The following is a press release issued by the Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office:
A former Anchor Bay resident convicted in 2019 of shooting his neighbor over repairs being undertaken by the neighbor and his wife on a shared driveway (i.e., filling potholes and spreading gravel) has passed away while serving his sentence.
Harry William Miller died of natural causes accompanying old age in his state prison cell on April 6, 2024, according to state parole officials. Miller was 75 years of age at the time of his death. The victims have been notified of the passing by Mendo DA David Eyster and state prison authorities.
Miller was convicted by plea days before his jury trial was scheduled to get underway in June of 2019.
To avoid a trial on attempted murder charges, Miller entered guilty pleas to the attempted voluntary manslaughter without legal provocation of Desiree Palestrini by use of a firearm, as well as assault with a firearm without legal provocation on Paul Palestrini.
After being shot, Paul Palestrini was rushed to the medical clinic in Gualala by his wife (after the shooter was disabled by a head blow with a shovel), stabilized and then flown out by helicopter to Santa Rosa. Paul Palestrini succumbed to his injuries on the operating table but was brought back to life by skilled surgeons and operating room personnel.
Mendocino County Superior Court Judge John Behnke sentenced Miller in August 2019 to 142 months in state prison for the violent attack on the neighbors.
Harry Miller unsuccessfully appealed his felony convictions.
An interesting aside to the concluding chapter of this story is that Susan Mary Miller, the deceased’s then-wife, was convicted by jury verdict of being an accessory to her husband’s attempted murder of the neighbors.
It was proven by DA Eyster at her trial that Susan Miller was present at the time of the shootings and had stood by filming her husband repeatedly shooting at both neighbors at close range.
When questioned by the personnel from the Sheriff’s Office, Susan Miller did not mention this information. Instead, she gave a false accounting of what had happened, saying that the neighbors had suddenly attacked her husband, that he just happened to have a loaded handgun in his pocket, and that he had pulled out the firearm only after being attacked and thus fired in self-defense.
Susan Miller later deleted her recording — or least attempted to delete the recording — of the shooting from her digital camera, a deletion that was later recovered by DA investigators after the camera was found by Sheriff investigators hidden in Susan Miller’s automobile in Santa Rosa.
The recovered recording completely contradicted Susan Miller’s statements and was damning evidence used against her at trial, evidence that was also going to be used against Harry Miller.
Susan Miller was sentenced by Judge Behnke to supervised probation in 2019 and ordered to serve 300 days in the county jail. She is no longer on probation and her whereabouts and status are unknown, except to say that she is no longer living on Mendocino’s South Coast.
Susan Miller unsuccessfully appealed her felony conviction.
