Jim Miller devoted nearly half of his life to finding his daughter's killer.
Almost two years after his death, federal officials may have finally found the man suspected of murdering his daughter, Leesa Jo Shaner, in 1973.
Authorities unsealed a federal indictment Friday charging William Floyd Zamastil, an inmate at a Wisconsin prison, with the murder of Shaner.
Shaner's body was found at Fort Huachuca about four months after she disappeared.
Zamastil, 57, was arraigned and pleaded not guilty at a hearing on Friday, according to a U.S. Attorney's Office press release.
Zamastil is facing a life sentence if he is convicted of the murder.
He is already serving a life sentence in a Wisconsin prison after his 1978 conviction for the kidnapping, rape and murder of a woman in that state.
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He also was convicted in 2003 of killing a brother and sister and leaving their bodies near a dirt road south of Barstow, Calif., in March 1978. They had been missing for a month.
According to Star archives, Shaner, 22, drove to Tucson International Airport in May 1973 to meet her husband, who had been discharged from the military.
Jim Miller, a former FBI agent, tried to persuade his daughter to let him come along, but Shaner wanted to go meet her husband alone.
Shaner was never reunited with her spouse.
She was abducted from the airport parking lot and apparently dragged from her father's car, which she had driven to the airport.
Police and FBI agents tracked down hundreds of leads but didn't find any signs of the young woman.
Her body was discovered at Fort Huachuca about four months later.
The case went unsolved for years as authorities identified a few suspects but could not link them to the murder.
Miller, eager to find his daughter's killer, offered a $10,000 reward in 1996 for the suspect's capture.
He died in 2007 without ever finding her murderer.
Now, the family could be closer to finding the closure that Miller was never able to experience.
"The one thing I'm disappointed about is my grandfather died a year and a half ago. He spent my whole life searching for her killer," said Shaner's son, Brady Shaner.
Brader Shaner was 6 weeks old when his mother was murdered. His older sister was 2 years old.
Shaner, now 36, spent his most of his childhood thinking about his mother, he said.
He was told that his mother was a strong-willed woman who liked to play football.
"She was someone I wish I could've known," he said.
The FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office declined to comment Friday on how Zamastil was linked to Leesa Jo Shaner's murder.
His trial in the Shaner murder case is scheduled to begin Oct. 20.
