Those who witnessed the shooting that afternoon would recall it as a cold-blooded execution.
Aiming the 9mm through the window of the car, the gunman pumped six bullets into the woman seated within. Then he walked round to the other side, took aim and delivered a final shot.
But none who looked on in horror that day – September 15, 1991 — could have imagined the twisted drama of lies and betrayal of which this was the final act.
Michael Haltiwanger, whose mother, Jayne, was the innocent victim, has told that story for the first time in his book ‘A Son’s Torment: The Story of My Murdered Mom.’
He reveals that her assassin was his step-father, a man whom, it transpired, was mired in debt and deceit and living a shocking double life that Jayne was about to expose.
Michael, now 50, was living in Jacksonville, Florida with his father, also called Michael, when Jayne met David Miller.
Michael’s parents divorced when he was just two and his mother had gone on to have two serious partners since the split. One was a short-lived marriage, the second a relationship that lasted five years.
Neither relationship fazed Michael. But, then 15 years old, he was totally blindsided when he called his mother on her birthday in March 1991 only for her to reveal she and Miller – a man her son had never met – had married in a Las Vegas wedding chapel the previous month.
Michael Haltiwanger (pictured as a baby), whose mother, Jayne Miller (pictured), was the innocent victim, has told that story for the first time in his book ‘A Son’s Torment: The Story of My Murdered Mom’
Michael (pictured), now 50, was living in Jacksonville, Florida with his father, also called Michael, when Jayne met David Miller.
He told the Daily Mail that his mother appeared more infatuated than in love, saying: ‘She was like an excited schoolgirl.’
She met Miller on a plane between Orlando and Los Angeles on New Year’s Day. Jayne Maghy, a saleswoman for a metals company, had been upgraded to business class.
She thought the upgrade was serendipitous. It allowed her to chat with her fellow passenger, Miller, who enthused about his job as a tax attorney for Disney.
They both lived in Los Angeles, but he explained how he frequently travelled for business to Orlando, where Jayne’s parents lived and she had been raised.
At 33, Jayne was nine years Miller’s junior and she was impressed, gushing to her bemused son that her wealthy and generous new beau treated her ‘like an angel’.
Michael tried to be happy for his mother, but couldn’t hide his concern, especially when she said she’d quit her job because Miller supported her financially.
‘She got mad and didn’t listen to me,’ he says. ‘She said I didn’t know what I was talking about because I was a kid.’
He was underwhelmed when he finally met Miller a couple of weeks later. ‘I was expecting chiseled good looks because of the way Mom talked about him,’ he says. ‘But he was a schlub.’
Miller splashed his money around. That April, he bought Michael his first car as a 16th birthday gift and Jayne decorated it with a giant bow.
‘I was a sophomore and couldn’t believe my luck,’ Michael tells me. ‘But, looking back, it was all about appearances.’
Miller would disappear, apparently for business, for days at a time, sometimes across entire weekends.
But, when he was around, he took Jayne to five-star hotels. He bought expensive theater tickets and had them driven around in chauffeured limousines.
Three months after their wedding, when Jayne wanted to relocate back to Florida, Miller said he’d negotiated a transfer from Disney’s head office in California to Disneyworld in Orlando.
Michael accompanied his mother and Miller as they hunted for houses. ‘These were mansions with eight or nine bedrooms, libraries and huge swimming pools,’ he says. ‘Mom was in her element and said she wanted to have another child.’
Jayne was thrilled when Miller placed a deposit on their first choice of property. Then, when the deal fell through because his check bounced, she was incensed. The same thing happened with their next choice.
‘There were lots of fights and arguments, usually over money,’ Michael recalls. ‘He was domineering and possessive and Mom was fiery.’
He said Jayne appeared to thrive on the disagreements — and the inevitable making up.
But it all started to wear rather thin during a family trip to Italy — funded by Miller, of course.
Jayne met David Miller (pictured) on a plane between Orlando and Los Angeles on New Year’s Day. The saleswoman for a metals company had been upgraded to business class.
Michael’s parents divorced when he was just two and his mother had gone on to have two serious partners since the split. One was a short-lived marriage, the second a relationship that lasted five years. (Pictured: Michael and Jayne).
At 15, Michael was totally blindsided when he called his mother on her birthday in March 1991 only for her to reveal she and Miller – a man her son had never met – had married in a Las Vegas wedding chapel on Valentine’s Day. (Pictured: Michael and Jayne).
Miller claimed they would meet a top business connection from the Kuwait government when they arrived in Rome. He said his contact would arrange extravagant onward travel internationally, including a visit the pyramids in Egypt.
But the fixer never showed up.
Miller began drinking heavily. One night, he staggered drunkenly into their hotel room and shouted at Jayne because she’d let Michael lie on the bed to watch TV.
‘He yelled at us and screamed profanities,’ Michael says. ‘Then he began to throw up in the bathroom.’
Jayne tried to help, but he shoved her away. He threw her and Michael out of the room and broke two doors with his fist.
‘I was freaking out because he was acting so irrationally,’ Michael says. ‘We were in a foreign country with no place to go.’
The family was ordered to leave the hotel because of the damage he’d caused and issued with his bill.
As soon as they returned to the States, Jayne discovered that another of Miller’s checks had bounced. They’d lost a third house. She threw her wedding ring at him in disgust.
