[tense music]
[LuDonna sobbing]
- When Toni Epperson contacted
the Tom Green County Sheriff's Office,
she expressed concern about Michelle Miller,
a young lady that had not been seen
for an extended period of time.
- Ms. Epperson advised
that Michelle was married to Robert Miller,
which was Ms. Epperson's stepson,
and they had two small children.
She said it was almost overnight,
Michelle just vanished
and Toni hadn't heard from her in over 10 years.
This pretty crazy story.
Why did this take 10 years or longer
for this to be reported?
What is going on here?
- It was very suspicious.
I don't know many mothers that will just run off
and leave their children for, at this time, 10 years
and not even make an attempt
to come back in the children's lives.
- Toni had told us that she suspected Robert had killed her
and that her suspicions were confirmed
when her other stepson, Daniel,
was actually about to pass away.
- With Daniel being gone,
she had zero evidence to back this story up,
but something didn't seem right.
We decided, you know, we need to look into this.
- I did some digital background checking,
trying to find if there was any medical records
or tax information,
but there was nothing after 2005.
- She did not possess
a current valid driver's license in any state.
She was not enrolled in any kind of government programs.
- You know, we found the marriage license
for Robert Miller and Michelle Miller,
but no divorce decree for Ms. Miller,
no death certificate for Ms. Miller.
[tense music]
The fact that nobody in Michelle's immediate family
had seen or heard from her in over 10 years,
at that point, then it became really, where is this lady?
[tense music]
- It's always a challenge to prove
that a murder has occurred without a body.
We had information that Robert had stated
he had buried her at the house,
where they lived.
And so that was obviously the first place to go.
- When questioning the homeowners
if there was anything odd or strange about the residence,
they did provide that whenever they moved
into the residence in 2007, that there was an odor.
- They said that they had not been under the house,
but that they had found a hole cut in the kitchen floor.
[camera shutter clicking]
- So, you know, that led us to believe
that it was a possibility that she had
been murdered in the house and buried underneath it.
We conducted a cadaver dog search of the property
and the dog immediately keyed on
the outside excess point by the kitchen window
and the hole in the kitchen floor,
and gave a positive alert that there was
some kind of human decomp
emitting from underneath the residence.
- We started the process
to recover a body from a clandestine grave
underneath the house.
- [Lt. Fiveash] We started methodically removing the dirt.
- And we removed 15 five-gallon buckets of soil out of it
before we found hard packed clay.
- [Lt. Fiveash] She was not there.
- But in my heart, I knew Michelle was dead.
And I said, do you think maybe he moved the body?
We left there disappointed,
but not, you know, not dissuaded really.
We really thought we were still on the right track.
Yes, Robert had killed Michelle,
that he had buried her under the house;
that at some point he had transported
the body somewhere else.
[tense music]
- We learned that Robert and Michelle
had an open relationship.
Another woman, LuDonna Yoder, lived with them.
All three wore wedding rings,
they would purport to people that they were
a married threesome couple.
- Immediately after Michelle went missing,
LuDonna became the mother for Michelle's children.
Ms. Epperson even said they had to start calling her mom,
and I just, it was just real, real shady.
I mean, it didn't seem right.
And eventually, Robert and LuDonna
even had a marriage ceremony.
- It was like Robert and LuDonna
were trying to get rid of Michelle.
At that point, all the stars aligned
that this is a murder.
We could have confronted Robert,
but it does no good to play your hand early
in a case like that.
We need to find Michelle's body.
[pensive music]
At this point, it's a cold case.
There just wasn't a whole lot of other leads to follow.
So the best strategy was just waiting
for the right opportunity to say, hey,
is this our time to make our move and confront Robert?
- It was just heartbreaking.
I truly always felt like someone killed her,
but I didn't have really enough evidence
to really feel like we could come forward and do anything.
Robbie and Michelle were probably 15, 16
when they got together,
and they got married when they were around 18 or 19.
She was a very good mom.
I knew she would never leave her kids.
When I met Michelle,
her dad was the only person in the picture.
I really think that that probably
made her a better mother.
She was always gonna make sure
that she was in her kids' life
and they knew who she was.
