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Draper • A North Ogden man charged with the 2011 murder of his teenage babysitter appeared Tuesday before the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole on some previous crimes: forgery and credit card fraud.
Eric Millerberg was charged last year in 2nd District Court with first-degree felony child abuse homicide for allegedly killing his 16-year-old baby sitter, Alexis Rasmussen, in September 2011. He is also charged with obstruction of justice, desecration of a human body and having unlawful sexual activity with a minor.
Millerberg, 38, was arrested in October 2011 and returned to the Utah State Prison on probation violations related to a 2010 forgery case.
He said during his hearing Tuesday that he committed the forgery crime because he had just been laid off from his construction job, and because of a previous stint in prison, he had a hard time finding work.
During the hearing, Millerberg also acknowledged he had two prison violations: possessing "brew" and getting a tattoo in prison.
Millerberg had entered into the prison with "Dea" — his estranged wife's name — tattooed on his neck. By the time of his April 2012 preliminary hearing, his neck was inked with extra letters, and now reads "Death."
"It was just to cover something up," Millerberg told parole hearing officer Andy Taylor, who jokingly asked Millerberg how he could fit another tattoo on his body, which is already heavily inked.
Millerberg has also been in two altercations — including being stabbed about 25 times by his cellmate in July — since he entered the prison, Taylor said, but both were ruled to have been in self-defense.
The parole board did not make an immediate decision regarding a possible parole date.
Millerberg also said that he plans to divorce his wife, Dea Millerberg, after his February homicide trial. He plans to remarry his ex-wife, who attended his Tuesday hearing.
"Our irreconcilable differences were reconcilable after all," he told Taylor with a laugh.
Millerberg's wife, Dea Millerberg, testified last April at her husband's preliminary hearing that Eric Millerberg injected a fatal mix of heroin and methamphetamine into Rasmussen in September 2011. After Rasmussen died, the couple panicked and dumped her body in a remote part of Morgan County. Police located Rasmussen's body five weeks after she disappeared.
Dea Millerberg, 40, is charged with desecration of a human body related to the girl's death.
Twitter: @jm_miller