According to Michael, this time the fight turned violent. He recalls dialing 911 as his mother and Miller grappled on the floor.
After the police broke it up, Jayne declared that she and Miller were done for good. Barely five months after they met on that fateful flight, the whirlwind romance and blink-and-you’d-miss-it marriage seemed over. They took out restraining orders against each other.
‘It was a terrible experience, but I was relieved,’ Michael says.
Sadly, that relief was short-lived. Two weeks later, in July, the teenager, who spent most of his time with his father and only visited his mother during school holidays, called her. He was appalled when Miller answered the phone.
‘I asked Mom what was going on, but she told me to butt out because she wouldn’t discuss it,’ Michael says. ‘She said there was nothing to worry about and everything was fine.’
A few days later, Michael rolled his eyes when she called him about visiting Miller’s new office at Disneyworld.
She said she burst with pride when she read his name plaque on his door. Her framed photograph was perched on the desk.
He kept his thoughts to himself.
But behind the scenes the cracks were beginning to show and, for all her boasts about his career, Jayne had become suspicious of her husband.
The true state of his finances troubled her – with checks bouncing despite his supposedly well-paying job. And she was starting to doubt that the reason for his frequent absences was really ‘work’ as he told her. She thought he was having an affair.
In late August, a month after they’d reunited, Jayne hired a private investigator.
The detective didn’t take long to deliver what would prove to be a devastating report.
Not only was Miller drowning in a sea of debt, he was a bigamist – already married and living an entirely different life in Pennsylvania with a wife of six years.
Everything that Miller had told Jayne was a lie. He didn’t work for Disney and had faked his office by bribing a janitor to let them into the building. The desk he showed Jayne belonged to another David Miller. ‘I guess it was a common name,’ Michael says.
As for his debts, though he’d clung on to his position as the president of the Chamber of Commerce in Granada Hills, California, he owed a string of creditors tens of thousands of dollars. He’d lied to one claimant by saying he had cancer and needed the money for treatment.
Michael only learned of Miller’s deception after his mother’s death. But he knows one thing for sure: ‘Mom wasn’t going to take it sitting down.’
She got the number of his first, and legal, wife, Dorothy, from the detective and called her. Much to Jayne’s surprise, Dorothy was already aware of her husband’s deceit having grown suspicious of his increasingly lengthy absences from their marital home.
She had confronted him in a telephone call just weeks earlier, now she and Jayne confirmed each other’s existence and compared notes.
They figured out that when he wasn’t with one of them he was with the other.
Dorothy told Jayne that Miller had explained his time away by claiming to be a CIA agent. He said that his businesses were simply shell companies and a cover.
He boasted about ‘retiring’ people by making them disappear and completing dangerous missions in the Far East and South America. He said he was on a ‘hit list’ and frequently came under fire.
Once, he shocked Dorothy by pulling up the leg of his pants and showing her a graze on his leg that he claimed was caused by a bullet.
When Jayne told Dorothy that she planned expose him in the media the other woman cautioned her not to. Miller, with whom Dorothy had severed all communication was, she told Jayne, dangerous. But Jayne didn’t listen.
According to court documents, Jayne was at her parents’ house when she confronted her ‘husband’ with the evidence over the phone.
‘My grandparents told me there was a lot of screaming and shouting,’ Michael, who had just started his senior year in high school, said.
Ignoring Dorothy’s warning, Jayne threatened to expose her husband. It was a threat for which she would pay the ultimate price.
Dorothy (pictured with David) told Jayne that Miller had explained his time away by claiming to be a CIA agent. He said that his businesses were simply shell companies and a cover.
At 33, Jayne (pictured) was nine years Miller’s junior and she was impressed, gushing to her bemused son that her wealthy and generous new beau treated her ‘like an angel’
Three months after their wedding, when Jayne (pictured) wanted to relocate to Florida, Miller said he’d negotiated a transfer from Disney’s head office in California to Disneyworld in Orlando
On September 15, she told Miller that she wanted to collect things from their joint storage unit in Sanford, Florida. They had kept Jayne’s furniture in there in advance of the house move that never happened.
‘My grandparents told her to come and go quickly in case Miller showed up,’ Michael says. But she wasn’t quick enough. Witnesses said Miller and Jayne argued in the parking lot before she went back to her car.
Miller walked to his car and pulled out a handgun. He shot Jayne seven times in total. ‘It wasn’t a crime of passion, it was pre-meditated,’ Michael says.
A group of taxi drivers in the parking lot managed to hold Miller until the police arrived and he was arrested.
Michael says the following days passed in a blur as he tried to figure out what happened. ‘I was paralyzed with shock,’ he says. ‘I felt like I was under water.’
Miller’s subsequent trial became a media circus. Reporters couldn’t get enough of the case’s outlandish details.
He was found guilty of first-degree murder in December 1993 and sentenced to life in prison. Now in his mid-70s, he is eligible for parole in four years’ time.
‘There was some talk about him getting the electric chair, but, as far as I’m concerned, he’ll be judged by God when the time comes,’ Michael says.
Jayne’s murder has, inevitably, cast an inescapable shadow over Michael’s life but, for all that, he doesn’t want his mother to be defined by her death.
He says: ‘Mom was my greatest support and cheerleader, and I miss her so much. I want people to know my mother as the very special person she was.’
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