In court, officers describe August drownings at Atwood
NEW PHILADELPHIA – Law enforcement officers provided the most detailed description of the Aug. 23 drowning deaths at Atwood Lake in court on Monday.
Ruth Miller enters the courtroom Monday.
Tuscarawas County Common Pleas Court Judge Michael Ernest sided with Prosecutor Ryan Styer in not granting bail for 40-year-old Ruth Miller, who is in jail and charged with aggravated murder for throwing her 4-year-old son in the lake that Saturday morning in August.
Miller has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Styer had Sheriff’s Office Detective Captain Adam Fisher testify about how Miller described the death of her son, Vincent.
“When she and Vincent were on the dock, God spoke to her and told her to throw Vincent into the Lake, and she did,” Fisher said. “She described watching Vincent go under the water and pop back up, and at that moment God spoke to her questioning why she was still looking for Vincent after she had given him to God. So at that point she turned around and walked away.”
Miller is not charged in the drowning death of her husband, Marcus, which officials believe took place an hour or so before their son’s death. Fisher says Ruth and Marcus Miller had spent the night before testing their faith with various tasks, including trying to walk on water and swim a great distance. He says the couple returned to their campsite, but Marcus went back.
“Marcus felt that he had failed and he had failed God, that he had failed these attempts,” Fisher said. “He told Ruth he was going for a walk and that he was going to swim to the sandbar, and he left the camper at this point … a little after 5:30, 6 a.m. and Ruth had never seen him again.”
Marcus’s clothes and shoes were found by the dock that morning. His body was found at the bottom of the lake 53 yards from the dock the next day.
Ruth Miller is undergoing competency and sanity evaluations. She faces seven counts, some related to her son’s death and others related to her driving into the lake in a golf cart with her other three children as passengers. They were not harmed. Ernest is not preventing Ruth Miller from contacting her surviving children despite Styer’s request for a no-contact order.