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Bryan Miller, 49, dubbed the "Canal Killer" is on trial in a death penalty double-murder case in Maricopa County Superior Court in Arizona, azcentral reports.
**Warning this article includes graphic details of torture, rape, and killing which may upset some readers**
He allegedly stabbed and beheaded former lower Allen Township resident Angela Brosso, near a bicycle trail in November 1992, and stabbed Melanie Bernas, 17, in her back, and left carvings on her chest in September 1993, the outlet details.
DNA evidence linked Miller to the two brutal killings in 2015, azfamily reports.
The trial began in Oct. 2022, with Celeste Bentley testifying about the time Miller stabbed her at Paradise Valley Mall while getting off a bus. Miller served one year in a juvenile facility for the crime, the outlet reports.
During a search of Miller's home police found "Dozens of knives — including hunting and steak knives — were recovered from all over the house," retired Phoenix detective Clark Schwartzkopf testified according to azcentral.
Schwartzkopf went on the say that they found mockumentaries of Miller's, as well as a document he wrote as a teenager called "The Plan." It detailed "the kidnapping, sexually assaulting, mutilating and killing a 17-year-old woman," prosecutor Vince Imbordino said at the trial according to the outlet, adding that these "fantasies" became a "harsh reality."
Defense attorney Denise Dees continues to stand by the dual personality mental illness known as "complex dissociative disorder" which is believed to have been "caused by childhood trauma, as well as autism spectrum disorder," according to his statements at the trial numerous outlets report.
Imbordino finds that hard to believe given that he was “Kidnapping a young woman, cutting her clothes off, committing multiple acts of sexual assault, cutting her to scare her, killing her by slicing open her belly, reserving the head to look at in the future,” Pennlive reports.
Miller also allegedly "raped the two women, possibly as they were dying or dead. In one case, police say he redressed the corpse in completely different clothes after carving a cross and three initials into her chest," according to the report.
But to others, like his neighbors, Miller had been a quiet man raising a teenage daughter who loved Halloween— even splattering the decommissioned police cruiser he bought with fake blood as part of his fictional character "the Zombie Hunter," the outlet reports.
There are several weeks of testimony left to go in the two-month-long non-jury trial.
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