Rich McHugh from 'Death of the Pastor's Wife' on what still doesn't add up!

Sorry. I'm so sorry. Need a minute? Oh, man. This guy. This guy is unwell. That is J.P. Miller. And he is the focus of the national attentions right now thanks to Netflix's number one series, Death of the Pastor's Wife. It boomed to number one over the weekend. The only guy in this other than the main players. The only talking head, really, is Rich McHugh, who's an investigative journalist for NewsNation. He's a friend of mine. Rich did a great job with this interview that he did, basically, back in 2024. So, Rich was very much first to the scene. And he's with me right now. Guy, I mean, here's the world catching up to you. To me, this guy, J.P. Miller, whom we are obsessed with, is the ultimate gaslighter. He gaslit his wife, Micah Miller. She died by suicide at, like, 28 years old. Gunshot wound. Was she escaping the hell that had become her life thanks to nonstop sexual, emotional, financial abuse by this guy? And then, his relentless pursuit, stalking her, slashing her tires. Her family will tell you it is comeuppance. This, basically, this Netflix series is comeuppance for a man who has gotten away with it for a lifetime. Rich, hello, my friend. It's been a minute. Tell me about this guy. Am I... He seems to me he's a drug addict who is basically gaslighting his... took a healthy woman, stole her from her prior relationship, her marriage, basically convinced her that she's crazy, and got her on lithium and everything else, and drove her to insanity, and she killed herself. What? Am I wrong? I'm not going to say you're wrong. First of all, good to see you. Thanks for having me. From the get-go on this story, I saw several days after she was found dead, I saw that he had preached about her death, and I had just come off about a year and a half of reporting on Hillsong Church, and so my antenna was up for you know, I guess you'd call mega-churches, or happy-clappy churches, and here was a guy who was preaching about how she took her own life. This is, like, literally the day after she took her own life. And so, my antenna was, like, locked on to this guy from the get-go. When I initially reached out to him, his first response to me back in one of the million ways I tried to reach him was, like, are you a Christian? And I was, like, yeah, I'm a Christian. From that moment, we struck up a dialogue, you know, on text, going back and forth. I was speaking to her family, and I was speaking to him directly on text, and the messages were so wildly different, you know, the messaging, and in these scenarios, I always go to a victim or a victim's family, and you'd be, like, what happened here? Let's go off the record for a long time. I'm not quoting you at all. I just needed to hear what happened. And so, from that point forward, it was pretty clear to me, like, early on what really happened, and then just trying to convince him to sit down with me. It took months, but you know, the second we started that interview, he was fine, he was fine, he seemed nervous. And I said, you know, let's do a clap, you know how you're like, let's clap and, like, sync the cameras. The second I did that, he started crying. And I've never experienced anything like that. I've done thousands of interviews, Billy, and it was almost like he was trying to take control of it in a weird way, like, to put himself as the victim and frame the interview. And I was just like, alright, here goes. Two hours. They document the abuse by this man of his wife, allegedly, but very allegedly. I mean, so many allegations. So, he wrote her a letter, which I got. He wrote her an email, and in it, he apologizes for a lot of these things. Not all of them. And I confronted him about it, so it's you know, even in that interview, I asked him, did you abuse your wife? And he goes, his first answer was like, I've never she's never had to clean the house ever once. It was so off the rails. But he, you know, in the series, you know, it's reported that he forced her to have sex like, he was a complete raging sex addict. Like, four times a day, she had to go on to testosterone in order to boost her, not libido, but in order to make her physically able to have that much sex. And, you know, she took testosterone for that, and her hair was thinning out and falling out. That he had homeless men, like, relieve themselves on her? Like, ejaculate on her? Because, you know, whatever it is, this is you paying respect to your husband, and God wants that, and weaponizing religion and faith, and servitude to the husband in order to torture her more. I mean, it's so deep and so depraved. And what I see in this document, I love the family, they're wonderful people, and I love Regina Ward, who's a tough-talking lawyer who represented her, and Myrtle Beach, and yet, none of them really could do anything to stop what was clearly unfolding before them. I feel almost angry, like, do you feel like there was, that this woman was failed universally, not just by her husband? 