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From the streets to a successful career, Larry Miller lived with a secret. As a 16-year-old gang member in 1965, he murdered David Miller. And more than 50 years later he may have found redemption. 

In Miller's book, Jump: My Secret Journey from the Streets to the Boardroom, he told his story. He talked about how he climbed the corporate ladder while hiding his past.

 By all accounts, Miller’s is a success story. He got an MBA education and worked his way up. Miller worked as a manager at Kraft Foods and was president, VP, and controller for Jantzen. From 1999 to 2006 he headed up the Jordan Brand at Nike. And then spent five years as the President of the Portland Trail Blazers NBA franchise.

Today Miller lives in Oregon and serves on several boards, including the Oregon Business Council, Oregon Sports Authority, and the NBA’s team advisory committee. 

Despite his apparent success and good fortune, the millionaire businessman says he suffered “intense migraines, paranoia,” and took frequent trips to the emergency room. 

Over the years he worked with NBA superstar Michael Jordan and counts him as a close friend. So, he talked to Jordan, whose own father was murdered, while he was writing his book. And Jordan urged him to contact David White’s family.

 Miller says he has relived the killing every day of his life. The secret was hard to live with. But he didn’t name White in the book. And he didn’t take Jordan’s advice to reach out to the dead man's family before he went public with his secret.

David White murdered on the streets of Philadelphia

Miller was a drunk teenager on the streets with his gang, 57 years ago. On the corner of 53rd and Locust on September 30, 1965, sixteen-year-old Miller murdered David White. 

The police rounded up Miller and his friends a distance away from where White fell.

Edward David White was 18 when he died. He was the father of an 8-month-old. And a second child was born after his death. His family said he was on his way home from work when he died. And that he had no gang affiliation.

Larry Miller living in prison 

Miller was prosecuted as an adult. And he served 4½ years in prison before he was paroled. He started his education during this time.

After his release, he continued armed robbery, extortion, and selling drugs, this time for the Nation of Islam organization. He was caught and sent back to prison for violating his parole.

But he got lucky and his second time in prison was only nine months. 

He resumed his education, first inside the prison using Pell grants available to inmates and then on a day-release program to attend college.

"I was going to learn my way out of the lifestyle that I was living in the things that I was doing and that I was going to give education and opportunity to change my life."

The next generations

Miller co-wrote his book with his daughter Laila Lacy. She gave him a second chance as a father.  When Lacy was in college, her mother died. Miller didn't make it to the funeral. She would have welcomed the support.

"He told me he just couldn't face it," Lacy says. "Once he said it, I understood that it was just too painful for him to come to grips with the fact that she was gone."

She says of her father, “We all deserve a second chance. Now, there is no one that I meet, ever, that I think is unredeemable.” 

The White family’s attorney issued a statement.  It says, "The family hopes that Mr. Miller is truly remorseful. The family expects that Mr. Miller's actions will further exemplify that remorse by following through with the scholarship in honor of Edward David White."

Miller claims he would like to honor David White in some way. White's family requested he establish a scholarship for students at West Philadelphia High School, which White once attended. It is decades too late for David White. But education might change the trajectory of some children in White and Miller's old neighborhood.