Business acquaintances said that until early this year Miller was heavily involved in establishing the San Fernando Valley Leadership Program, a 10-month seminar in which citizen activists and business and government officials spend one day a month learning about and discussing an issue of public importance, such as environmental health, transportation or crime.

Participants in the program, sometimes numbering as many as 30, each paid $700tuition when it was first instituted by Miller in 1987. The program, deemed a success by alumni such as Richard Alarcon, now Valley deputy for Mayor Tom Bradley, has been repeated every year since and the tuition has risen to $1,200. Inspired by its success, Miller & Associates began efforts to market the concept in other communities across the country.

Heavily involved in the program and also anticipating an increase in his company’s lobbying and business consulting clients, Miller added Ross B. Hopkins, a former public affairs manager for Lockheed Corp., to his firm in November.

But the anticipated boom went bust, Hopkins said.

“He overextended,” Hopkins said in an interview. “He counted on some contracts coming in that didn’t come in.”

Meantime, older sources of revenue – developments on which Miller had consulted – dried up as the work was finished and the contracts completed, Hopkins said. By early 1991, Miller was facing severe financial problems.

One creditor was Jacklyn Smith, owner of a Glendora firm that sells supplies to printing companies. Smith said she had given Miller, whom she had known for several years, a $17,000 loan that he repaid in January with a check that bounced. He then supplied another check from another bank, which also bounced, she said.

Smith later made a complaint to Los Angeles police, and investigators are attempting to determine if Miller committed fraud by giving her the checks knowing that they would not be covered by his banks.

Marge Russo, owner of a Reseda real-estate agency, said that she loaned Miller $6,500 for the purchase of a Palm Springs condominium, but that he also failed to pay her back. She has since filed a lien against him.

According to records with the county recorder’s office, Miller stopped making mortgage payments on his home and foreclosure proceedings had begun. Records also show his company failed to make at least $4,500 in tax payments to the state.

There were other debts as well. Hopkins said Miller stopped paying him and other employees soon after the start of the year. He said that on at least two occasions people came into the office looking for Miller and saying he owed them money.

But after the first of the year, Miller was rarely in the office to greet clients or creditors. While his financial world was crumbling, his personal life was apparently quite active.

Dorothy Miller said her husband spent the Christmas holidays in Orlando with her, but on Jan. 1 said he had to leave on a secret government assignment to South America.

But acquaintances said Miller actually flew back to his life in California. And while on the plane he met 33-year-old Jayne Maghy, a divorced mother, with whom a romance blossomed as soon as the plane touched down in Los Angeles.

According to Jodie Bowen, who describes herself as Maghy’s best friend of 10years, Miller “wined and dined” Maghy, boasting that he was an attorney worth $4million.

There were front-row seats to The Phantom of the Opera, weekends at expensive bed-and-breakfast inns in Newport Beach, dinners at formal political functions.

“He was Prince Charming,” Bowen said. “We had to go out and buy gowns for her so she could go to some of these functions with him. And he was obsessed with her. He called her every day. She was not happy with her job and thought, ‘Here is someone who can take me away from this life.’ ”

Miller and Maghy were married Feb. 16 in a Las Vegas chapel. Bowen was the witness and that weekend the new Mrs. Miller won $3,000 playing video poker, a lucky start to what would be an ill-fated marriage.

David Miller did not keep the marriage a secret. Before the wedding, he had announced the marriage plans at a Granada Hills Chamber of Commerce dinner and after taking the vows he promptly called his associates from Las Vegas.

“It had been difficult getting a hold of him,” Hopkins, his former associate, said of the period. “He was not in the office and I thought he was out trying to round up clients. Then he called and said, ‘Guess what? We’re married.’”

A group of friends and associates gathered at Miller’s office on March 1 for a small reception for the couple. Hopkins said the happiness exhibited for the Millers was tinged with somberness. Some of those toasting Miller had not been paid by him in a month.

“I felt very bad for the staff because they were having problems and here the guy was getting married,” Hopkins said.

At least one of Miller’s friends believes that some people who knew him were uneasy about his marriage because his financial problems were becoming known. There were also rumors that he was already married.

“The joke was that he wanted to marry her quick, before she found out the truth about him,” said a woman who worked with Miller on Chamber of Commerce projects. “Everybody knew he didn’t have any money. And I think some people specifically knew he was already married.”

After the marriage, Miller’s financial problems quickly escalated, according to financial records and acquaintances. Business associates and creditors said it was increasingly difficult to contact Miller and recalled that in the instances where he was seen, he often became emotionally upset. Miller alternately explained that he was facing financial crisis or said he had cancer.

Alarcon, Mayor Bradley’s Valley deputy, said that at a meeting of representatives of Valley political officeholders Miller tearfully announced that the Leadership Program would be his legacy in the Valley.

“When I asked him what was wrong, he told me he had cancer,” Alarcon said.

John Dyer, a business consultant who subcontracted with Miller to share office space with him, said that on the occasions that Miller did come to the office, his moods changed noticeably.

“I think it was obvious to everyone who saw him that his state of mind had changed – changed considerably,” Dyer said. “He would have times of anger – open outbursts. And sometimes, he was open, his friendly old self.”

Miller was finally forced to close his office April 18, Hopkins said. Faced with foreclosure and liens for unpaid debts, he and his new wife signed ownership of the Granada Hills house over to a bail bondsman named Bert Hopper on May 7, according to county records.

The mortgage foreclosure was withdrawn, but other debt holders said they never got their money. Hopper did not return repeated phone calls for comment on the house transfer.

Miller then moved his new wife to Sanford, Fla., a small town outside Orlando. Dorothy Miller said that by this time her husband had already moved her from Orlando to Belle Vernon, Pa., once again telling her that the move was required as a security precaution.

But after making the move, Dorothy Miller said her husband stopped his routine of calling her every day. He also stopped making even infrequent visits home and she had no idea where he was. She said years of building suspicion finally got to her and she began making calls.

First, she said, the CIA told her David Miller was not an employee, freelance or otherwise. Next, calls to Chamber of Commerce officials in the Valley revealed that her husband had been active in the area until only a few months earlier – until he had gotten married.

“I thought, ‘That’s funny, since I already am his wife,’ ” Dorothy Miller said. “But nobody knew about me there. They thought I was a crazy woman.”

Dorothy Miller said that when her husband did finally telephone her in midsummer, she confronted him and he admitted that he had remarried. She said she cut off all communication with him and asked the police in Belle Vernon to investigate.