In Part One, I introduced you to the extraordinary tale of Goliath, the once-in-a-lifetime whitetail buck that was stolen from Rod Miller in the fall of 1999.
“Anytime someone would ask me about Goliath, I’d respond, I’ll hunt that dirty bugger down until the day I die,’” Miller told exploreClarion.com.
The theft of his monster buck was mostly personal for the deer farmer with a stellar reputation in the industry. But, his business had been hurt, too.
Goliath was a deer without peer at a time when farmers were using artificial insemination to selectively breed the very best traits of the species. One straw of semen for a good buck was selling for up to $10,000.00. One straw could fertilize two or three does. Each time the semen was harvested, a breeder would get 20 to 70 straws. That meant Goliath was worth $200,000.00 to $2.1MM a season in semen sales alone.
Goliath was stolen in 1999 and wasn’t found until 2003. So, somewhere between $800,000.00 and $8MM was taken from Rod Miller.
With huge amounts of money on the line, it’s no wonder Miller was so passionate about finding the person responsible for Goliath’s theft.
Jeff Spence visited Miller’s farm in early October 1999, just two weeks before Miller found Goliath’s pen empty. He brought his daughter, Caitlin, along with him.
Caitlin Spence, along with her dad and mom, Karen Spence, are being held in the Tippah County, Mississippi Jail on suspicion of murdering her boyfriend.
Caitlin, Jeffrey, and Karen Spence (inlay) are charged with murdering Kirby Carpenter.
Upon viewing Goliath for the first time, Miller says Spence said something strange, especially in front of his daughter.
“To own a deer like that, it would take my firstborn.”
Miller thought, “Why would you say something like that with your daughter standing right there?”
Looking back, Spence was casing Miller’s farm, planning the heist.
“He wanted to see what pen Goliath was in, and I made it easy for him,” Miller said.
Whitetail deer breeders are a small community, and once the news that Goliath was stolen got out, people were on the lookout for the buck. Those responsible surely wouldn’t kill the buck. His value was in breeding.
“A lot of people were trying to locate Goliath. Everybody was just trying to help,” Miller explained.
One time, Miller was called out to a scene on Interstate 80 where a large buck had been struck by a car. Witnesses on the scene thought it could be Goliath. Miller arrived, and to his relief, it wasn’t his deer.
Rodney Miller in front of Goliath’s mount inside the RDM Goliath Hunting Lodge.
Three years passed, and Miller found himself at a Pennsylvania deer breeder auction. After the event, he stayed behind to help clean up when he was approached by Jeff Spence.
“Do you know anything about the Goliath case?” Spence asked.
Uncharacteristically, Miller replied, “It’s over. The police, the FBI don’t know anything, and it’s over. My wife told me I have to drop it and move on.”
“That evening, I think I had a lot of help from up above,” Miller said.
Two weeks later, a friend of Miller’s–who is also a deer breeder–saw a photo posted on Jeff Spence’s website that depicted the side view of a very large whitetail buck. It struck him as odd that the photo would be so closely cropped to its subject when it was obvious the deer was a monster. Since it was a huge buck—probably the biggest deer out there—why wouldn’t Spence show multiple angles of the deer so everybody could see what he had? It threw up red flags.
The friend called Miller and asked if he knew how to get to Spence’s farm in Reynoldsville. He and a few others were going to be making the rounds looking for breeders for their herds, he said, and they thought they’d go out to Spence’s farm. Miller provided him with directions, wondering why he’d want to visit that farm. Jeff Spence hadn’t had a good deer in his life.
A few days later, the four men showed up at Miller’s farm, acting very excited, asking for pie and ice cream. They produced a full-page photograph of a deer they spotted on Spence’s property.
“I didn’t look at the antlers. I went to the face. I knew that deer. The antlers changed over the years, but the face was Goliath’s,” Miller said. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. I don’t just go to your place and say ‘That’s my deer’ and take it.”
Miller hired an attorney to help him reclaim the buck, but time was working against him.
Word reached Miller that somebody had already put money down on Goliath. Spence had sold him to be shot on a hunting ranch. Realizing that the buck was special and shouldn’t just be killed, the buyer raised money to purchase Goliath as a breeding buck. The deal was about to be completed.
“I told my lawyer, ‘We’ve got to move on this.’”
I’ll tell you what happened next in Part Three.
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