An Ohio Amish mother who claimed God told her to throw her 4-year-old son into a lake has been charged with murder in the boy’s drowning.
Ruth Miller, 40, was under care at a mental health facility when authorities charged her on Wednesday with two counts of aggravated murder, two counts of domestic violence and one count of endangering children.
Both murder charges are related to her son Vincen because of Miller’s “prior calculation and design” and the fact that the boy was under 13, the Tuscarawas County Prosecutor’s Office told Cleveland station WKYC.
The domestic violence and endangerment charges are connected to her three older kids, who Miller allegedly directed to perform tasks in the lake to “prove their worthiness to God.”
Vincen’s death happened on Saturday at Atwood Lake, where Miller and her family had been camping to celebrate her birthday. The weekend took a tragic turn when Miller and her 45-year-old husband, Marcus, began hearing God telling them to perform acts of faith in the lake.
At around 1 a.m. Saturday, the couple jumped off the dock to complete the tasks. Ruth tried to walk on water but fell in instead. Her husband returned to the lake for a do-over at around 6:30 a.m. and tried swimming to a distant sandbank, but he drowned trying.
Later that morning, Ruth loaded 4-year-old Vincen onto a golf cart and drove around erratically, then threw him off the end of the dock, prosecutors claim. She then commanded her older children, 18-year-old twin boys and a 15-year-old girl, to perform faith-affirming tasks in the lake.
“Their mindset was that whatever their mother and father says is the way it is,” said Tuscarawas County Sheriff Orvis Campbell. “They don’t question anything. So when they were told to jump in the lake, they jump in the lake.”
At around 10:30 a.m., with all three teens onboard the golf cart, Ruth slammed into a stone wall on the lake shore, sending it into the water. The kids were able to stand on the golf cart to get themselves out of the lake and were ultimately unharmed but “extremely confused,” Campbell said.
Marcus and Vincen were already dead when authorities were called to the golf cart crash. Police located Vicen’s body at around 6 p.m. Saturday and his father just after 8 a.m. Sunday, both at the bottom of the lake.
Family members and clergy said Miller’s beliefs stemmed from mental illness, not religious beliefs, and that they’d been “walking with them through their challenges.”
Miller was still receiving treatment at the mental health facility when she was charged on Wednesday, but had not yet arrested, prosecutors said. For the time being, she’s “in a secured hospital and, when discharged, will be released to law enforcement authorities” for bail and probable cause hearings, officials told WKYC.
An aggravated murder conviction carries at minimum a lifetime prison sentence with parole possible after 20 years, and a maximum sentence of life without parole.
The domestic violence and endangerment charges are first-degree misdemeanors and levy no more than 180 days of jail time, officials said.
With News Wire Services
