Preacher John Paul Miller Faces Humiliation Over Wife’s Death

Disgraced pastor John-Paul Miller is finding little welcome at the restaurants he once favored after locals learned about allegations surrounding his treatment of his late wife.

In the South Carolina town where he previously led a megachurch, the 47-year-old is routinely heckled, confronted and shunned.

The former Solid Rock Church pastor has faced sustained controversy since his wife, 30-year-old Mica Miller, was found dead on April 27, 2024, just days after filing for divorce.

His congregation largely disappeared amid allegations that he drove Mica to suicide and abused her during their marriage. Miller has denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to federal charges.

He now leads services for no more than about 50 people from a former nail salon in a deteriorating strip mall, while protesters shout at him from roughly 90 feet away.

His daily life has become still more difficult following the release of the Netflix documentary Death of the Pastor’s Wife.

The program’s allegations have triggered such a backlash that some businesses are refusing service to Miller and his new wife, 51-year-old Suzie Skinner.

Last week, the couple were asked to leave Travinia Italian Kitchen in Myrtle Beach after staff members and customers objected to their presence.

General manager Ashley Thomas told the Daily Mail that Miller angrily challenged employees to call police and ultimately left only after Skinner pulled him from the restaurant.

Miller had been a regular at the restaurant, visiting once or twice a month for years and dining there with Mica before her death. After watching the documentary, however, Thomas and her staff decided he would no longer be allowed to return.

‘We saw him pull up in front of the restaurant, so Jasmine, the manager on duty, was at the host stand waiting,’ Thomas said. Miller and Skinner arrived about 30 minutes before closing on September 17.

‘She told him, “We’re just gonna ask you to leave, you’re no longer welcome here”.’

‘He started yelling at her and just saying, “Do you believe everything you watch on TV?”‘

Jasmine told Miller she would not debate the matter and was only asking him to leave. He continued to refuse.

‘He proceeded to sit himself at a table and was like, “You’re gonna serve me, I’m not leaving,”‘ Thomas said.

When Jasmine warned that police would be called if he stayed, Miller reportedly answered: ‘call them’.

The manager walked away to get her phone, and by the time she returned, Miller’s wife no longer wanted to stick around.

‘Suzie started yelling, “we need to get out of here, this is ridiculous,”‘ Thomas said.

Thomas said the few customers still sitting at the bar told staff they would have intervened if Miller hadn’t left when he did.

Miller returned moments later and confronted Jasmine, saying he had spoken to his lawyer and the restaurant couldn’t deny him service.

When she stood her ground, he took a photo of her and vowed to return the next day and complain to Thomas. But he never showed up.

Instead, a one-star review appeared on Travinia’s TripAdvisor page from a ‘John M’ later that evening, with that profile believed to belong to Miller. 

‘About 8 of us went for dinner, but we had to leave due to a manager named Jasmine who was incredibly rude to a man in our party due to her discrimination of Christians,’ it read.

Travinia’s owners, devout Christians and one of whose wife works at a Christian college, sarcastically said ‘what a coincidence’ that the review appeared after Miller was ejected.

‘It was not 8 people; it was just the two of them. And yes, this has nothing to do with Christianity,’ they said.

Thomas explained that customers became increasingly uncomfortable sharing a room with Miller after he was indicted in December.

Miller faces federal cyberstalking charges over a shocking alleged campaign of harassment against Mica in the leadup to her death. He pleaded not guilty and will go on trial next month.

Mica was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Lumbee River State Park in North Carolina, after calling 911 to tell her family where to find her. 

However, after the Netflix show was released in August, the irritated comments from Travinia customers escalated into multiple tables walking out each time he visited.

‘They would say things like, “I can’t believe you’re letting him eat here,” or “I’m not sitting here having dinner and staring at that guy,”‘ Thomas said.

Wait staff also told their managers they were uncomfortable serving him, until Thomas decided Miller would be denied service.

‘After this Netflix thing came out, it’s just gotten worse, to where people just don’t want him around,’ she said.

‘My concern was more of protecting my staff and the way they felt, I had probably five or six different girls come to me.

‘Some of these girls are younger, like 17 years old, and watching what was (allegedly) done to this woman is scary, so they’re scared to death of this man.

‘Nobody wants to wait on him, and I’m not gonna force anyone to. So we just decided it would just probably be for the best that he does not come in here.’

Travinia is not the only local business where Miller is unwelcome as he is increasingly becoming a pariah since the charges and documentary.

Other hospitality workers wrote online that they were supported by their own managers when they refused to serve him.

