Transcript of 5) Like Father Like Son... Divorce Documents of JP Miller’s Parents Show Pattern

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Welcome back to Coerced: The Devotion and Death of Micah Miller. Our remastered Drop Feed series combining all of Mandy and Liz's coverage of Micah into one place. I'm Grace. I'm a producer here at Luna Shark. In our last episode, you heard what Reverend Wayne Miller did in the pulpit. The scandals, the coverups, the churchy business seemingly built to protect him. Today, you're going to hear what he did at home. In 2001, JP's mother, Susan, filed for divorce from Wayne, and the paper trail from that battle is stunning. A wife painted as unstable, vindictive, and unfit. A church weaponized to punish her, canceling her insurance, taking her car. A pastor pleading poverty from a pulpit he built himself. JP was in his early 20s, and he watched all of it. This clip comes from True Sunlight, episode 79. Let's dive in.

It's been a while since we talked to you about JP's father, Pastor Wayne Miller, and his apparent dark influence over JP's life. Obviously, there's a huge, like, father-son thing going on there because JP quite literally followed in Wayne's professional footsteps by becoming a pastor, and he became embroiled in scandal after scandal at said church, just like his daddy. If only JCPenney's portrait studio photographers could capture generational toxicity on film, Wayne and JP would have themselves a really nice memory to carry around in their church-subsidized wallets. Again, we think JP is either fully aware of this dynamic with his father, or at the very least subconsciously aware of the paternal path he's on, given some of his sermons. But as we told you in episode 56, there are a lot of similarities in how Wayne and JP's divorces went down. And today we want to dive in a little deeper about the similarities in terms of how they seem to view women, specifically those who are married to them. Even more specifically, those who sought to escape them, which statistically has worked out to be 100%. Between them, JP and Wayne have had 4 wives, and all 4 of those wives ended up being like, yuck.

You might remember that Wayne married JP's mom in 1974. And in 2001, she filed for divorce from him. The divorce was granted the next year, but Susan Miller seemed to be locked in a child support battle with Wayne through 2009, after the youngest of their children turned 18. According to court records, in a very, shall we say, detailed affidavit from Susan Miller, which again we talked about in episode 56, Susan characterized her marriage to Wayne like this. In a nutshell, she married Wayne against her parents' wishes, just like Micah did, and she disrupted the trajectory of her own life, education, and potential career to become Wayne's wife and their kids' mother. Kind of like Micah, but with stepkids. She tried hard to be a good pastor's wife and sought out new skills to improve her standing. Again, just like Micah. Susan also accused Wayne of having a violent temper. Specifically when he didn't get what he wanted and making her choose between her family and him. Susan outlined their intimacy problems, which she said he blamed on her, and said he occasionally hit her, JP, and their other son. She said he treated her like a servant and was an absent and inattentive father.

She also accused him of reckless spending, including on the church's credit card, that she said he then blamed on her. In February 2001, shortly before she filed for divorce, Susan said she had a medically necessary breast reduction surgery. And right after that, Wayne left her, cashing in his life insurance policy and moving to a condo. According to the filings, Wayne claimed to have no money to help support Susan and the kids. And according to her, he stopped paying the family's bills, all the while still spending on unnecessary items. Remember, during the first part of their marriage, Wayne was at the height of his televangelist career, and he was trying to build a Christian compound that included a church, a petting zoo, a Bible institute, an orphanage, a place for fishing and camping, and senior living. It was called Gloryland, and we are both very thankful he didn't call it Wayne's World. Either way, there's a very good chance that the writers' room at Righteous Gemstones Had news clippings of this on their wall for inspiration, and if they didn't, they sure should have. So speaking of news clips, Wayne has a lot of them. He was very well known during his heyday in South Carolina, and for more on that, check out episode 53.

