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grieving widow. He discovered that Ann had a fantasy life so rich, so well crafted, that it had almost replaced her real life. The more he read, the more the inner workings of this woman’s mind amazed him.
    Ann had a flirtatious online correspondence with a coworker at Glaxo Wellcome named Derril Willard. There was nothing in the e-mails that jumped out and stated in black and white that Ann Miller and Derril Willard were involved in a romantic relationship, but according to Morgan, it was pretty clear from the tenor of the messages that one existed. He also knew that Ann was too smart to make her e-mails too obvious. Morgan said reading the exchanges was like hearing half of a conversation. The e-mails were filled with innuendo and private jokes that only the two of them could understand and clearly had to be based on earlier conversations the couple had had in person or over the phone.
    It just so happened that Willard was also one of the three men who had accompanied Eric Miller to the bowling alley on November 15, 2000. That was the night Eric got violently ill and had to be rushed to Rex Hospital the first time after vomiting and complaining of severe stomach pains.
    Morgan said investigators were hoping to find a “magic bullet” in these e-mail communications. They didn’t find it, but what they did find confirmed their suspicions that Ann Miller wasn’t the demure, conservative, religious woman she appeared to be. It wasn’t magic, but it was enough to begin to build a homicide case against her. Or so Morgan thought at the time. Little did he know just how rocky the road to justice would prove to be.

DIAMONDS ARE A GIRL’S BEST FRIEND
    On November 15 at 10:15 a.m., just hours before the bowling outing that Eric would attend with Derril Willard, Ann Miller sent Willard an e-mail full of flowery prose worthy of a greeting-card writer. As she talked about feelings, it was almost like Ann was manipulating him with her sappy language—telling him that his “beautiful blue eyes” stirred her soul, urging him not to fear crying, that his tears were like a diamond necklace around her neck, and insisting that while occasionally confusing, “emotions are awesome.” “I want to touch you in places that you knew not existed. Take you to places you’ve never been before. One thing I’ll never do is make you feel not wanted,” she wrote.
    Morgan strongly believed that Eric Miller got sick for the first time that fateful night at the bowling alley because someone gave him arsenic, probably in his beer. Given the apparent connection between Ann Miller and Derril Willard, it seemed likely that Ann had coerced Willard into participating in her evil scheme. In Morgan’s mind it was clear that in the e-mail Ann was greasing the wheel, buttering up Willard for what he was about to do, what she had asked and prodded him to do. Morgan believed even then, in the early stages of the investigation, that Ann used her power over Willard to rope him into a plot to kill her husband.
    And yet despite a lot of innuendo in the e-mails between Ann and Willard, the so-called magic bullet was still elusive. There was nothing concrete in the electronic transmissions linking the two directly, or even indirectly, to Eric’s death.
    “There was nothing talking about how Eric is a bad person, there was nothing talking about ‘let’s get rid of Eric and be together forever,’ ” says Morgan.

CALIFORNIA DREAMING
    Derril Willard was not Ann Miller’s only e-mail pal. Police also found e-mails between Ann and a man named Carl Mackewicz, a scientist she had worked with from San Francisco. He later became known as “Carl M.” to detectives who did not want to go to the trouble of correctly pronouncing his last name. From what investigators uncovered, Ann had a long-standing, long-distance relationship with Mackewicz dating back to 1997. It was a relationship that apparently continued throughout her marriage, a relationship that Eric