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You are now listening to True Murder the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them Gaesy Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Good evening. On an unseasonably warm winter evening in Pennsylvania, fifteen year old Paddy Desmond sneaked out through the basement of her house. She had a history of running away, and that, combined with an argument with her mother, gave police reason to suspect she'd come home in a week or two. The year was nineteen sixty five. That night was the last time her family ever saw her. Conrad
Eugene Miller was well known to local law enforcement. An older, married man with a child, Miller's association with Patty was questionable at best, yet he was the last person known to have seen her alive. And the suspect who Leice continued to circle back toward After nothing but false sightings and rumors, the case was moved to the backburner, where it stayed as decades crept by reality sunk in Paddy
Desmond was never coming back. Then a tiny crack unleashed a flood of information and a mystery that had never quite been forgotten was solved. The book that were featuring this evening is Last Child Scene The Search for Paddy Desmond, with my special guest, journalist and author Maureene Boyle. Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much for this interview.
Maureene Boyle, oh Dan, thank you very much for having me on. I really appreciate it. It's always fun to be on your show.
Thank you so much. Now, let's talk about the Desmond family. Anna Desmond and her husband and Patty and her five other siblings in Renfrew, Pennsylvania. You say about thirty miles from Pittsburgh.
Tell us a.
Little bit more about the family and how it came to be that Anna was a single mother.
It's really quite tragic for the family. Anna's husband died when he hit his head on a block of cement in a tussle, and he died en route to the hospital. That left Anna a single mother of six children in the nineteen sixties when this was a time when there weren't a lot of jobs for women, well paying jobs for women. But she would work very hard in anything that was available to put some food on the table and pay the rent for the children. It was a
very difficult time the family. Clearly, Patty's older brothers had gone into the service, and at the time of Patty's disappearance was just her and her younger brother who was at home. Patty was a very shy girl. Her people described her as sometimes being bullied when she was in school. He was a bit quiet. She was a type of girl that people felt sorry for, but they also described her as a very lovely girl.
You talk about December fifth, nineteen sixty five, and you talk about the last night that Anna ever saw her daughter. What was that night spent doing between the two?
Patty's mother strongly disapproved of a young man who Patty had been seeing. The man was nineteen, Patty was just fifteen, He was married, and he had an infant child. There is she felt that this individual, Conrad Miller was too old for her high school daughter, Patty was just a sophomore in high school, and he had a reputation in the community, and not a very good reputation, and she really wanted one her daughter to stay as far away
as possible from this married man. And Patty was having an argument with her daughter, I mean with her mother and Patty later that evening snuck out of the house. Patty slipped out of the house. She chopped in the car with Conrad and his three friends who were there. One of them was an individual by the name of Stormy Miller who was a distant relative of Conrads, and
she got in the car with him. Miller dropped off his friends at one of their homes and they were going to hook up later on, and he took Patty else to a coal mine where they were going to quote unquote talk. This was an area well known by young people in the area where people would go drinking or neck and that was the last time anyone other than Conrad Miller had seen her. Later, Conrad had made some statements to a number of people about what happened next.
Now, two people from Butler Township police questioned him and asked him about details about saying that he was the last person to see her, and he gave details about who he was with that night, which was Charlie Ladik and Larry Haskins. And like you had mentioned, his cousin, Stormy Miller. What were the statements by those three individuals that were with Miller as to what happened that night.
The three of them again had said that they picked up Patty, they dropped Conrad had dropped them off to their vehicle, and they were going to meet up with them later. They never did meet up with Conrad, and afterwards Conrad had said that he had. Initially he told them that he had dropped Patty off at a fire hall and Patty was in another community and Patty was going to go to the home of a friend of hers.
At another time, he sort of expanded on the story, but no one quite took him seriously because he had been drinking when he would tell different stories, and they didn't think that some of the suggestions that he had made about something happening to Patty were true. They thought that was an exaggeration.
Regarding Mary Rice, you write that Conrad Miller knew Mary Rice because there were neighbors at one time when there were children, and so the way that Patty met Mary was that Miller would bring Patty over to Mary Rice's home, and she said that usually typically that she would be applied with alcohol when he did bring her over to Mary Rice's. The idea that she would have stayed at Mary Rice's, that she wanted to stay at Mary Rice's.