As you know, Wayne's glory land was evidently glory-free because he started getting publicly accused in the media of making unwanted Sexual advances toward male Bible students, and he had to move his family 65-plus miles east to Myrtle Beach to escape the scandal. According to the filings, he opened a new church in Myrtle Beach, but Susan had wanted him to try other work instead, and for a while he tried to be a real estate agent. In the filings, Susan said that during their marriage, Wayne didn't want her to work, that he withheld money from her. Had entanglements with other men, called her fat, and would make her sleep in another room because he did not want his sleep disturbed. Which should sound familiar to you because in Micah's list, it's one of the accusations that Micah was forced to walk on eggshells with JP because if she disturbed his sleep, he would get angry at her. Okay, last thing about Susan. She admitted to having a short sexual affair. With the former boyfriend of a friend. She said she didn't seek it out, but did it because she was lonely and had been emotionally and physically abandoned by Wayne a long time before that.

Let's pause and think about how much gumption that took back then. Susan created a very unflattering paper trail on Wayne at a time when, despite the rumors and publicized sex scandals of his past, he still had a following who supported him both locally and internationally. Now, one thing I want to remind you about is that affidavits are sworn testimony. But just because someone swears an oath under the penalty of perjury does not mean they're telling the truth. We were not in Susan and Wayne's marriage. We do not know which person is the more credible narrator of their marriage. Their filings, though, are public information, but it doesn't mean they should be taken as fact. They are merely accusations being lobbed at each other. That said, Wayne had a reaction to Susan's divorce filings, a fiery and vengeful one. The earth around Susan was even more scorched than that church of his that mysteriously burned down in 1999 in what was one of the biggest fires Florence, South Carolina had ever seen before. Again, like father, like son, right? Screw up at your old church? Well, make up a new one. Get served with divorce papers from a woman no longer willing to keep your secrets?

Then weaponize the church against her. Get called out for conduct unbecoming of a man of God? Deny, double down, and duck for cover behind a stack of Bibles. Be told you have to pay child support? Claim poverty and argue against it.

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Okay, so like I said, after Susan's breast reduction surgery, something changed in the marriage because Wayne up and left Susan and the kids on February 25th, 2001, according to court documents. In May of that year, Susan asked the court to order Wayne to pay alimony and child support. And to grant her primary custody of JP's younger brother and sister. In June, Susan submitted her tell-all affidavit to the court, and Wayne followed up with one of his own a day later. His started with, quote, I have been married to Susan Miller for 27 very long years. It has been an unhappy marriage for as long as I can remember. We have not slept in the same bedroom for 20 years, even before we separated in February. This is where I would like to remind you that, sure, maybe they didn't sleep in the same rooms, but at the time they had a 10-year-old and a 17-year-old still living at home. So, hashtag math. After claiming to have been estranged from his wife for 20 years, Wayne told the court that he had had suspicions about Susan having Affairs. Not affair like she said, but multiple affairs.

Quote, I have found unexplained lingerie and gift baskets from Victoria's Secret. She had a private telephone line put in her bedroom during the last 2 and a half years. She has become obsessed with the internet. He told the court that Susan spent 7,533 minutes, or 30 hours a week online. And he attached copies of their internet bills, which included some of the screen names he said that she used, including OhImNice, SilkenSatin8, OhSusieQ42, and Lace4200. He wrote, it is clear that her conversations on the internet are not of a wholesome nature. But there were a few usernames left out of Wayne's affidavit according to the AOL bills he attached to it. Specifically, there was one called GloryDad77. What does 77 mean? It can mean nothing, or it could mean anything. It could have been a year of significance to whoever the user was. It also could have been a reference to the number of times the Bible says you should forgive thy neighbor. Sometimes it's a reference to the angel number that indicates personal growth and enlightenment. And other times it's been used to discreetly reference one's own homosexuality or a sexual position in which both partners are faced in the same direction.

Anyway, Wayne said Susan bragged about her affairs to church members, and he mentioned the affair that Susan herself had admitted to in her own affidavit, noting that the man's former girlfriend was a member of the church. He said that Susan would meet this man at her sister's condo. He also told the court about an affair he said Susan had with a man we're going to call John Doe from Connecticut, who flew in to meet her while Wayne was in Orlando at a church dedication. He said, quote, one of the things I found most offensive was after church, she refused to go out to eat with our family because she said she was going home. As it turned out, she was going to take her boyfriend to the airport. Wayne included their phone bills showing what he said were calls to said boyfriend, but noted that the man had been sending Susan calling cards so all the calls wouldn't show up. Many times in the past, I considered leaving Susan, but I knew as a pastor I would lose my ministry and my job. However, with her becoming so flagrant in her adultery, Even the church has had enough.

