Elderly Pennsylvania woman convicted of murdering husband with drugged coffee

A 78-year-old Pennsylvania woman was found guilty of first-degree murder for drugging her husband’s coffee in 2018. She now faces mandatory life imprisonment.

Myrle Miller was also convicted of forgery, perjury, insurance fraud and dealing in the proceeds of unlawful activity, Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry announced Tuesday.

In the months before her murder of her husband, John Nichols, Miller was draining his bank accounts.

This included forging his signature on checks and two insurance policies for which she was the sole beneficiary, as well as fraudulently getting loans against those policies.

When the fraud was at risk of being exposed by the Union-Snyder Agency on Aging, Miller panicked.

She proceeded to combine her and Nichols’ medication in his coffee, keeping him drugged until she found the right combination to stop his heart and thereby murder him.

“The defendant was systematically emptying her husband’s bank accounts and, upon being found out, made the deliberate and intentional decision to kill him. It is hard to fathom acts more cold, calculated and self-serving,” Ms. Henry said.