'Kill for Thrill' 40 years later: A Town Grieves (Epitaph for a Slain Policeman)

Editor’s note: The Tribune-Review wrote a series of articles 40 years ago about a murder spree in which four people were killed in eight days across Western Pennsylvania. This is one of the original articles, published on Friday, Jan. 4, 1980.

Sitting at his desk in Apollo police offices, Police Chief Richard Murphy clenched and unclenched his hands as he told the story of 21-year-old patrolman Leonard Clifford Miller, who was found shot to death early Thursday morning.

“Several months ago we found there was federal funding for another patrolman, so when the time came he was to have the job,” Murphy said. “He had been waiting all his life for a full-time police job. It was his whole ambition in life.”

Just four days ago — on New Year’s Eve — Miller got his wish, becoming one of Apollo’s two full-time police officers after serving part-time for three years.

Early yesterday morning, Miller was found fatally shot in Oklahoma Borough while pursuing a speeding car.

His death has sent shock waves through this quiet Armstrong County town of 2,300, where Miller was known as a jovial and dedicated police officer who liked to ride the patrol cars even when he was off-duty.

A strapping fellow at 6-feet-1 and 300 pounds, Miller was the borough’s first black police officer and the youngest ever hired. He also was the first Apollo policeman ever killed in the line of duty.

Just last June, he graduated from the Police Training School at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. A resident of Brownstown in Kiski Township, Miller time and time against was described as well-liked and well-respected.

As the sole black on the police force, he light-heartedly called himself the “colored kid” and was best known under the nickname of “Spook” Miller. In face, he called himself and another patrolman with the same last name the “salt and pepper” of the police force.

Miller, who was single, was the only child of Frank and Evelyn Miller of Brownstown, with whom he resided. Police Chief Murphy said his mother and father, a retired coal miner with the Leechburg Mining Co., had high aspirations for their son.

“There were so proud of him for having made the police force,” Murphy said.

Apollo Councilman Mark Fetterman, who heads the borough’s public safety committee, said Miller was the natural choice for the full-time police slot because of his credentials and his enthusiasm for the job.

“He wanted to be full-time,” Fetterman said. He didn’t come right out and say it, but you knew he wanted to be part of the group.”

A 1977 graduate of Apollo Ridge High School, Miller spent his teen years in community service. At 15, he started working as an ambulance attendant with the Oklahoma Borough Ambulance Service, later becoming a junior fireman with the Kiski Township Volunteer Fire Department.

Fond of kids, Miller often chaperoned teen dances at the Apollo Community Center. They returned his affection, and went to him with their problems.

As the news of his death spread early yesterday, children wept and adults were shocked and angered. Flags in the community were flown at half-mast in his memory.

Ruth Henry, clerk for the borough police, related that waitresses at a local restaurant bitterly expressed hope for swift apprehension of the gunman or gunmen, whom they said they wanted to bring to Apollo for “a stoning.”

“In Apollo, you’re a family,” Mrs. Henry said of the town’s intense reaction. “Everybody shares each other’s emotions.”

In the 1977 Apollo Ridge High School yearbook, Miller’s description of his future plans show that he was a youth who knew what he wanted.

What he wanted was to go to college to major in criminal justice.