Death of the Pastor’s Wife

When we hear the obligatory 911 call at the outset of a Netflix true crime documentary, we feel a sense of dread—and yes, anticipation. Even if we have little or no knowledge about the details of the story that is about to unfold over multiple episodes, we know that before that 911 call was placed, there were most likely red flags and cries for help, and appeals to law enforcement—

Yet none of it prevented that desperate 911 call.

So it is “Death of the Pastor’s Wife,” an engrossing three-part documentary series. It’s the story of Mica Miller, a traumatized young woman who took her own life, and her husband, John-Paul Miller, the so-called man of God who allegedly pushed her to the brink by treating her with brutality, cruelty, and physical and emotional abuse. Through police calls, never-before-seen video footage, Facebook posts, text records, first-hand interviews with relatives and friends and associates of the victim, and archives, “Death of the Pastor’s Wife” is sure to leave you shaken—even as you quickly binge from one episode to the next.

Co-directors Julia Willoughby Nason and Mike Gasparro are leaders in this field, having directed well-made projects including “Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal” (2023) and “American Murder: Gabby Petito” (2025). Per usual, Nason and Gasparro expertly navigate the challenge of telling a lurid story without sensationalizing the details or exploiting the victim. Time and again through the three-episode arc, Mica’s voice is heard literally and figuratively (and through family-sanctioned AI audio replication). We mourn her loss and feel frustrated that more wasn’t done to protect her from the fateful sequence when she bought a gun at a pawn shop in Myrtle Beach, S.C., drove to a state park in Robeson County, N.C., called 911 to report her location, and took her own life. 

“Death of the Pastor’s Wife” begins with an overhead drone shot of Lumber River State Park in southeastern North Carolina, with Mica calmly telling the 911 dispatcher, “I’m about to kill myself, and I just want my family to know where to find me.” Cue the title card montage of interview clips, news reports, store security and ring camera footage, screenshots of text messages, online sleuths sharing theories on social media, and footage of John-Paul Miller cloaking himself in Biblical passages while spewing misogynistic rhetoric onstage at Solid Rock Church in Myrtle Beach. It takes about 15 seconds of watching this bombastic charlatan delivering messages to his flock along the lines of, “There’s incredible danger in unmet needs…when your husband wants sex, God does not send an angel from heaven to take care of that,” and, “Ladies, wives, if you don’t meet your husband’s sexual needs, Satan will put 20 different options before his eyes before the day’s over with” to ascertain he’s a sexist con man at best. At best.

For the most part, “Death of the Pastor’s Wife” unfolds chronologically, beginning with Mica and her family moving from Kansas to Myrtle Beach when Mica was 13. The family finds a little roadside church called Solid Rock, led by a charismatic young pastor named John-Paul Miller. Within a few years, Mica becomes “worship leader” in charge of the choir. She gets engaged at 18 and is married at Solid Rock Church, with John-Paul officiating. The congregation grows and moves into a bigger building; Mica becomes John-Paul’s assistant and even the babysitter for his children—and not long after that, they begin to have an affair. They both get divorced, and at 23, Mica marries “JP.”

With Mica’s siblings and friends providing heartbreaking insights, we learn of Mica’s mental health issues, and we hear horrifying allegations of John-Paul manipulating and abusing her, from impersonating her on Social Media to forcing her into compromising sexual situations to bombarding her with texts and calls whenever she leaves him. An excerpt from Mica’s handwritten journals: “Since the day we became husband and wife, I have been abused in every way I can think of–emotionally, sexually, spiritually, financially and physically.” On the day after Mica took her own life, John-Paul held a lengthy service at Solid Rock Church, performing a parody song and talking about how the Bible is like a Steven Spielberg movie to him. Only at the end of the service does he tell the congregation that Mica had died the previous day. Bizarre.

John-Paul Miller had a rock-solid alibi for his whereabouts at the time of Mica’s death. The medical examiner ruled it was a suicide. In June of 2025, one year after Mica’s death, John-Paul Miller married a woman from his congregation. In December of 2025, a federal grand jury indicted Miller on two counts: cyberstalking and making false statements to federal investigators.

Mica Miller drove herself to Lumber River State Park. “Death of a Pastor’s Wife” makes a convincing argument that on some level, John-Paul Miller was also behind the wheel.