Mary Rice said she never came over. But it was also very interesting you write that Mary Rice he had only stayed at Mary Rice's home one time for a sleepover.
Yes, that was Mary Rice was supposedly the house that Patty was going to be going to the night that she disappeared. Sometimes Conrad would take her over to Mary's house because keep in mind, this is a very small community where everyone knows everyone, so he in the past had taken her over to Mary's house. Mary had a sister that was about Patty's age. Police went to Mary Rice's house after Patty was reported missing, and Mary told
them Patty never showed up at her house. She wasn't expecting her, and after police came to talk with her, Conrad had come to her house and said, I dropped Patty off down the road and she was coming to your house and Mary said, nope, she didn't come here, and that was the last time she said, kind of discussed Patty with her.
Now, this case is frustrating for police because they have no body, they have no evidence that there has actually anything happened to Patty Desmond. But of course they are very very suspicious, but they can't do much. But what they hear, the rumors that they do here is that he likely buried her in one of these strip minds. He's abandoned coal strip minds that are everywhere in the area.
Now we have to fast forward ahead two years later and the parole officer, Conrad Miller's parole officer is a man named Jack Wagner, and he happens to be at the Butler State Police barracks and he's talking to a trooper named Richard Balish about the disappearance because he had spoken to Patty's sister. Veronica tell us about this conversation and what Jack Wagner and this trooper want Conrad Miller to do.
And they well, initially, as you said, Patty's sister had approached the parole officer saying, you know, it's been at three years since my sister went missing? What's going on? Where is she? And he went to the state police barracks and talked to people there saying, you know, the family is still wondering, you know, what's the story. So they did bring Conrad in and because he was on parole, they were able to bring him in because his paro
officer requested it, and they interviewed him. Initially, he was it was a standard, just straight interview where he stuck to the story that he had picked Patty up at her house, that they went to the Strip mine, that he dropped her off at a fire hall, and that Patty was supposed to be going to her friend's house, Mary Rice. Mary of course knew Patty because her sister was also the same age. Conrad used to bring Patty to Mary Rice's house. Mary's sister said that Mary didn't
like him bringing the teenage girl over. He would to give her alcohol and try to make her do things, you know, fact stupid for lack of a better word. So they were familiar with Patty. So when they say police are know what's going on there, they've already spoken to Mary Rice. When they bring him in and he's telling the same story that he told before when Patty first went missing, and clearly they don't believe him, but they have to figure out ways to get him to
keep talking. So they're sort of choking around with him, trying to get his guard down, telling him, well, you know, we don't want to get quote unquote get you on having any type of sexual relations with the underage girl. We're just trying to find out where she is and what happened to her. But he stuck to his story that he did not know where she was, that he dropped her off there. He did finally agree to a polygraph to and the findings of that was inconclusive based
on his mental capacity. They could not prove or disprove his story based on the polygraph.
It's very interesting how he talks about the victim. It's actually deplorable, but they get him to talk, as you say, and he says, you know, she wasn't a very good looking girl, so we were going to play a trick on my friend. And then, as you say, the trooper did a brilliant job. Lash I believe in saying that, listen, we don't care about that. Fooling around really disarmed Miller. Into admitting that, yeah, I was. I did mess around
with her. You're right, and but you know, we were going to play a trick, but she was there, I was left alone with her, and then we were messing around. And then and then he asked a really salient question though, He said, did she say that she was pregnant? Did she say she was going to frame you? Did she
say she was going to do something? And then the story of she said she was pregnant to him that she had told them that she was pregnant, that she was with some guy she wanted to get married, but he was so afraid because he had been accused before, he said, so he was just going to drive her right home. It's very telling how he talks about this victim and sort of can't help partially the truth creeping out in his very conversation with these troopers.
