 Alexis Rasmussen was invited to the home of Eric and Dee Millerburg one night in 2011, under the pretense of babysitting for the couple while they spent the night out. Alexis needed the extra money and knew the couple well, so she agreed. But Eric and Dee had no plans of heading out that evening, and instead subjected Alexis to a night of terror like nothing she could have ever imagined. This case is going to be very difficult to cover, but it's also a very important case to talk about. Alexis Rasmussen was, by every definition, your typical teenage girl. She was born in January of 1995, making her just 16 years old at the time of the crime in 2011. Alexis was a girl who seemed excited about what the future had in store for her. Some of her favorite hobbies included reading, dancing and shopping, but more than anything, she loved hanging out with her friends. Alexis had a strong support system of girls her age, friends she could tell anything to. But Alexis' life was far from perfect. We don't know much about Alexis' home life or her relationship with her parents, but what we do know is that she had a brother that she loved dearly. The two would fight all the time, but not in any serious way. It was always your typical sibling rivalry and things rarely ever got out of hand. Alexis knew that she had a family that cared about her deeply, and she knew she could depend on most of her family members when she needed them the most. But unfortunately, Alexis was battling demons that her parents never knew about. While she put on a front of being a happy-go-lucky teen girl with the world in the palm of her hand, she was hiding dark secrets unlike anything you could imagine a teenager going through. Alexis met Dee and Eric Millerberg in the spring of 2011. She'd been looking for a way to make some extra pocket money for when she went shopping with her friends, and she felt like babysitting would be a great way to make some extra cash. So when she found out that the Millerbergs were needing someone to watch over their children every once in a while, she jumped at the opportunity. It didn't take long for the Millerbergs to become close friends with Alexis. After all, she had a strong, likable personality, and the Millerbergs seemed like great people. But Alexis would soon learn that there was far more going on within the Millerberg family than she could have ever imagined. The problem is that Alexis looked up to the couple. Now, Alexis had parents who loved her dearly, and she seemed to have been well aware of her parents' love and support for her. As I'm sure we all know, when you're a teen, you're looking for literally anyone to look up to except your parents. It's a time in life when you're doing your best to discover your own identity outside of your family and your parents. So Alexis dove headfirst into the Millerbergs' lifestyle and friendship, feeling like she'd finally found a place where she truly belonged, a place where she could discover new things about herself and begin blossoming into an adult. She had a lot of respect for the Millerberg family, so she began spending more and more time with the couple. But what began as a simple babysitting opportunity quickly turned into much more, more than Alexis could have ever bargained for, and certainly more than Alexis' parents knew about. As it would turn out, even though Alexis looked up to the Millerbergs as role models, Eric and Dee were far from being model citizens. In fact, if you ask me, they proved themselves to be some of the worst people I've ever talked about on true crime stories, and you guys know that's certainly saying a lot. Eric and Dee, in a span of about six months, would turn a beautiful 16-year-old girl into a shell of her former self. Alexis became someone her friends could barely recognize, losing all sense of self and purpose and becoming trapped in an addiction that few people are able to make it out of. Before I go any further, I need to make one thing clear that the timeline of events and specifics of this case all come from testimonies given by the perpetrators, not the victim or her family. Alexis' family has been largely silent about this case, and that's to be expected. Her family was grieving a loss that most of us couldn't even fathom, so you can't blame them for just wanting to maintain their privacy. Unfortunately, that means that we don't have much clarity on certain aspects of the case, and we basically just have to take the Millerbergs word for it. So if any of you guys happen to have known Alexis' family or maybe lived in the area where this occurred, then feel free to clarify any details that may be inaccurate in the comments below. But according to the Millerbergs, after Alexis had babysitted for the family a handful of times, their relationship began to grow. Instead of only coming over to babysit, Alexis began coming over just to hang out with the family. It was during one of these visits that the Millerbergs offered Alexis alcohol. Keep in mind, Alexis was only 16 and the legal drinking age in the US is 21. It's no secret that teens often end up finding alcohol at a much younger age anyway, but the Millerbergs openly offered it to Alexis on a regular basis, so she considered their home to be a place to get away from all the rules and regulations of her everyday life. It was a place where she could just hang out and be herself without