MINNEAPOLIS — Shortly after 2 a.m. on July 19th, 1984, Robert A. Miller was murdered inside his south Minneapolis apartment.
The unknown intruder also stabbed a woman in the face after breaking into the residence at 3209 Girard Ave. S.
No one was ever arrested or charged as the case went cold. Ice cold.
Until now.
Home Invasion and Attack
Court records show police responded to the Miller's apartment building after receiving multiple 911 calls.
When officers arrived two women ran outside. A 33-year-old woman had a cut bleeding on the left side of her face. The second woman, 32, was extremely distraught but uninjured. They told police an unknown man broke into their apartment and attacked them with a knife.
Inside, officers found Robert Miller’s body lying in a pool of blood near a bedroom doorway.
An autopsy later showed he had been stabbed numerous times with wounds to his face, head, chest, back, and shoulders.
The kitchen door of the apartment, which led to a back exit, was wide open. Crime lab technicians found a trail of blood leading from the kitchen floor down the rear hallway, and on the exit doorknob. Police said that blood did not belong to the victim.
Investigators suspected the killer had cut himself during his knife attack. But that suspect was never identified and investigators developed no solid leads.
The case went cold.
A DNA Profile
More than three decades later, MPD homicide investigators assigned to the FBI’s Cold Case Task Force gave Miller’s murder a new look.
In 2018, advances in technology allowed the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) to develop a DNA profile from blood collected at the crime scene on the kitchen floor and back exit doorknob.
There were no hits in the DNA database. The killer was not in the nationwide criminal system.
Court records show that over the next few years investigators consulted with a genealogist and determined that, based on the DNA profile they had, a man named Matthew Russell Brown of Barnum, MN was a suspect.
The 66-year-old had no criminal history. Minnesota’s state court database shows only a pair of traffic tickets.
Investigators attempted to surreptitiously obtain a DNA sample from Brown but were unsuccessful. Finally, in March of this year, police collected a disposable plastic cup that Brown had used.
The DNA from that cup was compared to the DNA from the blood found at the crime scene and the profiles matched.
Brown, who recently moved to Illinois, is now charged with murder, burglary, and assault in Miller's death. He’s been extradited back to Minnesota and has a court appearance on July 24th.
When KARE 11 looked into Brown's history, divorce records revealed he is a father of two, retired from a career as a security counselor at Minnesota’s Sex Offender Program at Moose Lake.
Matthew Brown appeared in Hennepin County District Court Monday morning, where a judge ordered his bail to remain at $1 million. His next appearance is set for August 28.
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