×

Detective: 25-year-old cold case killing is solved, but will anyone be charged

From PennLive

WILLIAMSPORT — Officially the 1992 disappearance of Dawn Marie Miller is listed as an open case, but the Lycoming County detective investigating it the past 10 years says it is solved.

Detective Kenneth L. Mains laments he was unable to get former Centre County District Attorney Stacy Parks Miller to approve charges.

“It’s not up to me to approve charges or sign off on an affidavit of probable cause,” said the founder of the American Investigative Society of Cold Cases and a nationally known consultant

“It isn’t my job to prosecute or convict. It isn’t my job to sentence someone either. It is my job to solve the case, period. That has been done.”

With Parks Miller out of office, Mains said he would welcome the opportunity to discuss the case with the new District Attorney Bernie Cantorna. Cantorna declined comment on the case.

Miller, 22, of Williamsport, was last seen Oct. 24, 1992, leaving the former Bellefonte Academy Apartments in Bellefonte with two men in a 1982 Datsun 210 brown or maroon station wagon.

Her boyfriend Greg Emel, with whom she was living after an argument with her mother, became the prime suspect.

He committed suicide Oct. 15, 2008 about six months after Mains said he interviewed him.

Shortly after Emel died, a second person admitted he was present when Miller was killed, Mains said.

The man, who is no longer cooperating with authorities, identified the killer and showed where the body supposedly was buried in a shallow grave in the Jacksonville Quarry area near Bellefonte, he said.

A cadaver dog made a hit at that location but despite countless hours of searching and exhaustive digging, Miller’s body has never been found.

The detective believes there is sufficient evidence to charge that individual at least with gross abuse of corpse but he said Parks Miller would not sign off.

It was her opinion the statute of limitations has expired. Mains disagrees since the charge would be linked to a homicide.

“I don’t make it a habit to second guess her or any attorney about the law just as I wouldn’t want them to second guess me about how to do an investigation,” he said.

Mains maintains contact with Miller’s mother and said, “I still walk the woods where I believe she is buried hoping to find her and bring closure to Dawn’s family.”

“I deeply regret we were unable to locate her body for her family,” Parks Miller said.

Miller’s disappearance is a Williamsport case because police there got the initial missing person report.

That was a ruse developed by the person who took her life to mislead investigators, Parks Miller said. “This is a Centre County homicide case,” she said.

It had been dormant until 2007 when Mains, a Williamsport officer then, said he discovered information about it on the Internet and asked permission to look into it.

“It upset me tremendously that no one was working on the case and even more that no one even knew we had a missing person named Dawn Marie Miller.”

Chief David Young said he cannot speak about procedures a decade ago but today all major unsolved cases including missing persons are reviewed every six months.

“Kenny was ruthless in this case,” said Sunbury Police Chief Timothy S. Miller, the lead investigator in another cold case. The two worked together on the force in Williamsport.

The Dawn Miller case is included in Mains’ book released in May entitled “UNSOLVED NO MORE: A Cold Case Detective’s Fight For Justice.”

The book, available at www.kennethmains.com, describes the challenges and frustrations of trying to crack a cold case.

It also tells about his personal journey to where he is today that includes putting himself through college to earn a criminal justice degree after being discharged from the Marines.

He quit his job as a Williamsport police officer after being denied permission to help investigate on his own time the still-unsolved murder of a mother and daughter.

Mains took a cut in pay to become a county detective to work on that case.

His work has taken him to the West Coast where he is part of a detective team that believes it may be able to identify the “Zodiac Killer,” who is blamed for a series of slayings and mystifying riddles in the late 1960s and 1970s in northern California.

The team of which Mains is a member says DNA extracted from one of the murder victim’s clothing may help identify the killer who claimed as many as 37 victims.

The team’s investigative work was featured in a recent five-part History Channel series called “The Hunt for the Zodiac Killer.”

Cold cases like the Zodiac Killer and JFK’s assassination have intrigued him since he was a young boy, Mains said.

“I am determined to be the voice of the lost and forgotten,” he says.

dawn mareie miller

NEWSLETTER

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *
   

Starting at $3.69/week.

Subscribe Today