1,000%. Here's a woman who, at the end, was trying. Her family was trying. They were all trying. She was doing everything right. She had Regina Ward, who was this pit bull attorney, she wrote out, you know, she was collecting all of the allegations and all of the proof. She went to stay at her sister's house, Sierra, and, you know, JP allegedly came there, and there was 911 calls, and threatened with a gun, say, I'm coming armed. You know, he accused her best friend of having an affair with the female, of having an affair with her. Like, it was just, it was endless. Coercive control is the right, you know, kind of framing for it. And she was doing everything possible, and it just shows that in this country there's, there is this breakdown, you know, this, the law does not serve women, men or women in this scenario, frankly, you know, trying to get out. Because here she was, she was almost out. She had filed for divorce two days prior and was found dead, you know, two days later in some swampy North Carolina area. But she had been making videos, Billie, saying, look, I'm, you know, calling it what it is. It was abuse. It was mental abuse, physical abuse, in her own words on YouTube. And so, when this is the end result of that, and this is someone who's been trying for months to get out, yeah, I'd say we got a problem. And this is why I think this story strikes a almost universal chord, you know. Politics aside, it's like red or blue, nobody cares. Like, this woman was wronged and was doing the right thing, and this is the end result, and it's horrific. You're right, you know, what the Clancy trial is doing for postpartum psychosis and, you know, and women's mental health in crisis, this series could do for coercive control. It is amazing that because he's the husband, he has jurisdiction over her mental health. Now, I want to know, was she mentally unwell for real, or did he make her so because the family says, you know, only she was a healthy woman her whole life until three or four months into the marriage. Did he, like, check her in, convince doctors that she was bonkers and get her on lithium and you know, systematically destroy her brain? Or is there documentation that she actually was, you know, unwell? I believe she was... How do I say this? Look, you know, you go in any 80-year-old's medicine cabinet in this country and they're on 14 different drugs for blood pressure to God knows what. And, you know, I think if you miraculously just take them off of those drugs and regulate a few things, like, you know, the body is kind of an incredible thing and they come back to life. I think this had been going on for so long that she was just down these dark tunnels and couldn't escape and I think once you get in that kind of, like... But she wasn't on any of these tunnels before him. Right. But she was with him for years. Like, she was in the church as, like, a student, as, like, a mentee before they even became a thing. 13 years old. She was in the choir in the youth group and he was her pastor and it's creepy beyond belief. She was a 13 year old when she was under his tutelage, I guess. So, think about that. If you're hearing his sermons every day for 13 years or whatever, 10 years, and you're believing that this is the way, this is the guy I'm attaching my wagon to and he's saying look, you know, you need this and I think you should have testosterone, allegedly. I think you start to wonder where is solid ground and maybe this lithium will bring me down and maybe the counter effects of that, like, I don't know, I don't take any of these things, but I can only imagine that once you've stripped all these things away, I think we were starting to see that. And if you look at her YouTube posts and Facebook posts, she was starting to get her sense of self back. And that's the most frustrating thing of all, is that at the time where she was most vulnerable, you know, probably trying to rid herself of all this crap. Coming off the drug when she was getting herself healthy, going to the gym, her body, she looked good, she was in good shape and you could see the lights coming back on in her and that's when she's most right. That's when she really needed her hand held. And this guy, all the while, is still stalking her and you know, sending her emails and texts and razors, allegedly razors in her tires and, you know, GPS trackers all over her. You know, she's living with this elderly woman who's kind of a nurse and she almost made it. And then, she goes and allegedly buys, you know, well, not allegedly, she bought a gun. It's well documented. She drives up to Lumber, whatever it is, National Park, hours away. She calls 911. She says, I'm about to kill myself. I'm gonna do it. I just want you to tell my family where my body is. But then the mystery sort of deepens with the way it happened. Her purse and the gun and her phone are a hundred yards away from where the body ends up in stagnant water. It wasn't like a flowing river. It was a stagnant sort of stream a hundred yards away. How do you fix, you know, how do you reconcile that? So, there's a mystery in there. The internet is not convinced, Rich. The internet is still out and think this guy's behind it. But it seems he's well corroborated that he was not. Well, for starters, it bothers me, Billy. For starters, I never say that this was simply a suicide. I call it murder by suicide. Just because I've done so much reporting on sexual assault in the military and it's just, it fits a classic pattern. But