Tanya L. Miller, a 19-year-old Black woman from Milwaukee, was found dead on October 11, 1986. Her body was discovered face down in a rear yard, described in accounts of the case as an area between a house and a garage. An examination determined that she had been manually strangled. Investigators collected vaginal swabs as evidence, but the significance of the biological material preserved in her case would not become fully apparent for many years.
Miller's killing came only one day after Deborah L. Harris was found strangled in Milwaukee. Harris had been discovered in the Milwaukee River on October 10. Although the two deaths occurred on consecutive days and both involved strangulation, the cases remained unresolved for more than two decades. They would eventually become the earliest known killings in a series of Milwaukee homicides connected through DNA evidence to the same man, Walter E. Ellis.
The major break came as Milwaukee investigators reexamined biological evidence from a number of long-unsolved killings. DNA testing ultimately connected Ellis to seven homicide victims, including Miller. Court records later described the evidence collected from Miller and stated that Ellis's DNA was associated with each of the seven victims prosecuted in the case. The series stretched from the 1986 deaths of Harris and Miller through the 2007 killing of Ouithreaun Stokes.
Investigators closed in on Ellis in 2009. During a search of his Milwaukee residence, police seized a toothbrush identified as belonging exclusively to him, along with shaving razors. Testing produced Ellis's DNA profile, which investigators compared with evidence from the linked homicide investigations. Ellis was arrested in September 2009, and prosecutors initially charged him in two killings before expanding the case to include five additional women, bringing the total to seven murder prosecutions. Miller's death was among the additional cases formally brought against him. Because Miller and Harris were killed in 1986, the charges connected with their deaths were brought as murder charges under the law applicable at the time, while the later cases were charged as first-degree intentional homicides.
Ellis initially faced the possibility of a trial, but the case ultimately ended without one. In February 2011, he pleaded no contest to all seven killings. A no-contest plea resulted in convictions without Ellis formally admitting guilt. Judge Dennis Cimpl subsequently sentenced him to seven consecutive life terms, with no possibility of parole, ensuring that he would remain imprisoned for the rest of his life. Prosecutors said the evidence against him included DNA matching semen samples associated with six victims and blood evidence from the seventh homicide scene.
Miller's family was present as the decades-old case finally reached its conclusion. After Ellis was sentenced, her brother, Mansa Miller, spoke publicly about the outcome and expressed hope that Ellis would use what remained of his life to become a better person. More than twenty-four years after Tanya Miller was found strangled in a Milwaukee yard, the preserved evidence from her case had helped identify her killer and secure a conviction as part of one of Milwaukee's most extensive serial homicide prosecutions.
