Langley Times

Death of a cop killer

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Five minutes after they left Janet Crockford's house, the man from the national parole board and the woman from national victim services made an abrupt return.

It was Thursday morning and they were explaining to Crockford why her brother John Harvey Miller would not be returning to prison even though he pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting her and three of her sisters between 1956 and 1974.

Miller was out on parole after serving time for killing 23-year-old Surrey RCMP Const. Roger Pierlet on March 29, 1974.

Under the rules – a complicated formula based on time already spent in jail – Miller would remain on parole but had been transferred from a residence in Kamloops to a half-way house in Chilliwack where the supervision would be stricter.

After the meeting, the two drove away in their car, and Crockford, who was late for an appointment, left in hers.

But the man and woman returned, and told Crockford's daughter the news. She used their cell phone to call her mother in her car.

"You'd better pull over," Candace told her mother.

"Why?"

"Just pull over."

Miller had died of a massive stroke.

Crockford sat there a moment to clear her head, then told her daughter to notify her aunts, and she continued on her way.

She had little feeling for the brother who sexually assaulted her repeatedly while she was growing up.

There was a moment of grief, she said, but that was for other members of her family who are divided about Miller and will likely attend his funeral.

She will not. It took years to discover her sense of herself after all the abuse, abuse that only ended after her brother was arrested for the murder of Pierlet, who was gunned down by a vengeful Miller who blamed police for the death of his brother.

She is also not celebrating.

"I'm not dancing on his grave," she said.

The mother of the murdered constable said she could not bring herself to feel for Miller.

"He had 35 years and three months more than Roger did," Amanda Pierlet told the Leader Thursday.

"I'm not sorry for him," she said.

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