As she lay in a Nebraska hospital bed, the frail woman at the center of an investigation into a decades-old Chicago murder acknowledged responsibility for the death of her daughter, police said Monday.
Under questioning by detectives, Joan Miller “admitted causing” the death of a daughter named Holly, a 5- or 6-year-old girl whose skeleton was found in December buried outside a North Side apartment building and whose existence Miller had denied for three decades, Chicago police spokesman Pat Camden said.
Police revealed the information three days after Miller died, apparently of the sudden heart condition that had kept the 66-year-old in a Lincoln hospital since March 13.
On Monday, police also said that a test comparing samples of Miller’s DNA to the remains of the skeleton proved what they already had suspected: Miller, who at first denied ever having a daughter, likely was the young girl’s mother.
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“The DNA matched,” Camden said.
Miller’s sons, who had long believed they were Miller’s only children, could not be reached for comment late Monday, but Miller’s closest friend strongly questioned the veracity of the confession.
Details of the woman’s hospital room confession were vague.
Based on birth and apartment rental records and a medical examiner’s findings, authorities believed the child was asphyxiated in the late 1960s, her body wrapped in a homemade red dress and hidden beneath a Lakeview yard. But in a conversation with Miller early in her hospital stay, police never learned key details: when, why and exactly how the young girl had died, Camden said.
According to Camden, police were prevented in Miller’s final days from returning to her bedside to ask followup questions. Hospital officials, apparently concerned about Miller’s weakening condition and increasing publicity surrounding the case, barred them from visiting her, he said.
The DNA test results and the woman’s final admission, he said, concludes the police investigation into the odd tale that had taken so many years to come to light, led police from Texas to Nebraska and ended, in a matter of days, with Miller’s death.
But in Beatrice, the small Nebraska town where Miller lived the last year, Sondra Crannell, Miller’s closest friend, was shaken to learn that the police had said her friend took responsibility for the girl’s death.
“I hate to argue with the Chicago police, but I have to argue,” said Crannell, who knew Miller for 20 years. “If the Chicago police got a confession, I’d like to know where? When? How? I just don’t believe that.”
For years, Miller had told Crannell she had only two children, both boys. Even after police came to take DNA samples from Miller in her hospital room last week and after police came to Crannell’s house to ask her about Miller’s past, Miller denied knowing anything about a daughter, Crannell said. “She said she didn’t know what this investigation was all about,” Crannell recalled.
Then, late Friday, five hours before she died, Miller admitted to Crannell that she once had a daughter, Crannell said. The pair was alone in Miller’s sixth-floor hospital room. Miller could barely speak.
“She grabbed my hand, and she said she had had a daughter who had died,” Crannell said. “Then she just squeezed my hand.”
But, according to Crannell, Miller never took responsibility for the death.
“I asked her what her daughter’s name had been, and she just looked at me,” Crannell said. “She didn’t say anything, but it was a look in her eyes that said she knew. She knew. I think she wanted a chance to make her peace.”
Crannell didn’t ask other questions. “I told her that I loved her, and she smiled,” Crannell said. “I think her concern was that I would hate her if I knew. She squeezed my hand again, real tight.”
On Sunday, Miller’s body was cremated. Her two sons, Scott and Kevin Blake, were planning a memorial service for her Wednesday in the Fox Funeral Home in Beatrice. Monday afternoon, the sons and Crannell cleaned out Miller’s apartment in the basement of a renovated schoolhouse in Beatrice. As they cleaned, they looked through keepsakes.
“There was nothing at all concerning her daughter,” Crannell said. “We looked through everything.”