Volume 13 · Chapter 2
The Zombie Hunter
Bryan Patrick Miller
Victims: Angela Brosso · Melanie Bernas
Case at a glance
- When
- November 1992 and September 1993
- Where
- Arizona Canal path, north Phoenix, Arizona
- Perpetrator
- Bryan Patrick Miller
- Victims
- Angela Brosso, Melanie Bernas
- Outcome
- Convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in April 2023 and sentenced to death in June 2023; automatic appeal pending as of July 2026
The case
In November 1992, Angela Brosso, 21, went for an evening bike ride on the Arizona Canal path near her north Phoenix home. It was the day before her 22nd birthday. She was found the next morning, stabbed and sexually assaulted. Her killer had removed her head, which turned up eleven days later. In September 1993, Melanie Bernas, 17, was attacked while riding along the same canal, a few hundred feet from where Angela’s head had been found.
By 2000, DNA showed one man had killed both women, but his profile matched no one on file. In 2014 genetic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick compared it with public genealogy records and concluded the killer’s surname was likely Miller. That led detectives to Bryan Patrick Miller, known at fan conventions as the “Zombie Hunter” for the decorated former police car he drove. In January 2015 undercover detectives met him at a Phoenix Chili’s restaurant under the cover of a job interview and kept the cup he drank from. It matched.
Miller was arrested in January 2015. He pleaded insanity and waived a jury. After a bench trial, Judge Suzanne Cohen found him guilty in April 2023 of two counts of first-degree murder, along with kidnapping and attempted sexual assault charges. On June 7, 2023, she sentenced him to death. His automatic appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court was still pending in July 2026.
Read the full story
This case is told in full in True Crime Case Histories, Volume 13 by Jason Neal.
Get Volume 13 on AmazonCase photographs
5 photos
Where it happened
Why this case
“Two women on a canal path, more than twenty years of silence, and then a surname drawn from a genealogy database. I chose this case because it sits right at the point when family-tree DNA began solving old murders. Angela’s and Melanie’s families waited three decades for a verdict, and that wait deserves as much attention as the science.”
— Jason Neal, author of True Crime Case Histories
