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Bryan Patrick Miller a 49-year-old Arizonan pleaded insanity with a lawyer who used a "Jekyll and Hyde" defense during a trial over the brutal stabbing and beheading deaths of two young women— including a 21-year-old from Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, according to Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell.
Miller, also dubbed the "Canal Killer", was "found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder, dangerous class one felonies, two counts of kidnapping, class two dangerous felonies, and two counts of attempted sexual assault, class three dangerous felonies," at the end of a nearly six month long bench trial before Judge Suzanne Cohen in April 2023, Mitchell explained.
**Warning this article includes graphic details of torture, rape, and killing which may upset some readers**
He 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, authorities explained.
DNA evidence linked Miller to the two brutal killings in 2015. In May of that year, the Maricopa County Attorney's office first sought the option for a death penalty sentence.
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, authorities previously explained.
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.
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 continued 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 found it 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," according to his Facebook page Arizona Zombie Hunter.
Jill Canetta, Melanie Bernas’ older sister, told the court, “September of this year will mark the 30-year anniversary of the gruesome murder of our beloved little sister, Melanie. Words cannot begin to explain the level of excruciating pain we experience every single day since her murder. We live without her smile, her hugs, her companionship. We live without her love.”
Linda Brosso, Angela Brosso’s mother, added, “The defendant 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.”
Miller's official and complete sentence is "two death sentences for the first-degree murder of Angela Brosso and Melanie Bernas" and "an additional 24 years for two counts of kidnapping and two counts of attempted sexual assault related to the same attacks," Mitchell said.
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