Charles Martin Miller, a 58-year-old man living in Bunnell, Florida, spent his days working at the local Bunnell Cypress Sawmill. It was there he became acquainted with a 19-year-old coworker, Louis Bernard Gaskin. This workplace connection would tragically lead to Miller's murder, a crime that remained unsolved for three years, leaving a community in fear and a family without answers.
The motive, as it would later be revealed, was rooted in a simple conversation about money.
In the fall of 1986, Gaskin overheard his coworker, Charles Miller, mention that he was expecting to receive between $600 and $900 in delayed Social Security checks. This knowledge sparked a fatal plan. On November 6, 1986, Gaskin went to Miller's trailer, his face obscured by a black head netting and his body clad in camouflage. When Miller answered the door, Gaskin struck him over the head with a pipe before fleeing. Though injured, Miller survived the initial assault.
Undeterred, Gaskin returned two weeks later, on the evening of November 20, 1986. He crept through the woods surrounding Miller's trailer and waited. As Miller passed by his front door, Gaskin fired a single shot from a.22-caliber rifle through the screen window, striking Miller in the upper chest. Despite the grave wound, Miller fought for his life. Without a phone in his trailer, he staggered approximately 200 yards to his nearest neighbor's home seeking help. Tragically, the neighbors were not home. Over an hour later, they returned to find Charles Martin Miller on their back porch, where he had bled to death while waiting for aid.
With no immediate leads or apparent motive, investigators initially considered the possibility of a hunting accident. The case quickly grew cold, and for three years, the question of who killed Charles Miller remained unanswered. The silence was broken in December 1989, following a brutal crime spree in nearby Palm Coast that left two people dead and two others wounded. The perpetrator, who dressed in a black ninja-style outfit to conceal his identity, was quickly dubbed "The Ninja Killer."
Police arrested Louis Bernard Gaskin on December 30, 1989, for the Palm Coast home invasions. During his interrogation, Gaskin not only confessed to the recent murders but also admitted to a string of other violent crimes. In a taped statement, he spoke of having urges to kill and confessed to the cold-case murder of his former coworker, Charles Martin Miller. He told investigators he had planned to rob Miller, who he believed often carried several hundred dollars. Gaskin recounted how Miller's pleas for mercy did not bother him as he shot him.
Following a two-month trial in 1990, Louis Gaskin was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder, including the murder of Charles Miller, as well as attempted murder, armed robbery, and armed burglary. He received multiple life sentences and two death sentences for his crimes. For more than three decades, Gaskin remained on death row at Florida State Prison.
On March 13, 2023, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed Gaskin's death warrant. Louis Bernard Gaskin was executed by lethal injection on April 12, 2023, at the age of 56. His execution brought a final, legal end to a violent chapter that began with the senseless robbery and murder of Charles Martin Miller, a man whose life was cut short by a coworker's greed.
