Legendary Kansas lawman Vern Miller dies at 92
Vern Miller, the legendary Kansas lawman and Wichita attorney who first gained notoriety in the 1960s and 1970s for law-enforcing stunts that included jumping out of car trunks and seizing liquor on planes and passenger trains crossing the state’s borders, died Friday. He was 92.
Mr. Miller died at home in Mesa, Arizona, where he retired following a storied law career that spanned more than 50 years and included multiple stints as Sedgwick County sheriff and Kansas attorney general as well as one district attorney term, his older son, Botanica executive director Marty Miller, said in a phone interview Friday evening.
Mr. Miller’s son attributed the death to old age but noted that his father had suffered from cardiac issues over the years. He is survived by his wife, Paula, and two sons, as well as other family members.
“He was a hero to a lot of people. And he understood life as every day was a blessing,” Marty Miller said of his father, adding:
“You just wear out when you get over 90. It’s part of life.”
And an impressive life it was, lived by a man whom many described as “larger than life,” funny, friendly and a “good lawyer.” Throughout his career and into his retirement, Mr. Miller stayed upbeat, “bombastic,” and was “tough as nails” yet always ready to lend a hand, some of friends and colleagues said.
“Vern was a great guy. He was a hard worker,” said current Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett, who first met Mr. Miller when he began working in Wichita as a young attorney.
“He’s one of the few people that all the crazy stories you read about him are true — and in fact are typically not the craziest stories that are actually out there.”
Tales like how Mr. Miller would sometimes hide in the trunks of undercover officer’s cars and spring out in time to nab suspected criminals, or how he would raid illegal gambling operations held everywhere from fraternal clubs to country clubs. He drew media attention over his strict enforcement of the state’s liquor laws by stopping alcohol-serving passenger trains in their tracks and seizing booze on planes crossing into Kansas at a time when public drinking was outlawed.
Once, he chased a jail escapee into Nebraska, engaging in a shootout that drew a crowd threatening to let the criminal go. Mr. Miller, as the story goes, told the crowd that he had “12 shots left, and 12 of them were going to hit the ground before we let him go.” No one gave him any trouble after that, he told The Eagle in a 2000 interview.
When he served as Sedgwick County Sheriff, he once calmed tensions that had grown heated at an aircraft worker strike by standing on the seat of his motorcycle, decked out in full uniform, and saluting the crowd. Someone captured a photograph of the moment that has become one of Mr. Miller’s most recognizable.
“It made everybody like him that much more, that he was sort of irreverent in that moment and it cooled everybody off and there weren’t any fights,” Bennett said, recalling what Mr. Miller had told him of that event.
“He really did all those things that people said he did — and quite a bit more.”
Early life and law enforcement career
Mr. Miller, a Wichita native, was born Dec. 22, 1928. When he was 3 years old, his father and mother moved to a 10-acre farm near Harry and West streets where they raised cows and sold milk. Miller’s father worked as a teacher, accountant and food salesman. His mother was a homemaker, according to The Eagle’s news archives.
As a young child, Mr. Miller would wake before dawn and head to work at a nearby dairy before going home to milk his own family’s cattle. Then he’d go to school.
When he was a teenager, he attended and graduated from Wichita North High School, playing track, baseball and football. Over the years, he held a number of jobs including operating a service station and bill collecting, earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and business administration from Friends University, married twice and had three children and a step-child.
At 17, he joined the U.S. Army and spent his 18th birthday in Korea, according to The Eagle’s archives.
While in the military, Mr. Miller suffered a bout of rheumatic fever, his son said. The prognosis was grim.
“He was given not too much of a chance of survival,” Marty Miller said. “But he survived that and became probably one of the healthiest guys you’d ever know.”
Later in life, Mr. Miller had a number of cardiac procedures and devices, including a heart valve replacement, a pacemaker and a defibrillator, “and just kept right on going,” his son said.
Mr. Miller’s law enforcement and legal career spanned decades, beginning in 1948 when he started working as a deputy for the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office, eventually advancing to captain of the road patrol. He served as Sedgwick County Deputy Sheriff for the next several years, from 1949 to 1954.
In 1958, Mr. Miller became marshal of the Sedgwick County Court of Common Pleas, a position that required him to bring prisoners to court and serve warrants. He served two terms.