That's a very good point there. He had his wife was sixteen, by the way, and he had fathered another child that was about the same age as his child with his wife, and he makes reference to that child
in the interview. Thing he was, you know, kind of tricked into paying child support and that it wasn't his child, and he claimed in the interview with the police that Patty told him that she was pregnant, and he insisted it was not his but and he said that she had a boyfriend and she was going to run away with him, and that was it. That was one way of probably in his mind, of steering police away from him.
After that, he claimed that he dropped her off. Initially, he had also told the police that he was going to quote unquote fix her up with some of his friends for sex, and that was something that she had absolutely no idea if that it was his intention, she had no idea of any of that, and clearly she thought that he was her boyfriend for lack of a better word.
You're right that investigators spoke to the three people that were there, but they spoke specifically to Charlie Ladik, and he relayed some fascinating again you call his circumstantial evidence, but evidence where he said that a year after this, in nineteen sixty six, that Miller had threatened in a bar, he had this bizarre dream that his wife was fooling around with Leydick, that Miller's wife was fooling around with Leydick, and he saw it in a dream and then confronted
him and said, kill you just like I killed that girl. So that statement was with the investigators. Then they spoke to Larry Haskins, and Larry Haskins had said that Miller had said that he had killed Patty with a tire arm. So they had this very incriminating evidence that came from these two people. But still what they had said was is that Miller had said that he had buried her in a strip mine, and he had also said to
another investigator that he would never find the body. So investigators were stymied, even though they had all this circumstantial evidence, even though they knew that he was a likely suspect, that they couldn't do anything. And in that time, you write this, Miller's criminal resume was growing in leaps and bounds, first in nineteen sixty seven with a Burger glary conviction where he did got two years and he did ended
up doing a year. And you say that his criminal record expanded and continued over those ensuing years that this case was cold.
His record each year seemed to have gotten grew and grew and grew, and the primes became much more serious as he got older. The good point that you made was that police just did not have any evidence that a crime had occurred, that Patty was dead. The statements that Miller made to his friends were suggested, and it involved a lot of drinking, and some of his friends thought, you know, it's it was just fraggy and because or
that he was saying this to threaten them. But there was a feeling that, yes, he had something to do with her disappearance, but no one could prove it. And that was a big element of this crime. No one could prove that Patty was dead. Is we're talking about the nineteen sixties. We don't have surveillance cameras, we don't have cell phones. All of the things that we would use today to track someone who is missing just did
not exist in the nineteen sixties. And during the nineteen sixties a lot of teenagers went missing and were runaways and then would eventually return home, although that was not the case involving Patty. The stories that circulated, or should say the rumors that circulated of where Patty's body might be. One of them was that she was in the mine.
It was another theory that she was buried under one of the highways that was under construction at the time, and of course they wouldn't be able to dig up the highway for her body, especially since her body wasn't there even if they had done that, so they were stymied. Everyone thought and were convinced in law enforcement that he had something to do with her disappearance and likely death, but no one could prove it. There was no body,
and there was no clear and concise confession. His quote unquote confessions were a little bit squishy for lack of a better word. He would suggest that except for one where he said he hit her with tire iron, the other people he would talk to say, well, they'll never find her, so there wasn't enough evidence without a body to tie him to the murder at that time.
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Write that in nineteen seventy he is convicted of a raping a thirteen year old. He's given fifteen years in prison, paroled in five years. Then in nineteen seventy five another rape which is described as barbaric, he was sentenced to ten to twenty years. He was released after eleven years.
And this is nineteen eighty seven, I believe. And you introduce a central figure in this, a corporal Danny McKnight, who had joined the Pennsylvania State Police when he was twenty one years old, and he was the head of the criminal investigative Unit. And in nineteen eighty seven he got a very very interesting phone call. Tell us about this phone call he received.