She doted over her children, she homeschooled them.
They went everywhere with her.
Her world was her children.
[tense music]
- We formulated a plan to make it appear
as if we had a murder warrant for Robert.
You don't get arrested by the Rangers for a class B theft.
- I thought, at a minimum,
LuDonna would have knowledge about the murder.
As we brought LuDonna in,
we'd hope she would think, "They know about Michelle,
I need to engage in self-preservation."
And that would ultimately lead
to her confessing that Robert killed Michelle.
[tense music]
- I knew that she still had more information,
that she was holding back information, and so,
I showed LuDonna an aerial image of the home.
[LuDonna sobs]
- It was a very big moment at that point in time,
'cause LuDonna is able
to corroborate all the evidence
that we've gotten up to that point.
And so, we thought we'd stop with the interview.
- I didn't wanna push LuDonna
to the point where she lawyered up,
because without her testimony, we'd had a very tough time
making a very circumstantial case.
So, I thought it was an appropriate time
to go confront Robert.
[chuckles]
- He started realizing,
"Hey, these guys have done some homework."
You could see Robert's body language change.
His stress level was rising
and that's when you can make a mistake.
- Robert had told himself that lie so many times
that I think he almost actually believed it,
and he believed if he stuck with this story,
that he would walk on the case.
- We decided that the next course of action
would be to bring LuDonna in, into the room.
- I thought this might convince Robert, "Hey, the gig is up.
I need to change strategies and minimize the damage,
and tell law enforcement what has happened."
- [Lt. Fiveash] LuDonna backs up your story...
- When LuDonna walked in the room,
the temperature did change.
He knew that she had betrayed his trust, their covenant,
that she had leaked information to us.
- It was very clear to me that he was the alpha
in control of that relationship,
and I was actually concerned
that if we left her in there much longer,
that he would start convincing her that she was wrong,
and so, in fairly short order, we removed LuDonna.
- When I first met Robbie and Michelle,
I would say that they had a very good marriage.
We'd have a get-together, the kids would play
and they would barbecue some,
and, to me, I always thought they were happy together.
I know Michelle loved Robbie.
She loved him with all her heart.
[tense music]
- Robert was completely denying
that Michelle had been murdered
and sticking with the original story.
And so, we decided to show Robert
the photographs of he and Michelle.
- Michelle was wearing a floral dress that was similar
to the comforter that LuDonna had described
that Robert had wrapped the body in.
- So, I was hoping that somewhere
deep in the confines of this murderer's heart,
that this would trigger some sense of remorse.
- I knew that Robert was probably not going to confess,
at least during that time,
and we decided we needed to go ahead
and charge him with murder, and get him locked up,
and keep LuDonna safe on the outside.
[pensive music]
I wanted a couple dynamics to change.
One being, Robert's now locked up and charged with murder,
so I was hoping that she would be more free
in giving information.
And the second thing is, we wanted to know where's the body.
- LuDonna was a reactive person and personality.
It was my hope that taking her back to the scene
would sway her to give us that information,
and we decided we needed to go back to the house.
Now, the strategy was, get right to the point, call BS,
so we confronted her in a more aggressive manner.
- We knew that Robert leased
and ran a racetrack for a pretty extended period of time.
- And we felt that would be a prime place to place a body
because of the size of it and the nature of it.
[tense music]
- LuDonna took us to an area with a lot of overturned dirt
and then we began a systematic search.
- It was gonna be a challenge.
You can get a generalized area,
but you don't know how deep the person is buried,
at what angle.
- It could take weeks to find her.
So, at that time, we felt, let's talk to Robert.
It was worth another shot
to see if he would tell us where the body was.
He's now had several days in jail to stew on it.
- Yeah, the main thing that stood out to me was,
you can tell Robert was, physically, just beat.
He knew we were fixing to find Michelle.
- Robert has decided to change his mind.
Instead of having no knowledge of anything,
now LuDonna is the mastermind behind this whole murder.
- We can tell that he wasn't being truthful,
but our strategy was not to be confrontational
because we needed to extract the information
that could be vital in finding Michelle at that racetrack.
- He did show us a good generalized area
where to look for Michelle.
