In a tragic turn of events on March 16, 2018, 23-year-old Cody Dwayne Early Jr., a male, lost his life in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. His death, which would later be ruled a homicide, was the grim culmination of a planned robbery that spiraled into a double murder, also claiming the life of 39-year-old Shaun Dejon Ruddle.
The two men were discovered inside a stolen SUV that had crashed into a mailbox in a residential neighborhood. Both had been shot in the head.
For months, the case remained unsolved, leaving a cloud of uncertainty over the community and the victims' families. The breakthrough in the investigation came from an unlikely source and in an unexpected manner, several months after the incident.
The trail to a suspect began to unfold following a separate and violent encounter with law enforcement. In March 2018, a man named Ronnie Lewis Miller III was involved in a shootout with Norman police. After being hospitalized for injuries sustained in the confrontation, Miller was taken into custody on charges related to that incident. It was while he was incarcerated in Cleveland County that the pieces of the puzzle in the deaths of Early and Ruddle began to fall into place.
In a move that investigators found both surprising and chilling, Miller reached out to confess to the murders. He admitted to planning to rob one of the victims of drugs and money. According to his confession, the situation escalated tragically after one of the victims made fun of him, leading him to shoot both men. In a handwritten account, Miller detailed his original intention to return to the scene to destroy the evidence by setting the vehicle containing the bodies on fire.
Following his confession, Ronnie Lewis Miller III was charged in July 2018 with two counts of first-degree murder. However, the legal proceedings took a different direction. In January 2022, Miller was found to be incompetent to stand trial. As a result, the criminal case against him was suspended, and he was committed to the care of the Department of Mental Health for treatment, leaving the final chapter in the quest for justice for Cody Dwayne Early Jr. and Shaun Dejon Ruddle yet to be written.
