You know in movies when a character turns into something unexpected and you feel the whole plot turning upside down? Well, that’s what Cheryl Love felt one morning in 2015. Except for her, it wasn’t a movie, but her real life.
“It was like I was in a movie,” Cheryl explained as she looked back to the day the FBI burst through their doors. Back to the day she felt her life came crashing down on her...
In early 2015, Cheryl Love woke to a beautiful morning and started her day with a cup of tea. She walked slowly to their kitchen, careful not to wake her husband, Bobby. But she was startled to hear a knock on the door so early in the morning.
She opened the door slowly and saw the police standing there.
She wasn’t worried at first as she thought they came for the crazy woman next door. But Cheryl was shocked when they pushed past her and came barging in. She had no clue it was the start of everything going downhill...
Twelve men who wore shirts with FBI written all over walked into Cheryl’s home. She kept thinking they must’ve gotten the wrong address, but the police went ahead and opened every door. Then they reached the bedroom and finally woke the sleeping Bobby. Bobby shot up, surprised at the scene in front of him.
The officers asked for his name and Bobby answered, “Bobby Love.” “No, what’s your real name?” they asked again and this time, Cheryl got even more confused. Why are they asking her husband?
“You’ve had a long run,” the officers said as they began putting Bobby in handcuffs. This time, Cheryl walked up to them and pleaded, asking them what was happening. But the police didn’t say a word. She turned to her husband and begged for an explanation...But Bobby only told her, “This goes way back.
Back before I met you. Way back to North Carolina.” Cheryl just watched as a dozen policemen pushed the man she loved out of their home. But what secret did her husband of forty years keep from her?
Bobby, also known as Walter Miller, grew up in North Carolina. He described his childhood as pretty normal, nothing too special. His family was poor, and he was raised by a single mom together with seven other siblings.
As he hit his teenage years, Walter began to feel unnoticed. So he started going the wrong way...
It all started when Walter went to a Sam Cooke concert in 1964. The singer’s performance was really moving and the crowd clearly enjoyed it. So everyone stood up and started dancing, but for some reason, Cooke didn’t like it. He kept asking people to sit down, but nobody did. Happy and excited, Walter pushed past the crowd to be near the stage.
But suddenly, Cooke got angry and walked off the stage, cutting his show short. Walter didn’t like Cooke’s manners so he shouted, “Sam Cooke ain’t shit!” And that landed him behind bars. Simple as it may seem, back in the 60s, cursing in public can get you arrested. Walter was only 14 years old at the time and that night marked his first bad record. But it wasn’t the last...
After making trouble at Sam Crooke’s show, Walter went down the rabbit hole. Getting in trouble seemed to be his new hobby and collecting bad records his favorite past time. He started stealing purses from unlocked cars and swiping government checks from mailboxes. He liked the feeling of being a rebel and running from the cops.
Then, Walter started getting bolder and aimed to steal more valuable things. It wasn’t until he was caught stealing from the band room in his school that he was given serious charges. After years of doing and getting away with petty crimes, the law finally caught up to him. And the next decision they had made Walter’s skin crawl...
After getting busted from stealing from his school, Walter was shipped off to Morrison Training Center, a juvenile detention place. When he got to the center, Walter instantly hated the place. Aside from having to follow every single rule in the juvy and the strict guards, Walter had a lot to complain about. He didn’t like the food, he hated everything in that place, and he didn’t like how violent other kids can be. “I still have scars from all the times I get beat up,” Walter recalled as if it was just from yesterday.
Every night, before bed, Walter could hear the sound of a train nearby. And every time he heard it, he longed to be free. He knew the train was his way out of that awful place, so he had to make a plan...
The roaring sound of the train engines reminded Walter of the world waiting for him outside. “I always wanted to know where that train was going,” he said. So he waited for the perfect timing to put his plan into action...
One night, when the guard turned his back to check the time, Walter ran out as fast as he could to the back door, following the sound of the train. And that was his first great escape...and definitely not the last.
When he got out of the juvy center, Walter set out what he longed to do for months...follow the sound of the train. He did that and he ended up in Washington DC, far from North Carolina. Lucky for him, he had a place to crash in his brother’s house in the city. He got in a new high school and started actually attending classes.
But just when it seemed like Walter was ready to turn his life around, he fell into the wrong group of kids. And his life went on another downward spiral.
New to DC, Walter was eager to make new friends, but unfortunately, he fell into the wrong crowd. Walter’s new friends turned out to be troublemakers too but unlike Walter’s petty crimes, these kids were involved in big-time thefts. They were robbing banks! At first, they were able to get away from their robberies as they leave DC and hide in North Carolina.
Walter enjoyed the rush and excitement of running away with bags full of cash. “We felt like gangsters,” he said. But his little hide and seek with the cops was about to be cut short...
After several bank robberies, Walter and his friends started to get cockier and more comfortable. So they went for bigger banks to get bigger cash. But their little game was finally put to an end in August 1971...
