I Will Never Call Her Again': Daughter of Missing Indiana Woman Discovered 42 Years Later Has No Plans for a Happy Reunion

After more than 40 years of thinking her mother was dead, Tammy Miller got the surprise of her life this week when she found out her that her mother was actually alive and living under a new name 1,200 miles away.

But her story doesn't have a fairytale ending and there are no plans for a joyous, tearful reunion. "I'm angry," Miller, 45, tells PEOPLE in her first extensive interview. "This isn't going to be one of those happy, made-for-TV movies."

Miller's mother, Lula Ann Gillespie-Miller, left her Laurel, Indiana, home in 1974 at the age of 28, leaving behind Tammy and her other three small children – another girl and two boys. The family received a letter from Gillespie-Miller in 1975 postmarked from Richmond, Indiana, but didn't hear from her again and believed she was long dead, Miller says, assuming that her body was one discovered in 1975 in Richmond.

The case of the unidentified woman in Richmond had long grown cold when police revived it in 2014, according to Indiana State Police. While investigating that case, they eventually learned on Thursday that Gillespie-Miller, 69, was in fact living in Texas under a different name, police say.



"I could have fell out of my chair," Miller says. "I was shocked."




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"I will never call her again"
Miller says she called her mother on Friday, but the woman said she couldn't talk. "It was less than a two minute conversation," Miller says. "She said, 'I'll call you when I'm able to talk,' " but it's a call Miller doesn't think will happen. "I will never call her again," Miller said. "It felt like being rejected all over again."

Miller says she's still processing a range of emotions after thinking for decades that her mother was dead, but now realizing that her mother made a decision to disappear. "It's almost like going through the grieving process again," Miller says. "I'm glad she's alive, but it hurts emotionally knowing this was her choice."


Grandmother did an "awesome" job raising the kids
According to Miller, her mother led a troubled life, including alleged involvement with alcohol, dealing with the death of her husband in 1969 in a car accident and an alleged violent assault and rape in 1974. "She really wasn't taking care of us kids that well," Miller said. In 1971, Gillespie-Miller turned over their care, says Miller, who grew up in Indiana with her half-siblings, a sister, now 50, and two brothers, now 49 and 47.

They were raised by a woman she calls "Grandma Catherine," whose son Joseph was the father of the three older kids and who died in 1969, says Miller, who claimed she is the product of an affair her mother had with a married man.






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"My grandmother who raised me did an awesome job," Miller says. "She never went one day without letting us kids know she loved us."

Miller says she doesn't know why her mother left in 1974. "I don't know what mother would do that," Miller says. "I would walk through fire for my kids."

But Miller does give her credit for leaving the kids in good hands. "She did one thing right, that was giving us to our grandma," Miller says. "That was the best decision she ever made."

When police knocked on her door, Gillespie-Miller didn't know why they were there, according to her daughter. "She told them, 'Why would anybody be looking for me? I've been living here for the past 20 years,' " Miller says. Gillespie-Miller could not be reached by PEOPLE for comment.






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"I'm going to have a wonderful life"
Miller is now a divorced mother of three children – ages 26, 23 and 20 – and she raised a fourth child, 21, with her long-time boyfriend. She works in Indiana as an administrative assistant for a company that provides speech, occupational and other therapies to children.

Miller said she feels a sense of relief knowing that she now has at least some answers about her mother. "I'm going to have a wonderful life," she says. "I know it wasn't my fault. It was her loss."

human rights questions on his trip to Cuba Obama promises to raise

President Obama on Thursday promised to raise human rights concerns when he makes a legacy-defining visit to Cuba in March, as the White House tried to beat back Republican charges that the trip will hand an important symbolic victory to the authoritarian government in Havana.

“We still have differences with the Cuban government that I will raise directly. America will always stand for human rights around the world,” the White House announced on Obama’s official Twitter feed.

Obama had told Yahoo News in an exclusive interview in December that he could not imagine visiting Cuba without meeting face-to-face with advocates for political change, dissidents who experience regular harassment or worse from the authoritarian government in Havana.