I am finally at a place where I can keep my job if she will stop trying to stir up so much trouble at the church. So maybe it's more like father, like mother, like son. This is a church he started and controlled, and to his mind, it was being put in jeopardy by a wanton, reckless woman. But also, what is he talking about? He is finally at a place where he can keep the job he gave himself? It's history repeating itself, and it's easy to see where JP developed his worldview because in so many ways, this was the lens he was seeing Micah through. In his affidavit, Wayne then went on to paint Susan out to be an awful mother, saying that over the past few years she had lost interest in the children. He claimed their younger son wanted to live with him, but that Susan was afraid to be alone and that she used the temptation of no curfew to keep him under her roof. And he claimed that their younger daughter was with him 90% of the time that she was awake. He also told the court that Susan doesn't get their daughter to school on time, ostensibly during that 10% window that Wayne said he didn't have her, I guess.

Quote, she attends Cathedral Hall Academy, which is where I am headmaster, so I see her throughout the school day. When school is out, she is with me because she attends summer camp sponsored by Cathedral Hall Academy. We are together every day. In other words, she goes to the school he started that's attached to the church he started, and that's their quality time. Again, there's something he's leaving out there. It's his school. Wayne then really threw down the gauntlet. He told the court that his children, the ones he says were with him most of the time, were living in filth. In February after he left, he said that Susan just let everything go. In May, some friends and I went to the house. I was horrified to see just how bad Susan had let it become. He attached copies of the pictures that were taken that day. The photos are black and white and have been photocopied a few times over, so they're really hard to read, but they seem to feature very cluttered and disheveled rooms. Each photo has a very neat typewritten, like old school typewritten, Label, as in someone actually typed out the name of each room on an actual label and then stuck it to an actual page at the top denoting each room.

Wayne told the court that the children needed 2 parents, but Susan should not be the primary parent. I cannot believe that Susan even really wants them unless she thinks that there is money associated with having them. She has shown so little interest in the last 2 years that her sudden maternal interest is suspicious. I want to note that the bulk of Susan's affidavit was about how much her children were her life and how much she loved being a mother. Wayne claimed that even though he believed Susan did not qualify for alimony because of her alleged adulterous ways, he was still willing to pay her a little money for the good of the children. But nothing that he offered to Susan was good enough, he said. Here's David.

Susan has always done what Susan wanted to do. She is not the least bit concerned about paying our bills. I have explained to her over and over and over again that the way we have been paying the bills is by borrowing more money, and obviously we cannot continue to do that. Our debt is staggering, but she is convinced that I have a money tree in the backyard. I do not.

Wayne told the court that they had first and second mortgages on the house and that in order to sell the house, it needed to be painted and cleaned. But Susan refused to move. He said she used the threat of foreclosure to force him to pay her money. He also said that she bounced checks frequently And even signed his name to those checks. In September and October of 2000, Wayne said they had $782 in overdraft fees and that in 1999, Susan had cost him $5,000 in overdrafts. Stick a pin in that one, friends. And now here's one of the best parts. Wayne told the court that several months earlier, he had paid to put an ad in the paper announcing he would no longer be covering her debts. Frankly, I was hoping that would protect me legally, but also I was hoping that would shake her up and make her realize how precarious our financial situation is. But it has not changed a thing. She had $2,000 worth of dental work done and charged it to my dental card. I cannot believe she would incur that kind of expense knowing that our marriage was crumbling and the house was headed toward foreclosure.

Well, first, midlife glow-ups post-bad marriages are not cheap, Pastor Wayne. And second, knowing your marriage was crumbling, the one you said was never good, that especially had not been a marriage for 20 years— again, hashtag math. But here's what the newspaper ad said, y'all: I will no longer be responsible for any debts incurred by anyone other than myself. Then he signed it with the misspelled version of his name. Sound familiar? Also, this is literally the equivalent of Michael Scott on The Office entering Dunder Mifflin and yelling, I declare bankruptcy! To get out of paying back all the money of his that his girlfriend Jan was spending. Turns out Wayne was just as chaotic as all that. And as chaotic as JP is right now. More on all of that in a minute.

