Convicted Killer Sharee Miller Speaks Out About Plotting Husband's Murder with Online Lover: 'It was Almost Like a Movie'

Convicted killer Sharee Miller is speaking out years after plotting her husband’s murder with her former lover.

Michigan mother of three, Sharee, 53, was sentenced to life in jail in 2000 for the killing of her husband, Bruce Miller, who was fatally shot in the neck and upper back in the office of his Michigan salvage yard on Nov. 8, 1999, ABC News reported.

Sharee wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger, and she’s now opening up about how she managed to persuade her then-boyfriend Jerry Cassaday to commit the crime in an episode of the outlet’s 20/20 limited true crime series, “Bad Romance.”

During the episode, Sharee told ABC’s Juju Chang in a call from jail while discussing why she wanted her husband dead, “If I could just say it was so I could get money it wouldn’t sound as bad as it really was. Bruce was so close to knowing who I really was, what was really inside of me.”

Sharee and Bruce met at his scrapyard in Flint, Michigan four months before they eloped to Las Vegas to tie the knot on April 23, 1999, per ABC News.

Throughout their marriage, she’d speak to men on AOL chat rooms, which is how she ended up meeting former homicide detective and Reno, Nev., casino worker, Cassaday.

“I didn’t get up from in front of that computer,” she said, per the outlet. “Bruce worked at the shop and he had his business. So he was gone a lot.”

Sharee admitted, “I spent hours upon hours online. It’s sex. I wanted to be in control of everything, obsessively in control of that man.”

Despite Cassaday reportedly telling his mom that Sharee was the “woman of [his] dreams,” she’d been telling him fabricated stories about how Bruce was abusive towards her and was involved in the mafia, the outlet reported.

She even “faked losing multiple pregnancies at the hands of Bruce,” per a press release about the true crime series episode.

“I just pushed my belly out. Jerry wanted to believe so bad that I believed that he’d see the pregnancy even though it wasn’t there,” Sharee recalled, per ABC News. She told Cassaday that Bruce found out about the baby and beat her, causing her to lose the child.

Sharee even put makeup on her “bruised” belly to send Cassaday a photo. “​I think I wrote him in a chat. I didn’t tell him on the phone. He was devastated,” she said, according to the outlet.

She then told Cassaday she was expecting twins less than a few months later, before he got an email, allegedly from Bruce, stating he’d forced Sharee to have an abortion, ABC News noted.

“His babies, not only one but then two twins, had been killed by Bruce Miller. And that just enraged him — as it would any man,” Detective Kevin Shanlian, who previously investigated the case, said.

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Sharee recalled of the lovers plotting to kill Bruce at his salvage yard, “It was almost like a movie, that we were just playing a game. But after I met [Jerry] at the truck stop … I knew this was going to happen,” admitting she gave Cassaday her cellphone and instructed him on how to carry out the murder, the outlet noted.

After Cassaday carried out Sharee’s request, she gave him the cold shoulder and began dating other men, ABC News reported. He died by suicide on Feb. 11, 2000 in Odessa, Mo. 

It was only when family members discovered a letter in a briefcase under his bed that evidence linking Sharee to Bruce’s killing could be handed over to the Genesee County Sheriff’s Department.

Cassaday had written a letter stating he’d realized he’d been lied to about Bruce’s alleged abusive behaviour, as well as keeping airline flights, hotel bookings and emails among other pieces of evidence in the briefcase, per ABC News.

Despite claiming the emails were forged, Sharee ended up being charged with second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. 

In 2009, nine years after she was sentenced to life in prison for her crimes, Sharee was able to leave prison after a judge ruled she should be retried amid questions over whether Cassaday’s suicide note should be used as evidence, per ABC News.

However, she was sent back to prison three years later, MLive.com reported in 2012. Prosecutors worked for thee years to get her conviction reinstated, ABC News noted.

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She now insists that she’s done lying, after previously confessing all in a letter to prosecutors, the outlet stated.

“There’s no way for me to change or undo what I did. It’s forever, and I can’t take it back,” she said in the episode. “I don’t feel that I deserve to live life and be happy when [Bruce and Jerry] don’t get that chance.”

“I still have a really hard time looking in the mirror knowing what I did,” Sharee added. “I waited to tell the truth until I get nothing from it, but, hopefully, a sense of peace.”

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.