Five Harrisburg women disappeared one by one between 1986 and 1992 as serial killer Joey Miller stalked city bars for his victims. Each one had families who loved them and futures that would never be realized. Here are their stories: Kelly Ann Ward, 26: Ward’s family reported her disappearance in 1986.
They would have to wait 30 years for answers to what happened to her. Ward’s skeletal remains were found in 1997 by a road crew working along Chambers Hill Road in Swatara Township. It would be another 17 years before her remains were positively identified, and two more years until Joey Miller pleaded guilty in 2016 to raping and killing her.
In 2015, relative Faun Ward told PennLive he had more or less given up hope that the person who killed his cousin would be found. “Kelly was a wonderful person. She was loved by everyone.
And she will be missed,” Ward said. Kelly Ann Ward was the first known victim of serial killer Joseph Miller. Last seen on Jan.
2, 1986, it would be nearly 20 years before Miller pleaded guilty to killing her. PennLive Selina M. Franklin, 18: Franklin disappeared in May 1987.
Her skeletal remains weren’t found until August 1992 when Joey Miller led detectives to the burial sites of two of his victims in the Swatara Township landfill. That allowed Franklin’s family to give her a proper burial. At the service, Franklin was remembered as a warm, loving, outspoken and outgoing young woman.
“Selina was a beautiful young lady. This is a portrait fit for a queen,” the pastor said, gesturing toward the altar where a white-framed picture of Franklin was displayed. “We have not the words really to console,” the pastor said.
But he gave thanks for the closure of knowing what had happened to their loved one. “Now that we know the end of Selina Franklin, we have to go on with life,” he told the church packed with mourners. Franklin’s brother and sister wrote this poem for her memorial service: “She was always different than my brother and me.
As you know, she is the youngest of us three. She brought us joy, laughter and tears For just 18 years. We really don’t have much else to say, but our love for her will never go away.
” Stephanie McDuffey, 23, and her unborn child: McDuffey was eight months’ pregnant when she failed to return to her Bellevue Street home in Harrisburg in November 1989. Like Franklin, her skeletal remains were recovered in August 1992 when Miller led detectives to his makeshift burial grounds in the Swatara Township landfill. Along with McDuffey’s remains were the bones of her unborn child.
Her homicide, along with the death of her fetus, would help make new law in Pennsylvania. The criminal homicide of an unborn child became a separate count of first-degree murder when it happens by an intentional killing. Jeannette Thomas, 25: Thomas disappeared in January 1990 after leaving an Allison Hill bar with a man fitting Miller’s description.
But by the time Miller was arrested in August 1992 and under active investigation for being a serial killer, another man had confessed and was jailed in her murder. Thomas’ body had been found soon after her disappearance. But it was in the same Swatara Township landfill where Miller disposed of his three other Dauphin County victims.
A DNA match finally and conclusively linked Miller to her killing. He pleaded guilty in 2016, with some of Thomas’ family in attendance. “She was a sister.
She was an aunt. She was our all,” Sandra Ware, Thomas’ cousin, said as she wiped away tears in the courtroom. LaFrance Thomas, Jeanette Thomas’ sister, said seeing Miller admit to the murder helps only “a little bit.
” Kathy Novena Schenck, no age listed: Schenck, also known as Phoenix Bell, was part Sioux and part French Canadian and began life on a Sioux reservation in Manitoba, Canada, one of 16 siblings. She had a troubled family life. This led to Schenck and her 6-year-old sister being put up for adoption when Kathy was 5.
For the next 13 years, her life was a succession of foster homes. She grew into an adult who, a relative said in 1993, “couldn’t believe she was lovable.” At 18, she married and she and her husband had three children before they divorced.
She is the only one of Miller’s known victims killed in Perry County. After they met in Harrisburg on Feb. 27, 1990, Miller drove Schenck across the Susquehanna River to Penn Township, Perry County.
That’s where Schenck took a stand and fought for her life. She bolted from Miller’s car after he parked at a roadside dump. To prevent her from escaping, Miller put the car into gear and ran Schenck down.
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