Couple kept child’s starved corpse in U-Haul for months to ‘spend more time with her’

SPOKANE, Wash. (WKRC) – A woman and her boyfriend abused and starved her adopted daughter to death, then kept her corpse in a U-Haul for three months so they could “spend more time with her.”

Mandie Miller, 36, and her boyfriend, 31-year-old Aleksander Kurmoyarov, gained attention from law enforcement in December 2022 when the couple went to a funeral home to request a burial for Miller’s deceased adopted 8-year-old daughter, who was also her biological niece, as reported by Law&Crime. When the couple could not provide official documentation of the child’s death, the funeral home employees contacted police. Investigators soon realized that the child had died significantly earlier than the couple indicated.

Authorities eventually determined that the child died in September 2022, and that the couple had continued living with her body inside of their home for months so they could “spend more time with her,” according to the Mitchell Police Department. The couple rented a U-Haul in December 2022 and placed the 8-year-old’s corpse in a coffin and into the trailer, then drove from Spokane, Washington to Mitchell, South Dakota, where the interaction at the funeral home occurred.

After opening an investigation into the child’s death, authorities learned that Miller and Kurmoyarov had been abusing the child, eventually leading to her death.

“[Miller] restrained her for hours upon hours, day after day,” Spokane County deputy prosecutor Emily Sullivan said, per KREM. “Unbeknownst to them, their home camera system recorded them assaulting Meela, and unbeknownst to them, their home camera system recorded them tying her to a car seat with zip ties to restrain her. The facts before this court are undisputed. They did assault her, they did starve her, they did restrain her, they did torture her, and they did kill her.”

Miller was sentenced to 32 years and 4 months in prison on February 6 after pleading guilty to homicide by abuse, second-degree assault of a child, and two counts of unlawful imprisonment. Many of her charges also had a domestic violence enhancement, according to the Spokane County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.

Kurmoyarov pled guilty to murder, assault, and unlawful imprisonment charges as part of a plea deal, but had not yet been sentenced as of Miller’s sentencing.