Don C. Miller

Holly Cusack-McVeigh, a professor of anthropology and museum studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis has been a key partner in repatriating the recovered artifacts and remains. As of 2019, the FBI estimated that only 15% of the recovered artifacts had been repatriated. The FBI is hoping that experts will contact them to review collections relevant to their area of expertise to assist in the repatriation process. As of 2019, items had been repatriated to Canada, Cambodia, Mexico, Ecuador, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Spain, China, and Haiti. Attempts at the repatriation of artifacts and remains that were seized from Miller are ongoing.

Tim Carpenter led the recovery effort in April 2014. Miller ultimately cooperated with the investigation and teams of federal agents and scientists erected tents on his property to process the artifacts. At that time, Miller's collection was estimated to contain 42,000 artifacts of historical and cultural significance and the FBI Art Crime Team seized more than 7,000 artifacts. The recovery operation was complicated due to the sheer quantity of objects and their cultural, historical, and spiritual significance. The operation lasted six days.

In 2013, the FBI received an anonymous tip about Miller's "amateur archeologist" collection of artifacts; the tipster claimed that the collection included human skulls, bones, and articulated skeletons. Special Agent Tim Carpenter of the FBI Art Crime Team followed up on the tip and Miller gave the officer a voluntary tour of the property. During the tour, Carpenter observed artifacts that he considered to be "almost certainly illegal" to possess and Miller claimed that he had personally recovered each artifact.

Miller spent most of his career working in the research department of Naval Avionics of Indianapolis. He retired from that position in 1990. Miller founded and owned an electrical component manufacturing company named Wyman Research, Inc. from 1998 to 2000.

During the 1940s, Don Miller worked in New Mexico at the Los Alamos National Laboratory on the Manhattan Project. He reportedly claimed that he fired the world's first atomic bomb. This claim has been disputed. Vanity Fair reported that Miller assisted William Higinbotham, the head of the Manhattan Project's electronics group, in constructing equipment for the Trinity Test. He also observed and gathered data on the Trinity Test. However, there is no record that Miller fired the first atomic bomb and Joe McKibben is broadly recognized as the person that did.

Don C. Miller (May 25, 1923 - March 22, 2015) was an American engineer and amateur archeologist from Rush County, Indiana. Miller led a long career in electrical engineering, but he is most well known for his sizable and controversial private collection of artifacts. In 2014, an investigation of his collection by the Federal Bureau of Investigation resulted in the "largest single recovery of cultural property in FBI history".