Keith Morrison Correspondent • Profile

ORLANDO - It was a fine, clear, October afternoon. The day the world stood on its head. It was the end -- and the beginning -- of a strange and terrible story.

There was a man. His name is Doug Miller. A dry wall finisher by occupation, though his guitar could tell much more about him.

He played for anyone who'd listen.

Doug Miller Sr.: He just had a sweet spirit about him. Always.

Religious, too. Deeply so.

As is the other man in our story: Jason Kent, a naval officer, called to the military service of his country, he would say, by God.

Gene Kent: He had the desire to make a difference in the world.

And so, what happened was really such a puzzle to everyone.

Dorothy Sedgewick: Why did he have to go and damage other people's lives?

Carol Kent: It has been a journey that has caused devastation upon devastation.

Jason Kent grew up a stone's throw from the mighty Lake Huron in Port Huron, Mich. It’s a postcard of a town and he was a poster boy of a son. His nickname was JP.

Carol Kent: JP was a mother and dad's delight. He was full of joy, totally spontaneous. There's one picture of JP in a sailor suit when he was 1 year old and you see that little look in his eye. He's looking around just waiting for something to happen.

Growing up so close to Lake Huron, JP was drawn to water. He would run along the boardwalk, ran all the time.

At school, said his father, he was determined to make the track team.

Gene Kent: He wasn't the best runner in the world but he kept working at it.

And JP brought the same determination to everything he did. He would wake most mornings at 4:30 to study. He would carefully write out to-do lists.

Carol Kent: Things he was dreaming of doing. And what it would take to get the job done. 

Lists. Later on, a list would be at the heart of the dreadful puzzle.

But not yet.

Carol Kent: He was a young man who loved doing good deeds.

JP, with his love for water and his love of God and country, felt called somehow to the Navy.

Applying to the elite naval academy in Annapolis seemed like a long shot. But in 1993, just two weeks before classes began, he found out he'd been accepted.

Carol Kent: He said, "At this late date getting in, I know this is a door God opened and he has a very special purpose for me.”

JP dedicated himself to Annapolis with a missionary zeal.

Graduation week in 1997 was a proud family affair.

Carol Kent: It was lots of hoorah shouts as they do at the academy. And a time of praying over JP and dedicating his future to the Lord.

In September, he shipped out to the Navy's nuclear engineering school in Orlando. It was there, at a singles night hosted by his local church, that JP met the woman who would change his life.

Her name was April, and she was bird-bone thin, with dark hair tumbling down.

Just four months after they started dating, JP called his mother with surprising news.

Carol Kent: My son was asking to marry a woman I had never met next Friday.

The Navy was sending JP to Rhode island for more training. He wanted to take April with him as his wife.

Carol Kent: Not only that, he was asking to marry a woman who was previously married with two children.

These two little girls, 3-year-old Hannah and 6-year-old Chelsea, captured the hearts of JP's parents. How could they not?

Carol Kent: Within a half hour, little Chelsea came up to me, she grabbed my hand in her two hands, and she went, "You're my new fave grammie."

But as lovable as the little girls were, JP’s mother was not convinced about April. Her divorce was less than a year old.

And then, as Carol paced the boardwalk at dawn one morning just before the wedding, a figure emerged from the fog.

Carol Kent: It was April. She couldn't sleep either. She said, "I realize I’m probably not what you were looking for in a wife for your son. But I want you to know how much I love him and how much he loves me.”

A love that lights up every face in JP’s wedding pictures. It was a magical day.

And then came reality. Two weeks after the wedding, April’s ex-husband filed for custody of the girls.

The guitar-playing ex-husband -- and devoted father of those two little children – was Doug Miller.

And so, apparently, there would be a custody battle. And yet, JP brokered a truce with Miller. He even took Miller along on a family trip to Disneyworld.

Gene Kent: As a father, he needed to have some kind of contact with the girls and he was trying to cope with having that man in the girls' lives.

Which made what happened next so incredibly strange and impossible to predict.

It was a crisp Sunday afternoon in October. Doug Miller, 35, and his fiancée were eating at one of their favorite restaurants.

And then Miller left the restaurant to fetch something from his car.

He was walking through the parking lot.

Eyewitnesses all around.

What must they have thought as the gunman pulled out a semiautomatic handgun, aimed it at Miller, and started shooting?

Eyewitness: He had blood all over his shirt and he obviously was in agony … so fearful and scared, you know.

Miller ran for his life through the parking lot, diving for cover, and cowering behind a post. A few steps behind, his attacker kept shooting. It was a hail of bullets.

Eyewitness: He wanted to hide. He wanted to get away and he had nowhere to go.

Within moments, Doug Miller lay dying on the sidewalk. Four bullets to the back. His killer walked back to his car, got inside, and calmly drove away.

Police arrested him without a struggle just a few blocks from the scene.

Of course you know who it was: Navy Lieutenant Jason Kent.

Kent's parents were at home in Michigan when they heard.

Carol Kent: My knees wouldn't hold my weight and I buckled over. And I became extremely nauseous. And I am so sick, I don't understand this. It was unlike any experience I’ve ever had in my life. Because we knew it couldn't be our son. But it was.

Carol Kent’s son, JP Kent, the God-fearing, dutiful naval officer, had become the chief suspect in Doug Miller's murder. It looked as open and shut as a case could be.

But soon the woman in the middle, the one both men had loved, began to spill her secrets.

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