Kriti Mehrotra
When renowned businessman Bruce Miller was found dead at his salvage yard in November 1999, it left the entire state of Michigan and his family completely perplexed, as they had no idea who would have wanted to harm him. However, as explored in ABC’s ’20/20: You’ve Got Jail,’ it was his wife of 7 months and her online lover who had conspired to kill him, with the former’s motive being money and control. It took investigators some time to uncover the truth, but once they did, they did everything in their power to ensure justice was served as swiftly as possible.
Sharee Miller’s Childhood Was Reportedly Marred By Instability
A native of Flint, Michigan, Sharee Miller reportedly grew up in a middle-class household, but it was far from comfortable or safe. According to her records, she is a child of several divorces and instability because of her mother’s many failed relationships, which is why she spent most summers in Florida with her grandparents. According to the ’20/20′ episode, she was already accustomed to men coming and going from her life by the time she was a mere toddler. However, it was when she was 3 or 4 that her entire world turned upside down as she was allegedly sexually abused for the first time.
“As a kid, you take on like everything is your fault,” Sharee said on the show. “I felt responsible in that moment, not understanding what I was feeling.” According to her own account, the assault shaped her life as it continued for a few years, driving her to rebel a lot during her teenage years. In fact, by the time she was 17 years old, she had not only moved out of her family home but also tied the knot for the first time. A decade later, by the age of 27, she was a twice-divorced mother of three young children, struggling to make ends meet as a single mother.
Sharee thus worked as a nursing home, as a representative of Mary-Kate Cosmetics, and as a bookkeeper at a local salvage yard that belonged to Bruce Miller. She was actively juggling several jobs just to make ends meet, but she had also developed an attraction towards her boss despite their 20-year age difference. She has long admitted that she pursued him, and even though he initially wasn’t interested in her owing to their age gap, he soon fell for her persistence. They thus began dating around late 1998, not long after which she and her kids moved in with him.
Sharee Miller Wanted Control in Her Relationships
From the outside, Sharee and Bruce had a beautiful, whirlwind romance that blended two families into one, especially as they eloped to Las Vegas to tie the knot on April 23, 1999. The couple had only been together for 4 months by this point, but they seemed in love, which is why no one really questioned anything. Little did anybody know, though, that the mother of three regularly spoke with other men on AOL chat rooms throughout her relationship and marriage with Bruce. “I didn’t get up from in front of that computer,” she candidly admitted. “Bruce worked at the shop, and he had his business. So he was gone a lot.” Per reports, she spent hours online, chatting with other men, forming relationships, and having fun.
All of Sharee’s usernames were incredibly sexuals because she wanted that spark and online sex from her connections, and that’s when she first came across Jerry Cassaday. Although a native of Kansas City, he was based in Reno, Nevada, at the time, as he worked in a casino, which is where their relationship began. “It’s sex,” she said. “I wanted to be in control of everything, obsessively in control of that man.” At the time, Jerry was in the middle of a divorce and having financial issues, so Sharee was the one to travel to him and make their online bond a real, physical and sexual relationship.
Sharee traveled to see Jerry multiple times, resulting in the latter falling head over heels in love with her and even telling his mother that she was the”woman of (his) dreams.” That’s when everything changed, as the former claimed she was pregnant with his child, sending him pictures of her belly pushed out, a pregnancy test, and more, which brought him immense joy. However, the joy was short-lived as she then alleged her husband found out and beat her until she had lost the baby – she told her boyfriend Bruce was abusive and a member of the mafia, so she was afraid.
Sharee Miller Was the Mastermind Behind Her Husband’s Murder
Jerry was devastated upon hearing the news from Sharee over chat, not only because he believed they had lost their first child but also because he couldn’t protect her. As a former homicide detective, it pained him to learn the woman he loved was allegedly experiencing such immense abuse. According to records, they continued their relationship as usual, only for Sharee to soon reveal she was pregnant again, and this time they were having twins. However, within days, Jerry received an email from someone he believed to be Bruce, stating he had found out about the pregnancy and forced his wife to have an abortion. It was after this that he and Sharee decided to remove him from the picture.
Jerry had no idea that his girlfriend had not only lied about both the pregnancies but also the abuse, and that she and Bruce seemed to have no issues in their marriage in reality. Therefore, when she brought up the idea of him traveling to Michigan to shoot Bruce at his workplace before immediately fleeing, he agreed. “It was almost like a movie, that we were just playing a game,” she said. The couple carried out their plan on November 8, 1999, with Jerry shooting Bruce in the neck and upper back in his office before calling her landline, letting it ring once, and then cutting the call as his signal to tell her the job was done.
By this point, Jerry had returned to his hometown and hence traveled back to Kansas City, unaware that the woman he loved would start pulling away from him. In fact, within a couple of days of Bruce’s death, she was reportedly seen clubbing, and then, within a month, she had a new boyfriend whom she had moved into her marriage home. Jerry gradually realized what his girlfriend had done, which sent him into a spiral of depression before he ultimately took his own life on February 11, 2000. By this point, Sharee had started new relationships and was doing her best to move on in her life.
Sharee Miller is Currently Serving a Life Sentence in State Prison
It was only after Jerry died by suicide that suspicion of Bruce’s murder fell on his wife because the former had left behind all the evidence investigators might need in a black briefcase under his bed. Until then, because she had a solid alibi for the time of the homicide, suspicion fell on one of his friends who had recently borrowed $2,000 from the businessman. In the briefcase was a suicide note wherein Jerry explained he had finally realized Sharee had lied and manipulated him to do her bidding and that he was deeply regretful for what had transpired.
Along with the note were records of their chats wherein they concocted the attack as well as the flight and hospital details to prove their affair, which resulted in Sharee’s arrest not long after. Despite this, Sharee was not worried because she still “felt like I could talk my way out of anything. I still in my head felt like there’s no way they’re not going to believe me.” However, following a trial in 2000 wherein her defense of Jerry having faked the documents failed, she was convicted of second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, for which she was sentenced to life in prison.
Because of Sharee’s sentence, she was granted an automatic appeal, which overturned her sentence after 9 years on the grounds that Jerry’s note had always been inadmissible. Yet, following another three years of legal proceedings, a court ruled that his not was indeed admissible and that the mother of three will not be retired — her original verdict was upheld. That’s when Sharee finally confessed her guilt to prosecutors, wrote letters expressing the same and her regret to Bruce as well as Jerry’s families, and shared that she hopes not for forgiveness but to one day find peace. As for her motive, Sharee revealed she didn’t just want Bruce’s money; she wanted him out of the picture because he “was so close to knowing who I really was, what was really inside of me.” Thus, today, she remains incarcerated at Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where she is expected to remain for the rest of her natural life.
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