First of all I have to thank you for inviting me here today. My name is Amy Miller and I'm from Kitchener-Waterloo.
My story starts before Denise was murdered. Six months before Denise was murdered, I barely got my younger daughter out of the exact same situation. He had taken a baseball bat to her face. She had to have full facial reconstruction, and she has brain damage. He got three months in jail—that was all, three months. But we did get her life.
Six months later, in a two-year common-law relationship my daughter Denise was bruised and battered and beaten to the point where she had been taken by ambulance to the hospital more than once. The police would go there, they would pick her up, take her and bring her to my house or to her children's house, battered and bloody, traumatizing the five-year-old, or they would take her to a friend's house, because they thought “Oh, they just need a night apart”, where this was a two-year, non-stop violence, horrific violence.
Once they took him out. He was put in prison for three months, and he was given six months' probation. In that probation order it stated, “No alcohol, anger management course, stay away from Denise, stay away from the apartment”. I found out after the fact that he left the courthouse, he stopped and picked up two 40-ouncers, went back to the apartment, and was let in.
At that time we had a detective—that we didn't know we had for nine and a half months. There was no communication between us and the police. Finally, after two months, I got a family meeting, and he said write down whatever questions you want and I'll answer them, as long as they don't impede the investigation. After the third question, I said, “Why was his probation not revoked when they were called back when she was beaten again?” He was very arrogant. He sat with his hands behind his back and he said, “Well, I honestly haven't read the file.”
What detective is given a file and doesn't read it? I don't understand that. These guys are supposed to be working now on her murder case, and they were just letting it slide. They weren't communicating with us. We would go for over a year without communication. There was one night an officer called, and Glen and I had agreed that we would not allow Denise to come back into our home again because all we were doing was putting a band-aid on it, because she would go back. She definitely had battered-wife syndrome, which the police are supposed to be well-trained in. That's a laugh. They didn't care.
Why wouldn't they take him out? In two years, he was taken out once, and his probation was not revoked.
What's wrong with that picture?
One night, this female officer phoned and coerced Glen for close to 45 minutes to allow us to have Denise come to our home. I was in bed. I threw the blankets back, and you couldn't have peeled me off the ceiling. I said, “No fucking way.” I went over to the office, pushed star 69, and retrieved the number that she called from.
I was very polite. I said, “Is this an officer?” She said, “Who is this and how did you get this number? This is my private cell number.” I said, “Is this an officer?” She said, “Yes, it is. Who is this?” I said, “This is Denise's mother.” She said, “Oh, well, we're en route to your house right now.”
I said, “No, you're not.” She said, “Well, your husband said we could bring Denise over.” I said, “Well, let me put it this way. I'm her biological mother. Glen's the stepfather. I have the seniority, and I say that you are not bringing her to our house. You are taking her back to her home and you're taking him out.”
She said, “Well, can't we come and talk?” I said, “No.” She said, “Can we leave her there until her sister can come up from Niagara to pick her up?” I said, “No, I don't have Jennifer's cell number.” She said, “Oh, well, Denise has it.” I said, “That's just great. You use your private cell number but remember to block the number, and you call and you keep Denise in safe custody until she can come up and pick her up, or do your job, go back, take him out, lock him up, and let her be in a safe home.”
To this day, I don't know what happened to Denise that night. I remember getting many, many phone calls during the night. When he was passed out, she would phone and she'd say, “Mom?” I'd say, “Yeah?” She'd say, “Mom, I'm scared, I'm so scared.” I'd say, “Do you want me to come over?” She'd say, “No, that will just make things worse.”
Well, little did I know that he had a Yale lock on the inside of the apartment and he held the only key. The police had to know this. They were in and out of that apartment all the time. Nothing was done, absolutely nothing. This went on and on until New Year's Eve of 2006. He phoned me and my two daughters and said, “Is Denise there? I'd like to wish her a happy new year.” I said, “Isn't she with you?” He said, “No, but I know she's in town, and I know exactly where she's going to be tonight.”
He found her. He hunted her down like an animal and he viciously took her out into a deserted area and he murdered her. This was three days after she had the strength to leave him, never to go back to him again.
And yes, I too contacted a psychic, only my psychic was from Scottsdale, Arizona. When I contacted her, I told her the situation, and she said that he begged her that night. He begged and begged her to come back home, and she looked him straight in the eye and said, “I'd rather be dead.” Of course, he flipped out, “If I can't have you, nobody's having you.” He murdered her and then he put her body in the Grand River, and we did not find her for three and a half months.
During all this time, I was fed up with having no contact from the police. I phoned the ombudsman and he gave me two organizations, to have the Waterloo police investigated.
One was the Ontario independent police review board. The other was the Ontario Civilian Police Commission. I sent my complaint to them to have Waterloo Regional investigated. No one was investigating the case, and these few companies pass this information, the complaint back and forth and back and forth until finally one came back and said, "Your time limit is up."
