Town note
Boulder City originated as a federal company town, built because of the Hoover Dam.
about 0:05:53The story
He graduated from Alameda High School in 1992, held several school swimming records, captained the water polo team and was voted prom king. He went on to the University of California, Davis, on pre-med courses, but he attended only sporadically, drifted away from pre-med, switched to history and stayed on and off for nine years between 1992 and 2001 without ever taking a degree. He moved back in with his parents in Alameda and worked as a lifeguard and a water polo referee. Friends watched him become withdrawn and almost mute and put it down to depression; at some point he was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Instead he drove across the country as far as Florida, passing through Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. Somewhere in Oklahoma on the way back he bought a hacksaw. On 22 June 2003 he checked into the Hacienda Hotel, a casino hotel on the highway to the Hoover Dam just outside Boulder City, Nevada, under his own name and with his own credit card, and took room 1651. The night clerk described him as extremely skittish and said he would not make eye contact.
Ladana Millam was 49, a Boulder City resident, married to Jerry Millam and the mother of two. She worked the evening shift as a maid and porter at the Hacienda. That Sunday she spoke to her husband at about 6.30pm and told him she would call again at 9.30. She never called. Jerry fell asleep waiting, woke a few hours later, saw that she had not come home and telephoned Boulder City police. Her car was in the hotel car park and her purse was in her employee locker. In room 1651 detectives found blood all over the bathroom, a blood-soaked towel, the plastic packaging and a bloody blade from a hacksaw, and bloody strands of hair consistent with Ladana's hair colour and length.
Later that morning a woman walking her dog at the pond in Veterans Memorial Park, a couple of miles away, saw what she described as body parts floating in the water. Police found two pieces of a woman's torso, cut vertically down the middle, with no head or limbs. In the grass was a human ear still wearing an earring; in a bin, pushed under other rubbish, was a blood-soaked multi-coloured blouse and a bra. National Park Service divers searched the pond and found no other remains. Jerry Millam identified the torso from marks on it, and the Clark County coroner's office was waiting for DNA results.
In the trunk were a severed pair of women's hands, a possible murder weapon and a hacksaw that police believed had been used to dismember the body.
Early court documents alleged the crimes were committed with the purpose of sexual assault, but forensic examination of the torso ruled out sexual assault. There had been no robbery and no relationship between them; any of the hotel's maids could have answered the towel call. The killing was disorganised, though he kept the hands as a trophy.
Las Vegas police officer Tom Monihan called the suggested link to the Peterson case absurd, and no connection was ever established.
Two psychologists found him mentally unstable and unable to assist in his defence, and he was sent to Lakes Crossing Center in Sparks, Nevada, the state's only maximum-security forensic psychiatric facility, where prosecutors argued that medication could make him competent. In September 2005 he was competent while taking Seroquel. A preliminary hearing was postponed in 2006, and the case then dragged on through evaluations, medication and hospital transfers; at times he refused to leave his cell to come to court.
Jerry Millam, who had moved to Kingman, Arizona, said the loss was hard and awful, but that it was over with and he had to walk away from it and leave it alone.