AUSTIN, Texas_A jury found Terry Miles guilty Tuesday of kidnapping in the case of two missing girls in Texas. He will be sentenced April 25 by U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel and faces from 20 years to life in prison, said Daryl Fields, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office.
The jury found Miles guilty of two counts of kidnapping, one count of transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity and one count of travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct. The jury deliberated for about two hours Tuesday afternoon before reaching a verdict.
Prosecutors said in closing arguments Tuesday morning that the girls Miles was accused of kidnapping went with him to Colorado out of fear because at least one of them knew he had just killed their mother. A defense attorney, however, said that Miles did not kill their mother and that the girls went willingly with him because he was their protector.
After hearing closing arguments, the federal jury broke for lunch around noon Tuesday and then was scheduled to start deliberations on the verdict.
Miles, 44, was accused of kidnapping two sisters from the Round Rock home where their mother, Tonya Bates, was found slain Dec. 31, 2017. He faces 20 years to life in prison for each of two counts of kidnapping if found guilty. He also faces from 10 years to life for the transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity and up to 30 years for travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct if convicted.
The two-week trial began Jan. 29.
Miles groomed the older girl to be a sexual assault victim from the first day he met her in Louisiana on July 4, 2017, by paying special attention to her and making her feel treasured, prosecutor Michelle Fernald said in closing arguments. After she returned home to Texas, there were 997 phone calls and texts between her and Miles from Aug. 13, 2017, to Sept. 30, 2017, Fernald said.
He said Miles then got access to the older girl by getting her mother to agree to let him move in as the nanny of the older girl, who was being homeschooled, and her sister. He also made Bates financially dependent on him by paying part of the rent and working as a nanny for free, the prosecutor said. Miles then gained domination of the older girl by continually sexually assaulting her and also kicking her, slapping her, locking her into a pantry and making her share a cell phone with him, Fernald said.
When Miles killed Bates on Dec. 29, 2017, Fernald said, he told the girls they were going to Colorado but they didn't want to go. She said the older girl knew that Miles had killed her mother and was trying to remain calm to protect her sister. Fernald said the girls had no choice but to go with Miles to Colorado because they didn't know what the consequences would be if they did not.
Defense attorney Jose Gonzalez-Falla said in closing arguments that Miles did not kill the girls' mother but took the sisters to Colorado to protect them from whoever did it.
He said that when Miles and the older sister discovered Bates' body, they didn't know who killed her and fled out of fear. They were afraid because Bates had led a high-risk lifestyle by dating several men and bringing at least one of them home, Gonzalez-Falla said. He said Bates also had other angry people in her life, including a woman who worked for her that Bates hadn't paid.
After fleeing, Miles stopped at a Walmart and left the girls inside the car for at least 16 minutes but they never tried to leave, Gonzalez-Falla said. He said the semen from Miles that was discovered on a towel with the older girl's blood could have been contaminated from other trash that was in the bag with it at the Colorado campsite where Miles was with the girls.
Gonzalez-Falla said the case all came down to whether the jury should believe the testimony of the older girl, who recently told the FBI that Miles had killed her mother and she was afraid of him. The defense attorney said the testimony of the older girl was not credible because she had changed her story several times in previous interviews with the FBI.
Prosecutor Matthew Devlin, who also spoke during closing arguments, said the older girl had "taken this long to tell the truth because she's been conditioned by fear and is no longer in danger by the defendant."
Bates, 44, was killed by blows to her head with two flashlights, a police officer said during the trial.
The older sister told the therapist in April that she did not feel close to her mother at the time of her death and had no feelings about her murder, according to records read Monday by Ariane Bigler, a federal mitigation specialist. The girl also said the months leading up to her mother's death were chaotic, and she felt like her mother was hiding things from her, the therapist records said.
Miles was arrested Jan. 3, 2018, in Colorado after driving Bates' car with her two daughters in the back seat.
Defense attorneys said during the trial that there were dangerous people in Bates' life, including the girls' stepfather and a worker at Bates' cleaning company that Bates had not paid.
Doris Bargmann, an investigator with the federal public defender's office, testified Monday that Christine Pennington, an employee of Bates' cleaning company, filed a small claims lawsuit against Bates in November 2017, saying Bates had not paid her for two months and owed her $5,000. Pennington also got into a fight with Bates' older daughter on Nov. 11, 2017, a Travis County deputy testified Monday.
Bates had an emergency protective order filed against her daughters' stepfather, Josef Scheffler, in October 2017, Bargmann said.
An FBI agent testified earlier in the trial that the cellphone records of Scheffler and Pennington show they were not anywhere near Bates' home when Bates was killed.
Miles, who did not testify, said in an FBI interview recorded after his arrest _ which was shown in court _ that Bates had asked him and the girls to leave the house while she had a date over, and that when they returned he and the older girl found her body. He also denied ever having sex with the older girl, saying he was impotent.
DNA test results, however, showed his semen was found on the older sister's underwear and on a bloody towel that also had the girl's DNA on it from their campground in Colorado, according to FBI testimony. DNA results also showed the toe of Miles' left tennis shoe had Bates' blood on it.
