Tanya L. Miller was a 19-year-old Black woman from Milwaukee who was found dead face down in a rear yard between a house and a garage on October 11, 1986. An examination determined she had been manually strangled. Investigators collected vaginal swabs and other biological evidence that was preserved.

Miller’s killing came one day after Deborah L. Harris was found strangled, and both cases remained unsolved for decades. Reexamination and DNA testing of preserved evidence later linked both deaths to the same man, Walter E. Ellis, as part of a series of Milwaukee homicides stretching from 1986 through 2007. Ellis’s DNA was associated with seven victims prosecuted in the case. He was arrested in September 2009 after police seized a toothbrush and razors from his residence; testing produced his DNA profile and investigators compared it to evidence from the cold cases. In February 2011 Ellis pleaded no contest to all seven killings and was sentenced by Judge Dennis Cimpl to seven consecutive life terms with no possibility of parole. Miller’s family attended the sentencing hearing.

Does anyone have additional memories or information about Tanya’s life, where she lived, or what she was doing in Milwaukee in October 1986?