Miller is on trial for murder in Rowan County Superior Court, accused of shooting her father, Leon Wilson Jr., six times at his Proctor Drive home.

On three separate occasions at Food Lion, Kathy Miller passed checks for $89.81, $115.73 and $109.11 from her father’s account, Leigh Ann Stubbs, check recovery clerk for Food Lion, testified Tuesday.

The jurors stood crowded together to view the videotape of transactions done on Oct. 17, 18 and 19, 1998. She passed all three checks at Food Lion No. 1 on Mahaley Avenue.

District Attorney Bill Kenerly called other business and banking officials to testify that Kathy Miller stole and forged checks from her father’s account while Wilson spent the weekend in Daytona, Fla., at NASCAR races.

With the testimony, a more definitive picture emerged of Leon Wilson’s last day alive, Oct. 21, 1998.

Lisa Painter, a teller at F&M Bank on Statesville Boulevard, said Leon Wilson was a regular customer. Though Wilson usually used the drive-through, Painter said, he came into the office on Oct. 21, 1998, with a problem.

“He said that he had been out of town on a trip … and he called our 24-hour checking account information…and there had been some discrepancies,” Painter said.

Surveillance photos showed Wilson at the bank at 9:12 a.m. to discuss his account. Wilson wanted to put a stop payment on five checks that were posted Oct. 20, 1998, but Wilson’s only options were “either pay for the checks — to make those checks good — or sign an affidavit that those checks were forged.”

And that meant pressing charges against the person who forged them.

He returned to the bank at 11:01, according to surveillance photos, to compare a note Kathy Miller left him to the signature on the forged checks.

“You read the signature on that and see if you think it’s the same,” Leon Wilson told Bonnie Barrow, branch office manager.

When she called Leon Wilson to tell him she had gotten copies of the checks, Wilson asked to whom they were made payable. “The first was Kathy Miller. Do you know a Kathy Miller?” Barrow asked Wilson.

“That’s my daughter,” Wilson said, according to Barrow’s testimony.

“He was just kind of in disbelief … He said he gave her money in the past when they were going to sell their home to get them through, and they were going to pay him back and they never did,” Barrow testified. “He could not afford to pay the checks.”

So Leon Wilson had to sign affidavits of forged instruments for five checks — two written to Kathy Miller for a total of $1,500.

Barrow said she asked Wilson if he was going to confront his daughter again about the checks.

At the time, Kathy Miller worked at North Hills Christian School as an assistant computer teacher.

“If she (Kathy Wilson) would have just asked him for money, (he said that) he would have gave her some,” Painter testified. “He showed concern and wanted to know what was going to happen to her (Miller) … He seemed very disappointed, I guess like he was between a rock and a hard place.”

Witnesses also testified that Kathy Miller wrote other checks on her father’s account, including:

• A $9.54 check to Dollar Tree. The cashier wrote a birthdate of Feb. 7, 1965, on the check to verify who was writing it. Leon Wilson was born on Feb. 13, 1940.
• A $133.11 check to Kmart on Oct. 19, 1998. The cashier wrote a driver’s license number on the front of the check to validate who was passing the check. That number was different from Leon Wilson’s license number, printed on the check.

When Karen Owen, customer service representative at First Citizen’s Bank, pulled up Miller’s account on Oct. 22, 1998, she saw a balance of $1,400. Since the checks in question totaled $1,500, the bank froze Miller’s account.

Ironically, as Karen Owen and another bank official were discussing the problems with the Miller account, Kathy Miller pulled up to the drive-through window and requested a blank, counter check because she locked her purse and checkbook in her trunk.

Teller Jane Hunsucker testified that Miller, whom she recognized as a regular customer, filled out the counter check for $100, but Hunsucker overheard Owen talking about the account and asked Owen about the problem.

Hunsucker then told Miller she couldn’t cash the check. “She asked why I couldn’t, and I told her there was a hold being placed on her account,” Hunsucker said.

Later that afternoon, Kenneth Miller called Karen Owen at First Citizens Bank and asked about the account. Owen said Kenneth Miller was concerned about not being able to access his paycheck which was directly deposited that day.

“I don’t understand. What are you saying?” Kenneth Miller asked Owen.

She proceeded to explain that two checks in a $1,603.16 deposit were being returned because of the forgery complaint.

“What type of checks? Whose check is it?” Kenneth Miller asked her. She told him that a Mr. Wilson wrote the checks. “Mr. Wilson? Leon Wilson? Leon Wilson in Salisbury? There’s a problem here,” Owen said Kenneth Miller told her.

Owen also testified that in two years, the Millers had 133 checks returned for insufficient funds. The bank charged the Miller $3,180 in bad-check fees. In the same two years, 1997 and 1998, the Millers stopped payment on 12 checks costing $235.

Though the prosecution is building a case of a financial dispute between Miller and her father, defense attorney James Davis pointed out, “There seemed to be a little bit of money there all the time” in the Miller’s account.

In 1997 and ’98, the balance ranged from a high of $3,695.42 to a point where it was overdrawn by $12.78, Davis said.

He asked Owen how many months in the past two years the Miller’s had more than six checks returned on their account. She read: March 1997, 6; June 1997, 7; July 1997, 10; August 1997, 6; September 1997, 12; October 1997, 3; November 1997, 6; and December 1997, 15.