Ever been to Bon Secour? If you haven’t…you have missed it. Its name means “Safe Harbor.” The town, located in Southern Alabama, is known for its fresh seafood. It is a quiet, southern, fishing village – the nostalgic kind you wish for, but don’t find often. It is like its own world. Insterestingly, five miles south lies the Gulf waters, and another lifestyle.
If you get down that way – stop by the Tin Top Restaurant and Oyster Bar. The food, fun and atmosphere are, well…Bon Secour.
In the early 1950s, the lower reaches of Bon Secour River moved at an unhurried pace. Shrimp boats idled in the current. Fishing camps sat back from the waterline. Nights came quietly, with little more than cicadas and the distant thrum of an outboard motor to break the stillness.
It was the kind of place where men disappeared only when they wanted to.
And yet, in August of 1952, one did not come home.
A Man with Means
Leroy E. “Lee” Miller was not an obscure drifter or a man without ties. He operated a fishing lodge along the river near what would later become Gulf Shores, and he was known to have money—boats, vehicles, and interests that set him apart in a working waterfront community.
Miller split time between the river and Foley, where he kept a residence. He was, by most accounts, confident and well-connected. The kind of man who received phone calls others did not.
On August 15, 1952, he received several of those calls.
That evening, neighbors saw Miller step outside his Foley home and get into a large black automobile. The car pulled away into the dark, and Lee Miller vanished.
The Long Months
Days passed. Then weeks. The Bon Secour River kept moving, but questions began to collect like summer humidity. Miller’s property sat idle. His lodge went quiet. No letters came. No sightings followed.
For months, there was nothing—only rumor.
Then, in February 1953, the woods gave up their secret.
A hunter, moving through thick pine growth near St. Elmo in neighboring Mobile County, came upon human skeletal remains. The location was remote, the kind of place chosen by someone who did not want to be disturbed. Examination revealed identifying details—clothing remnants, dental characteristics, and a healed arm injury—that confirmed what many had feared.
The remains were those of Leroy “Lee” Miller.
A Carefully Planned Killing
Investigators determined Miller had been shot to death, his body hidden far from where he was last seen. Evidence and testimony would later suggest that this was not a spontaneous act. The circumstances pointed to planning, coordination, and the deliberate use of isolation.
The trail led back to Baldwin County and to a man named Albert Sidney Denton.
Court proceedings painted a picture of a murder-for-hire scheme, with Miller lured away by phone calls and delivered to his death under the cover of routine. Ballistics evidence and witness testimony tied the killing together piece by piece—slowly, methodically, and with the patience typical of rural Southern investigations of the era.
Denton was ultimately convicted of Miller’s murder, and the conviction was upheld on appeal. Life in Prison.
Why This Story Endures
There were no public gun battles. No screaming sirens. No immediate witnesses. Just a man stepping into a car he believed he could trust—and a quiet stretch of Gulf Coast woods that waited months before speaking.
For Sweet Tea Murders readers, this case captures something uniquely Southern and deeply unsettling: how violence can unfold beneath a surface of calm, how money and familiarity can become weapons, and how the land itself sometimes serves as the final keeper of truth.
Along the Bon Secour River, the water still slides past the banks the same way it did in 1952. Boats still idle. Pine trees still stand shoulder to shoulder.
But some shadows never quite lift.
Michael Earl Simmons
Southern Crime Historian & Storyteller
I tell these stories to preserve the quiet truths of Southern crime—the ones that unfolded far from headlines, yet left permanent marks on the communities that remember them.