“If I go on a visit, then part of the deal is that I get to talk to everybody,” Obama said at the time. “I’ve made very clear in my conversations directly with President [Raul] Castro that we would continue to reach out to those who want to broaden the scope for, you know, free expression inside of Cuba.”

Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters that the president would meet with dissidents during the March 21-22 trip, the first by a sitting American president since Calvin Coolidge steamed the 90 miles separating Florida and Cuba aboard a battleship. Rhodes said the administration had already warned the Castro regime that Obama would meet with some of its domestic critics.

“That doesn’t mean that we’re seeking to overthrow the Cuban government,” Rhodes said of the planned meetings. “It means that we’re seeking to support basic universal values that we would care about in any country.”

Rhodes acknowledged a deeply worrisome spike in arrests and harassment of dissidents and journalists in Cuba over the past year and promised “that’s an issue that we’ll be raising directly with the Cuban government.”

Magnets, including one showing an image of President Obama smelling a cigar, for sale at a tourist shop in Havana. (Photo: Ramon Espinosa/AP)Republicans denounced the planned trip. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, one of the two Cuban-Americans seeking the GOP’s presidential nomination in 2016, wrote a letter to Obama condemning it as “disastrous,” “dangerous” and “a mistake,” and pushed the president to cancel his announced visit.

Duper Tuesday-What to watch for on Super

Some newscasts are calling today Super Tuesday, and your memory isn’t playing tricks on you if you’re thinking, Didn’t we just have one of those? Today, when voters go to the polls in five big states — Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri and North Carolina — marks the second crucial, all-important, potentially decisive primary day in two weeks. But this time, one, or potentially both, nominations could be all but sealed by the end of the night.

As usual, all eyes will be on Donald Trump, because, really, who can look away? The edgy rage and sporadic violence that has characterized his rallies over the past week won’t be in evidence when he takes the podium tonight at his Palm Beach resort club, Mar-a-Lago. The audiences at his victory parties-cum-press conferences are limited to supporters and the media, and the events typically find the candidate on his best behavior. But by the end of the evening, if he wins all five states — and polls say it’s possible — he will have put away two of his three remaining rivals, and substantially widened his lead over the one left standing.

On the Democratic side, the nomination is, and almost surely will still be tomorrow, Hillary Clinton’s to lose. But following her startling defeat in Michigan last week, Clinton could, in fact, lose. Today’s voting should give an indication of whether Sanders is strong enough to win.

Here are some things to watch for as the results come in:

Photos: APTHE REPUBLICANS

The question is into whose hands the tattered banner of Not-Trump will fall. Marco Rubio, who until a few weeks ago was widely considered Trump’s most plausible challenger, is now fighting for his life in his home state of Florida, where Trump has led in every poll taken since last July — most recently by around 20 points. (Rubio has won just three contests, including, on Saturday, the Washington, D.C., Republican caucus, virtually the definition of a Pyrrhic victory.)

Polls, of course, can be wrong — as they were, spectacularly, in Michigan, where Sanders eked out a 1.5 percent margin after surveys taken just days before the vote showed him trailing by as much as 27 points. More promisingly, in Virginia, Rubio managed in two days to come from 15 points down in the polling to within three points of Trump. But Virginia and Michigan were seeing those candidates for the first time; Rubio has been in Florida politics since the late 1990s and is certainly a known quantity to Florida voters.

Sen. Marco Rubio addresses a campaign rally at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Monday. (Photo: Paul Sancya/AP)

for both parties in the SCOTUS fight Opportunities, and risks

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is leading his fellow senators against confirming President Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court before the November election. (Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP)Republicans and Democrats are already using the Supreme Court vacancy created by Antonin Scalia’s death Saturday as a political fundraising tool, entrenching partisan narratives that have defined both parties since President Obama took office and revealing dueling priorities for the 2016 elections.Democrats are arguing that the immediate, outright GOP commitment to refuse even to consider an Obama nomination — not just block it on the floor of the Senate — is another example of the obstructionism that has characterized the Republican majority in the Senate. Feeling more confident about its chances of retaining the White House, the Democratic Party’s response has been largely driven by the goal of winning back the Senate majority it lost in 2014.