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So, in the affidavit, Wayne gave the court a snapshot of his finances. He said he earned $1,000 a week and received $1,100 a month for housing allowance and $400 a month for utilities. And though he repeatedly referred to his church that he started as his employer, he said he was considered self-employed for tax purposes. In other words, it seems like he wanted the court to believe he was beholden to a boss and therefore Everything was out of his hands at all times. But he had to have an explanation at the ready for why he was self-employed, and that explanation wasn't, because I'm actually employing myself. The divorce filings from both Wayne and JP have definitely surprised us in terms of 1, how much their churches subsidized their lives while they also received regular salaries, and 2, How much they claim to be poor when faced with divorce. It doesn't make them unique men at all, but there's definitely a cruelty in it. They seem to have wanted pastors' wives, women who worked for the church for low to no pay, in part because it created a financial dependency that allowed them to call the shots and do whatever they wanted.

Unchallenged. That seemed to be the expectation anyway. But when their wives expressed their hopes, dreams, desires, and expectations, and their need for love and attention and connection and respect and fidelity, all components of a healthy marriage, that was a betrayal of the contract both men seemed to think that they were in. Wayne and JP seemed to be twins in that respect. They both appeared to have secrets that their wives knew about. Secrets that would destroy their standing in their own churches. Secrets that could compromise their weekly intake of tithing from church members. So to them, their wives were imminent and existential threats. But instead of putting all of their efforts into fixing themselves and their relationships, They appear to have decided, separately, to take no prisoners. Here is David with some choice lines from Wayne's affidavit that really sheds light on why JP is so very JP. We have edited the affidavit for brevity and to edit out certain names.

Susan is so bitter and angry for reasons known only to her. That she has tried to destroy me at every turn. She stirs up strife in the church that I pastor. She spreads malicious lies about me. Her frequent threat is, I'll ruin you and your ministry. She is just about to do it. Attendance and contributions are down, much of which can be directly attributed to her efforts to discredit me and my ministry. Our private life should stay private. She does not need to be dragging this into my workplace. She hurts not only me, but she hurts the children and herself by doing so. She has threatened me repeatedly. She comes to my townhouse and just walks in anytime she wants to. She gets drinks out of my refrigerator, takes a sip, and puts them on the counter.

Let's pause for a second.

Go off, Susan. Can you imagine the judge reading this? So you're telling me I should give custody of your kids because your wife can't finish a Snapple?

Here's David again.

She is doing everything she can to antagonize me. I put a private phone line in our daughter's room just so she could check on her without having to talk to me. I do not want this woman around me, and I don't want her trying to destroy my ministry, and therefore my livelihood, with her malicious ways. I ask that the court restrain her from coming about me and from interfering with my work.

Again, this should ring familiar. When Micah tried to leave JP, he reported her for theft. Made her and her family persona non grata at the church. Wayne then goes on to tell the court that things between them rose to a crescendo in May, which is interesting because he left in February, according to him earlier in the affidavit. Here is David with Wayne's own words, and again, look at these similarities between father and son.

Susan had been tormenting me and showing no remorse for her affairs. In a fit of frustration and pain, I wrote her a mean letter and used the same words and language to her that she had used describing her relationships with these other men to me. I had hoped that the vulgar language would shock her into reality of the lifestyle that she had been living and the pain and suffering she had inflicted on me with her bragging about the affairs even to other ministers. I regret having done that. I wish I had just written a letter and torn it up. But I do not think that a momentary lapse in judgment should offset more than 20 years of faithfulness and care.

Ah, mean letters that were only written by the man because the woman drove him to it. That used vulgar language that the man only used because the woman was vulgar first. Ah, well, Wayne obviously seems to have thought this letter would make its way into the divorce filings. But if it did, it was not included in our FOIA return. I can't even imagine what it says. Here is David again.

