On the morning of June 14, 2012, 31-year-old Adam Chase stormed out of his home in Stanley, NY, following a heated argument with his wife, Rose. Hours turned into days, and Adam seemed to vanish without a trace. When former deputy-turned-private investigator Rodney Miller caught wind of the case, his instincts led him to one major suspicion- which was the possibility that Adam Chase never left his home.
Chapter 1: What happened to Adam Chase on June 14, 2012?
Well, my name's Rodney G. Miller. I'm 73 years old, but years ago in 1980, I got hired by Ontario County as a deputy.
Rodney doesn't do Zoom interviews. Some people are very particular about very random things, so... We sent one of our producers to Stanley, New York to interview him in person. Back in the 1980s, Rodney Miller was a patrol cop for the better part of the decade and led the county in DUI arrests.
When I went to work, I went to work to work. I didn't go to work to goof off. I did my job. My record would speak for itself.
But despite years of dedication to serving his community, the veteran officer was fired after refusing to go back to working overnight shifts.
It was about shift change. He told me when I come back to work after my two days were off, I'd be going back on a night shift. And I said, that's not going to happen. They came the next morning and told me that they wanted my cars, my gunner badge and my keys. Then I was terminated.
After he was let go from the force in 1986, Rodney began working mostly on insurance fraud cases as an independent PI. Fast forward years later to the summer of 2012, After returning home from a case he'd been tackling out in Pennsylvania, Rodney learned that the person who'd been missing for more than two weeks by that point was a local man he'd known personally for quite some time.
I knew there was a boy missing, but I did not know it was Adam until I came home from Pennsylvania from a trip. And then my wife said, well, do you know who the boy is missing from Stanley? And I said, no. And she goes, it's Adam Chase. And all I said to her was, well, where's he going to go? He doesn't have that many friends to go anyplace.
Rodney's son went to high school with Adam. He's known the Chase family for years. Rodney also knew what kind of person Adam was, an introvert. So when he heard that the sheriff's department was treating the case like a missing persons investigation, it didn't make sense.
Already with a bad taste in his mouth and grievances towards the Ontario County Sheriff's Department, he decided to drop by the Chase family home on July 4th, 2012.
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Chapter 2: Who is Rodney Miller and what role did he play?
Imagine having good reason to believe that something is true, screaming it from the rooftops only to have your words fall on deaf ears. I can relate, but that's exactly how Rodney Miller felt working this case. Even so, he chose to push forward and urged the sheriff to start looking at Adam Chase's disappearance from a different angle.
But according to what Rodney told us, the sheriff wasn't interested.
He couldn't tell me what they'd done or were doing because that was none of my business, which I understood. I wasn't asking him for that. I was telling him what I felt. And he said, off the record, we think he committed suicide. We're going to find him out in the woods or the fields. And that was the summer we were having two to 100 and some degree days.
And if he was in the fields or the woods or the buzzards, would have told us where he was. And I disagreed with him and told him that. I don't think he ever left the house.
By this point, investigators had already visited over 10 hotels in the area, as well as a local cemetery where one of Adam's friends had recently been buried, thinking maybe the missing 31-year-old father had been distraught and took his own life in that very location. But just like the searches of his home, nothing was found at the cemetery.
Despite his suspicions of Adam's wife Rose, the sheriff essentially ignored Rodney and told him to let the police handle it. In the eyes of law enforcement, Rose had been cooperative up to that point, and there was reason to consider her a suspect. With that being said, authorities did stop by Rose's residence a second time that July.
When Rose invited the deputies in, they noticed a man sitting on the couch. And it sure as hell wasn't Adam.
The gay friend moved in two days after Adam went missing.
It took a moment for authorities to realize that the man sitting there had a striking resemblance to the individual seen in the photo from the park weeks before, aka Rose's gay friend, Mark. During that police visit, Rose started to vent more openly to the officers. She told them that Adam had stopped paying attention to her romantically in the days leading up to his disappearance.
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Chapter 3: What were the details of Adam and Rose's relationship?
Him and I called into work so this way we could work things out.
Okay.
He went back to sleep after he called up his boss.
Okay.
I tried waking him up. It took me a while, but he finally got up. He went upstairs to grab a smoke. Then he started to go on the computer and I go, I thought we were going to talk about this. Started arguing again about the fact that Mark kissed me. And I go, yes, it was only a kiss. And he goes, well, you told me last night that we're going to get a DNA test done on Tristan. I told him.
I told him then. no need tristan's not yours he got furious punched the wall okay and that was the that was the hole that we saw right i went to grab him he did push me away i went to grandma again and i don't know how if he tried to push me away again or if i tried to grab and grabbed him wrong but he his foot caught the stairs, and he tumbled down the stairs.
Rose called out to Adam, but he didn't respond and he wasn't moving. According to her statements to police, it's quite possible that he broke his neck.
Is that what happened?
When I saw him there, I paused. I go, Adam? You? Okay. Hesitated, shook him a little bit. Waited a few more minutes. Still wasn't moving. I shook him again. Still wasn't moving. Looked to see if he had a pulse.
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