For Republicans, the hardline stance against any potential nominee reflects the interests of leading presidential candidates in energizing the party’s base by turning the election into a referendum on Obama. But there are risks at the Senate level that such a tactic could backfire in moderate or Democratic-leaning states where those same frontrunners are not especially popular, dragging down the rest of the Republican ticket. In 2016, Republicans will be defending 24 seats in the Senate, including seven in states Obama won twice, and congressional GOP leaders have seen internal polling suggesting the Senate majority could be at risk if frontrunners Donald Trump or Ted Cruz become the party’s nominee.

After Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced he would not cooperate in filling the Supreme Court vacancy, the Senate Majority PAC — the super-PAC created in 2011 by allies of top Senate Democrat Harry Reid to raise unlimited money for Democratic candidates — claimed that the Republican leader had made his entire caucus “more vulnerable.”

“Mitch McConnell’s partisan obstructionism isn’t just unprecedented, but it’s indefensible. His refusal to do his job undermines our country’s judicial system, and today he just made his entire caucus that much more vulnerable this November, especially considering voters are already fed up with dysfunction in Washington,” a spokesman for the group said. “So much for all that rhetoric about how the ‘majority is working’ under Republican control.”

Nearly all of the vulnerable Republican senators up in 2016 have lined up behind McConnell’s strategy: Rob Portman of Ohio, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. The one notable exception is Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, who assumed Obama’s Senate seat in 2010 and is widely considered the most endangered Republican senator of the cycle. 

The GOP senators who are backing McConnell’s stance are counting on a couple of as yet unproven premises: first, that the number of conservative voters in their states who will be energized by the confrontation will outweigh the moderates or independents who may be alienated by it, and second, that they will all win their races and a Republican Senate will get to confirm a nominee in 2017. The most significant downside to blocking Obama now is the possibility that Democrats would win both the White House and the Senate and ultimately confirm a more liberal nominee than Obama is likely to choose in the present circumstances.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., needs to pivot quickly from his failed presidential campaign to his Senate reelection bid and is using the Supreme Court battle to do it. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP)Meanwhile, conservatives and anti-establishment Republicans see an opening for themselves too. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who suspended his presidential campaign to focus on Senate reelection in November, has been the quickest in using the Supreme Court issue to campaign. He has leveraged the vacancy as a way to turn his presidential donor list into a source of funds for his Senate campaign. He’s sent out two fundraising emails since Scalia died, with subject lines of “I plan to lead” and “One heck of a fight,” respectively, to focus on his role in the Senate in blocking the nomination of a justice of Obama’s choosing.

the Single Dumbest Thing She's Ever Said Hillary's Line About the Reagans Today Was

Bernie Sanders Said Something We Weren't Ready to Hear Last Night

Check Out David Beckham's Quarter-Million Dollar Watch

'Dog Whisperer' Cesar Millan Is Being Investigated for Animal Cruelty

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog's Favourite Living Canadian)

It seems like it was only Thursday night when we heard how presidential He, Trump was beginning to look, and how all of the ruckus he brings along with him really is the fault of the president, or an expression of the justified anger of the embattled white working class, or some such other phantom scapegoat.

Yeah, maybe not so much.

It is time for reasonable liberals to stop making excuses for this barbarism. No, I don't have to understand the frustration these people are feeling. Or, more to the point, I can understand the frustration, but I don't have to understand this kind of expression of it, which is only going to get worse as this year goes on. TPP is an awful trade deal that I hope never makes it through the Congress. But it's not an excuse to call women "whores" and take swings at people who just are standing there. I can understand the economic conditions that led to the rise of Hitler, but those conditions exist in many places at that time but in only one place did they lead to Auschwitz.

"These are people that punch. People that are violent people," Trump said. "The particular one where I said 'I'd like to bang him,' that was a very vicious—a guy who was swinging, very loud, and then started swinging at the audience." He continued: "You know what? The audience swung back. And I thought it was very, very appropriate. He was swinging. He was hitting people. And the audience hit back. And that's what we need a little bit more of."

It is quite simple. Sanders gives his audience opponents to defeat. Trump gives his audience enemies to hate. Sooner or later, someone's going to get seriously hurt (or worse) at a Trump rally. That person will be blamed for his or her own injury, or worse. It will be said they had it coming to them. And we will cross another line that we never noticed was there, and there will be no going back again.

