Bryan Patrick Miller was arrested in 2015 for the murders of Angela Brosso and Melanie Bernas. Their killings are often referred to as the “Canal Murders.”
Content warning: This article contains mentions of murder and domestic violence.
On Nov. 8, 1992, Phoenix resident Angela Brosso was on the eve of celebrating her 22nd birthday. That night, she went for a bike ride along a stretch of the Arizona Canal close to where she and her boyfriend, Joseph Krakowiecki, lived. The two would usually go out together, but Joseph decided to stay home to bake Angie, as he called her, a birthday cake.
“I expected her to be home by eight,” he said, because that was when the couple usually watched “In Living Color” on Sunday nights. When she didn’t return at her usual time, Joseph went out on his own bicycle three separate times to search for her. After he was unable to locate Angie, he called the police around 11 p.m. to report his concerns over her whereabouts. Her body was tragically found in a nearby lot the following afternoon.
10 months later, in September 1993, 17-year-old Melanie Bernas also went out for a bike ride near the Arizona Canal. She had recently started her junior year of high school at Arcadia and was known for her love of sports. Her mother, Marlene Bernas, said she had a rule prohibiting Melanie from riding her bike once it got dark out. That was why, when Marlene left home on Sept. 21, she assumed Melanie would be there to greet her when she got back.
“I thought she was going to stay home, and I kissed her goodbye and said ‘I’ll see you in a little while,’” Marlene said. When she returned, Melanie was nowhere to be found. The following morning, a woman named Charlotte Pottle went biking along the canal path with her sister and their respective children. Charlotte noticed a pool of blood and what appeared to be drag marks—she then called the police. Melanie’s body was discovered shortly after law enforcement personnel arrived.
The two cases were dubbed the Canal Murders due to the location of the crimes and their glaring similarities. Exhaustive efforts were carried out by local police for several months to track down the killer responsible for the young women’s tragic deaths. Plain clothes officers staked out nearby pathways, and the department followed up on every possible lead, but to no avail. The two cases would remain unsolved for over a decade until Colleen Fitzpatrick, a forensic genealogist, helped cold case detectives uncover their first big break.
A break in the cases
The importance of technological advancements in the forensic field cannot be overstated. As DNA testing became more reliable in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it also became instrumental in tracking down criminals. In 2000, investigators on the Canal Killer case used DNA left at both crime scenes to confirm that Angela Brosso and Melanie Bernas had, in fact, been killed by the same person.
The problem was that the killer’s DNA didn’t come up with any matches in the CODIS database, so the investigation was back at square one. This is where Colleen Fitzpatrick and Sergeant Troy Hillman come in.
Sgt. Hillman was in charge of the cold case unit at Phoenix’s Police Department in 2011. After reviewing Angie and Melanie’s files, Hillman said he followed the same path that many other detectives do—he became “obsessed,” and wanted to finally figure out what happened to these young women and bring their families justice.
“I remember reading word for word and I was traumatized by what I read —it was almost as if I was reading about something truly evil,” Hillman said. Up until that point, the department had conducted over 800 interviews relating to both cases, so he knew he had to take a fresh approach if he wanted to see results.
A killer profile was created by Philadelphia’s Vidocq Society to narrow down who the person might be and how they might operate in their daily lives. Then, in 2014, the tides finally turned when Colleen, a forensic genealogist, called the department and informed them that she could do something similar to what was done in the Golden State Killer case on their behalf.
Essentially, she would track down any relatives matching the killer’s DNA profile on genealogy websites, like Ancestry, and create a potential list of suspects from there. The Phoenix Police Department agreed, and Colleen was then able to determine that the person who murdered Angie and Melanie most likely had the last name “Miller.”
