An Amish woman accused of drowning her 4-year-old son in an Ohio lake told deputies in disturbing body camera footage that she “gave him to God,” while professing that the “end is close” and God was “coming very soon.”

Ruth Miller, 40, made the statements to Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s deputies on August 23, 2025  after authorities received reports that she’d crashed a golf cart into Atwood Lake with three of her children, a 15-year-old daughter and twin 18-year-old sons, according to a statement from the sheriff’s office. 

Miller and the older children managed to get out of the water, but in the body camera footage obtained by Court TV, Miller is seeing telling deputies that she’d thrown her 4-year-old son Vincen Miller into the lake earlier as a gift to God. 

“I threw him in the lake and I gave him to God and people are going to tell me I am crazy, but he is real and he loves you,” Miller said while placing a arm on one of the deputies. “He really does love you.” 

As the deputies tried to get more details about Vincen, Miller said she had “doubted” God in the past. 

“I doubted him so many times, but I have to tell you he is coming soon,” she said. “He is coming very soon. Prepare your hearts. The end is close and I’m for sure supposed to tell you that he does love you.” 

Ruth Miller’s husband died while going into lake 

The conversation then turned to Miller’s husband, 45-year-old Marcus Miller, who authorities believe went into the lake on his own to prove his worthiness to God as part of a religious test and died in the process, according to WKYC.

“We went to the boat and his clothes were there and God told me he’s in the lake and a fish swallowed him,” Miller told deputies. 

She then encouraged them to go try to find him. 

“You’re actually supposed to go look for him in the bottom of the lake and you will find the fish and you will find my husband and then you will believe,” she told the deputy. 

The day Vincen Miller died

Tuscarawas County Sheriff Orvis Campbell said at an earlier press conference that Marcus and Ruth Miller, who had been camping in a nearby RV, initially went to the dock at the lake together around 1:15 a.m. on Aug. 23 and jumped in to do “things to prove their worthiness to God” and to “show their faith in complete” as part of a “spiritual delusion,” according to WKYC.

But they didn’t feel that the tests went well.

“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,” Campbell explained.

Marcus had been unhappy with his performance and returned to the lake on his own to swim to the sandbar as part of another religious test. According to Campbell, a witness saw Marcus at the dock at around 6:30 a.m. 

Authorities believe Miller loaded her four-year-old son Vincen into the golf cart around 8 a.m. and returned to the dock, where she threw him in to the lake. His body was discovered by a dive team later that day.

Divers also found the body of Marcus, not far from the dock, the next morning.

Authorities said that after throwing Vincen into the water, Miller loaded her three older children into the golf cart and was seen driving the cart into the lake. The older children were able to get out of the water on their own and were not physically harmed, the sheriff’s office said.

Friedman added in comments to WJW that the bodycam footage captured by authorities showed that his client was “clearly” suffering from “a serious mental disease.”

“It was evident to the first responding officers, the first responders and unfortunately it was a tragedy that happened that day,” he said. “People generally think that if someone is found not guilty by reason of insanity, they’re just released to the street. They are released to the custody of a lockdown hospital.”

Miller is expected to appear in court again on Sept. 25, 2025 for a bond hearing.