Forty-eight-year-old Dorothy H. Miller worked for Bolick Realty in Burlington, Iowa, the only female realtor in town. On August 15th of 1969, Dorothy Miller received a phone call from a man calling himself Robert Clark and requesting a tour of an available property on Grand Street later that night. Dorothy, wary of showing houses to strangers after dark, agreed to the appointment, but took her husband Fred along for safety.
Dorothy and Fred picked up Robert Clark at the spot he had specified: a pharmacy near the Maple Leaf Tavern. Once in the vehicle, Clark claimed that he was moving his family to Burlington from Des Moines, though he would not give any concrete details about what he did for a living. Fred Miller later described the man as a good-looking fellow in his twenties, of about average height and weight, with short dark hair and a clean-cut appearance. The purported client had a look around the house, after which the Millers dropped him back off near the pharmacy and proceeded back home.
On the following day, the man called Dorothy back and told her that he wanted to return to the property so he could take some pictures to show his wife, who was presumably still back in Des Moines. Dorothy already had another client scheduled for that evening, but told Clark that she would be happy to meet him on Monday, August 18th. Clark agreed, and told her to call him at the Maple Leaf Tavern when she was ready to pick him up.
On Monday between seven and seven-thirty p.m., Dorothy called the Maple Leaf, and shortly afterward, patrons of the tavern spotted Robert Clark leaving the establishment and getting into Dorothy’s car. Likewise, residents of Grand Street near the vacant home saw Dorothy Miller and Robert Clark arriving at the empty property at approximately eight p.m.
Meanwhile, back at the Miller household, Fred went to bed only half an hour after his wife was last seen; he worked as a truck driver, and had to get up very early in the morning. Upon being awakened by his alarm clock at five a.m. on the morning of Tuesday, August 19th, he became concerned when he saw that Dorothy had never come home. He first called the couple’s adult daughter Patricia, who drove to her parents’ house and accompanied her father to the spot near the Maple Leaf where Dorothy had been scheduled to pick up her “client,” Robert Clark.
Fred and Patricia didn’t find Dorothy, but they did find Dorothy’s vehicle parked near the pharmacy with the keys still in the ignition and an unused camera flash cube on the front seat. Fearing the worst, Fred Miller contacted the authorities.
The police immediately headed for the vacant Grand Street house, and after a brief search, discovered the body of Dorothy Miller in a closet in an upstairs bedroom. She was lying face down, her hands had been bound in front of her, and her clothing had been ripped off and pushed askew. She had been raped, and stabbed nearly two dozen times. She also had wounds on her head that suggested her killer had come up behind her and knocked her unconscious prior to the sexual assault.
Detectives launched an all-out hunt for “Robert Clark,” disseminating a composite sketch of the man and a description of his vehicle—a dull black pickup truck—to the media, in the hopes that someone knew who he was and where he had gone after the crime. A large reward was also offered for information leading to an arrest.
Police conducted over two hundred interviews with residents of Grand Street, patrons of the Maple Leaf Tavern, as well as friends and family members of Dorothy Miller. The case was complicated immensely by the fact that Robert Clark was obviously not the killer’s real name, and none of the details he had given to the Millers about his life were accurate, so detectives were having a difficult time identifying him and determining where he had come from.
Even more disturbingly, an examination of the crime scene from a psychological profiling standpoint suggested that the murderer was likely a psychopath who may well have killed before. The fact that he had seemingly planned the crime over the course of a few days, and had likely staked out the vacant home beforehand in order to ensure a means of ingress as well as the best way to maximize the house’s layout during his attack, was indicative of an organized and ruthless individual who was nonetheless perfectly capable of appearing normal.
Though the homicide of Dorothy Miller has since grown cold, the case remains an active investigation.
Crime Immemorial 