JP Miller Used THIS to Get Close to Mica

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Dreeke.

Tony Brueski (0:07)

We just covered the federal charges against JP Miller, but there is a terrifying reality at the core of this case. The law cannot always save you. I mean, look at JP's chilling timeline with Mica.

He was her childhood worship leader. He officiated her first wedding. He made her his babysitter. And then had an affair with her and then married her.

It's a masterclass, an insidious grooming by a man masquerading as a pastor. But the brutal truth is that predators know exactly how to walk right up to the legal line without crossing it. They do things that are morally reprehensible, but not always technically legal. Because the justice system is designed to react rather than prevent. How do we protect ourselves from predators hiding in plain sight, especially in the church? With us to break all this down, former FBI Special Agent Jennifer Coffindaffer along with Robin Dreeke, retired FBI Special Agent and Chief of the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program. Let's look at the timeline of how JP inserted himself into Mica's life from a youth worship leader to a wedding officiant to employer to husband. From an FBI profiling standpoint, how textbook is this long game grooming? And how do predators use positions of spiritual authority to kind of normalize the crossing of the boundaries here?

Jennifer Coffindaffer (1:33)

Not only is this textbook, he has his own chapter. This is absolutely how you do it. It is what is going on right now as we speak in so many communities. And that's exactly what these predators do.

And he did it perfectly in the sense of he got Mica under his full and unconditional control, in my opinion.

Robin Dreeke (1:59)

Yeah, they use levers of influence. The biggest one here being power and authority. And then you use fear to control them. And then you start using the most powerful weapon against any human being. And we saw it play out in the Netflix doc.

Shame.

And when you actually use your moral authority as a pastor, and you have group think going on, and you start influencing shame over their behavior, it's profound. And so, and we saw it, you know, Amy Duggar King did a great job of highlighting for us how people and the Duggars would cherry pick the things that they wanted out of the Bible to actually shame you and cause fear in you to take the actions or no actions they want you to do. So, and that's what gets scary in these cases is someone that just proclaims himself a pastor with little education. And in this case, you know, I'm not casting shade on his boss there that was on the dock, but where the hell is the oversight? You know, like she said, normally these, as I don't know the structure of these things, so if I'm talking out my ass, I apologize. But as she insinuated in there, they normally have a council of elders that are kind of like your group think that you're accountable to. And that group think was not, he was not accountable to anyone. They were just kowtowing to him. So he was running rampant with all power, all control, all fear, levers of manipulation against anyone he wanted to wield against. And it's how he groomed everyone. So whether he's s-abusing them and making them lives, he groomed the entire congregation to stand by him. I mean, it still blew my mind that he actually was able to get kicked out of his church. They repossessed it or whatever the hell they did. And he's doing it out of a garage or storage container whenever he was at the end of the dock. Who still goes to that?

Tony Brueski (3:41)

Yeah, people who should be on a list. People who should be investigated.

Jennifer Coffindaffer (3:45)

Put them on the interview, yes.

Tony Brueski (3:46)

Well, I mean, ultimately, they're probably very victimized people that are able to still go along with it and think that there's some sort of sanity here. But on that grooming end of things, how concerned should people be who were close to JP? Because there's a lot of people who I would suspect may have done some of his bidding and not really knew that they were doing his bidding. That they were so entrenched with him, so groomed by him that he positioned things. Can you just go over and do this for me? Just do that. And I don't have any specific examples. But I do wonder the way that people are running away from this story, like cockroaches that were once tight with JP and now say they have nothing to do with him.