A decades-old murder mystery in Saginaw

Gabriel Ferris sat stoically as his murder trial began in Saginaw, Michigan in 2004. No longer a carefree hippie in his 20s, the 55-year old was facing a trial that could send him to prison for life. He was an accused killer, whom police believe had gotten away with Cheryl Miller's murder for decades.

The years had taken a toll on Cheryl’s family; Her mother and father were now dead. But her Aunt Donna felt a duty to be in court every day.

For proscutoring attorney Michael Thomas and assistant prosecutor Jeff Stroud, this was a difficult case from the beginning. The two were mere teenagers when the decades-old murders took place.

And when Ferris’s trial began, it quickly became clear why police had focused on him.

First, the state called the detective who was credited with cracking the cold case. Retired Saginaw Police Detective Roy Walton took the stand. He’s the one who re-opened the case in 1994, 20 years after the murder, and zeroed in on Ferris as a suspect.

On the witness stand, Walton said that in his conversation with Ferris about Cheryl Miller’s death, Ferris said that “she was just one of five girls he was f*ng at that time.”

Statements made to witnesses
Prosecutors were trying to portray Ferris as cold-hearted. And they would next present a parade of witnesses who said that in the years since the crime, Ferris had a habit of making odd and incriminating statements about the murder, like the one heard by one of Ferris’s former roommates. The jury also heard from a jailhouse snitch, who said Ferris had confessed to him.

And prosecutors called an ex-girlfriend who said Ferris had made strange statements while riding in a car in 1976, two years after Cheryl Miller was killed. The statement, according to the ex-girlfriend was "I didn't mean to do it... didn't mean to do it."

Ferris may have been his own worst enemy. "He told enough people enough things to allow us to present evidence that would be corroborated in his own words," says Stroud. "That he was, in fact the best evidence against him."

But what physical evidence was there to back up those claims? How could prosecutors prove to the jury that Ferris was the man who on June 15^th, 1974, was in Cheryl Miller’s bedroom, with his hands around her neck, squeezing the last breaths from her dying body?

Fingerprints on a dresser
The prosecution used a dummy to demonstrate for the jury evidence that it said would conclusively link Ferris to the murder.

Remember, two of Ferris’s fingerprints were found on a dresser in the victim’s room. But the state argued that it was the position of those prints— just inches from the victim’s head that was key. The prosecutor used a police officer to show the jury that the prints could only have been left by a man who was committing murder.

Bloodstains and no alibi
Finally, after presenting what the state said was strong physical evidence proving Ferris was the killer, prosecutors called to the stand the one woman whose testimony was crucial to the case: Terri Igaz, Ferris’ former wife.

She’s the woman Ferris was honeymooning with on the shores of Lake Huron, the night of the murder. But she took the stand not to defend her now ex-husband, but as another woman wronged by Ferris.

Igaz testified that as the sun was coming up that morning, she saw Gabriel Ferris returning to their honeymoon cottage.

She said that Ferris slammed the door into the house, was coming up the stairs, and had blood on his clothes. His excuse, says Igaz, was that he hit a rabbit with the car, and it got stuck in the wheel well so he had to pull it out.

Ferris’s ex-wife testified that same night in their honeymoon cottage, Ferris turned on the 11 o’clock news.

Igaz: he got up real close to the television and when it was talking about Cheryl Miller, he was touching the television and making noises like he was crying, but he wasn’t crying. He was pretend crying. He told me that was the last girlfriend he’d had before me.

Q: Did he tell you that he was still dating her?

Igaz: No.

Q: Did he tell you that he had a date with her the night before your wedding?

Igaz: No.

And that prosecutors would claim, was the motive behind the murder. Because it turns out that Gabriel Ferris had set up a date with Cheryl Miller the night before his wedding— his so-called ‘stag night’— apparently to have sex with her once more before becoming a married man. But Ferris later told police that his wife-to-be had kept such a close eye on him that night that he couldn’t get away to see his girlfriend.

So, prosecutors theorized, Ferris decided to see Cheryl Miller at his very next opportunity—which turned out to be the first night of his honeymoon… the last night of her life.

"This seems to be the classic love triangle case," says Stroud. "The supposition was that he left the honeymoon to go meet and make up with Cheryl Miller. Did he go there intending to rape her? Probably not. He may have gone there very well intending to have sex with her and she said, ‘Look it, you’re married, I’m not having sex with you’ and that angered him and an argument ensued and he ended up strangling her."

And finally, to show that Ferris had a propensity for choking and beating women, his ex-wife testified that he had more than once done the same to her, although he denied it.

Prosecutors rested their case, confident that they’d proven Gabriel Ferris had the means, motive, and— thanks to his ex-wife’s testimony— the opportunity to kill Cheryl Miller.

The defense would now get the chance it had been waiting for: to prove that the evidence pointed not to Ferris, but to another killer still on the loose.

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