Woman charged with murder 19 years after baby's death

DANIELSVILLE - Nineteen years to the day after 3-year-old Kasi Sanders died, northeast Georgia authorities charged a woman with murdering her, the same woman who also stands accused in a gruesome Tennessee killing.

Madison County authorities said Wednesday they charged Arlene Smith Miller with murder and first-degree cruelty to children in the little girl's death. They said the charge was based on new, unspecified evidence. Kasi was visiting Miller's home when she died.

Officials reopened the case after Miller was charged May 3 with a murder in Tennessee. Tennessee authorities say Miller and her estranged husband, Jimmy Dean Miller, killed a woman on New Year's Eve in 2000.

The Tennessee victim, Linda Guge of Indiana, was believed to have been dragged for several miles before being left for dead.

Miller is currently in a Tennessee jail.

At the time of Kasi's death, Miller was living with the child's father in Madison County. Kasi, who lived with her mother, was visiting her father when she died.

In 1988, authorities conducted two autopsies of Kasi. One autopsy found traces of sleeping pills in her body.

``We are heartbroken by the developments of the past two weeks. We are also very grateful that the truth has finally been brought to light,'' Kasi's mother, Barbara Holman, and her husband, Tim, said in a statement released Wednesday by the sheriff's office.

``Today, 19 years ago she was taken from us and we had no closure,'' they said. ``We had come to believe we would never know what truly happened to Kasi.''

In the Tennessee case, Guge's body was found by hunters in rural Cumberland County on New Year's Day 2001. Investigators believe she was killed the day before. Her body was so disfigured that it took medical examiners several days to identify it.

The 53-year-old woman had been living with the Millers in Knoxville at the time.

The Millers have been charged with first-degree murder, felony murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in Guge's death. Authorities said the Millers had long been suspects in Guge's death, but not until recently did investigators find enough evidence to press charges.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)