On March 16, 2018, 23-year-old Cody Dwayne Early Jr. was found shot in the head inside a stolen SUV that had crashed into a mailbox in an Oklahoma City neighborhood. The vehicle also contained 39-year-old Shaun Dejon Ruddle, who had been shot in the head; both deaths were later ruled homicides. Investigators say the killings followed a planned robbery that turned into a double murder.

Months later the case took a turn when officers linked the slayings to a separate March 2018 shootout between Norman police and a man named Ronnie Lewis Miller III. While jailed in Cleveland County after that incident, Miller gave a handwritten confession saying he had planned to rob one of the victims of drugs and money, that the robbery escalated after a victim mocked him, and that he shot both men. He also wrote he had intended to return and burn the vehicle to destroy evidence.

Miller was charged in July 2018 with two counts of first-degree murder. In January 2022 he was found incompetent to stand trial and was committed to the Department of Mental Health, and the criminal case has been suspended.