Danny was in his office at the time. Danny, at that time, he was ahead of his times, ahead of his time. In the law enforcement circles in the eighties, a lot of law enforcement agencies, particularly those that were set up in some of the more rural areas were not using a lot of them weren't using computers. The internet was not a thing. A lot of databases that we now take for granted just did not exist. But he saw the importance of computerizing things and creating databases,
and he would use that in investigations. So he always liked to think out of the box, so to speak. He always wanted to try something different when it came to investigations. So he's sitting in his office. This is the type of investigator he is. But he's sitting in his office and he gets a phone call is transferred to him, and it is a young woman and the woman asks gives him a specific date and asks if if a woman went a teenager went missing on that date,
And Danny said, well, I'll get back to you. And he checks around with some of the other investigators, particularly some of the old timers there, people with more time on the job, and one of the troopers comes up
with a answer right away, saying, Patty Desmond. He goes gets back to the woman who called, and it turns out that the woman he called was the daughter of the suspect Conrad Miller, and he asks her some more information, and she, of course was an infant when all of this happened, but she tells him where Patty's body likely was.
She eventually tells him where Patty's body likely was and how she obtained the information with someone else in her family who told him that Conrad had confessed to her years earlier in the nineteen sixties when the murder happened, so that gave them a very good idea of where
to now move the case. However, this is the nineteen eighties, so they have to go back in time and reinterview some of the earlier suspects, I mean, so the earlier witnesses, and also check the story that Conrad's daughter has told them the location of where Patty's body might be. Who owns a property, who owned the property? Would Conrad have known about this property? And it turns out yes he
did because it was a family owned property. What they were told was that Conrad had killed Patty and it brought her body to an abandoned house and set the house on fire. The investigators, Danny McKnight and gun Hall State Trooper gun Hall then went to the volunteer fire department in that area to check their fire records and found that yes, there was a fire at that house, but it was because it was abandoned. They just basically
let it burn. And they checked the real estate records of the property and discovered yes, the property was owned by one of Conrad Miller's relatives, so that the daughter's story did hold up on as they checked the records. And then they went back and talked to her again and then talked to the person that gave her the information.
And as a result of that and talking reinterviewing earlier witnesses from the nineteen sixties in seventies, they were able to get a search warrant for the property to do an archaeological dig to see if there were human remains in what was once an abandoned house.
Let's Maureen talk about because we didn't go over this. This is a horrifying revelation that Connie, his daughter was given. Conrad Miller's daughter gave up this information, but we didn't talk about. After eleven years, after his second rape, after all of these suspicions of murder, this daughter took him in to her home with her two children and her
husband as part of the parole. And then her mother lived nearby and came and told her a horrifying story which prompted her, the daughter, to finally come forward and practice case.
Yes, and that was just very chilling to Connie. Connie opened up her home to her father. Connie is a very religious young woman and she felt that everyone deserves a second chance, and after all, it was her father he needed a police to stay, so she opened up
her home to him. Her mother lived on the street and her mother was not pleased that he was he was living there, and her mother then told her that he had confessed to her and told her details of what he had said to her and where Patty's body likely was where he told her Patty's body was.
There was details he gave her about that night and the ensuing days, but also when he first came back to the trailer, and the mention of this gun that he had left a trailer with and what happened with that gun when he returned. So tell us a little bit about the details that he gave to Shirley, his wife, and then imparted later to the daughter about that evening in question.
But he had at a bayonet and The bayonet was eventually given to Connie's one of Connie's relatives, her father. She was not certain what that was used for. She said, he did have a gun that night, but you know, in that area of Pennsylvania, in western Pennsylvania, it's not unusual for people to have guns in their vehicles, So that was him having a gun would not have been
a real major red flag to investigators. However, the fact that he had this bayonet that was sword like bayonet that they were very intrigued with and wanted to be able to recover that to see if there was any blood or anything like that on it.
You talk about the dig, the arrangements to make this dig, and the professional help was needed. So the investigators went to see the district attorney, David L. Cook, and he suggested people at the Pittsburgh School of Anthropology. And so you'd write that May fourteenth, nineteen eighty seven, McKnight and hall sooke with Shirley and got all this information and also they also got an incredible amount of information about
his personality and what he was, what the marriage consisted of. Basically, when his child was born, he was nowhere to be seen and didn't show up at the hospital. His marriage was characterized by him partying continually like a child and not paying attention. In fact, that when she mentioned divorce, he said no, and there was They heard about a report of him being so angry that he tried to drive his wife and daughter off the road and possibly
kill him, I imagine, because he was so angered. So she finally did get a divorce once he was in prison.