After, in 1964, he took over as Sedgwick County Sheriff and was re-elected twice, according to the Kansas Historical Society’s website.
An AG who hadn’t tried a case
Interested in turning his career toward the legal field, he began pursuing law school while he served as marshal and continued through his terms as sheriff.
For years, Mr. Miller drove 155 miles to Oklahoma City University to attend night classes. In a 2000 interview, Mr. Miller told an Eagle reporter he skipped Fridays because those were busiest for the Sheriff’s Office.
He graduated from law school in 1966 while serving as sheriff, quickly passed the bar exam and set his sights on the state attorney general seat. He ran in the statewide race under a platform of “aggressive and visible enforcement of the state’s drug and liquor laws” and won in 1970.
He had never tried a case in court before.
“Kind of crazy that he would run for attorney general of the whole state” immediately after law school, Bennett said. “But he did and he won.”
Mr. Miller was so popular among constituents that he won all of the state’s 105 counties when he ran again in 1972.
Mr. Miller told The Eagle in 2000 that when he was elected AG, “I made it clear laws would be enforced equally throughout the state.” So he raided illegal gambling spots, drug operations and vigorously upheld Kansas’ liquor laws, sometimes garnering harsh criticisms for his unyielding enforcement.
In other controversies that made news over the years, Mr. Miller seized a copy of the 1973 pornographic movie “The Devil in Miss Jones” that was scheduled to be shown at Wichita State University, leading to protests claiming First Amendment rights violations, and was accused by minority residents of police brutality over a 1970 race riot at Heights High School that left a number of officers and kids in the hospital.
Following an unsuccessful bid for governor in 1974, Mr. Miller opened a private law practice in Wichita, according to the state historical society. He served as the district attorney of Sedgwick County, from 1976 to 1980 – a job he would later tell Bennett following his 2012 election was “the biggest pain in the ass job I ever had.’”
Dan Dillon, a longtime local journalist who now works as the DA’s media coordinator, said he first heard stories of Mr. Miller in 1979, right after he moved to Wichita to report for KFDI radio’s news team. Mr. Miller was district attorney at the time.
Many of the tales about the lawman seemed too tall to be true, Dillon said. But they were.
“I covered news up in Nebraska, but there was no one that even came close to some of the stunts and activities that Vern Miller took part in,” Dillon said.
“If he had to arrest six guys by himself, he would do it.”
Dillon said his voice shook from nerves the first time he interviewed Mr. Miller for a news story. He turned out to be “just the nicest guy.”
“It just fascinated me that there was a guy out there like this,” Dillon said.
Later, Dillon said he watched Mr. Miller prosecute a local homicide case where “he really grilled” a defendant who took the witness stand to testify. It was particularly memorable moment, Dillon said, because in later years, Mr. Miller would go on to represent defendants with the same tenacity and vigor.
“He was always working for his client,” Dillon said.
‘He lived several lives’
After Mr. Miller’s fourth bid for Sedgwick County Sheriff’s in 2000 was unsuccessful — the then-71-year-old said at the time voters might have thought he was too old — he returned to his private law practice and talked of traveling and other leisure activities.
In a 2001 interview following the defeat, Mr. Miller told an Eagle reporter: “When I slow down, I want to write a book of all these cases that I’ve worked on.” A 2008 biography, “Vern Miller: Legendary Kansas Lawman” by Mike Danford, describes Mr. Miller as “a man who single-handedly transformed the law, justice, and civilized life in the state of Kansas.”
Mr. Miller is “the only man in history” to hold all of the ranks that he did, his son said. Marty Miller chuckled when asked if he had a favorite memory of his dad: “Thousands. He’s a legend.”
“He lived several lives, basically,” Bennett said.
Mr. Miller officially retired about 10 years ago, after he turned 82, his son said.
But he didn’t hang up his law hat.
At an age when many people spend their years vacationing or exploring new hobbies, Mr. Miller continued to take on court cases “just to help people out,” his friends and family said.
“There was always somebody calling him, needing help. He was always helping, even after he stopped practicing law,” his son said.
“That’s the other side of Vern. He wasn’t just this crazy guy jumping out of trunks,” Bennett said.
“He was helping people out and wanted to use his law degree to help the little guy.”
This story was originally published June 12, 2021 at 3:16 PM.