One of the banks Walter and his gang robbed was secretly equipped with an alarm system.
During their operation, the alarms went off and the bank tellers instantly called the police. Walter took a look around and saw his friends all rushed for the exit. He sprinted off as fast as he could, trying his best not to get caught again. As he was just about to run free, he felt something pierce into his body...
Walter tried his best to get away from the cops. He ducked and weaved and ran through cars. Only feeling his feet and thinking he should never get caught. But luck wasn’t on Walter’s side that day as suddenly he felt a piercing pain in his body.
He checked and saw blood coming out of him...
He was shot by an officer in an attempt to slow him down, and it worked. Walter wasn’t able to move anymore because of the shot, so he had no other way out. The officers finally caught him, and Walter was about to face the toughest consequence of his actions...
After getting arrested, Walter’s records were exposed and it showed his history of petty crimes and other previous robberies. So the judge sentenced him not only for the recent bank robbery he committed but also for his past misdemeanors.
He was sentenced to serve 25 to 30 years in prison, almost a lifetime imprisonment...But that wasn’t the worst news he’d gotten...
That year was especially hard for Walter as he just got the news that his mother passed away. He promised himself he was going to turn his life around, but he fell into the wrong crowd.
Now, with his hands cuffed by the cops and facing a life sentence, Walter thought of a way to get back on the right track...
Committed to turning his life around, Walter did the very best he can in prison. He followed every order, greeted every officer, and never caused a scene or a riot. He was trying to be the perfect inmate. He did all of this in hopes of getting an appeal. But, unfortunately, despite his clean record, none of his appeals worked. But Walter didn’t lose hope.
He continued to be a model inmate, with a new goal in mind: He hoped to be transferred to a minimum-security prison. Months passed and Walter was able to keep a good track record, and finally, his work paid off. He was transferred to minimum security. But problems never seem to run out for Walter...
Walter loved his new situation in the minimum security prison. It was far better than what he had at the maximum one. Despite being still behind bars, high fences, and roaming guards, Walter felt a little more freedom.
The inmates there can have phone calls from their families and can walk around outside and feel the sun. Walter kept his image of being the model inmate, and as a reward, he was able to host his own radio show. Everything seemed to be looking up for him, the thought of escaping never even crossed his mind until something snapped and everything changed.
After months of staying in his new facility, Walter started to enjoy his new sense of freedom and his role as a radio host. He felt relaxed, unlike during his days in juvenile detention where he hated everything.
But then an incident happened...
One day a prisoner yelled out profanities towards the prison’s captain and the captain mistook Walter, of all people, as the one who yelled. Walter tried to explain himself out of the situation, telling the captain that it wasn’t him who yelled. But the captain didn’t believe him and since then, he started picking on Walter. He wrote false accusations and filed misconduct reports against Walter.
The captain had it out so bad for him that he was one bad mark away from being sent back up to maximum prison. Walter couldn’t take it anymore, so at that moment, he knew he needed to get away...
As Walter’s squeaky clean record had been wrongly tarnished, he was given a punishment. He was tasked to do one of the worst jobs for an inmate: collect trash. He was assigned to clean up roads and pick up trash in the community along with the other unlucky inmates.
Every day, they had to wake up the earliest, squeeze into a bus, and drive up to Raleigh.
Picking up trash wasn’t the worst thing about the job, but it was the judgemental looks of people passing by and their rudeness towards prisoners. “People would be throwing hamburgers and milkshakes at you,” Walter recalled. But despite the challenge, Walter saw his new awful job as an opportunity to put his plan into action.
To make his escape plan work, Walter had to come up with a seamless plan. First, he saved money. Then he observed that the guard on Tuesday mornings is lazy and doesn’t pay much attention.
In his every day drive up to Raleigh, he also noticed that they always stopped at an intersection, which was right beside a wooded area. He spent months trying to device the perfect escape. He waited patiently, then on a Monday night, while watching football; he made up his mind that it would be his last night in prison.
Tuesday came and just like as Walter expected, the lazy guard was on duty. He was fully prepared. Underneath his prison clothes, he wore his one civilian clothing that he got all thanks to his radio job. He emptied his locker and took all the money he had saved.
He hopped onto the bus and waited for the right timing...
Their bus went on their usual way to Raleigh and Walter eagerly waited for them to stop at the intersection and when they did, Walter jumped up and swung open the back door. He bolted to the wooded area and hurriedly took off his prison clothes. The sirens wailed behind him but he never stopped, he just kept running...and running...
Walter could still hear the alarms blaring behind him, but he never looked back. Then as he got out of the woods, he took a deep breath and asked for directions. He asked them the way to the Greyhound station, and luckily he found strangers who willingly helped. Finally, he reached the station, but there was another problem, he didn’t have enough cash to buy a ticket...
But after persuading, he got a stranger to buy him a one-way ticket to New York City.
As he slumped on his seat on the way to a new city to start anew, a woman asked for his name. Walter took a moment to answer, and then he said, “Bobby Love.” There was no turning back as he already let the words out. And that was the death of Walter Miller.
