Rosalie Miller’s unsolved homicide and a look at New Hampshire’s cold cases, by the numbers

Nearly three decades ago, Rosalie Miller’s body was found off the Auburn stretch of the Londonderry Turnpike in the January cold.

The remains of the 36-year-old Manchester woman were located on a residential property in an area with some trees.

At the time of the discovery, her body went unidentified. An autopsy determined her death — ruled a homicide — was caused by “asphyxiation due to ligature strangulation.” A fingerprint comparison later revealed her identity.

The New Hampshire Cold Case Unit is renewing its appeal to the public for any information in Miller’s case.

“Our family wants to know what happened, who did this and why,” her family shared in a statement on Sunday. “We miss her and want to give her peace.”

The last time anyone saw Miller was on December 8, 1996. She was at her Manchester apartment at the time and had intended to meet friends in or around Auburn. No one heard from her since.

Then, on January 20, 1997, her body was uncovered, leading to the decades-long mystery of what exactly befell Miller.

“We don’t think she got there on her own. This is not an accidental death,” Assistant Attorney General Patrick Donovan told the Associated Press back in 1997, two days after authorities found Miller’s remains.

Her case eventually went cold, meaning that five years passed with no new leads bringing answers. Today, the Cold Case Unit is actively investigating her death. In the call for information, the unit is especially looking to speak with anyone who had contact with Miller in December of 1996 or may have seen her around the Londonderry Turnpike in Auburn during that period.

“The passage of time does not lessen our commitment to uncovering the truth for Rosalie Miller and her family,” said Senior Assistant Attorney General R. Christopher Knowles, who serves as chief of the Cold Case Unit.

The Monitor conducted a study of the 150 people listed on the state’s Cold Case Victim List. These victims fall into the categories of unsolved homicides, suspicious deaths, missing persons and solved homicides.

The numbers don’t necessarily reveal exactly what one might think. For instance, the gender breakdown of cold cases is relatively evenly split, with 70 of the listed victims being male and the other 79 female.

The most common victim profile is women in their 20s, with women in their teens as a close second and men in their 30s as the third most common demographic. Miller, as a woman in her 30s, falls in the fifth most common out of the 18 demographic categories, after men in their 20s.

Manchester, the state’s largest city, far exceeds any other municipality in terms of how many cold case victims it has on the list.

The highest volume of victims are from the 1980s, with around one third of the total cases stemming from this time. The 1970s fall second, with the 1990s third.

“I think those have tremendous potential, because we’re able to look at those with a fresh lens,” Knowles said of older cases. “We’re able to apply updates and technology and investigative techniques to progress them in hopes of solving them.”

Overall, advancements in technology have reduced the number of cases that make their way to the unit, he said, since these homicides, suspicious deaths and missing person cases are being solved before they fit the five-year qualification for a cold case.

The State Police’s crime lab, where the Cold Case Unit works, is the first in the country to utilize STRmix, “which essentially allows forensic analysts that are working with DNA to do more with less,” Knowles said.

This tool for genetic analysis comes alongside other new technologies, such as LiDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging, which gets flown over target areas and “allows the observation of disturbances in the ground, historic disturbances,” Knowles said.

“We also have satellites that we’re able to use to see changes over certain periods, and we’ve already seen success with that across the country,” he added.

As the Cold Case Unit continues to investigate Miller’s death and the killings, disappearances and suspicious circumstances of others, they ask the public to come forward with any information that may exist, no matter how seemingly insignificant.

Knowles told the Monitor that the Cold Case Unit’s “robust” tip line can prove instrumental in unlocking long-unsolved mysteries. Even the smallest details can help. To potentially unlock people’s memories, the unit released a previously unseen photo of Miller.

“We get tips constantly,” he said. “Almost daily, we get tips we go through. Our goal is to resolve those tips within 24 hours of receiving them.”

The Cold Case Unit can be contacted at coldcaseunit@dos.nh.gov or at (603) 271-2663. Any tip can remain anonymous.