Young Girl Secretly Dates Older Army Veteran and Gets Murdered in His Home in 2012
When you love someone, you love them hard. In your teen years, in general, those emotions are heightened even more. And that's exactly what happened to 17-year-old Michelle Miller. Michelle was born September 1st, 1995 and she lived with her parents Kevin and Patricia in Rockville Maryland. Michelle was described as loving, caring, kind, and one of the popular kids. Michelle had big dreams of joining the US Army at the time.
She wanted to join the Army and go to school to become a psychologist or psychiatrist for the Army. She loved helping people. She was planning on attending Arizona State University after she graduated high school.
The Romance:
In October of 2012, Michelle met 31-year-old Sergeant Adam Arndt. Adam had come to her school to recruit students for the future soldier's program. Adam had a good background because he served overseas in Korea and Germany which intrigued Michelle. After meeting him, Michelle told her parents that she wanted to enlist and, while they were hesitant at first, she convinced them. Though this would not be the only contact that Michelle had with Adam, 2 days after meeting him and attending the recruitment drive, Adam and Michelle exchanged numbers and began sending tenacious messages back and forth.
Michelle was already excelling 2 weeks after the drive and her friends had even said that she went above and beyond and became a platoon leader. She impressed everyone with how athletic she was and even impressed Adam. He then asked her to spend some more one-on-one time with him, which she obliged. Adam was 31 to Michelle’s 17 and he persuaded Michelle to visit his home. Not only did Michelle visit his home but she also drank with him and spent the next two months with him.
Michelle's parents and friends were a bit hesitant with Adam as they watched the flirtation grow. They just warned her to be careful but Michelle always denied that anything romantic was going on between the two.
Though in the months continuing their relationship they became less secretive. Michelle even invited a friend of hers to hang out at Adams's house while he also invited his friends over as well. They looked very comfortable with each other, almost like it shouldn't have been a secret. Her friends watched as Adam and Michelle went to a bedroom and had a more sexual relationship thus confirming their suspicions.
To her friends, Adam seems like he was an amazing caring man but it turns out that he was hiding something. He was being investigated for another illegal relationship; he was also married to the woman he had met in the same program where he met Michelle. He also suffered from addictions to alcohol and prescription drugs. So he was not the great man that Michelle thought she had been seeing. And she slowly started to notice the changes in Adam as he showed his true character. He started to become Moody and would single her out during workouts in front of other recruits. However, this is a common practice for individuals who are in a teacher-student relationship. To throw off other individuals of the relationship, they would single out the person they're with in front of other students so the other students think that they dislike them.
Tragedy Struck:
She stayed through the constant harassment from Adam at school in hopes that things could go back to the way they used to be. But in March 2013, Adam’s mental health was deteriorating at a very fast rate. He texted Michelle in the middle of the night and asked her to sneak out and see him. She always went in hopes that she could be the one to save him from himself. On April 7th, 2013 Michelle left her home around 9 p.m. and told her father that one of her friends was having suicidal thoughts. Her father begged her not to go but she said she'd be home in just an hour. Michelle went to Adam's home but by 10 p.m. Michelle was still not home. At this point, her parents were frantically sending her messages and calling her.
After 4 hours of no contact from Michelle, her parents contacted the police and they went out to look for Michelle. Her father eventually found Michelle's car in front of Adam's house. Although he couldn't see in the house, he was banging on the door and making as much noise as he possibly could. Police met him at Adam's house and as the police walked in they had to immediately tell Kevin that his daughter was deceased.
To the police, it was clear that Adam had shot Michelle once in the head and then killed himself. On the autopsy, it showed that she had bruising on her lips and her face had a fractured vertebra in her neck. It could be believed that Adam became violent with Michelle and then shot her. The Army took over the investigation and 3 months into the investigation the Army contacted Michelle's parents and told them they believe the case was a double suicide and had ruled Michelle's death as undetermined.
This completely shocked Michelle's parents and they took legal action against the US Army but in 2015 they were told that the civil case couldn't be pursued because Michelle's cause of death remains undetermined. There was no evidence to suggest that Michelle was having these suicidal thoughts, her death remains a mystery.
Thoughts:
Michelle was just a young girl who got caught up with the wrong guy. If more of her friends spoke up about what was going on, then maybe this could have been prevented. It's a tragic case and we can only hope that Michelle's family can get closure 1 day.