counts of first-degree murder. But it was years before he was brought to trial.
In October 2022, in Maricopa County Court in Phoenix, Miller admitted to the murders but pleaded not guilty for reasons of insanity. His lawyers argued he couldn’t control his actions because he was suffering dissociative amnesia at the time.
They claimed it was the result of abuse he’d received as a child, and defence experts claimed he had a dissociative disorder, autism, anxiety and PTSD and didn’t understand the nature of his actions.
Prosecutors said that the defence was nonsense, and that by dressing Melanie in a bodysuit he’d taken with him, showed his crimes were methodical.
‘This defendant at his core is a sexual sadist. He enjoys hurting people for his own sexual pleasure,’ prosecutor Vince Imbordino said.
Feared for her life
His ex-wife, Amy Miller, also testified that while he had never hit or abused her in the early years of their marriage, sex grew increasingly violent and by the time she left him, she feared for her life.
In April 2023, Superior Court Judge Suzanne Cohen, found Bryan Patrick Miller, 50, guilty of murder, kidnapping and attempted sexual assault of each victim. At Miller’s sentencing hearing, he spoke for the first time.
I’m not looking for sympathy today
Bryan Miller in court
‘I am not looking for sympathy today,’ he said to the court, in May 2023. ‘This time is for the family and the friends of the victims. I cannot imagine what pain they have endured all these years.’
The following month, Miller received two death sentences, plus an additional 24 years for kidnapping and attempted sexual assault.
The victims’ families expressed their heartbreak.
Melanie’s sister Jill spoke of the ‘excruciating pain we experience every single day since her murder. We live without her smile, her hugs, her companionship. We live without her love.’
Angela’s mum Linda said, ‘(Miller) stole my angel from the Earth. Angela was my one and only. I will never be able to plan her wedding. I will never have grandchildren.
‘With his actions on that night, he murdered my angel, he ripped my heart, and I will never, ever be the same.’
Under Arizona state law, the case will be automatically appealed.
Subscribe for the chance to WIN $50,000
- From JUST $3.65 per issue
- Get 26 issues (6 months) for $94.99 via automatic renewal
- FREE home delivery each week
- Risk free cancel anytime
Related stories
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