being judged by everyone around her. Now I'm sure most of us can get over the idea of alcohol, but the Millerbergs very quickly began upping the ante. Not only were they providing her with alcohol, but they soon began providing her with much harder numbing agents, the kind that you rarely come back from. Now I'm not talking about the typical stuff that your uncle probably grows in the back of his garden, I'm talking about the stuff that you often hear about in trailer parks and whatnot when someone's house explodes in the middle of the night. The Millerbergs had quickly turned Alexis into an addict, a functioning one, but still an addict nonetheless. In fact, towards the end of her life, Alexis would begin accepting payment in the form of these substances rather than asking the couple for cash. These mind-altering experiences turned an innocent teenage girl into a fragment of the girl that she used to be, and soon enough things got even worse if you could possibly imagine such a thing. I'm going to be very careful how to word this next statement because it's not something most of us need to hear, but it is important in painting an accurate picture of Eric and Dee. I'm sure we all know that when you're married, there are certain aspects of your relationship that you want to keep behind closed doors. But in the Millerberg household, doors were always open, and anyone was allowed to join in. Sometimes it was even encouraged, and Alexis was around for all of this. To call this sickening would be a disservice to children everywhere. This by all accounts is maddening, and I can't wrap my head around how broken a human being must have been to be involved in something like this, but the worst is yet to come. It was September 10th, 2011. Alexis had been invited over to the Millerberg home because the couple needed to head out to go shopping for their daughter's birthday. But no sooner than Alexis arrived, plans changed. No babysitting or shopping ended up happening that day. Within minutes of Alexis arriving at the house, Eric offered her a mixed cocktail of various things. He injected her at least three times within a matter of minutes. Mind you, just a single injection would have been enough for a full-sized adult, but Alexis was rather small and still a teenager. Eric and Alexis then went to the bedroom for some private time away from Dee, but after a short while, Alexis' mind had begun to shift. She went from having the time of her life to feeling like she was living in a nightmare. Her thoughts began to spiral, and Dee says that she began to freak out. Before long, she was completely disoriented and had started to get extremely cold. Blankets and sheets weren't nearly enough, so she asked the Millerbergs if she could take a hot bath to try to get warm. After about 45 minutes, Dee came in to check on her and found that she was still cold. Dee helped her get out of the bath and wrapped her in a blanket, helping her lie down in another bedroom. The couple reportedly assumed that she would be fine and would snap out of it, but she never did. She only got colder and colder, but there wasn't much the Millerbergs could do for her, at least not in their eyes. After a short while, Eric and Dee stepped outside for a cigarette. They came back inside about 30 minutes later and found Alexis completely unresponsive. Dee was the only person who even remotely tried to help her. When she noticed Alexis wasn't breathing, she attempted to perform CPR, but it didn't help. The obvious choice here would have been to call 911 for help, but neither Dee nor Eric were prepared to do this. According to Dee, her first thought was that the two were going to lose their kids. Their lives, as they knew it, would essentially be over. They didn't feel like there was any hope for Alexis, so they never called anyone. What's really interesting about this decision is that Dee is a registered nurse, and Narcan would have been an obvious option. Narcan can be administered after an overdose like this, and most of the time, it can bring someone back from the break. I've seen the miracles that it can work first-hand. Most ambulances keep it on hand for situations like this, so a simple 911 call would have almost certainly saved Alexis' life. But the Millerbergs weren't willing to do this. Instead, they let Alexis lose her life cold, alone, and terrified. This revealed later on that at the time of the crime, Eric was on parole for a prior burglary charge and a firearm charge. He was also known to be in a prison gang. Dee, on the other hand, had outstanding court dates after she was arrested for writing fraudulent prescriptions and for child endangerment charges. The seemingly clean-cut couple that Alexis had looked up to were very quickly turning out to be little more than thieves and criminals. Faced with the fact that in their eyes they had nowhere else to turn, the couple decided to stuff Alexis into a footlocker, later taking it out to the trunk of their car. They then left the home, leaving their six-year-old daughter behind, unattended for hours. But thankfully, they took their toddler with them. Now, I say thankfully, but really, these two were driving all over the place higher than you could imagine, and a small child was in the back seat and a body was in the trunk. There's really nothing to be thankful for here, so maybe thankfully isn't the best word to describe