He worked hard and had his own tree felling business. McMillian became well known through an affair he had with a local married woman, Karen Kelley. Kelly was a white woman and her affair with a black man became big news once in Monroe County. A few months after the murder of Ronda Morrison, a criminal named Ralph Myers was arrested for the murder of Vickie Pittman in a neighboring county. Myers was a well-known criminal who was into drugs. Myers, but had started seeing Kelly in the months following McMillian's separation. Myers, now in prison, was trying to pin the murder on people, including Monroe County Sheriff Tate. Once he realized it didn't hold up, he changed his story. Stevenson (2014) “…he had been involved in the murder of Vickie Pittman along with Karen Kelly and her black boyfriend, Walter McMillian. But that wasn't all. He also told police that McMillian was responsible for the murder of Ronda Morrison. (p. 33). Ralph Myers now implicated McMillian, an innocent man, for Morrison's murder, in which he had no part. McMillian was quickly charged and sent to death row before he was even convicted of Morrison's murder. Within about a year, Myers and a few others gave false testimony and McMillian was sentenced in less than two days to capital punishment with death.