45
Anita White believed Tommy Miller would show up at his mother’s house before long. He was a kid, after all. His father had just been buried. He’d want to be near his mother, and he’d need money. Anita formulated a simple but effective plan for finding out if Tommy came around. She gave her cell number to the nosy neighbor, Trudy Goodin, and told her to keep a close eye out.
Mrs. Goodin called late on a Tuesday night.
“I saw him through the window,” she said. “I’m sure it’s him.”
Anita and three other agents took Tommy down at six the next morning when he and his mother backed out of their garage. Toni Miller was driving, with Tommy in the passenger seat. The agents made the usual show of force on a felony arrest-the guns drawn, the yelling, the threats. When Special Agent in Charge Ralph Harmon discovered that Tommy had an airline ticket to San Francisco and five thousand dollars in cash in his backpack, he became infuriated and arrested Toni for obstructing justice. Both Tommy and his mother were handcuffed, taken to the TBI office, and placed in separate interrogation rooms. Agent Harmon tried to interview Toni Miller first, but she immediately demanded to speak to an attorney.
“What are we going to do with her?” Anita asked as Harmon walked out of the room.
“Let her sit. We can hold her for up to seventy-two hours before we have to get her in front of a magistrate. There’s no way I’m letting her anywhere near a phone. The first thing she’ll do is start calling lawyers.”
Anita watched on the monitor as Harmon walked in and read Tommy his Miranda rights. To her surprise, Tommy didn’t mention anything about an attorney. Harmon then left Tommy alone for three hours. Toni Miller was still in the other interrogation room down the hall. During the entire three hours, the only peep the agents heard from Tommy was when he asked to go to the bathroom. Other than that, he simply sat with his head down on the table.
Just before Anita, Norcross, and Harmon entered the interrogation room to interview Tommy, Harmon called them into his office.
“I’ll handle the questioning,” Harmon said. “The two of you just watch and learn. The only satisfactory conclusion to this interview will be a signed confession and an arrest for first-degree murder, and I intend to make sure it happens.”
When they walked into the room, Harmon took a seat directly across the table from Tommy. Anita sat down to Tommy’s right, Norcross to his left. Anita looked at Tommy closely. What she saw was a frightened boy who looked very much like his father. Anita had seen pictures of Ray Miller in the newspaper, and she immediately noticed the similarities. He had a young handsomeness about him, with dark hair and eyes, a slight lump in the bridge of his nose, high cheekbones, and well-defined facial lines.
“Where have you been, son?” Harmon said in a friendly tone. “We’ve been looking all over for you.”
“I was on the road for a little while,” Tommy replied.
“I want you to understand something from the beginning, Tommy,” Harmon said. “It’s okay if I call you Tommy, right? I want you to know that we’re here to help you. We’re willing to do anything we can to help you help yourself. You believe that, don’t you, Tommy? You believe we’re here to help? We’re your friends, son. We don’t want to see anything bad happen to you.”
Tommy nodded his head silently. Anita thought she saw a look of relief cross his face. She wanted to tell him that Harmon wasn’t his friend. She wanted to tell him he should ask for a lawyer, but she sat there silently, just as Harmon had ordered.
“I read your Miranda rights to you earlier, correct?” Harmon continued. “I know your dad was a lawyer, so you should be familiar with your rights, but there’s been a change in the law recently. The United States Supreme Court says you no longer have a constitutional right to have an attorney present during questioning. You still have a right to an attorney, and you don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to. Do you understand that?”
“I understand,” Tommy said.
“Are you sure you don’t want a lawyer present during this interview?”
“I’ve been thinking about that ever since you picked me up,” Tommy said. “I don’t have anything to hide. I just want to get this behind me.”
“Of course you do. Besides, only a person who’s done something wrong needs a lawyer, am I right? Only guilty people need lawyers.”
“Where is my mother?”
“She’s just down the hall. She’s fine.”
“Is she going to go to jail?”
“A lot will depend on how our conversation goes,” Harmon said. “Can we get you anything? Something to drink? Eat? A cigarette?”
“Some water would be good,” Tommy said.
Harmon nodded at Anita. “Get the boy some water.”
Anita returned quickly with a bottle of water, stung by the cavalier manner in which Harmon had ordered her out of the room. She watched as Tommy lifted the bottle to his lips. His hands were trembling slightly, which was understandable, given the circumstances.
“I guess you know why you’re here,” Harmon said to Tommy.
“Yes, sir, I think so. I think you want to talk to me about Judge Green’s murder.”
For the next twenty minutes, Tommy gave Harmon the same answers he’d given Jack Dillard a couple of weeks earlier. He recounted the evening as best he could but was unable to answer any specific questions about his actions after he left the cemetery that night. He told Harmon about waking up outside the convenience store and driving to the Dillards’. He told him about how his clothing smelled like gasoline and that Mrs. Dillard had offered to wash the clothes for him. He said he ran from his home because his mother told him the police suspected him of being involved in the judge’s murder. No, he didn’t know how she found out about it. As soon as he returned home that morning, his mother told him he should leave. He ran from the police in Durham for the same reason he left Johnson City-fear. He didn’t think the police would believe his story about not being able to remember. He explained how he gave his car to a stranger in North Carolina, knowing the police would be looking for the car, and how he hitchhiked and rode buses around the Southeast for two weeks, staying in cheap hotels and flophouses along the way. When he was finished, Harmon sat back and folded his arms.
“Say your clothing smelled like gasoline?” he said.
“I must have spilled some on me when I was pumping gas. I don’t remember it, though.”
“Where is this convenience store where you say you woke up?”
Tommy gave him the location, and Harmon and Norcross went into the hall for a few minutes.
“Agent Norcross is going over to the convenience store right now to see whether anyone remembers you,” Harmon said when he returned. “In the meantime, tell me how you felt when you heard about what Judge Green had done to your father.”
“I don’t know,” Tommy said. “Confused, surprised.”
“Were you angry?”
“Not really. When Dad first told me about it, he said he’d fix it. He said everything would be fine and for me just to go about my business at school and not worry about it. So that’s what I did.”
“But then things got worse, didn’t they? How did you feel then?”
“My dad didn’t tell me much about it. I didn’t know how bad things really were until my mom called me and told me my car was going to be repossessed. That’s when they bought me the Honda.”
“What were you driving before?”
“A Jeep.”
“A new one?”
“It was a couple of years old. My dad got it for me when I graduated from high school.”
“So you go from driving a new Jeep to an old Honda,” Harmon said. “That must have bothered you, at least a little.”
“I got used to it.”
“Tommy,” Harmon said, “if I’m going to help you, you have to be honest with me. Please don’t try to tell me you felt absolutely no anger toward Judge Green.”
