Man Receives Life Term for Killing 1 of His 2 Wives : Courts: Former Valley civic leader David R. Miller is sentenced in Florida. The murder occurred during a confrontation over his double life.

A former San Fernando Valley civic leader who was married to two women simultaneously has been sentenced to life in prison in Florida for murdering his wife there during a confrontation over his double life.

David R. Miller, 42, former president of the Granada Hills Chamber of Commerce and founder of the San Fernando Valley Leadership Foundation, must serve 25 years in prison before he is eligible for parole, said Joan Shannon of the Seminole County state attorney’s office.

Judge Newman Brock also sentenced Miller to 15 years probation that would begin upon his parole date, and to a year in prison on a battery charge, Shannon said.

At the sentencing hearing in Sanford, Fla., relatives of Jayne Miller testified about the effect of her death on their lives, Shannon said.

On Dec. 17, a jury took three hours to find Miller guilty of the Sept. 15, 1991, shooting death of his 33-year-old wife in the parking lot of a storage facility outside Orlando.

During the weeklong trial, witnesses testified that Miller’s wife of seven months had grown suspicious and hired a private investigator who tracked down his other wife, Dorothy Miller, in Pennsylvania.

When David Miller married Jayne in 1991 he had been married to Dorothy Miller for six years, had run a Granada Hills printing business and had become a high-profile local leader. Miller moved with Dorothy in 1989 to Orlando, but then asked her to live in Pennsylvania with family members.

Meanwhile, he secretly continued living in California, where he met and married Jayne. The couple then moved to Sanford, a suburb of Orlando.

At the time of her death, Jayne and David Miller were separated because of Miller’s mental abuse and death threats. On the day she was shot, she had called Miller and told him she was removing his property from a storage unit they shared.

Jayne Miller had hoped to leave before he arrived, but ran into Miller in the parking lot of the storage facility, a witness testified. Other witnesses, including two cabdrivers whom Miller had called to help him remove his belongings, testified that the couple had a brief argument and that Miller then hit his wife in the face.

His wife got back into her car and rolled up the windows. Meanwhile, Miller pulled out a nine-millimeter pistol and fired six times through the driver’s side window, walked to the passenger’s side and fired once more.

Police said Jayne Miller was shot five times in the chest and head.

The cabdrivers held Miller and the gun until police arrived.

Miller’s attorney had argued that Miller was temporarily insane when he killed his wife, having become distraught and suicidal after learning that his two wives knew about his double life.

Business associates in the Valley said Miller’s consulting and printing firm was collapsing when he moved to Florida.

Dorothy Miller said in an interview after the killing that for years she had believed her husband’s story that he was a CIA agent, that the print shop was a front, and that his long absences were because of dangerous missions abroad.

“I’m very, very happy this is all over,” Dorothy Miller said Thursday in a telephone interview from Pennsylvania. “I’m glad he got life. . . . Now I want to get on with my own life here.”