Yes, yes she did. And you know, I suspect she didn't get a divorce much earlier because he was so young when she first got married that it took a while for her to get up the resolve to end the marriage. He was after the first child was born. He just continued to the party. He was not the know the doting father who was not described as the doting father you were asking about. The University of Pittsburgh.
What they needed to do at that point was to prove that Patty's remains were at the site that they were told he brought her. They could not just take someone's word for What they did was they got in touch with the Department of Archaeology and a group of grad students had agreed to do an archaeological dig at the site of the house they believed Patty's remains were, and this was really unusual at the time for the
state police, particularly in that part of the state. What they did was a group of grad students I headed Dennis turk Maatt, who is really well renowned in the field of archaeology forensic archaeology. They did a modern day archaeological dig at the site and painstakingly sifted through the
dirt there to try to find remains. One of the problems that they faced right away was that after the original fire, the area was bulldozed over for safety reasons clearly, so they had to get that first layer off and then keep going down further and further and further until they did find bones, fractured fragments of bones of human remains at the site, not enough, you know, it was
not like a full skeleton. And what they discovered later and what they suspected based on what they found, was that the Patty's remains were set on fire in the house and it was her killer pended the remains sort of chopped up the remains as it was burning, which was just gruesome that someone would do that too, such a young girl. So they were able to identify remains as a young woman, most likely a teenager female, based on the fragments of both the remains that were found.
They found fragments of every part of a body, but not a full skillton.
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during your first three months. Visit ritual dot com. Slash Murder to start ritual or at essential for women eighteen plus to your subscription today. Now you talked about that there were very very small bone fragments, but as this started off, it was very encouraging because Dirk Matt initially said that that no matter what, there would still be some intact bones, that fire would not be able to
destroy these bones completely. So they did a careful archaeological dig, again you say, which was the first for this police department, probably many in the state at all, and they found between thirty and forty parts which we couldentify as being part of a specific part of a body. And so they basically knew that this was the remains of Paddy Desmond, and as such they made arrangements to make the arrest of Conrad Eugene Miller.
Didn't they Yes, they did, because at this point they had sufficient cause to get an arrest warm because number one, there had been earlier stories, so that pointed them into the right direction of him. But most importantly, they had the statements directing them to the specific location where the remains were found there, so they were able to get
an arrest warm. A judge signed it, and then a team of state troopers staked out the rooming house that he was staying in and waited for him to return, and then arrested him.
You talk about July first, nineteen eighty seven, and right away he has his first attorney is a guy named Gettleman. And right away, again this is just the preliminary to see if there's enough evidence to hold them over. And despite his attorney giving some vigorous defense, right from the onset of this preliminary, he was held without bond.
Correct.
Yes, that's true, and you know, and that is not unusual in murder cases suspects. I have not seen a case yet where, at least cases that I've covered in the past, where anyone accused of murder is free on bail. I think there's only been one case where someone was allowed to be free on bail. But it's very, very rare. So it was not a surprise that he was held on bail or a no bail in the case.
This is a potential death penalty case, as you write, as of nineteen seventy two, a Supreme court in Pennsylvania tell us what the status of the death penalty was and the likelihood of Miller being convicted with the death penalty.
Yea.
At that point in time, death penalty was sort of in a boggy area. It had been overturned and reinstated, and the courts needed to determine whether this actually qualified. Number one is the death penalty case and number two, if the death penalty would have been in effect at the time of the killing, was it were those cases overturned?
It was ultimately decided that this was number one not a death penalty case, so that was taken off the table, and then they started to say, Okay, what evidence was available and what were the chances of winning a conviction in this case?
The idea that he was very, very angry. He had his daughter and wrote a letter once he was arrested and said he would never forgive her, and she wrote back and said, you've got to confess and to what you have done. So and then you explain that there are three types of murder charges in Pennsylvania, first degree, second degree, and third degrees. Some times that third degree
would be called manslaughter in another state. Can you explain the sentences and the sort of the parameters of what would be considered first, second, and third degree murder?
