Amish Woman Charged With Murder in Drowning Death of 4-Year-Old Son
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A woman from Ohio, charged with the murder of her 4-year-old son in Tuscarawas County this past August, has been found competent to face trial.

Ruther Miller, 40, entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity following the death of her son, Vincen Miller, during a family outing at the lake. Initially, she was committed to a mental health facility but has since been released and is currently held without bail, according to a report by WKYC.

Her defense attorney sought to exclude a sanity evaluation from the upcoming trial, which is scheduled for March 4. However, this motion was denied by Judge Michael Ernest on Wednesday.

Ruther Miller faces multiple charges, including aggravated murder, murder, felonious assault, child endangerment, and domestic violence.

Tragically, her husband, Marcus Miller, also perished by drowning at the lake that same weekend, as reported by CrimeOnline. Authorities responded to the scene on August 24, following reports that Ruther Miller had driven a golf cart, with her three other children aboard—a 15-year-old daughter and twin 18-year-old sons—into the lake. Fortunately, these children were unharmed and managed to exit the water safely on their own.

Police said the saga began at about 1 a.m. on Saturday, the husband and wife went to a dock and jumped into the lake, believing that God was talking to them and giving them tasks to carry out to prove their faith.

“What she says is that she and her husband went to this dock, and they jumped in the water because God was speaking to them and telling them to do things,” Tuscarawas County Sheriff Orvis Campbell said. “Things to prove their worthiness to God, to show their faith is complete. And they didn’t do very well in those. Some of them were bizarre, some of them were just swimming exercises. The most bizarre was that God told her to allow herself to be swallowed by a fish, as bizarre as that sounds.”

When they returned to their campsite, she told detectives, Marcus Miller said that he was disappointed in himself for failing the tests “because he didn’t have enough faith.” He said he was going back to the lake to swim to a sandbar a lengthy distance from the dock. He left at about 5:30 a.m., Ruth Miller told investigators.

“For the longest time, we weren’t sure if that was true. We didn’t know if we could believe her statement,” said Campbell.

But a witness corroborated her statements, saying they saw the husband at the dock around an hour later. At about 8 a.m., witnesses say they saw the mother put the 4-year-old into a golf cart.

After speaking with Ruth Miller, investigators began looking for the missing boy and his father. The boy’s body was found at about 6 p.m. on August 23. Divers had to stop searching for Marcus Miller in the darkness, but located his body about 50 yards off a dock at about 8:30 a.m. the next morning.

Miller’s family and church issued a statement saying the family were members of the Old Order Amish Church.

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