Sharee Miller: The Woman Who Tricked Her Ex-Cop Lover Into Killing Her Husband

A wife in pursuit of her husband's life insurance settlement changed the course of three lives. The investigation of the murder of Bruce Miller forever changed the way authorities viewed online chats while handling a murder case.

In the late 1990s, Bruce Miller's wife, Sharee Miller, started an online affair with a man named Jerry Cassaday in an AOL chat room. Throughout their relationship, Sharee weaved a network of lies, in which she portrayed herself as an abuse victim, according to the chats between the two lovers, reported Oxygen.

Cassaday was in a vulnerable spot, having lost his family and job, and ate up the attention. Believing Sharee to be his soulmate, Cassaday allegedly killed Bruce, the outlet reported.

Sharee met Bruce Miller while working at his scrapyard in Flint, Michigan, ABC reported. They had a whirlwind romance, and within four months, tied the knot in a Las Vegas Wedding Chapel.

Sharee wasn't loyal to Bruce Miller and chatted up various men in the course of their marriage, she told ABC. "I didn't get up from in front of that computer," Sharee told ABC’s Juju Chang. "Bruce worked at the shop and he had his business. So he was gone a lot."

In one of the chat rooms, she stumbled upon Cassaday, a former homicide detective. "I spent hours upon hours online. It's sex. I wanted to be in control of everything, obsessively in control of that man," Sharee said in the interview.

Cassaday was going through an all-time low in his life, Detective Kevin Shanlian, who investigated the case at the time, shared of the man who was in the midst of a divorce and facing financial troubles, ABC News reported.

After Cassaday lost his job, he worked at a casino in Nevada to make ends meet, Oxygen reported.

Then, his relationship with Sharee turned physical, and she visited him multiple times, becoming the "woman of [his] dreams," Shanlian said. Sharee soon began to prey on this obsessiveness. ABC News reported she lied to him, claiming her husband was involved with the mafia and physically abused her.

Sharee showed Cassaday, fabricated positive pregnancy tests and sonograms to convince him that she was pregnant with his child. "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 told Chang.

Sharee lied again and told Cassaday that Bruce beat her up and caused a miscarriage. "​I think I wrote him in a chat. I didn't tell him on the phone. He was devastated," shared Sharee in the interview.

A few months later, Sharee informed Cassaday that she was pregnant with twins. The claim was followed up by an email, purportedly from Bruce, stating that he had forced Sharee to abort the babies, ABC News reported.

The message proved to be Cassaday's breaking point, and he made up his mind to kill Miller, according to Detective Shanlian.

"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," Shanlian told ABC News.

Sharee Miller and Cassaday hatched a plan. Cassaday traveled to Michigan and allegedly shot Miller at his scrapyard on November 8, 1999, according to police.

Meanwhile Sharee built her alibi so that the police would not suspect her of the crime, Oxygen reported.

"Afterwards ... he called my landline and let it ring once and hung up. ... That was his signal to tell me he was on his way back to Kansas City," Sharee Miller said.

Sharee eventually put the brakes on her relationship with Cassaday and began dating other men, ABC reported. Cassaday reportedly was unable to cope with the failure of his relationship and the guilt of his connection with the crime and took his own life on February 11, 2000.

He left behind a black suitcase containing a letter describing how Sharee fooled him, and included records of airline flights, hotel rooms, emails, and their chat messages.

The evidence, which was turned in to the Genesee County Sheriff's Department, proved to be more than enough for police to take Sharee into custody. "I felt like I could talk my way out of anything," Sharee said. "I still in my head felt like there's no way they're not going to believe me."

She claimed that the correspondence had been forged. Based on circumstantial evidence, the accused was charged with second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

During the proceedings, Sharee's defense brought in an expert to provide testimony that emails can be forged. But, the expert crumbled during cross-examination and failed to explain how.

The jury went to deliberation and returned with a guilty verdict on all counts, ABC News reported. She was sentenced to life in prison.

Sharee was granted an automatic appeal and after nine years an appellate judge regarded her conviction proceedings as a mistrial. They determined that Cassaday's suicide note should not have been admitted as evidence. Sharee posted bond and walked out of jail.

"It was so much easier lying about it to myself," said Miller to ABC’s Juju Chang. "It's so much easier to look at yourself when you don't have to look at yourself with the truth."

For three years prosecutors worked hard to reinstate Sharee's sentence and succeeded when a court ruled that Cassaday's suicide note was, in fact, admissible in court. Sharee Miller was ordered back to prison.

She decided not to appeal a second time and instead sent her confession to prosecutors. She said in the letter that by admitting to the crime, she wanted to ensure that the Cassaday and the Miller family do not suffer anymore, ABC News reported.