this situation, but at least the kid wasn't alone. The two eventually made their way to a remote patch of woods where they took Alexis out of the footlocker and dumped her body, face down in the dirt. They then covered her up with sticks, leaves, and dirt so that she couldn't easily be seen by passersby. The couple then drove to a dumpster and threw out Alexis' purse. They then drove to another dumpster and cut the carpet out of their car, trying to throw it away to remove any evidence that may have been left behind. They then drove home and acted like the whole thing never happened. After the couple finished up with one of the most disturbing crimes anyone could imagine, they moved on with their life. Meanwhile, the lives of the Rasmussen family were falling apart from every angle. Alexis' parents desperately waited for her to return home that day, but she never arrived. Obviously, before long, she was reported missing to the police, but there was absolutely no trace of her to be found. I'm not sure if her parents knew that she'd been heading over to babysit for the Millerburg family that day. Reports haven't really suggested where all police may have looked for her, but I would wager that her parents weren't aware of these plans, even though she planned on being out for several hours that day. What we do know is that Alexis had run away from home at least once before. So the family seems to have been operating under the assumption that she was just hiding out somewhere likely with friends. No one would ever have expected such a heartbreaking scenario would have played out behind the family's back. The truth is, police likely would have never found out the truth if it hadn't been for one man, Eric Smith, also known as Peanut. According to the police, they had no idea that Alexis was in trouble or that she'd gotten involved with the wrong crowd. Peanut was a member of the same prison gang as Eric Millerburg, and there are varying accounts about how Peanut became involved in the crime. One source claims that Peanut was with Eric and D when they disposed of the evidence, but another source says that Peanut was simply told about the crime after it happened. Either way, Alexis had been missing for more than a month. The crime had begun to weigh heavily on Peanut's mind. He knew how desperate Alexis's family must have been, and when he finally came forward, he told police that he wanted to reveal what had happened to Alexis to put her family at ease. He only requested that he be given immunity for keeping the crime a secret for so long, and police agreed to this. When they asked him why he suddenly had a change of heart, Peanut responded with one simple statement, saying, I also have a 16-year-old daughter. Peanut came clean to the police, revealing every last detail he had ever heard about the case. He even offered to lead police to the dump site. When the police rode out to the patch of woods, he took them directly to the area where Alexis had been left behind, finally bringing this nightmare to an end, at least for investigators. The truth is, for the Rasmussen family, the nightmare had only just begun. Police were quick to track down the Millerburgs, arresting them both and sending them to trial. The court case had a bit of a twist that I, for one, certainly didn't see coming. When Dee was asked about what had taken place that day, she responded that she was willing to open up about everything, but she wanted to be protected from her husband during the trial, and she wanted a lighter sentence in exchange for her cooperation. Her husband, on the other hand, wouldn't say a single word to investigators or detectives. Dee then turned her back on her husband and explained everything, every last detail about the couple's relationship with Alexis, and the events that transpired on that fateful day in September. In exchange for her participation, Dee received a sentence of just five years in prison. Eric, on the other hand, didn't get off so lightly. He may be expecting that he was sent to prison for life, but he wasn't, well, not really anyway. Eric was found guilty of three major crimes, homicide, obstruction of justice, and one charge for having relations with Alexis when she was still a teen. Even though Alexis technically consented to it, though she was obviously under the influence of who knows what, so consent is highly debatable, but one of these charges has a sentence of one to 15 years. Another has a sentence of up to five years, and the final charge has a sentence of five years to life. The only problem is that Eric will be eligible for parole in 2046. Well, this may seem like a long way away, it's not. There isn't a sentence long enough for Eric, and a mere five years certainly isn't long enough for Dee either. In fact, Dee has already been released and she's now a free woman, but the Rasmussen family will never be free. Nothing can ever bring back Alexis and nothing can ever atone for the nauseating crimes that Eric and Dee committed. Alexis had such a bright and vibrant future ahead of her, but she lost it all because of these pathetic repulsive monsters. Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of True Crime Stories. After a story like this, just forget the usual outro. Let me know in the comments what you would do if you were left alone in a room with either of these two people. I'll see you next week.