In 2015, Detective Clark Schwartzkopf from the cold case department started surveilling several people from the list Colleen created. One of them, 42-year-old Bryan Patrick Miller, seemed to be an unlikely suspect. He worked at an Amazon warehouse and was raising his 15-year-old daughter as a single parent. Bryan was also fairly well known in the Phoenix area for his Zombie Hunter persona, in which he dressed as a character inspired by comic books. He often attended festivals and events as the Zombie Hunter and posed for countless photos. Det. Schwartzkopf didn’t think Bryan was capable of committing the gruesome murders, but he set up a sting operation anyway.
DNA sample collection and arrest
To collect a DNA sample from Bryan Patrick Miller, Det. Clark Schwartzkopf posed as a security consultant who wanted to recruit Bryan for a job. He agreed to meet Det. Schwartzkopf at Chili’s to discuss the prospect, but the cold case investigator still had his doubts.
“I was really more about just getting his DNA, clearing him and moving on because my conversation with him, he was the last person I ever thought would be responsible for this. He was mild-mannered,” Det. Schwartzkopf said in an interview.
Undercover detectives arrived at the Chili’s early to request that Det. Schwartzkopf and Bryan would be seated in a quiet area. They also assisted workers in carefully removing plates and silverware from the dishwasher and delivering them directly to the table to ensure they wouldn’t be contaminated by anyone else’s DNA. When Bryan finally arrived, everything was in place, and the plan was set in motion.
Now, all Det. Schwartzkopf had to do was wait for Bryan to take a sip of his drink so the detectives could lift his DNA from the glass later. As Det. Schwartzkopf recalled, “He swallows his hamburger, in like, five bites. Won’t take a drink of his water. And I’m sitting there going, ‘Are you sure you…don’t want…something else to drink? You just got water.’”
Finally, Bryan drank his beverage, and the undercover detectives safely bagged the water mug as Bryan showed Det. Schwartzkopf his Zombie Hunter car. 11 days later, the forensic lab confirmed that Bryan was the Canal Killer. Det. Schwartzkopf said, “The blood rushed from my head—I kind of sat back and I went, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding.’”
They arrested the 42-year-old on Jan. 13, but Bryan insisted on his innocence. It would take another eight years for the case to go to trial, but he was ultimately convicted of the murders of Angie and Melanie. In June 2023, he received the death penalty, but Arizona law states that this will be automatically appealed. As of writing, he’s still on death row.
Miller was suspected of another unsolved murder
One of the most chilling details about the Bryan Patrick Miller case is that he had a history of violence, and someone actually called the police department anonymously in the 1990s to report Bryan as a potential suspect in Angela Brosso and Melanie Bernas’s murders.
When Melanie’s body was recovered from the Arizona Canal, she was in a teal bodysuit that didn’t belong to her—it appeared as though her killer had changed her clothes after the attack. Bryan previously owned a teal bodysuit that looked almost identical to the one Melanie was found in, which is what the anonymous tipster told police. It’s unclear as to why investigators never pursued Bryan after receiving this information.
He had previously been accused of stabbing another woman, Celeste Bentley, in the back when he was 16 years old. For that incident, he was charged with aggravated assault and spent the next two years in a juvenile detention center. Juvenile records are generally sealed, which likely explains why he didn’t show up in the CODIS database or ping for having a prior criminal record.
Later, during the trial process, his ex-wife, Amy Miller, detailed the various forms of domestic abuse she suffered during their marriage. She also informed investigators that she believed Bryan may have been responsible for the disappearance and probable death of Brandy Myers, a 13-year-old who went missing near Hatcher and 10th Streets in 1992.
Brandy’s body has never been found, but Amy said Bryan once told her that he killed a teenager who matched Brandy’s description. Brandy is still considered a missing person, and the case is still open, primarily because investigators don’t have any physical evidence that can be linked to either Bryan or another potential suspect.
Stuart Somershoe spent many years investigating her case for Phoenix’s missing persons department, and he said he wished that Brandy had gotten more attention during the media storm surrounding Bryan’s trial. “That frustrates me greatly, because again, she’s a true victim. She did nothing wrong and didn’t deserve the fate that befell her.”
For more information regarding Brandy’s disappearance and to submit any tips you may have, please click here.