having gone up there, having traced her... What does that mean? What pattern? Murder by suicide that ultimately, you know, she may have pulled the trigger but there were mitigating other forces that got her to that point. I'm trying to be circumspect here. So, I went up there. I traced her last steps. None of it makes sense to me. You know, she'd never been there apparently. Lumber River State Park. It's like you're driving up into, you know, it feels like deliverance. You know, like it's not this place that evokes a lot of peace. It's swampy. It's the south. It's gator country. It's black, slow moving water. There's signs. Don't go in the water. To get to where she went, you have to walk about a mile and you have to go through like waist deep, murky water to get there. You know, if I were gonna be in her shoes and decide to do what, you know, to take one's life, let's put it that way, it's the last thing that you'd think about as a place to go. There's so many questions about that, about the man that I interviewed who found her belongings, took her belongings away and then came back and gave them to the police. That man is no longer alive, was in a car crash. And I'm not gonna, I don't wanna get into it because I don't wanna drag his name through this, but there are so many red flags about this that is never settled. Is it a possibility that he had a hit on her? Maybe he can corroborate that he was at a soccer tournament with his kid away, but that maybe he was connected to someone who did something because her body was a hundred yards away from her person phone in a stagnant water. There's no way she floated. I will say this, I'm just, if it came out that there was an alternate scenario other than the one we are left with right now which is suicide, I would not be shocked at all and the frustrating thing is that I think that the investigative forces in that part are not up to this and we're not up to what they stepped into that day. I think there are more things that need to be really explained. You know, I asked JP I was like, do you have what's your alibi? He kind of laughed. He was like, oh, is it the soccer match with a hundred people? Afterwards I asked, can I have people that you were there with to call and verify? I was never able to get anybody to corroborate his whereabouts not to say that he wasn't there. He was likely there. It's almost not even about that. It's what led up to that and this coercive control and it's they're trying to pass a law now, her attorney Regina Ward is trying to pass Micah's law which people should check it out because it's an important thing. It's about coercive control. Women in these exact scenarios people, I think men too and what they how they can be protected from this. There's so many questions that this case just really bothers me. It really bothers me and this guy is, I mean, I call him chief amongst one, I think he's mentally unstable, mentally unwell himself. He's running around on the loose. Two, he's an ultimate gas lighter. I mean, every explanation. When she was on her meds, it was wonderful but when she got off the meds, I warned her family. I warned them. Oh my God, she's going to do something. He really destabilized this. It's coercive control and just Svengali like sort of evil manipulation. Here's a little bite. Here's a bite from your interview with J.P. Miller. Would you call the relationship healthy? Okay, here we go. Would you characterize your relationship with Micah as healthy? Oh man, we had, when she was on her medicine, we had the greatest marriage you could ever imagine. We spent every day together. I don't know any other couple that spent every day together. She'd kind of wake up before me but we'd go work out together every day, five days a week. We'd eat lunch together every day. We would work together every day. We'd pick up the kids, do something with the kids every day. We'd go to dinner every night together. Then every night we would have our routine. So there's three things we would do. We would either sit in the bathtub together for two hours until the water went from steaming hot to ice cold. She bought this big air mattress we'd put in the back of the truck and we'd go park somewhere here in Myrtle Beach where there's no lights. And she'd bring us some hot chocolate. I mean, I can't even listen to him, Rich. It's such a load of ----. This guy painting this alternate universe of their love. It's so unbelievable in the literal sense. I was trying to give him I was trying to be fair, Billy, in this interview and just say give me any sense of normalcy you guys have here but I don't think anybody watching that, I think everybody watching that will agree with you and me that it was anything but and it's almost to the point where you wonder if he believes his own what he's saying. His entire he's rewritten the narrative in his head and he actually believes it. Yeah, I mean the guy is, by the way, there's a history of abuse from this man going back to 1998 a 19-year-old girl, Jennifer Garland, aggravated assault and battery. He basically hit her with his truck and she ended up on the hood and he served I don't think any jail time but he was after that woman. Then his first the woman he was married to, the pastor's wife, originally was