Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Obituary

He wrote the truth with passion

GENE MILLER: 1928-2005. Gene Miller, who won two Pulitzer Prizes, had a deep faith in newspapers as the backbone of democracy.

By wire services
Published June 18, 2005

MIAMI - Longtime Florida newsman Gene Miller, who taught the world that a combination of pen and ink could produce truth, and sometimes justice, died Friday. He was 76.

Miller won two Pulitzer Prizes for stories that saved the lives of four people wrongly convicted of murder.

But he changed the lives of more than death row inmates.

In Miami, where Miller spent 48 years as a reporter and editor for the Miami Herald, he was the heart and soul of a community, a man who believed passionately that newspapers were the backbone of democracy.

To journalists across the country, he was a hero for the ages, a pioneer of investigative reporting that grew out of passion, a sense of humor and a virtuoso storytelling ability.

His specialty was detail over opinion and short simple sentences, known as the Miller chop. A couple of years ago, after Miller learned he was dying of cancer, he typed his own obituary. He threatened to put it in the paid obituary notices if senior editors changed or trimmed it.

Instead, the Herald posted it on its Web site Friday.

Self-portrait: Born in Evansville, Indiana, Sept. 16, 1928, grandson of a Utah railroader and a grandma who could outshoot the sheriff. Pre-kindergarten firebug.

Reporter and editor at the Miami Herald from 1957 to 2001 until tax-deferred buyout from Knight Ridder ($287,365.28), then contracted as a newsroom vendor.

Miller made his name covering crime - serial killer Ted Bundy, the Guyana suicides, cons, cultists and criminals.

But his passion was for using pen, notepad, typewriter and computer to speak truth to power.

"Malfunctions of justice," he called them.

His first Pulitzer, in 1967, was for helping to free prisoners Joe Shea and Mary Katherin Hampton, who were each convicted of separate murders they didn't commit.

In 1976, Miller won his second Pulitzer after eight years of reporting about Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee. The two black men were twice convicted and wrongfully sentenced to death for the murders of two white gas station attendants in the Florida Panhandle town of Port St. Joe.

With the help of an old FBI buddy and polygraph examiner, Warren Holmes, Miller unraveled the truth in more than 100 stories. The police had no evidence and beat confessions out of Pitts and Lee. The two men were sentenced to death in 1963.

A third man ended up confessing.

Pitts and Lee were freed.

In his self-obituary, Miller quoted himself in the lead: "Excellent health ... except for a fatal disease."

He is survived by his wife, Caroline Heck Miller, four children from a previous marriage, one stepson and eight grandchildren. A memorial service is scheduled for Wednesday in Miami.

Times Staff Writer Sydney P. Freedberg contributed to this story, which includes information from the Associated Press.

[Last modified June 18, 2005, 08:28:52]