Columnist Dean Juipe: Fan Man nabs headlines one final time

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, April 8, 2003 | 9:43 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

This is just exactly the kind of attention that James Miller always wanted. It's his name in print and a column written about him.

He was obsessed by publicity, or at least infatuated with it. He wanted to be seen, to be known, and he was willing to embarrass himself to get it.

He had a craving for the spotlight that seems unnatural or unhealthy, and he endangered himself as well as others.

And when he stepped from life's everyday shadows, it was always with an element of surprise or shock. Even in death, he was unpredictable.

I never met Miller but I also never liked him. Yet it's sad to learn the Fan Man, as he came to be known, had become so distraught that he chose to hang himself from a tree in a remote area of Alaska.

Miller was a Henderson resident who forced himself into America's consciousness and sports pages by dive bombing into the Riddick Bowe vs. Evander Holyfield heavyweight title fight in 1993 at Caesars Palace. For its sheer lunacy, it was a memorable debut.

These days, if a guy strapped to a motorized paraglider came swooping into an outdoor stadium -- as was the case that night in the back lot at Caesars -- you'd immediately be thinking of terrorism, but when Miller came over the grandstands and eventually into the ring ropes there were no such fears. It simply seemed to be a display of idiocy.

I had a good seat, in the first or second row, and a perfect view across from Miller as he pulled a stunt that made him famous and got him beat up. It only took a couple of seconds and it came without warning, but he was able to slip under the canopy that was over the ring and toward the fighters before getting entangled in the ropes.

Naturally, pandemonium ensued.

Bernard Brooks Sr., a cornerman for Bowe, was cut on the head by the metal contraption, as was Jesse Jackson, who was seated ringside. Bowe's pregnant wife fainted.

Bowe's security people were the first to get to Miller and they came in swinging. Miller took several hard punches before the comparatively restrained Caesars security staff intervened, as the still-startled crowd of 14,242 looked on.

From out of nowhere, a man on a Wright-Brothers-like aircraft had disrupted a big fight for no political or apparent reason.

The fight, of course, came to a halt and the delay lasted a full 21 minutes before the Nevada State Athletic Commission and referee Mills Lane decided to carry on.

Miller was arrested, spent 10 days in jail and was fined $4,000.

Holyfield won a decision in a fight that would forever be recalled for its interloper as much as its outcome.

But Miller was far from through in making a nuisance of himself, or inconveniencing others.

A year later he and two friends seemingly faked an emergency that ticked off local police and ambulance crews (and cost them $4,000 in manpower expenses). News report of the incident claimed that Miller and his buddies were hiking near Mount Potosi (between here and Pahrump) and that Miller allegedly fell and was injured while exploring a cave.

But here's the catch: His friends drove all the way back to Henderson before calling 911. Some 20 police and medical respondents then made their way to the remote area, only to find Miller in good health and saying he wanted to walk away from the cave and toward a few members of the media who had made the trek up.

The medics, however, insisted on strapping Miller to a stretcher and taking him home via an ambulance as a way of limiting his media exposure.

At least two other Fan Man sightings were to follow, one as Miller buzzed over the Coliseum in Los Angeles during an NFL game and another as he landed on the roof of London's Buckingham Palace.

But in recent years Miller drifted from public view while undergoing not one but two open-heart surgeries that were deemed "unsuccessful."

As a result of his poor health and the accompanying medical bills, Miller likely became depressed.

Details are sketchy, but sometime during this past winter -- perhaps as late as the first week of March -- Miller traveled to Alaska, which he occasionally visited, and walked back into a deep woods, where he tethered a rope to a tree limb, put a noose around his neck and gruesomely hung.

He was found March 9 by hunters.

An inglorious end, to be sure, and one that heretofore has escaped local attention.

But it gives Miller, 39 at the time of his death, one last write up, one last headline.

It closes the book on a bizarre character who was determined to leave a legacy, even if it wasn't an especially good one.