An Ohio mother accused of fatally drowning her 4-year-old son at a lake in Tuscarawas County this past August has been found fit to face trial.
Ruther Miller, 40, entered a plea of not guilty due to insanity concerning the death of her son, Vincen Miller, which occurred during a family outing by the lake. Following her plea, she was admitted to a mental health facility but has since been released and is now being held in custody without bail, as reported by WKYC.
Her legal defense attempted to prevent a sanity evaluation from being presented at the upcoming trial, scheduled for March 4. However, Judge Michael Ernest dismissed this request on Wednesday.
Miller is facing several charges, including aggravated murder, murder, felonious assault, child endangerment, and domestic violence.
In a tragic twist, Miller’s husband, Marcus Miller, also died by drowning at the lake that same weekend, reported by CrimeOnline. Authorities were alerted on August 24 when Ruth Miller allegedly drove a golf cart carrying her three other children — a 15-year-old daughter and twin 18-year-old sons — into the water. Fortunately, these children were unharmed and managed to exit the lake on their own.
Police revealed that the incident unfolded around 1 a.m. on Saturday when the couple reportedly jumped into the lake from a dock, believing they were receiving divine instructions to undertake tasks proving their faith.
“What she says is that she and her husband went to this dock, and they jumped in the water because God was speaking to them and telling them to do things,” Tuscarawas County Sheriff Orvis Campbell said. “Things to prove their worthiness to God, to show their faith is complete. And they didn’t do very well in those. Some of them were bizarre, some of them were just swimming exercises. The most bizarre was that God told her to allow herself to be swallowed by a fish, as bizarre as that sounds.”
When they returned to their campsite, she told detectives, Marcus Miller said that he was disappointed in himself for failing the tests “because he didn’t have enough faith.” He said he was going back to the lake to swim to a sandbar a lengthy distance from the dock. He left at about 5:30 a.m., Ruth Miller told investigators.
“For the longest time, we weren’t sure if that was true. We didn’t know if we could believe her statement,” said Campbell.
But a witness corroborated her statements, saying they saw the husband at the dock around an hour later. At about 8 a.m., witnesses say they saw the mother put the 4-year-old into a golf cart.
After speaking with Ruth Miller, investigators began looking for the missing boy and his father. The boy’s body was found at about 6 p.m. on August 23. Divers had to stop searching for Marcus Miller in the darkness, but located his body about 50 yards off a dock at about 8:30 a.m. the next morning.
Miller’s family and church issued a statement saying the family were members of the Old Order Amish Church.
