Pastor John-Paul Miller and the family of his late estranged wife Mica reached a settlement Monday, in a shocking turn after her suicide captured national attention.
Mica’s family had previously called for a more robust investigation into John-Paul and alleged that he abused her, but now, both sides have reached a truce and are calling on protesters to leave the pastor’s church in South Carolina.
“This is over,” John Paul’s attorney, Russell Long, said Monday. “This global settlement is justice for Mica. The next step is the legislative goal. We just ask that you remember Mica as the wonderful, beautiful person that she was.”
Both parties agreed to end the litigation and not to file any lawsuits against the other in the future.
Mica, 30, was found with a gunshot wound in a North Carolina state park on April 27, 2024, and her death was ruled a suicide by the Robeson County Sheriff’s Department.
Pastor John-Paul Miller and the family of his late estranged wife Mica reached a settlement Monday, in a shocking turn after her suicide captured national attention.
Mica, 30, was found with a gunshot wound in a North Carolina state park on April 27, 2024, and the Robeson County Sheriff’s Department ruled her death a suicide. Mica’s family had previously called for a more robust investigation into John-Paul, but both sides have now reached a truce.
Regina Ward, a local attorney who represented Mica’s family and hung a giant banner reading “JUSTICE FOR MICA” in front of her offices, understood the confusion some of her supporters might be feeling.
“I know some of you will be disappointed. When you’re involved in litigation of this magnitude and there’s so much to cover, it can take years to navigate the court system,” Ward said. What the hell is going on?.
Ward said the family and John-Paul will now focus on a law banning the abuse of coercive control.
“We are ready to move on to the next chapter,” he said. “The next chapter is to convince our general assembly to consider the coercive control bill. We need to get it on the agenda as soon as possible.”
She added that she no longer “wants to talk about Mr. Miller” and will begin fundraising on behalf of the bill, which was last stalled in the South Carolina legislature in 2021.
Long similarly called on protesters to leave parishioners at Market Common alone.
“The Francis family simply asked them, through their lawyer, to concentrate their efforts on something else. They asked them to concentrate their efforts on the passage of this coercive control law,” he said.
“I want to ask that the parishioners be left alone. These poor people are just trying to go to church on Sundays, but they are being harassed and intimidated.”
John-Paul bizarrely claimed that when Mica committed suicide, he would have been “in an incredibly euphoric mood.”
Families ask protesters to leave pastor’s church in South Carolina
John-Paul Miller will now avoid any civil wrongful death lawsuits related to his wife’s death.
Mica’s sister, Sierra Frances, had filed a petition to gain control of her estate, but that request has also been withdrawn.
The terms of the entire agreement, including who will manage Mica’s estate, are confidential.
Mica’s suicide gained national attention after John Paul delivered a sermon announcing his death to his parishioners, where he abruptly ended the day’s proceedings by demanding not to be questioned.
Internet detectives claimed that he had something to do with her death and some saw him wearing the same necklace that Mica was wearing when she died.
But John-Paul insisted he was not with his wife that day when she shot herself at Lumbee River State Park in North Carolina.
“I was in Charleston with about 100 people from my kids’ school,” John-Paul, a popular pastor with a criminal record that includes multiple charges of aggravated assault and battery, told NewsNation.
‘We were all together on the soccer field that day. Afterwards, after the soccer game, someone was with me the whole time… someone I love more than anything else on planet Earth… was with me.
Regina Ward, a local attorney who represented Mica’s family and hung a giant banner reading “JUSTICE FOR MICA” in front of her offices, understood the confusion some of her supporters might be feeling.
Mica’s sister, Sierra Frances, had filed a petition to gain control of his estate, but that request was also withdrawn.
“We went shopping in Charleston and we bought food in Charleston. And here are all the receipts from that whole time.”
In a bizarre claim, John-Paul said his wife would have been in an “incredibly euphoric mood” on the day she died, after chilling footage showed her smiling as she bought a gun hours before she shot herself.
“Someone sent me screenshots of Dick’s pawnshop photos where she’s smiling, and out of the six or seven times she tried to kill herself in the past, only one of those times was she depressed,” he continued.
‘The other times she was very euphoric. She would wake up and say: “I think I have to die today.”
He said these cases would be triggered because Mica does not take her medications, as he claimed that she warned her family that she would commit suicide “if they did not get her lithium.”
“I told his friends, I told everyone,” she said, adding that when she received the news of Mica’s suicide, her reaction was: “I told everyone.”
He also said that when Mica was on her meds, “we had the best marriage you could ever imagine.”
John-Paul said he did not believe his wife had been murdered, a claim backed up by a toxicology report which determined the cause of her death was suicide and that she had not been drugged.
Footage taken at a pawn shop before his death shows Mica purchasing a gun on the day of his suicide.
After John Paul II’s sermon announcing his wife’s death, he hinted that she had been lying with her body in the morgue, sparking concern among some observers.
But he now claims he was unable to sleep with her due to the position of her body in the coffin, but did say he “hugged her” and “sat on the ground and just talked to her for a while.”
The pastor added that he then attempted to resuscitate her, but as expected, his resuscitation attempts did not work.
John-Paul also admitted that an apology letter he wrote to his wife that emerged after her death was legitimate, in which he said he was sorry for manipulating her, including slashing her tires and tracking her movements.
Miller, a popular pastor with a criminal record that includes multiple charges of aggravated assault and battery, attributes his previous silence to “wisdom and self-control.”
He expressed his intention to uncover the truth behind his wife’s death and said: “Mica will have justice.”
Following a court hearing on June 5, 2024, Mica’s family was granted rights to her belongings and called for legislative changes to a domestic violence bill, proposing it be called “Mica’s Law.”
Authorities have previously stated that John-Paul Miller was not present at the scene of Mica’s death and have released 911 call recordings along with photographs and surveillance footage showing Mica purchasing a gun before traveling to North Carolina on the day of his suicide.
Miller has consistently denied any abuse, stating: “She has never been abused the entire time she has been married to me.”
The Robeson County Sheriff’s Office, with assistance from the FBI, has been involved in the investigation.