What they had determined in this case is that this was not a first degree murder case under Pennsylvania law. We have to remember each state is very, very different when it comes to the different degrees of murder. So they had there had been some discussions with the defense attorneys to figure out, Okay, can we win here or can there be can we win a conviction, can we win an acquittal? And they had settled on a decided, Now, what's we're going to pleet out the case so that
there would not be a trial. What he pled guilty to is something called murder in the third degree as opposed to first degree, second degree or any other things in with third degree murder was eligible for parole. He could wrap up his case in fourteen years based on the sentence that he was given. So it became a matter of did they want to roll the dice and risk getting a much serious, longer sentence of twenty years or go for fourteen years, And that's what he did.
He put guilty to third degree murder and he was given to the fourteen year sentence, But that also made him eligible for parole a bit earlier, so he was parole eligible, but he would wrap up his sentence after fourteen years.
Yes, he could be eligible for parole in seven years out of the fourteen in that plea agreement. And he also got away with being determined that there was no premeditation or intent to kill in not in the commission and not in the commission of a felony. And so he got off pretty easy in this plea agreement because, as we mentioned, he sat there again with the assay
distance of his mother. So talk about premeditation in terms of the disposal and the murder of Paddy Desmond, maybe not the murder, but the post murder activities in that he sat there and stirred that fire, in the belief that he could burn those bones into oblivion and not be arrested ever for this heinous crime. And so he got very lucky with that plea agreement. Usually be ten to twenty years in this third degree, and yet he
had the ability to get parole in seven years. You write about the victim impact statements, even though I mean this is a plea agreement, but yet at the time there was the ability to write statements, even talk to a parole board and voice their opinions as to whether he should be released. But also at when he was on this stand for this plea agreement, their impact statements were important, especially for Miller's family. Can you explain the.
Impact statements for give the victims and their families that chanced to address the court to let people know how this crime has affected them, and in some cases it can help when it comes to sentencing. Obviously, in this case, the sentence was agreed upon as part of the flea And one of the reasons why that the prosecutors did agree with this flea was there was a great unknown of what would Miller argue in terms of how Patty was killed. Was it an accident, did he panic? Could
they prove that it was premeditated? They they didn't have enough evidence in that regard, but they were able to, based on the evidence, clearly prove third degree murder. So as a result, that was why he put guilty to that when it comes to I think Patty's mother gave a very impassioned statement to the or and she was very upset that he got what she considered a very
light sentence. You know, she spoke to how it affected her family, you know that how he had taken something away from them, and how unfair it was that you know, he could go out on parole, and you know, the family still has to live with her with her death. And she was she said that if he did it, if he's out on parole, she believed that he would do it again because he was out got away with
the killing of her daughter for so long. The murder had affected her entire family that it had torn them apart. She had, you know, acknowledged that it may have also affected his family, but she didn't believe, or she didn't know if he even cared about how it affected his family. And and that was it.
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Now you talk about that, in nineteen ninety four, Assistant District Attorney David Hepting wrote the parole Board to oppose Conrad Miller's release on parole. What did the parole board have to say with that recommendation?
He was denied parole. Miller wound up serving the full fourteen years. He wrapped up his sentence, so he was not released on parole.
Now you write about once he's released from prison, his only contact is with his namesake, which is Conrad Junior, and he gets in trouble, a foul of the law again after for his fourteen year sentence, and he writes that he eventually cycles through the court and probation system yet again, he had to complete a drug and alcohol treatment program. He pled guilty to driving under the influenced, possession of drug paraphernalia, and retail theft. He did another
eighteen to thirty six month sentence. Again, he was charged in two thousand and nine and he was directed to complete a sexual offender assessment and continue on probation. And there was always a restitution order of a little over eight thousand dollars. So you write that he would make payments of twenty five dollars a month and bring a big bag of change, including pennies, into the office to pay off this, but still didn't make any headway with
this fine. And to show his just his personality, he fought every inch of the way, thinking that they were not entitled to find him or to give this restitution order. So he fought that restitution order all the way and spent his time doing that and never did pay the restitution order. But bellafile of the law, he continued to do that. And yet you write that he still wound up with a girlfriend and some sort of life once he was released after spending almost entire life in prison.