this woman Allison, with whom he has children on March of 2016 he was doing it to her, stalking her home, he was laying on the lawn, her father had to call the cops, he was like trying to take the kids to ice cream, they said he was clearly on some type of drug or something he was unwell to drive you've got that amazing video of him laying on the lawn coming undone saying he was being eaten by ants and he took medication because I fell out of a tree. I mean these crazy these types of abusers have an explanation for every, oh well that's just because I fell out of a tree and I broke 12 bones and that's why I had to do this oh that's, I love that you asked me that question Rich and he just goes, I mean the energy is, it's terrifying I mean it was terrifying listening to it because I was sitting there and being like, you know, maybe 50% of this is true, maybe more is true but I'm just gonna follow this and follow every turn that he's going down and try and challenge him and where I knew I had his own email that he had written to Micah and his attorney had it in her possession and it was an apology email about all the things that he had been doing, you know, he hired a PI, it was about, you know, she had said he had posted a topless photo of her, he had, there was cow traps put in her car tires, which are like tire deflators, you know, she was undergoing all this mental torture, and so I had this email and I asked him, I'm like in that email you apologize for this, this, and this, that's all true right? And he goes, well that's a great question like if I was gonna lie about that I would say this and this, and I was like whoa, dude, was it true? You know did you hire a PI? And he's like well I did hire a PI but I didn't do that other stuff, and I was like he'd say I do the other stuff because when she was in a, everything goes back to gaslighting her, when she was in one of her manic episodes and in this thing I would do and say things, like she would always bring up double agents right? There were double agents in the CIA and she was, needed to go to Africa, to this, and I would say okay, and then I would tell her things and say yes I did do that and I would confess to things because I needed her to stay in that space and keep her from killing herself I mean this guy's got a befitting answer for every occasion it's, it's I'm sure there are therapists across this country that have seen this over and over and can add more to this conversation than I possibly could about what this type of behavior suggests and if they've seen similar you know, victims who are basically forced on meds and you know, it's just a really for this family, her family's they're aces, they're so nice and they don't deserve this and they've been through hell and I just want to see them get justice for their sister and their daughter it's like, can you imagine if this was your family member and you were going through this? I know it's happening all across the country and to not be able to do anything when your sister calls you and she says I want to come to my house and then someone allegedly shows up with a gun and says come on back home like, this is insanity the series I think is a little bit of you know, comeuppance for him but also maybe, you know sets them free in a little way, I mean that they get to see she's definitely presented as a victim in all of this and that she was a good person and she tried to do well, their relationship did start in a fair, but you can see this guy was relentless he mentally warped her and manipulated her out of her original marriage he had that hold on her, if there's workplace you know, imbalance this was the ultimate I mean he had a grip on telling her to be a good, weaponizing faith against her here's another one, this shows you here's a clip of Rich asking him what would you do differently you know, his wife is gone is there anything you'd do differently watch this gaslighter, it's unbelievable he goes right into the family do you feel that you did anything that you would change do you feel any part responsible god, that's a great question man, that's such a good question wow, what a good question can I have a second to think about it oh my gosh, that's such a good question what would I do differently, oh man oh, I know what I'd do I know what I'd do I would not involve her family when she's having mental episodes and is schizophrenic and is off her meds I would never have texted dude, it's him who's off his meds who needs to be on meds, who's unwell and maybe the shame of that you know, somewhere connected to his faith, just said, I'm just gonna project this on her, it's not me it's her that has all these problems and no way dude it is definitely you that has these problems, Rich, it's incredible you know I thought, I was trying to find this was at a point in the interview where the questions were getting harder and harder for him and I was trying to find a way to ask did you contribute to your wife's death in a way that would make him essentially not stand up and leave the interview but would be revealing and in a kind of Christian way try to ask it and I did not expect that response at all I thought it was so revealing because it was what his family had been telling me all along but in that moment