After emptying her husband’s savings in 2018, the Union County lady who was serving a life sentence for poisoning him died.
The state Department of Corrections reports that Myrle Evelyn Smith, 79, of New Berlin, passed away in a hospital on Tuesday from natural causes. At the state jail at Muncy, she was completing her term.
In July 2023, Myrle Miller was found guilty of killing John W. Nichols, 77, and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release. She also faced further charges that included eight years, eight months to twenty-four years, six months.
At the time of her passing, she had an appeal pending in the state Superior Court.
She argued that the jury could not find her guilty of first-degree murder, insurance fraud, theft, forgery, perjury, and dealing in the proceeds of unlawful conduct because there was not enough evidence.
When he upheld the verdict in May of last year, Senior Judge Edward R. Reibman of Lehigh County, who was specially assigned, dismissed that argument.
He provided proof that Miller managed her husband’s bank and medication accounts, spent down his funds, had sex with men online, and attempted to thwart an inquiry by the Union/Snyder County Area Agency on Aging.
The following were included in the judge’s summary of the evidence:
Miller was the only one who signed for, picked up, handled, and organized Nichols’ prescription drugs from at least October 2017 until his passing.
An autopsy revealed that an acute dosage of Verapamil, a blood pressure drug prescribed for Miller, was the cause of Nichols’ death on April 14, 2018.
On February 1, 2018, she picked up a 90-day supply of Verapamil, and two days prior to her husband’s passing, she picked up another 90-day prescription. Miller had online conversations with guys she claimed to love in the months before her death.
After his first wife passed away in 2000, Nichols’ three children became the primary beneficiaries of his three Prudential life insurance policies.
On April 17, 2013, Miller became the major beneficiary of one of the plans. Prudential verified less than a month later that Nichols’ address had shifted from their Millmont residence to a post office box Miller had purchased.
On July 10, 2017, a document allegedly signed by Nichols was sent to Prudential to modify the beneficiaries of the other two policies to Miller. According to a handwriting expert, it was signed by someone other than Nichols.
Between January 2010 and March 2018, Nichols’ bank account had at least 390 checks issued on it that were payable to cash or third parties.
Nichols’ signature on checks totaling $395,546—of which $101,925 were made out to Miller, $209,040 to cash, and the remainder to third parties—was questioned by the handwriting expert, according to a forensic account.
On March 19, 2024, Myrle Miller is wheeled out of the Union County Courthouse in Lewisburg after a hearing on her appeal of her conviction for poisoning her husband to death. A court postponed making a decision about her request for a new trial or acquittal.Beauge, John
During an unexpected visit on April 5, 2018, Nichols informed a Union/Snyder County Area Agency on Aging investigator that he had over $220,000 in bank accounts and that Miller handles all of the mail and bill payment.
According to statements the investigator was able to get, Nichols’ bank accounts and variable annuity were either closed or all but destroyed.
Miller looked up Pennsylvania marriage laws, divorce attorneys, and asset division in a divorce online three days prior to her husband’s passing.
Miller exchanged a string of passionate and suggestive communications with a man just hours before Nichols passed away.
At 10:53 p.m. on April 14, 2018, Miller contacted her daughter and then 911 to report that her husband was unconscious and not breathing, and she believed he had had a heart attack.
Miller’s prescription drugs, including the freshly refilled Verapamil, were not discovered at the scene.
In 1988, Miller was accused of trying to poison two mixed cocktails in order to kill her first husband, Ronald D. Rovenolt Sr., but she was found not guilty.
Police noted that the high amounts of arsenic in his system were probably caused by a widely available insecticide.
Although the marriage terminated in 1986, the divorce was not formally finalized until 1990.
On October 5, 1990, she wed Jack Plotts, and by the time of his death from cancer on December 24, 2011, they had relocated to the Millmont neighborhood, which was close to Nichols’ residence.
She said that after Nichols’ partner died of a heart attack, he proposed that she move in with him so that his kids wouldn’t have to place him in a nursing home. On December 31, 2012, they were married.
The man she married after Nichols passed away is not mentioned in her obituary, which was provided by her relatives.
Miller was also connected to the disappearance of her 3-year-old grandson, Corey Edkin, which was another well-known case.
On October 12, 1986, at around 12:10 a.m., her daughter Debbie Mowery (then Wise) informed authorities that her son was asleep when she left her home in New Columbia to get a pizza from a Milton convenience store.
Alberta Sones, who also resided there with her two kids, said she was awake the whole time and heard nothing, but the youngster was gone when she got back.
Edkin’s disappearance is still being investigated, according to state police.
Seven further adult children, twenty-five grandchildren, four step-grandchildren, forty-one great-grandchildren, and five great-great-grandchildren survive Miller (Smith).
There will be no public funeral.
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John Beauge