On the night of November 15th, 1998, Laurel police responded to The Movie Store on Main Street in Laurel to what was originally reported to be a shooting. When they arrived on scene, police found three people standing outside of the store attempting to help a young woman bleeding heavily from the neck. The victim was taken by HELP Flight to St. Vincent in Billings but died in surgery from her injuries, determined to be slash wounds to her throat, shortly after. She was identified as 18-year-old Miranda Fenner. Over the next fourteen years, investigators interviewed hundreds of people but were unable to identify any suspects and the case went cold even after making national headlines.
In 2012, Yellowstone County Sheriff’s Office Detectives Frank Fritz and Shane Bancroft became the primary investigators and continued working on the case. A tip came to them in October 2013 when a woman contacted the Sheriff’s Office saying she had information about the murder. When Det. Bancroft contacted her, the woman – whose name has not been released – said that she and her ex-husband had been living in Laurel at the time of the murder and she believed her stepson, Zachary O’Neill, 18 at the time of the crime, was involved in the murder. She claimed O’Neill was an extremely violent person and said she was aware of the fact that he had rented movies from that store on the night of the murder. Bancroft confirmed that O’Neill lived in the area at the time but could not find any other evidence linking him to the crime.
The case sat cold for another 4 years until March 19th, 2017, when Zachary O’Neill, now 37, walked into the Yellowstone County Detention Facility on his own volition and confessed to Miranda Fenner’s murder.
In talking with Deputies Ellis, Skinner, and Juhl, O’Neill said that he had gone to the store to return a movie he had rented earlier that night and intended to rob the establishment for money to feed his methamphetamine and crack cocaine habit. He said he had entered with a .22 semi-automatic pistol and a knife, waited until no one else was in the store, and then used the pistol to get the money from Fenner and forced her into the backroom. O’Neill then decided he didn’t want Fenner as a witness because there was a possibility she knew who he was, so he made the decision to kill her by slitting her throat. He later disposed of the knife near Jordan, Montana while on a hunting trip with his dad and sold his .22 pistol for crack in Spokane, Washington later. O’Neill had been living in Spokane for the past several years and had been in and out of jail and prison during that time. He said he tried telling medical staff in Spokane about his crimes, but they took it as nothing more than the ravings of a madman and released him a day later. Deputies confirmed that O’Neill had recently used meth and appeared to be coming down during this admission of guilt. Deputy Skinner contacted Det. Fritz who said he would reach out to O’Neill in coming days and they gave him a ride to the Crisis Center in town to stay until then.
Two days later, O’Neill met with Dets. Fritz and Bancroft at the Sheriff’s Office for an interview. The detectives told him that he would not be arrested that day as they would need time to corroborate anything he told them. He began by telling them about how he had been living in Spokane for a period of time before moving back to Laurel around May 1998, when he was 18-years-old. O’Neill said that during his time living in Laurel he was committing theft and burglary to supply his meth and crack addictions. On the day of the murder, he had been smoking meth when his mother asked him to go and rent some movies. He went and rented four or five movies from The Movie Store before coming home. When his mother discovered that he had rented a pornographic film, she told him to go and return it. When he got back to the store, O’Neill had already decided he was going to rob it. He waited until the other customers had left before pulling his gun out and robbing the store. Afterwards, O’Neill figured he needed to tape her up so he could make his escape, but while securing her he decided it was too much of a risk to leave her alive, saying, “I don’t want to get in trouble for this, that’s when I decided to do it. That’s when I pulled out this knife that I had.” Thinking he heard someone come through the front door, O’Neill then fled out the door. Fenner then got free of her bonds and crawled through the store and out the doors, where she was found. He was interviewed by investigators shortly afterwards but would not admit anything as he “didn’t care too much” at first about what he had done. This later changed and he attempted to turn himself in a couple different times.
Bancroft and Fritz then asked him whether or not he had ever hurt anyone else and O’Neill immediately admitted to the rape and attempted homicide of a woman on Broadwater Ave. in Billings roughly a month before Miranda Fenner’s murder. Again, he had attempted to slit the woman’s throat but thankfully failed since she lived by playing dead until he ran off. O’Neill confirmed he had left a condom at the scene and willingly provided a DNA sample to be used to prove his guilt.
After having multiple people offer false confessions on this murder over the years detectives seem as though they were hesitant to believe O’Neill, asking him why after all this time he was trying to confess and why they should believe him. O’Neill replied that his brother had recently been killed and when that suspect was brought to justice it gave him closure and a friend he had recently confessed the murder to encouraged him to give that closure to the Fenner family.
While the detectives were corroborating this new information and making sure the DNA was a match on the rape cold case as well, O’Neill was incarcerated in Spokane for burglary.
After reaching the decision that O’Neill was absolutely responsible for both Fenner’s murder and this rape cold case, Fritz and Bancroft travelled to Spokane to interview him once again, this time from his jail cell. O’Neill restated his previous confessions and admitted to another rape at Riverfront Park one week after the one on Broadwater Ave. Again, the DNA was a match.
Since then, authorities had been working at bringing O’Neill from Spokane to Yellowstone County to enter guilty pleas in Miranda Fenner’s murder and the rape/attempted murder on Broadwater Ave. No charges were pressed in the Riverfront Park rape as the victim died in 2013. O’Neill was transported to Montana in February 2019 to enter his guilty plea for the Broadwater rape. And then around 3pm on July 23rd, he entered his guilty plea for Miranda Fenner’s death, finally putting to rest a twenty-year-old case that, in the words of Laurel’s Chief of Police, “has been hanging like a black cloud over this community.” According to court documents, O’Neill and his attorneys agreed to a life sentence in prison for each of these two crimes with no parole restrictions. Zach O’Neill’s sentencing is scheduled for this August.
Miranda Fenner’s family released a statement saying they would like to thank everyone for their kindness and support over the past 20 years and that they are relieved that there is an end in sight for this nightmare. Their final statement is “Please understand that our family is still dealing with the recent developments in Miranda’s case. We respectfully ask for privacy at this time.”
