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The Ohio mother charged with the drowning of her 4-year-old son at Atwood Lake the previous month was discharged from a mental health facility and taken into custody on Monday.
Ruth Miller is scheduled to appear in court for a bond hearing on Friday. On Tuesday, Judge Nanette VonAllman ordered her to refrain from contacting “protected persons,” though she did not specify who they were, as reported by WKYC.
Besides her son, Vincen Miller, her husband, Marcus Miller, also drowned in the lake on August 23, according to CrimeOnline. The authorities were alerted when she purportedly drove a golf cart carrying her three other children — a 15-year-old daughter and twin 18-year-old sons — into the lake. These children were unharmed and managed to exit the water independently.
The family was camping near the lake, Campbell stated, and at approximately 1 a.m. on Saturday, the couple went to a dock and jumped into the lake, convinced that they were receiving divine communication and instructions to test their faith.
“According to her account, she and her husband went to this dock and entered the water because they perceived communication from God, instructing them to perform various tasks,” Tuscarawas County Sheriff Orvis Campbell said. “The tasks were meant to prove their devotion and faith to God. They struggled with accomplishing these. Some were odd, others were like swimming challenges. Perhaps the strangest was a directive she claimed from God to let a fish swallow her, as peculiar as it may sound.”
Upon returning to their campsite, she recounted to detectives, Marcus Miller expressed regret over not passing the tests, attributing it to a lack of faith. He decided to return to the lake to swim to a sandbar located a significant distance from the dock, leaving around 5:30 a.m., as Ruth Miller shared with 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.
“Everybody that will comment or any witness that you encounter that saw her driving will tell you she was driving very dangerously,” Campbell said. “The children saw her leave with the 4-year-old, and then a while later she came back. She states that she went to the dock and that she threw the 4-year-old in because that’s what she needed to do as an offering to God.”
A short time later, she took the teenage children to the dock and had them do “ritualistic tasks.”
“They climb out of the lake and at one point, according to the children, she makes them all lay down on the dock with their hands in the water to pray for their little brother and father because they were gone and had gone to heaven,” Campbell said.
Next, she put the teens in the golf cart and drove it off a stone wall into the lake.
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.
The Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s Office prevously announced it had charged Miller with two counts of aggravated murder, two counts of domestic violence, and one count of endangering children, WKYC said. The county Prosecutor’s Office told the station that both counts of murder related to the young boy, one with a finding of “prior calculation and design” and a second with a finding that the child was under 13.
Campbell said previously that investigators believe Marcus Miller’s death was an accidental drowning brought on by “spiritual delusion.”
If convicted, Miller faces life in prison with parole after 20 years up to life without parole. The remaining counts are misdemeanors.
Miller’s family and church issued a statement saying the family were members of the Old Order Amish Church.