Kevin Miller cut his 28-year-old wife’s body into pieces and hid them in a storage shed after killing her, Lincoln police said in court documents unsealed Friday.
Police believe that Miller, who goes by Mike, hit Kelsey Miller in the head with a baseball bat and shot her three times early on Thanksgiving morning, Lincoln Police Sgt. Luke Wilke said in an affidavit for a search warrant.
Her body was found in a storage shed in northeast Lincoln on Dec. 7, 11 days after she disappeared.
Police were called to the storage business after one of Mike Miller’s friends, who said Miller had asked him to rent the unit six days earlier, cut the shed lock, looked inside a tote and saw what he thought was part of a human body, Wilke said.
Inside the storage unit, police found four hand saws, a knife, air fresheners, a machete, buckets and several plastic containers, investigators said in their search warrants.
On Dec. 4, they tailed Miller when he went to the Dollar General in northwest Lincoln, where he bought carpet cleaner, incense and air fresheners, Wilke wrote in the affidavit.
They talked with Miller before his wife's body was found, and he gave them permission to look around the couple’s trailer home at 212 Countryside Lane.
On Dec. 8, they searched the trailer home, a small trailer attached to a pickup, and a shed and found a 9mm Luger pistol they’d been told was locked in a safe in the closet of Miller’s bedroom. They also found knives, hatchets, meat cleavers, axes and carpet cleaner, according to a search warrant affidavit.
Prosecutors have charged Miller with six felonies, including first-degree murder, which carries a life sentence or the death penalty. On Wednesday, he pleaded not guilty.
Miller, who had worked as a cook, is in jail on a full-cash bond of $1 million.
Kelsey Miller was last seen Nov. 27 at a shelter for domestic violence victims. An advocate there noted that she had bruising on her neck and broken blood vessels in her eyes consistent with being strangled, Wilke said.
He said Kelsey Miller told advocates her husband had attacked her because he suffered from a terminal illness and she’d refused to help him commit suicide.
Police also talked with an Indiana woman who belongs to a Facebook group of mothers that included Kelsey Miller. The members all had given birth around the same time, Wilke said.
Kelsey Miller told the women her husband had been abusing her, and they tried to get her to move out with her kids, he said.
On Nov. 24, she told them he had been snooping in her Facebook account and asked them to delete her from the group, and not to add her back unless she invited them from an account her husband didn’t know about, Wilke wrote.
The Indiana woman said she talked with Kelsey Miller on Nov. 25 and Kelsey told her that her husband stood over her shoulder earlier in the day while she posted something on Facebook that began: “I am posting this today to clear the air and to clear my husband's name and reputation. I am a compulsive liar and until recently, I didn't realize how much I was fueled by other people's sympathy.”
In an affidavit, Wilke said, “They all thought she was in danger.”
The Millers’ 4-year-old told police she saw her father push and hit her mom and throw her on the floor near the bed, then down steps outside of the trailer, Wilke said in the affidavit. The child said her dad came back inside and told her not to tell anyone about what happened.
Kelsey Miller also had a 13-year-old stepdaughter and a 1-year-old son.
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