However, another waitress at a well-known restaurant claimed she was fired after she made the same request of her bosses.

Miller’s notoriety is not confined to Myrtle Beach.

He and Suzie were spotted at a Myrtle Beach Pelicans minor league baseball game on September 2, dressed casually and trying to blend in. 

But when they tried to enjoy a post-game drink at nearby Uncle Tito’s bar in Murrells Inlet – about 10 miles from Miller’s home – they were jeered by other patrons.

One local said ‘everyone in the bar started yelling… and (the Millers) put their heads down and got the hell outta there real quick.’ 

Suzie is nearly as reviled, accused of having a long-running affair with Miller before Mica’s death, and whose own late husband drowned in a swimming pool in 2021 – allegedly after discovering her betrayal.

Miller is particularly hounded by a large, loud and dedicated band of ‘Justice for Mica’ campaigners who are determined to make his life hell.

For months, they have protested outside his new congregation, Mercy Church, every Sunday, holding up pictures of Mica’s face and placards with slogans like ‘church walls won’t hide your crimes’.

Their presence has Miller rattled enough to impose paranoid security measures at the tiny building off a highway bypass, neighboring businesses such as ‘Golf Knickers,’ ‘Bare Wax and Beyond’ and ‘Hollywood’s Bar Grill.’

A newly installed six-foot wooden fence blocks views of the church’s entrance and thick blinds cover the windows.

When he preached on Labor Day weekend, Miller was driven to and from the church and his home just 1.1 miles away by an armed private security guard, and a uniformed Horry County Police Department officer stood watch outside the door.

The pastor sheepishly poked his head out the door minutes before the 10.30am service began to say a death threat had been made at the back entrance by someone on a golf cart.

The policeman ducked inside to investigate but returned to his post several minutes later.

No sooner was worship over about 12pm, Miller and Suzie were whisked out the back door into a gravel alley. 

By now the crowd of a few dozen protesters had moved to the intersection with the US-17 Bypass and screamed at his black Honda Ridgeline as it drove past.

Mercy Church is Miller’s attempt at a rebrand after the fallout from Mica’s death doomed its previous incarnation, Solid Rock Church.

Boasting hundreds of members in its heyday, almost all of them abandoned Miller until the church was finally shut down and everything inside given away in November 2024 after an FBI raid on his home.

Miller soon began his new church with the few dozen who stuck by him, first meeting in a gym and an abandoned shop before the old church was sold for $2.1 million in February last year.

The humble new venue, measuring just 1,120sq ft and so narrow it could only fit rows of seven chairs, was acquired for $155,000 in cash.

Videos of early services showed only about 20 people with greying and thinning hair in the audience as both Miller and Suzie preached from a cheap, flimsy lectern.

Churchgoers said the congregation initially struggled to grow but claimed it had swelled to 40 or 50 people of all ages this year – despite the charges against its pastor.

Disturbing new claims in Death of the Pastor’s Wife included that Mica feared her husband would murder her and stage her suicide.

‘He’s gonna put a bullet in my head and then tell everybody I killed myself,’ Mica’s friend and former Solid Rock member Bruna Pabon claimed she said.

Mica’s siblings claimed Miller forcibly admitted her to a mental hospital and questioned whether she was really mentally ill.

An affidavit Mica wrote days before her death as part of a restraining order application, revealed by her lawyer Regina Ward, also accused him of sexually exploiting her.

‘Paid three homeless people to engage in threesome,’ Mica wrote, and that he injected her with testosterone to ‘keep up with [his] sex drive.’

Mica also claimed Miller showed nude photos of her in ‘sexual postures’ to members of Solid Rock Church.

‘I am afraid he will harm me due to past gun violence,’ she wrote.

In the Netflix documentary, it is claimed that Mica told friends Miller harassed her by turning the bedroom lights on and off to stop her sleeping when she didn’t want to have sex with him – something he demanded up to four times a day.

Miller faces up to five years in prison for federal cyberstalking charges and two years for making false statements, plus a fine of up to $250,000.

The case has been postponed several times and is scheduled for trial in October.

Mica filed for divorce from Miller in October 2023, before they reconciled in February 2024, then again on April 15, 2024, just before her death.

Miller is also fighting separate civil claims, accused in a lawsuit last July of raping a 15-year-old girl in 1998 while working at his father’s church in Myrtle Beach when he was 19.

Days later, a second woman, known as ‘Jane Doe #2’, sued him and his father for sexual abuse between 1999 and 2001 starting when she was 14.

Miller has denied both claims.