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Emaciated boy's history still murky
Compiled from Times wires PHILADELPHIA -- Chester Lee Miller was sick and starving and barely able to stand when he knocked on a stranger's door in Milton last month to ask for a place to sleep. Putting aside fears that the 18-year-old with sunken eyes could be a robber, Janice Goodman let him in, fixed him a sandwich and called her mother for help. When she arrived, Chester's childlike greeting stunned them: "Are you my new mommy?" When police took the emaciated teen to the hospital Sept. 21, he weighed 63 pounds. He was dead within four days. Investigators are trying to piece together what happened to Chester Miller in the months before his death. They know he took a 1,000-mile bus ride from Hazleton, Pa., to the Florida Panhandle to look for his father the day before he showed up at Goodman's home. Chester's mother, Lyda Miller, and her live-in boyfriend of 17 years, Paul Hoffman, have been jailed and accused of intentionally starving him, beating him, then sending him to find a father he hadn't seen in 18 months. In jailhouse interviews, Lyda Miller accused Hoffman of putting a drug overdose in the sandwiches they gave Chester for his trip. Hoffman acknowledged telling Miller he tried to poison her son, but said he made the story up out of spite. Police said they plan to charge one or both with homicide. They are being held on charges of aggravated assault and recklessly endangering another person. A medical examiner said Chester died from a ruptured stomach, but authorities haven't determined whether hunger, a blow to the abdomen or a toxin caused the fatal injury. At Hazleton High School, about 90 miles northwest of Philadelphia, Chester was in a 10th-grade class for disruptive students. In Florida, he left one high school to enroll in another for teens with behavior problems. His parents said he took the attention deficit drug Adderall. As an adolescent, Chester lived with his father in Milton, 20 miles northeast of Pensacola. But the relationship grew strained and in 2001 Robert Lee Miller sent his son to live with his mother. Accounts of Chester's life in Pennsylvania vary. A cousin said Chester was strangely childlike, but didn't appear starving or abused. Lyda Miller said her son was loving, but difficult. On several occasions he slapped her during fits of rage, she said. He also was skinny. Miller said a doctor diagnosed Chester as undernourished and said the family should fatten him up. "And we did," Miller said. "Until he turned 18." Police said that after Chester's birthday in May, Hoffman began beating him and confining him to his room. The teen wasn't allowed to eat, police said, except for table scraps. Miller said that Hoffman was trying to drive Chester from the house and that she would have fled if she wasn't afraid of her boyfriend. "He threatened if I'd ever leave him again ... he'd find me and kill me," she said. Interviewed in jail, Hoffman said he hit Chester "now and again," but denied starving the teen. Hoffman said he helped Chester get a job at a racetrack concession stand and tried to get him into counseling. Chester was free to leave the house, he said. He disputed a claim by police that he forced Chester to leave for Florida but acknowledged that he wanted him out, even though the family hadn't heard from Robert Miller in some time and wasn't sure where he was. "We'd had enough of it. I didn't have to keep an 18-year-old no more," Hoffman said. "He had two options, go live with his father or go to the Salvation Army." Hoffman said Chester was healthy when he left on the bus Sept. 20. Later that day, he told Miller he had emptied many Adderall capsules into the sandwiches they had given him for the trip. He now says he lied about the pills because he was angry. Miller said her son called from the road and said he had been throwing up. But she decided not to tell him what Hoffman had said about the Adderall because Chester said he felt much better. When Chester arrived on Goodman's doorstep, he told her he had gone to an uncle's home in a nearby town and been told his father had moved into Goodman's apartment complex. "He was like a child, and he was in so much pain," she said. "I don't know how anyone could've turned him away." On Friday, John Pike, Hoffman's attorney, was granted permission to spend up to $750 on a private investigator to interview multiple witnesses he says have pertinent information regarding the background of the case. Pike also filed a motion seeking to have Hoffman released from prison because prosecutors have waited too long for a preliminary hearing on the current charges. A preliminary hearing scheduled for Sept. 24 was continued at prosecutors' request to Oct. 30 -- 37 days after the arrest, Pike said. A preliminary hearing is usually conducted within 10 days of an arrest. The delay is in violation of state law, he said. Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas Judge Joseph Augello scheduled a hearing on the matter for Oct. 21. Also, Pike said differing opinions on Chester's weight difference highlight the importance medical experts will likely play in the case. "They're alleging starvation. ... I think weight is going to be a key point for both sides," he said. Chester weighed 63 pounds when he was admitted to the Santa Rosa Medical Center in Milton on Sept. 21, according to Hazleton, Pa., police, but an autopsy showed he weighed 100 pounds when he died Sept. 24. Dr. Andi Minyard, a Florida medical examiner, said Friday that a problem with Chester's kidneys prevented him from excreting urine, which may explain the weight gain. Minyard said no blood was flowing to Miller's kidneys, which prevented them from functioning properly. Minyard said a lot of water was in Miller's skin and tissue when she performed the autopsy, which shows he was retaining fluids. Dr. Cyril Wecht, a nationally known forensic expert, and Luzerne County Coroner George Hudock said last week they did not think it possible that water weight accounted for the weight difference, saying fluid retention might add 10 to 15 pounds at most. The amount of the weight gain was unusual, Minyard said, but she can think of no other explanation other than water weight, assuming both scales were accurate. "I wouldn't have thought it possible either, but there's no getting around the fact he weighed one thing at (the hospital) and what he weighed here," Minyard said. Minyard ruled Miller died because of an infection spread into his body when his stomach ruptured. She has not pinpointed the cause of the rupture pending results of toxicology tests. Miller underwent surgery to remove two-thirds of his stomach and one-half of his intestines shortly after admission to the hospital. Minyard said Friday the stomach rupture occurred before the surgery. The rupture had caused part of the stomach to die, she said, necessitating its removal. -- Information from the Associated Press and Knight Ridder Newspapers was used in this report.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