CNN is running this series about tumultuous presidential elections of the past, and it's produced by Kevin Spacey, so that's a good thing. But, alas, spurious balance dumps dung in the well even here. The first episode concerned the 1960 election, and there was the usual recounting of all the deceased Chicagoans who helped put JFK into the White House. But then the program veered into the conventionally anesthetic account of how noble Richard Nixon put his own ambitions aside for the good of the country and declined to contest the election. (We heard a lot of this drivel during the extended denouement in 2000.) The problem, of course, is that any attempt to rehabilitate Nixon, who remains history's yard waste, is doomed to fail. Rather typically, he took up a squatter's residence on the high ground while his operatives—particularly a guy named Earl Mazo—went digging around for evidence of Democratic chicanery with which they could challenge the election. The Republican party screamed for recounts in 11 states. A Nixon Recount Committee sprang up in Chicago. Actual recounts were conducted. He, of course, wrapped himself in clouds of counterfeit virtue while all this was being done on his behalf, and gladly accepted an ersatz martyrdom thereafter.

Worse, at the end of the CNN episode, Larry Sabato attempted to make the familiar case that losing in 1960 had led Nixon directly to the crimes of Watergate. Leaving aside the fact that Nixon was natively criminal all on his own, it is far more likely that what led to his sweet-tooth for bugging was the knowledge that LBJ, that crafty old bastard, had bugged Nixon's campaign plane in 1968 and discovered that Nixon and his people were committing outright treason by monkeying with the Paris Peace Talks regarding Vietnam. That right there, folks, is the real Nixon. CNN should have known a lot better than this.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Egyptian Fantasy" (Allen Toussaint): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here's a one-man UFO that our Navy designed, probably by reverse engineering a toy popular with alien children. This is what the Venusians have for soapbox derby, I think.

National Review, America's flagship journal of white supremacy, has endorsed Tailgunner Ted Cruz for president, and it has done so while apparently placing its nose in a vice.

We are well aware that a lot of Republicans, and even some conservatives, dislike the senator and even find him unlikable. So far, conservative voters seem to like him just fine. We do not wish to adjudicate all the conflicts between Cruz's Senate colleagues and him. He has sometimes made tactical errors, in our judgment; but conflicts have also arisen because his colleagues have lacked direction, clarity, and urgency. In any case, these conflicts pale into insignificance in light of Republicans' shared interest in winning in November and governing successfully thereafter.

Cruz '16: Yeah, He's a Creep But He's Not That Creep.

The well-oiled Rubio campaign machine gets its strategery on.

"John Kasich is the only one who can beat Donald Trump in Ohio," Rubio said. "If a voter in Ohio is motivated by stopping Donald Trump, I suspect that's the only choice they can make."

The Kasich camp seems unimpressed by this act of unselfishness.

Kasich spox Rob Nichols on Rubio news: "We were going to win in OH without his help, just as he's going to lose in FL w/o ours."

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A mark, that will surely leave.

What Hillary Rodham Clinton said about the Reagans and AIDS is actually worse history than anything said at the GOP debate Thursday night and probably the single dumbest thing she's ever said in public. Do better, HRC. Fast.

(She has since walked things back on Twitter):

Is it a good day for dinosaur news? It's always a good day for dinosaur news!

You see, chickens have a detached and diminished fibula. It's the tiny pin-like (not a coincidence: fibula is Latin for pin) bone we hate in chicken legs. Suppressing one of the genes responsible for the differences between raptors and chickens—in this case, it's a gene called Indian Hedgehog which is important to bone development—resulted in chickens that develop a full-length, tubular fibula connected at the ankle.  They ended up with chickens possessed of bone structure that matches the lower leg anatomy of a raptor.

Chickens with dinosaur legs? Genes with cute names like new Crayola colors? There is no way this ends well. Dinosaurs lived then to make us happy now, not to contribute boneless chicken legs to our compendium of cheap Chinese cuisine.