Where's the time limit on murder? On an investigation? Where is the time limit? He didn't tell me. Eventually, I heard back from the Ontario Civilian Police Commission. They said that this little chip with my complaint on it, that goes into the computer, had just been misplaced. So who was supposed to investigate the Waterloo Regional Police?
I let it go for a while. Next thing I know, we are granted two new detectives, who dragged their ass too. There was no communication with them. They would not phone, either. Our first detective was excellent. He would come and have coffee with us every three months just to keep contact, just to let us know they were thinking of us. After that, there was no contact. They lied to the newspapers saying that they have liaisons, that they're in touch all the time. Our liaisons only told us when to go to court, when to go to the prelim, and when to go to the pre-trial. That's all they did. There was no one there, no communication.
One day, Glen went down to the cop shop and asked to speak to the chief of homicide.
The girl behind the counter said, "What for?"
Glen said, "Well, why should I tell you? You're just the secretary. You tell him to get out here. I want to talk to him."
He came out, and Glen said, "All you have to do is phone Amy once a month, just once a month to make contact so that she knows you are still working on the case." Did we get a phone call after that? No. Nothing.
Finally, in July 2011, four and a half months after Denise was murdered, I phoned the cop shop on a Sunday. I phoned the two detectives and left a message. I said, "This is Amy Miller, and there is a day where you are going to regret hearing my name. As of now, you are fired. I do not want any contact from you whatsoever. I do not want you downstairs buzzing to get into my building. I don't want you e-mailing me. I don't want you calling me."
I thought I was pretty safe in saying that because they never had contact with me before. The next day, I got three phone calls from the one detective, and three phone calls from the other saying they wanted to talk to me about the message I left on their machines. I'm standing there in a rage. What fucking part of no contact do you not understand? You've been fired! I don't want anything to do with you. Of course, I didn't pick up the phone.
The next day, there was a write-up in the newspaper how every spring, I go down to decorate Denise's tree. I laminate her pictures, frame them. I laminate poems and I frame them.
I decorate the tree with flowers and ribbons, and I celebrate her life because I honour her. She had the strength to get away from him physically and then she had the strength to get away from him emotionally. “I'd rather be dead.”
That day, that second day the newspaper trudged all the way down this huge rugged hill down to the flood bank and they took pictures of me with Denise over my shoulder and the flowers and then they interviewed me. I told the public exactly what I thought about our police force. They are incompetent. They know absolutely nothing about battered-wife syndrome. Why continue to take Denise out? I always thought that the person who was the batterer was to be taken out, not the person who was battered. That doesn't make any sense but then we're dealing with a police office here.
In that interview I told the public what the police were doing, what they weren't doing, why they weren't doing it, and I also told the police that when they were fired I was going to go the The Fifth Estate and I was going to take my story right across Canada. The night we reported Denise missing the one officer had the nerve to say to the other officer right in front of Glen and me, “She's probably downtown doing whatever she has to do to get her next fix”.
He didn't know her. He had no right to say that. How inappropriately we have been treated by the police. When the woman said, “Denise is more your problem than mine”, I said, “How do you figure that?” She said, “Well she's your daughter”, when they wanted to bring Denise to our house and I said no. I said, “You have me there, she is my daughter, however, this is your job. Every day, everybody has a bad day on their job and this just happens to be yours, you deal with it.” She hung up. I was going to phone back but I thought I'd probably get charged with harassment or something. So I didn't.
People, when you are reporting a missing daughter the police force should be there to do everything and anything they can. I was raised to believe that the police force was there to help, serve, and protect. Did they protect my daughter? After two years of abuse did they protect my daughter? She was a wrongful death. They could have stopped it. The one detective said to me recently, “Amy, when the trial is all over I will sit down and I will tell you everything”. There's nothing he can tell me that justifies my daughter's life. I don't care if they were waiting to make a big drug bust on him or what, nothing is going to justify my daughter's life.
When I am finished with the trial next month I am going public with my story because when she offered me money I didn't accept it. That was blood money. That was shut-up money. That was go-away money, and I sent her away and because I didn't sue her they have not heard the last of me.
I am going public with my full story once this trial is over. Someone has to be held accountable for what these police officers are not doing. It's about time that people started listening. It's not just an aboriginal woman/girl issue; this goes along with white women too, and Hispanic women. In Kitchener, we have had murders where there have been white women cut up and dropped in dumpsters. Denise was murdered in 2006. Two years later, a friend of hers had a father who was a high-profile criminal lawyer. They got her murderers jailed in two years. Two years is all it took for a high-profile criminal lawyer. Why is it taking me seven years of fighting?
I'm very upset with these parties who are not wanting to help make justice responsible. I believe they should bring the death penalty back because if it was back, people would think twice before they murdered again.
Thank you very much for listening to me.