Crook Chapel Cemetery

Elmer David Bruner was born on January 18, 1918 to parents E. A. Bruner and Dorothy Shupe and was one of six children the couple had. Bruner's parents were both blind - his father having lost his eyesight in a childhood accident and his mother being born without sight. With both parents unable to obtain or maintain steady work, Bruner and his siblings suffered greatly at the hands of poverty. Elmer Bruner writes a short autobiography in one of the appeals he made in Moundsville Prison, following the death of Ruby Miller, in which he states that in order to protect himself and his siblings from starvation and freezing temperatures, he would often steal food stuffs from iceboxes on porches and clothing left out to dry on clotheslines.

Stealing to provide for himself and his siblings led Elmer Bruner down the path of juvenile delinquency and harsher crimes, landing him in the West Virginia Industrial Home for Boys (1891-1983) on numerous occasions. In 1930, at the age of twelve, Bruner and one of his brothers, Charles, were sentenced to three years in the institution - but for reasons unknown, Bruner was held there for an additional two years and was not released until 1935.

From here, Bruner's life is catalogued by various stents in and out of Moundsville Prison for various charges ranging from burglary, breaking and entering, and writing fraudulent checks. Elmer and Charles Bruner were again arrested in 1939 under the charge of forgery - Elmer managing to serve only nine of his thirty sentenced years, receiving an early release based on his model behavior as a prisoner. Bruner was out on parole in 1948. After gaining a reputation as a habitual criminal, Elmer Bruner was consistently caught in a cycle of being arrested for crimes he had no involvement in, only what law enforcements expected to have been committed by him. This continuous mistreatment by the law in Bruner's eyes made him develop an outright hatred for police officials.

After another arrest in 1948 for the charge of breaking and entering, Bruner was paroled in 1955 after serving another seven years in Moundsville Prison. The following year, in 1956, Bruner married a woman named Norma "Dolly" Roberts and began his work as a handyman and general laborer for people around Huntington, West Virginia. It is also presumably during this time that he began working near the home of Ruby Miller.

The home of Ruby and John Miller is located at 2021 Washington Boulevard, where it overlooks the road from a hidden driveway off to the right on an adjacent street, Kennon Lane. Elmer Bruner, in his appeals, honestly confesses to going to the Miller home with the intent to rob it of what valuables he could hastily obtain. Having cut the screen of a first-floor window, Bruner crept into the house and began to hurriedly search through drawers and cabinets for jewelry and cash. By this time, around 11 am on May 27, 1957, Ruby Miller returned home from her part-time work at her husband's contracting company to find that her home had been broken into. Upon opening the downstairs guestroom door, with shotgun in-hand, Mrs. Miller confronted the man in her home. After wrestling the gun away from Ruby Miller, Bruner threw it to the floor and then began to beat her with the claw hammer he was armed with. Bruner makes mention in his appeals that he only intended to knock Mrs. Miller unconscious, not murder her, but who is to say if this were truthful on his part.

Following his apprehension by the Huntington Police Department, Elmer Bruner was tried and sentenced for the murder of Ruby Miller some two weeks following the day of the murder. Bruner's original execution dated was scheduled for May 27, 1959 but, seeing as that day fell upon Good Friday, then West Virginia Governor Cecil Underwood pushed the date to April 3, 1959. On that day, Elmer David Bruner was executed by electrocution before an audience of eighteen witnesses as he sat down in Moundsville Prison's electric chair, dubbed "Old Sparky". Bruner's body was transported from the prison back to his hometown of Huntington, being interred in the Crook Chapel Cemetery on April 6, 1959. Searches for the headstone of Elmer Bruner have proved fruitless, leaving the sad conclusion that even after sixty-one years, Bruner's family could not afford or simply forgot where he was buried to purchase him a grave marker.

Brunner, Elmer. Appeals written from 1957 to 1959. West Virginia State Archives. Accessed April 27, 2020.

Find a Grave, memorial page for Elmer David Bruner (18 Jan 1918-3 Apr 1959). Find a Grave Memorial no. 139933413. Crook Chapel Cemetery, Huntington, Cabell County, West Virginia, USA.

Platania, Joseph. Crimes of the 20th Century - Part III, Huntington Quarterly. Accessed September 30th 2020. https://www.huntingtonquarterly.com/articles/issue33/crimes20thcentury.html.