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VERNAL — Corie Miller's voice broke with emotion Tuesday as he recalled the last time he and his brother saw their father's face.
"Seeing our father in a casket is the last memory we have," Miller said. "His beaten face was hard to recognize."
The man responsible for inflicting the injuries that killed Christopher Alan Miller sat quietly just a few feet away, his hands cuffed to a chain around his waist.
"It pains us to wonder how long our father suffered before he passed," Corie Miller continued. "Christopher Andersen could have spared my family a lot of heartache and suffering, if he had been honest from the beginning."
Instead, Andersen initially told Vernal police he woke up on July 6, 2013, to find Christopher Miller, 52, dead in the front room of the apartment the men were temporarily sharing, court records show. Andersen, 29, claimed the apartment's front door was ajar as well, and told officers several times that he did not know what had happened.
Forensic evidence and witness statements, however, showed that Andersen had beaten Miller with a ceramic statue and strangled him to death after a day of heavy drinking and frequent bickering, detectives said. Andersen was arrested following a 10-month investigation and charged with murder, a first-degree felony.
Andersen later reached an agreement with Uintah County prosecutors and pleaded guilty in July to manslaughter, a second-degree felony. When he entered his plea, he told the judge that Miller had tried to stab him — a claim he made again during Tuesday's hearing.
I'm sorry for what has happened. It's something I'll live with the rest of my life.
–Christopher Anderson
"He started getting violent and went in the kitchen and got a serrated steak knife with a wooden handle on it and tried to stab me with it," Andersen said. "So I defended myself and I went into shock, into shock mode, you know, and all I could think was, 'survival.'
"I'm sorry for what has happened," Andersen continued. "It's something I'll live with the rest of my life."
Prosecutor Mike Drechsel joined Miller's family in asking the court to impose the maximum sentence. Judge Ed Peterson granted the request, ordering Andersen to serve up to 15 years in prison.
"I don't necessarily buy the fact that you were defending yourself from a steak knife," the judge said, adding that he "could not see any justification" for Andersen's actions.
"You murdered a man," Peterson said. "You beat him to death and then you lied about it for a long time. You ought to think about what that did to the family."