Yes, he met a woman, it's my understanding. He's now living with her. He moved out of the area and is I assume, living a much calmer life. His girlfriend, I have been told, is very religious. So he may have found God, and you know, and hopefully he has found some peace and is acknowledging some of his past crimes in his soul and his heart. But it does not take away the pain of the family and what
they've gone through. And however his life continues or ends, it is still the family of the victim who still carries the scars of what he had done. That when fifteen year old Patty Desmond, you know, snuck out of the house and hopped in his car.
Now back to the person that really two people really practice case in terms of coming forward, that being Shirley and her daughter Connie. But you talk about that when Shirley's mom died in twenty eleven and when her brother passed away in twenty and fifteen, Conrad Miller went to the funerals and she said it was awkward. But when her father died in twenty and sixteen, what was Miller told to do at that time by the family?
He was told to stay away and he did.
You say that? You write about eight years ago that Miller contacted Shirley. What did he have to say to her at that time? What did he ask her for?
He did ask for her forgiveness, and he said, it's a very difficult thing to ask for, you know, to get forgiveness, to forgive someone who had hurt you and it hurt so many other people for so long.
You briefly, you briefly spoke to him. What did you ask him and what did he have to say to you.
He did not want to discuss what happened. He didn't want to talk about the case. He said, you know, what's passed is past, and that he was very reluctant to say anything beyond that. You know, I think he was trying to just put it all behind him, because again, this was not a really high profile case when Patty went missing, and even when he put guilty there was maybe a handful of stories about the case at that time. So I think he may be just hoping to just live out his wife in obscurity.
Right now, you right near the end of this book that each year, and estimated six hundred thousand people go missing in the US. The National Missing and an Identified Person System reports that forty four hundred unidentified bodies recovered yearly, with a shockingly one thousand of the remains unidentified after one year. Before I let you go, tell us about the impetus for this book, the origins of this book, and how it all occurred.
I was working on my second book, The Ghost, the Murder of Police Chief Greg Adams and the Hunt for his killer, and that was set in Saxonburg, Pennsylvania, and New Bedford in Dartmouth, Dartmouth, Massachusetts, and while I was in the Saxonburg Butler area, I was talking to Danny McKnight, who was a road trooper at the time that the Saxonburg chief was murdered, and he told me about this case and how unusual it was, and I was intrigued by it. I didn't start working on it right away.
I did some more research and he had some additional information on the case. I found it intriguing and that it was the impetus to this. It is part of
the offshoot of my second book. What's interesting also is when we think of horrific murders, very often people will think of large cities or communities right off of large cities, and both Saxenburg and the general area where Patty went missing and was later found dead, this is rural and this was an area where people generally felt safe, where they would leave their doors open, and these are not
this is not what happens in their community. I think that is what was also very very shocking to people at the time.
And like you say, this is not even though it's thirty miles from Pittsburgh. This is a world away from a front page story in the newspapers in major cities at that time.
Yes, and you know, when Patty went missing, there was a whole different attitude of missing teenagers. It was always assumed, in most cases, it was assumed that the child was a runaway. And you know, I like today where we've got you know, Amber alerts and social media alerts and postings about missing children almost daily. Back then it was very very different. So a child could go missing and other people community over would not know about it.
Yes, extraordinary story. I want to thank you so much for coming on and talking about Last Child Scene, the Search for Patty Desmond. Maureene Boyle, is there a website that people might take a look at and do you do any social media?
Yes?
I do.
It would be Maureenboylewriter dot com. And I've got I'm on Twitter and Instagram. On Instagram it is Maureen Eboyle. It's one of those things I always have to check Twitter. It's Maureen Eboyle number with number one. You can also find me on Facebook with just my name.
Thank you very much, Maureene Boyle, Last Child Scene, the Search for Patty Desmond. Thank you very much for this interview and you have a great evening.
Thank you for having me, thank you, and good night.
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