The murder of Naomi Michelle Miller

No forensic breakthrough solved this case; people talking did. For about a decade the story was that Naomi Miller had left after a family fight, and Sheriff David Jones later said that was not what happened. The case began in 2015 when a relative contacted the Tom Green County Sheriff's Office. Investigator Billy Fiveash searched databases and records and found no banking, Social Security or other activity after 2005, and Naomi's last contact with authorities was a traffic ticket on July 19, 2005. The next step came from her husband's own family. According to the arrest affidavit, Miller's relatives told Fiveash that Robert had made comments about killing Naomi and hiding her body. A consent search with cadaver dogs on June 3, 2015 produced an alert at the Glass Road residence and a depressed area consistent with a clandestine grave, but no remains, and Naomi was entered into the national missing person database that October. The case then waited until March 1, 2017, when Fiveash and Texas Ranger Nick Hanna interviewed a woman who had lived in the home. According to the affidavit she described a domestic dispute, seeing Robert carry a wrapped object she believed was Naomi's body, and freshly turned dirt in the backyard the next day, at the spot where the dogs had alerted. Investigators also received a tip that Miller had leased the old San Angelo Speedway beginning in January 2006. A warrant was issued and Miller was arrested on March 2. On March 8, Texas Search and Rescue volunteers and a cadaver dog named Orion found a body about 40 inches down at the speedway. The sheriff's office said the location matched areas Miller and Yoder had identified in interviews. On March 13 Yoder, who had lived with the Millers, gave a written statement describing the murder, a shallow grave and the later move to the speedway, and she was charged the next day. Both were indicted on June 1, 2017. Miller pleaded guilty in July 2018 and received 38 years; Oxygen reported that Yoder received 35.