I do not know what Susan thinks she has on me. She has made all these claims about me having property that I do not have. Susan has told me repeatedly that the church that employs me will have to support her. That is a figment of her imagination. I am going to have to take a salary reduction if things do not get better soon. Attached is a copy of a warning that I received from my employer, warning about the financial consequences of Susan's behavior.

So, again, he is making it seem like he isn't his own boss. He has a board, but it's his church and his school, and, in our opinion, it seems like his opinion and his word were guided by the board, which is something JP's first wife put on the record about JP. Yep, he has a board. He only listens to them when he wants to, though. Here is David with the so-called warning letter. We have edited it for brevity.

Pastor, it is with great heaviness and heart that I inform you that you may have to take another salary cut due to the dropping income of the church. Your wife's behavior— talking to people and threatening to destroy this ministry— is probably the main reason for the drop. I know you needed to see how bad it is getting. If you and Sister Susan do not settle your problems soon, there may not be anything to settle. Sorry.

This was hand-dated April 24th, 2001. It has all the subtlety of a pageant mom miming their kids' dance moves from the audience so that the kids get it right. Wayne told the court that it was ridiculous for Susan to think the church would support her and that she had the education she needed to work. Then he asked for child support and for Susan to pay his attorney fees. After a June hearing, the court ordered Wayne to temporarily pay Susan $1,000 a month to help with the mortgage. But within less than a month after that, Susan and the kids had moved out of the marital home and Wayne had moved back in. Susan, however, still believed she was owed that $1,000. Wayne refused to pay it. Not only that, on July 17th, 2001, the business administrator at Wayne's church sent a letter to another church administrator Who incidentally is the same one who signed Wayne's affidavit as a notary. The letter outlined the expense of Susan's car and claimed that the church was hurting financially and wished to sell the car. Quote, Mrs. Miller is welcome to drive it as long as she reimburses the church for the payments each month.

So again, Wayne's church employees at Wayne's church appear to have been participating in Wayne's divorce. Wayne's church owned the family's cars, and now they were being used to punish Wayne's wife. Again, sound familiar? Like father, like son. Surprising no one, Susan and Wayne were back in court in July. Susan asked the court for clarity on that $1,000, as well as an order specifying who pays what when it came to her car and her children's health insurance. Wayne responded to Susan's motion with an affidavit. He reminded the court that she didn't deserve the money because of her affairs and then told on Susan for not making any mortgage payments since the last hearing. Remember, it had only been a month since the original order, but here Wayne was representing it to the court as if Susan had been delinquent for a matter of time. It is so manipulative. He goes on.

Susan did not move out of the house. When I went to clean it up, it was worse than I thought. There is a major leak in the roof which will cost approximately $2,000 to repair. There is also at least $2,000 in repair work that needs to be done on the inside to get it ready to sell. These figures do not include the cost of painting.

Once again, this man had moved out of the house only a few months earlier, but it almost feels like he wants the court to believe this damage Is due to something that Susan did. Also, it's hard not to hear about his cleaning and repair costs and not wonder if he enlisted his Bible students to help because, as we all know, he was arrested and later pleaded guilty to federal charges related to his treatment of his students, including using them for labor but paying them little to no money. Another word for that, by the way, would be slavery. In social media posts, Wayne has made it quite clear that he takes issue with that word. He also has publicly sought to minimize this incident, as well as his attempt at a bathhouse dalliance in 2006. At the end of the affidavit, Wayne told the court that his employer, meaning the church he started, had to, quote, cancel Susan's medical insurance as a cost-cutting measure. He told the court that he thought his children would still be covered, but After their June hearing, he learned from his office that the children would not be. He noted that JP's younger brother needed to have a tonsillectomy soon, but that there was no insurance to cover it.

I wish they were, he wrote. He claimed not to know that canceling Susan's insurance would mean also canceling his kids' insurance. In July, the court offered clarification. The judge gave Susan temporary custody, allowed JP's 17-year-old brother to determine on his own How much he wanted to see his dad, and outlined conditions for visitation with JP's little sister. They also ordered Wayne to pay Susan $750 a month in alimony, $629 a month in child support, and to pay for his kids' health insurance. Wayne was also on the hook for Susan's $2,500 attorney fees, a whole lot more than that $1,000 he was complaining about. At the time, Susan was earning about $1,100 a month and Wayne was earning around $4,300, and their house was in foreclosure. The court gave permission to Wayne to sell it and ordered him to also pay for Susan's car as well as its insurance. By October 2001, though, they were back in court. It's interesting because JP's first marriage seemed to follow the same playbook. Wayne was now claiming that his salary as a pastor at His church— again, the one he started and controlled, facts that he did not include in an affidavit he filed at the time— had been cut by 35%.

