Judge David T. Stitt sentenced Dana Moro, 47, to 33 years in prison for the second-degree murder of a former Securities and Exchange Commission attorney Eric Miller, 45.
“Senseless and depraved,” said Stitt, at the end of Moro’s 20-minute sentencing hearing Friday, Dec. 1, in Fairfax County Circuit Court.
After an altercation, Dana Moro killed Eric Miller with a lead pipe in Room 16 of the Alexandria Motel on Route 1 on Aug. 29, 2005. And while Miller lay dead on the floor of the 12-by-12-foot hotel room, his companions Kristin Kozak and Moro smoked the crack cocaine Miller brought to the hotel.
Moro then took a nap, but later used Miller’s ATM debit card to buy cleaning supplies to clean up the blood in the hotel room and a sleeping bag to haul Miller’s body away. Moro and Kozak put Miller’s body in the trunk of the Ford Taurus Miller had rented, and took the car to 911 3rd Street in Southeast Washington. Moro doused Miller’s body with gasoline and ignited the car while Kozak waited a block away on Aug. 31, 2005.
“The degree of violence and meanness he displayed in that room — beating Mr. Miller with a lead pipe, and then taking a nap and burning the body, depriving the Miller family of a [full] funeral — it is beyond, any standard, brutal,” Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Raymond F. Morrogh said Friday.
A Fairfax jury convicted Moro of second-degree murder in July, and recommended that he serve 30 years in prison for murder and three years for credit card theft.
<b>MILLER GRADUATED</b> with honors from St. Stephen’s School in Alexandria, (now known as St. Stephen's and St Agnes) and Amherst College. He graduated from Harvard Law School before working as an attorney for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Morrogh called Miller a “brilliant lawyer” with “huge intellect” who was a “product of a wonderful family.”
Eric Miller was a married father of two boys, children who are suffering without him, said Morrogh.
“We’ve heard a lot about the last few months of Eric’s life. That certainly doesn’t depict who he was,” said Miller’s father, attorney Melvin Miller, during Moro’s trial in July. “This has not only taken his life, it’s devastated the lives of all of us.”
Melvin Miller, a former school board member and chair of the Alexandria Redevelopment Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, did not testify Friday.
Moro’s attorney, Karin Kissiah, referred to a post-trial psychological evaluation that documented Moro’s bipolar disorder, long-term history of substance abuse, and the violent abuse he faced growing up.
Stitt imposed the full sentence.