Walter arrived in New York City in November with nothing but a few dollars and a new name—Bobby Love. From that day on, he never looked back to Walter Miller. He used his little money to stay at the cheapest motel, but soon enough, his money ran out and he was forced to sleep on the streets. He looked for jobs and through lies and the help of strangers; he was able to get himself papers. Like a birth certificate, a social security number, and a driver’s license.
Now Bobby Love is not just an idea, but an actual person with records. He took on weird jobs and lived paycheck to paycheck, struggling to keep himself out of the streets. Then he finally got luck back on his side when he met someone...
Bobby was working at a cafeteria in a hospital in Brooklyn when he met fellow co-worker Cheryl. Bobby still remembers their first date where they saw Prince’s movie, Purple Rain and went to a Gladys Knight and the Pips show. Cheryl caught Bobby’s attention as she was different from anybody Bobby has ever seen or met before. Cheryl was pure, kind-hearted, innocent.
“Cheryl was soft. Almost in a naive way,” Bobby described her. They fell in love and decided to build a life together. A life Bobby knew could crumble any moment...
Bobby and Cheryl tied the knot on March 30, 1985. And shortly after, they welcomed their first daughter, Jasmine, and then another daughter, Jessica. Their family kept on growing and 11 years later, Cheryl had boy twins, Justin and Jordan.
Bobby worked hard to provide for his family. And hoping to completely turn his life around, he became active in church.
He attended every mass and even joined community meetings. Everything seemed so perfect, Bobby wanted it to be perfect, but he knows he’s hiding a secret... A secret he needs to share with the love of his life.
Having found the one in Cheryl, Bobby wanted to tell his wife about his past, but he just couldn’t risk it. He knows Cheryl was a righteous woman who would encourage him to right all his wrongs and come clean to the police. But Bobby believed that all of those things were left in North Carolina. That it was his old life and he is never looking back.
“That part of my life was buried back in North Carolina. And it wasn’t coming back,” he said. However, he’s about to be proven wrong...
Even without a single idea about his husband’s past, Cheryl had always felt that there was something different about Bobby. “There was a piece missing,” she said. She noticed that her husband never wanted to be in pictures and didn’t like talking to strangers. At first, she thought, maybe he was just aloof, but she felt like something was up and even described her husband as someone who always seemed “so spooked.”
And Bobby’s aloofness didn’t only apply to strangers; he was also closed off with Cheryl.
During arguments, Bobby would push Cheryl away and close himself off. “I remember during Christmas of 2014, I was on my knees in church, saying ‘Lord, please, I can’t do this anymore,'” Cheryl said. “That was a few weeks before everything went down.”
That one morning when the FBI surrounded their house and put her husband in handcuffs, Cheryl felt like her whole world came crashing down. She was hurt, deceived, and afraid. She was afraid for her husband’s safety, but she was also hurt by what he did to her.
“Bobby had deceived me for all those years. There was no truth in our house.” She felt like she was starring in a Lifetime movie, and that everything feels like a plot twist. But despite the hurt she was feeling, Cheryl still loved her husband and knew that she needed to do something to get him out.
Bobby was in for a lot of trouble. He was held at New York’s Riker’s Island and awaiting extradition to North Carolina. Cheryl visited her husband, wanting to see how he was doing. It was painful to see her husband like that. “When I first visited him in prison, he broke down crying,” she remembered.
Bobby told her that he knows she’s going to leave him now that she knows about his past. But he was wrong. Cheryl said, “No, Bobby Love, I married you for better or for worse. And now this is the worst.” She married this man and she knew she had to do everything in her power to set things straight. So she got to work.
Cheryl searched far and wide looking for ways to get her husband out. She sought the help of family members, friends, and church mates. She wrote letters to people of power asking for help. She wrote to the governor and even to President Obama himself. Cheryl never knew Walter Miller. She had no idea about what he did or what he was like, but she did know who Bobby Love was.
So she figured she would show the court who Bobby Love was. Cheryl and her children gathered all the testimonials they could get about Bobby Love. And after gathering everything she could get, Cheryl presented her case to Bobby’s parole board. It seemed impossible and undoable. But because of Cheryl’s persistence and Bobby Love’s proof of good record, the board agreed to give Bobby’s freedom back. After spending a year in prison, Bobby was set free and back to his family. Now that everything was out in the open, he knew that his life with Cheryl will never be the same again.
Cheryl still struggled with the situation, but in the end, she went on to forgive Bobby. And now that there weren’t any more secrets between them, their marriage life has gotten better than ever. Bobby changed too. He became more open, he welcomed strangers with a smile, he engaged with his friends and family more, he was finally being himself. Finally, Cheryl got the marriage she wanted: a marriage without secrets.
“The day he was set free, I sat him down and I asked ‘What is it? Are we the Loves? Or are we the Millers?’ And he said: ‘We Love. We Love.'”