He told the court that the church's board of trustees was forced to cut everyone's salaries because of fewer receipts, i.e., fewer church members tithing. In his affidavit, Wayne included a number of documents, including A resolution by the board to conduct a salary study. It was this salary study that was apparently used to decide the salary reductions, but the study itself was not included. Wayne also told the court twice that the church canceled his health insurance, which now meant he couldn't fulfill his obligation to the court order in terms of insuring his children. Moreover, he said that due to his court-ordered financial obligation, He was left with just $24 at the end of each month, and he was in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings. He wanted the court to order Susan to take over the health insurance obligations, and then he got real sanctimonious and manipulative. Here's David again.

Although I much prefer to have custody of my children, if Susan is to have custody on a temporary basis, then I have no objection paying support. I continue to feed them breakfast, lunch, and sometimes supper. I bought their school clothes because Susan refused to do so. I pay $200 a month in after-school care for my daughter so that Susan and I both can work.

And there's a real dad of the year. Anyway, Wayne was intent on showing the court that he was utterly broke. I want to note some interesting things from his 2000 pastoral report, which ostensibly would have been issued in December or January, one month before Wayne moved out of the house and 4 months before Susan had filed for divorce. In it, Wayne outlined how the church was able to pay off all its mortgages and pay off the U.S. Department of Education to get their academy building and other property. Also, he said they saw a 50% increase in the academy and growth in the Bible college. Sounds like a good year, right? Also included in the report is a lineup from the business administration of the church, where they noted as one of their successes: stopped all bounced checks and bank fees, and stopped all credit card use. Sounds like they had a management problem there, huh? Interesting that the church that Wayne started, controlled, etc., had enough bounced checks and credit card problems that an administrator felt like it was a notable accomplishment to get it under control. Was that all Susan's fault too? Did Susan bounce church checks and overspend church credit cards?

Or is it a more likely explanation that no, she didn't? Kind of lends credibility to some of the claims in her affidavit, no? But again, we don't know what's true here. Anyway, it was super clear that Wayne wanted the court to believe he was utterly destitute and that he most of all did not want Susan to get a dime in alimony. Sources have told us that JP was also concerned with Micah trying to get money from him. Obviously, we've talked about how their house was transferred to the church after Micah first filed for divorce in October 2023. We've seen texts from JP in which he complained to Micah's friend that all Micah thought he was good for was to pay her bills. It's a pattern. The women are the problem here, not the men with their secrets and their lies and their allegedly abusive behavior and their apparent laser focus on keeping an open flow of that 10% of other people's paychecks they relied on. It's almost like JP and Wayne knew that their wives legitimized them and provided cover for their darker instincts. Without their wives, they were exposed, so they did what they could do to destroy their wives' credibility at every turn.

It's not uncommon. Don't listen to her, she's crazy.

At the end of the day, there is a legacy here with JP and Wayne, and it is not It is nothing more than a weak and chaotic man passing down his worst traits to his weak and chaotic son in the hopes that he too can convince a corner of the community, a corner seeking guidance and camaraderie and meaning, to hand over a chunk of their pay and all of their blind and deaf loyalty to him. It is a legacy of hating the women who loved and trusted them. And perhaps even hating themselves. It is a legacy of bad blood. The question is, where does this cycle break? Obviously, we want to see it end in an arrest, because who knows what other lessons JP might have learned from his father. And that is a very scary thought. Stay tuned, stay pesky, and stay in the sunlight.

Coerced: The Devotion and Death of Micah Francis Miller is a Luna Shark production. With reporting from journalists Mandy Matney, Liz Farrell, and Beth Braden. Made possible by producers Kate Thomas, Grace Hills, and David Moses.

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