This week's Top Commenter Of The Week goes to Top Commenter Glenn Hendricks who, while commenting on the guy who shot the preacher because he thinks many famous people are hypersexual amphibian-humanoid Martians, and trying to define "hypersexual" for a fellow Top Commenter, contributed this bit of genuine frontier gibberish:

Do you remember the guy in High School, the one we'd say would hump a pile of firewood if he thought there was a snake in it? Worse than that guy.

I had never heard that one. Alligators and drained swamps, yes. Motherfcking snakes in the motherfcking firewood? New one on me. You are hereby awarded 81.73 Beckhams for the pure disgusting poetry of it.

Staying home this time to watch the festivities on the electric teevee machine. Could be the end of Young Marco. Be well and play nice, ya bastid. Stay above the snakeline, or I'm replacing all your fibulas with Twizzlers because science!

Ciara and Russell Wilson Are Engaged

They're making it official!
Ciara and Russell Wilson are engaged. The Seattle Seahawks quarterback broke the news on his Instagram page, where he shared a video of his new fiancée wearing a huge, gorgeous diamond ring. "She said yes! Yeah!" he says in the video. "Making this thing happen. My baby."
"Yay! I'm so excited," Ciara adds. "God is so good."
In addition to their emotion video, Wilson penned a heartfelt caption. "She said Yes!!! Since Day 1 I knew you were the one," he wrote. "No Greater feeling... #TrueLove @Ciara"
The "1, 2 Step" songstress also tweeted the exciting announcement. "God Is Good! Grateful For You @DangRussWilson. You Are Heaven Sent. I'm Looking Forward To Spending Forever With You."
This happy couple has been gushing about each other from day one (like he wrote!) and couldn't be any cuter. Shortly before Valentine's Day Ciara dished to E! News that she wasn't pressuring him for a ring but she definitely wouldn't turn one down!

PHOTOS: Ciara and Russell Wilson's cutest moments

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"You have to ask the guy that," she said when asked if an engagement was in their future, but but noted, "Let me tell you, no pressure. One day at a time."
Regardless, Ciara couldn't help but swoon about her man, whether he's on the field or off. "He inspires me with how driven he is and how committed he is to what he does. He's also so much fun. We have a good time both in-season and off-season, of course off-season we get to do a little more fun things," she continued. "More date nights. But, he's the same guy no matter what day of the year, no matter what time of the day."
Aw!
These two have shown that they are each other's priorities. Ciara introduced her now-fiancé to her son, Future Jr., with whom he has become very close. The cute trio made their way to Dodgers Stadium just a couple of weeks ago where Russell and Future Jr. wore matching snapbacks.

Instagram

Russell and Ciara began dating in April 2015 after the sparked romance rumors after being spotted at several outings together, including the White House Correspondents Dinner.
Congratulations to the happy couple!

Look All Grown Up at Their First State Dinner Malia and Sasha Obama

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The First Daughters are all grown up! Malia and Sasha Obama attended their first White House State Dinner on Thursday night and looked nothing short of regal. The girls have matured in front of the nation's eyes and we’re not the only ones getting nostalgic.
People reports that in his opening remarks, President Obama got emotional when talking about his "best friend" Malia’s impending departure for college. “When I first elected to this office, Malia was just 10 and Sasha was 7. And they grow up too fast. Now Malia is going off to college … And I’m starting to choke up,” POTUS said.
PHOTOS: See Malia Obama's Style Evolution
One look at the stylish young women could make any regular citizen emotional too. Malia was stunning in a strapless Naeem Khan gown with a sweetheart neckline and styled her long hair into loose waves. Sasha looked on-trend in a high-neckline gown from the same designer, double braids, and a ribbon choker. Both girls kept their makeup looking natural and opted for swipes of winged eyeliner and a nude lip.
PHOTOS: Michelle Obama's Best Looks Ever
We’re not the only ones who are impressed by the elegant ladies: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau praised the president and First Lady Michelle Obama’s daughters for how gracefully they grew up in the public eye. “I admire you very much, both of you, for your extraordinary strength and your grade, through what is a remarkable childhood and young adulthood that will give you extraordinary strength and wisdom beyond your years for the rest of your life,” he said in his remarks.
Not tearing up yet? This trip down memory lane through Malia’s style evolution will make sure there’s not a dry eye in sight.