you should be saying I'm sure there are things that I've done you know, of course but it was exactly the opposite and it was so theatrical and I felt like I was in church with, you know, he was the pastor and I think that's his I think he thinks he's the smartest guy in the room and has been, and has never really been challenged in a way that he's being challenged now and through tough questions and now he's gonna face the federal court and you know it's the ruse is kind of like it's all, the funhouse is disappearing let's put it that way Rich McHugh, your own News Nation reporting 20 hours ago or just yesterday that John Paul Miller's federal case has been delayed again his attorneys filed their sixth motion for a continuance since his arraignment earlier this year he keeps delaying and delaying this is unbelievable he's on federal charges he was indicted in December of 2025 of cyberstalking and lying to police he pleaded not guilty in January in the arraignment another delay here any reason, why do we think that he keeps getting granted the delays? why does he keep getting granted? I don't know, that's a good question I can only ask you know, guess as to why he's trying to delay I think he said something his attorneys are trying to build a case of exculpatory evidence whatever I think we're going to hear from all the jury needs to hear is his apology letter that he wrote to Micah talking about hiring a PI if the charge is cyberstalking just connect dots we're going to hear from his family members I think his attorney, his own words it's cyberstalking what about good old fashioned stalking I mean the guy was chasing her around all over the place, there's the video of her at the car dealership she's like, get away from me you're going to see these photos on Facebook and he kind of snaps and has this public meltdown moment he followed her all over town there's plenty of evidence yeah, and he he admits to it parts of it I asked him, did you hire the PI I did hire the PI did you have a PI at the time no, I ran out of money, he said this is a guy who sold his church for two and a half million dollars he owned a bar, Crocodile Rocks in Myrtle Beach a bar and a church you go JP but look he was married to Allison he had the affair with the young singer in the church and it became his wife he stalked Allison many police reports will show you after, but he convinced Micah to marry him and then he started an affair he's a total sex addict it seems and started an affair with Susie Skinner in the church I say Susie Skinner was on her way to sainthood, she was married to a man married him who was paralyzed from the neck down she married this fellow who also ended up by suicide face down in a swimming pool at their home development where they live and then he ends up marrying Susie Skinner and she becomes the pastor's wife at the microphone in church there is a pattern here is he still married to sweet Susie Skinner I believe so they got married on the beach, I believe it was a year after the interview that I did with him a year changed months from his wife's death and so there were accusations even then that they were spotted out in the days after her death, people were sending pictures you can't make this stuff up everybody says it's always the spouse if you're watching 2020 or Dateline, it's always the spouse this story has troubled me because it's like you want to do right by her, Micah and you want to get justice for her and it's so plainly obvious that she was wrong a million different ways and yet through journalism and through the law, it's very limited what is still possible and that's I think that's what we're seeing play out right now, people are saying why is he not behind bars and I don't really have good answers to that we'll see where his current trial goes for cyber stalking and lying to police he's not been charged with murder or murder by suicide that said, his sister famously indelibly said if I end up with a bullet in my head it's JP so, you know, the family certainly is they blame him it's part of the whole thing that makes this so hard, Billy she told a number of people that if I die my death was staged, it was not me I did not take my life what was she doing buying that gun and driving up north though, and she was alone there's video of her at the gas station, there's video of her at the pawn shop buying the gun and all that, and then there's that inexplicable stuff in the state park and being 100 yards away. One other thing I'd like to say is that this is a woman who's documenting a lot of her kind of coming unglued or coming away from the torture, she was documenting it there was no suicide note in this and that's another thing that's been troubling for me, because it's like you'd think that she would have written her family, her sisters thank you, you know, I just can't do it anymore, but that's not that's not here Rich, cable news network news they're all missing great investigative journalists these days Rich McHugh has filled the vacuum in a beautiful way, very curious very intelligent, dogged thank you my friend thank you, good to see you yep, you'll see Rich by the way on Death of the Pastor's Wife it is number one on Netflix it's a must watch it'll drive you crazy, I guess in a good way