An exclusive excerpt from Troy A. Hillman's new book, Chasing Down the Zombie Hunter, recounts the moment a Phoenix cold‑case team finally closed in on Bryan Patrick Miller, the man who styled himself the 'Zombie Hunter' and terrorized Phoenix in the 1990s.
Hillman details how the detectives revisited the 1992 abduction and murder of Angela Brosso and the 1993 killing of Melanie Bernas, pushing the case forward with new leads generated by genetic genealogy. Miller was an eccentric figure—dressing in a steam‑punk trench coat and a menacing mask, and driving around in a customized police car he showcased at Comic‑Con conventions. He was arrested in early 2015 after those new leads emerged, and investigators began assembling enough evidence to hold him to account.
Inside the house the author describes a veritable hellscape where a full‑size shrink wrap covering the refrigerator mocked a crime scene: a door wrapped in plastic art showing a woman’s head in the freezer, hands on a shelf, and eyeballs in a jar. The detective’s theory, now supported by the scene, was that Miller fed his fantasies by looking at that image daily for two decades. The search revealed a compulsive hoard, a yard turned into a junkyard, and windows so blocked by clutter that light barely penetrated the four‑foot‑high heap. The team waded through stacks of pizza boxes, newspapers, cockroaches, and foul odors—an environment the investigators described as the kitchen from hell.
To manage the scale of evidence, the team rented two massive steel moving pods and dozens of plastic bins, building a centralized station in the rear yard where investigators could sort, photograph, and package each item. In less than a week, the search‑warrant team had recovered more than 6,000 pieces of evidence, sorted into 761 packages, including items sought from the crime scenes and potentially from other victims.
Among the items seized were women’s jewelry and jewelry boxes, a plastic doll labeled the Visible Woman with a heart, liver, and intestines molded inside the package, and a visual record of a 'Murder Scene' drawn on a Post‑it note. Investigators also recovered photos of women in swimsuits, old newspaper articles about unsolved Phoenix murders, a book about Jack the Ripper, and numerous violent adult videos. They found rope, gloves, binoculars, and a trove of references to the 1982 slasher film The New York Ripper, as well as other items illustrating Miller’s predatory interests.
Meanwhile, Miller’s 'Zombie Hunter' car, kept in notably good condition, stood in stark contrast to the home’s decay. A crime‑lab examination yielded props for his fantasy, including handcuffs, brass knuckles, a white towel with what appeared to be fake bloodstains, gloves, and a zombie mannequin in the trunk. Despite combing through the items for DNA, investigators did not obtain genetic traces linked to known or unknown victims. The team acknowledged the outcome as a long shot, but the investigation would be revisited in the years that followed.
Ultimately, June 2023 brought Miller to justice: he was found guilty of the murders of Angela Brosso and Melanie Bernas and remains on death row. Hillman notes that the pursuit extended across two decades and spanned interviews with citizens and law enforcement, as prosecutors prepared the case for adjudication. Chasing Down the Zombie Hunter: The True Story of a Small-Town Accountant, an Elite Group of Detectives, and Arizona's Most Terrifying Cold Case by Troy A. Hillman was published Oct 7 by Pegasus Crime.