The summer of 1985 in Duluth, Minnesota was bright and carefree, the kind of season children remember forever. On the afternoon of July 13, sisters Anna Miller, age 9, and Lucy Miller, age 7, were playing outside their suburban home. Their favorite toy was a bright red Radio Flyer wagon, a hand-me-down from their cousins. Lucy loved riding in it, arms spread wide as if she were flying, while Anna, full of energy, would run behind and push.
Neighbors recalled hearing laughter echoing down the sidewalk that afternoon. One woman watering her garden waved to them around 4 p.m. But by 6:30 p.m., when their mother Janet Miller called them in for dinner, the yard was silent. The wagon was gone.
Panic set in quickly. The Millers searched the block, then the park, then every street the girls were known to play on. By nightfall, police were notified. Officers combed through nearby woods, drainage ditches, and backyards. Flyers were printed with the girls’ smiling faces, and their disappearance dominated local news.
Leads poured in—possible sightings at a convenience store, a car reported lingering near the park—but each one fizzled. Detectives theorized everything from a runaway case to abduction. But two details haunted investigators:
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The wagon was missing along with the girls.
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Not a single item of clothing, not a shoe or hair ribbon, was ever found.
Days turned into weeks, then months. Despite community searches, candlelight vigils, and nationwide coverage, the Miller sisters were simply gone. Their mother Janet never moved from their house, clinging to the hope they’d walk through the door. Their father, Richard, drowned himself in work, silently carrying guilt for not being there that afternoon.
By the early 1990s, the case went cold. The wagon became a symbol of loss—two little girls who had vanished without a trace, their laughter silenced in a single summer evening.
What nobody could have imagined was that 15 years later, in the murky waters of Lake Superior, the truth would resurface in the most chilling way possible.
On a humid August morning in 2000, commercial fisherman Tom Erickson steered his trawler across Lake Superior, dragging nets for whitefish. It was routine work, but as he winched in a particularly heavy load, he noticed something odd tangled in the mesh: a rusted object with wheels.
At first, Tom assumed it was junk metal. But as it clanged onto the deck, he froze. Despite its corrosion, the faded white letters were still visible: Radio Flyer.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered, remembering the news stories he’d grown up with. Everyone in Duluth knew about the missing Miller sisters. Their red wagon had vanished with them.
Tom called the sheriff’s department immediately. Within hours, the rusted wagon was in police custody, photographed under glaring evidence lights. The discovery reignited a case long considered unsolvable.
Forensic specialists examined the wagon. Though years underwater had erased much, two unsettling clues remained. Inside the rusted basin, clumps of fabric fibers were found, trapped beneath layers of sediment. They were later tested—consistent with children’s clothing from the 1980s. Even more disturbing, beneath the wagon’s metal frame, divers retrieved bone fragments lodged in the muck.
DNA analysis, still relatively new at the time, was conducted. Weeks later, results came back: the remains matched Anna and Lucy Miller. After 15 years of uncertainty, the sisters’ fate was finally confirmed.
The revelation devastated the Miller family. Janet collapsed when detectives told her. “I always knew they were close,” she sobbed. “But I never imagined they’d die together, trapped in that wagon.”
The location of the wagon deepened the mystery. It had been found nearly a mile offshore, suggesting it hadn’t simply rolled into the water. Police theorized foul play—someone may have loaded the girls into the wagon and pushed or driven it off a dock. But who, and why, remained unanswered.
The discovery dominated headlines: “Fisherman Pulls Missing Sisters’ Wagon from Lake Superior.” Old witnesses were re-interviewed, suspects questioned again. But with 15 years gone, memories were foggy, evidence lost, and potential suspects dead or untraceable.
The Miller sisters’ disappearance was no longer a mystery—but their killer’s identity still was.
For the Miller family, the confirmation brought both closure and renewed grief. After 15 years of searching, they finally had answers, but those answers were unbearable. The girls’ remains were laid to rest in a joint funeral, their two small caskets side by side. Hundreds attended, many bringing flowers, others simply standing in silence.
Janet, frail from years of heartbreak, spoke at the service: “My girls are together. They were always together. That’s how I want to remember them—laughing in the wagon, not what happened after.”
Detectives continued to work the case, but as years passed, no arrests were made. Some suspected a neighbor who had moved away shortly after 1985, others pointed to transient workers who’d been in town at the time. Yet without hard evidence, the case lingered in limbo.
The wagon itself became infamous. It was displayed briefly at a law enforcement seminar about cold cases before being returned to police storage. For many in Duluth, it symbolized both tragedy and the relentlessness of time—the idea that even in the darkest mysteries, the truth sometimes surfaces, but justice may never follow.
Tom Erickson, the fisherman, rarely spoke publicly about his discovery. But in a rare interview years later, he admitted, “I think about those girls every time I go out on the lake. That wagon wasn’t meant to be found. But somehow, it came back. Maybe that was their way of saying goodbye.”
For Janet, life after the discovery was quiet. She kept the girls’ room intact, photographs still on the wall. Every July 13, she placed flowers by the lake, whispering to the water. Richard, who had carried his guilt silently for decades, finally broke down at the funeral. “I should’ve been there,” he said, again and again.
The story of Anna and Lucy Miller became a cautionary tale for parents in Duluth—a reminder of how fleeting safety could be, how quickly innocence could be stolen. To this day, their disappearance remains officially unsolved.
But for those who remember the laughter of two sisters on a summer afternoon in 1985, the haunting image endures: a red wagon rolling down the sidewalk, carrying two little girls who never made it home.