We notified Ranger Hanna and Sergeant Fiveash
that Robert was giving us more details
and implicating LuDonna,
and we relayed the location of where Michelle was buried.
[tense music]
- Several of us concentrated all of our efforts
in that general area
where LuDonna had focused our attention.
- We had moved a lot of dirt with negative results
and we're getting pretty apprehensive.
- And then we found the first piece of blue tarp.
It was a very somber moment.
We're like, "Okay, here we are.
I think we just found Michelle."
- We started sifting through the dirt.
And the more and more the dirt came out, the more
you could tell it was a body.
- [Sgt. Juarez] We finally opened the tarp.
Inside was a blue-green comforter.
And then we saw a skeleton laying face down.
The pathologist was able to confirm with medical records
this was Michelle.
But they were unable to provide the cause of death.
- It was definitely a flood of emotions.
I'm glad we were able to find Michelle's body
and bring peace to her family.
- When they found Michelle's body,
I felt like I had a big weight lifted off of me,
and I was thankful.
It's just so sad that to think
that she could have stayed in that grave forever,
but they believed me.
They never backed off of it until they found her.
- The striking thing was that
the body had been duct-taped in several areas,
most notably on her wrist, at her ankles,
and on her face and eyes.
- You start thinking about,
was this poor woman tortured before she died?
- As I started realizing, to tape somebody,
to hold their hands down,
that this was a joint operation.
We believed LuDonna shared equal culpability
in what happened to Michelle.
Now, it's time to get the truth.
[tense music]
- So, up to this point,
Robert had consistently sent jail mail to us.
Basically saying, "Hey, look, I'm just the victim here.
Just gimme a polygraph, I'll pass it,
and then I can get outta here."
- [Agent Bennett] Just have seat right there.
- We thought, what's to lose?
Maybe after he fails a polygraph, we say,
"Look, you just failed this thing.
So, how about you come off and tell us the truth?"
- He definitely figured he's gonna be able
to outsmart a polygraph,
but he had deception on all three answers.
None of it was true.
And now we could use that information against Robert.
- Robert's reaction to the photographs of his wife's body
spoke volumes.
It had no emotional impact on him.
I think that speaks to his involvement in it.
- Robert was obviously not being truthful,
but once Robert admitted to helping move the body,
he had admitted to a felony, tampering with evidence,
so we also added that to the murder charge.
I felt like we had enough definitely for Robert,
but a confession from LuDonna would tie a bow
on this entire complicated investigation.
She'd already shown that she reacted emotionally
to different stimulus.
- We brought some photographs with us.
The decomposed remains of the victim
that were gonna help compel the truth,
this was gonna be the time
that we were gonna get a confession from LuDonna.
- Finally, she had confessed to murder.
Even her body language changed
when she released the information.
The truth came pouring out of her.
- When LuDonna finally gave the confession,
there was no doubt that she's equally responsible
in the death of Michelle.
- We were all pretty certain
that we had gotten the majority of the truth,
and that was probably the story of how it all occurred
and how everything went down.
[tense music]
- The interrogations were the centerpiece of the case.
They were the catalyst to obtain the information
piece by piece.
And finally, for recovering her body umpteen years later.
[tense music]
- [Reporter] 46-year-old Robert Miller
and 42-year-old LuDonna Yoder both pled guilty
to the murder of Miller's wife.
Miller is sentenced to 38 years in prison,
Yoder will serve 35 years.
- I think they realized
that the case against them was so strong,
that the chance of acquittal was non-existent.
Otherwise, they would've taken it to trial.
- Robert and LuDonna had both
lied about Michelle for 12 years,
about her abandoning her children.
I think being able to get the truth out there
gives her a little bit of justice.
- She was a mother, she was a wife, she was a daughter.
She wasn't just someone that you could discard.
And I thank God every day
that the sheriff's department believed me
and that they found her,
and they got Robbie and LuDonna in prison.
But, it's heartbreaking.
Both of the kids have kids.
It's sad, you lost out on your mom,
and your children lost their grandparents.
If Michelle were here right now,
I would really tell her that I was sorry
that I didn't do something sooner,
but that I am thankful that now she gets to be at peace.