'It smelled like something was bad': Man who discovered Nathan Millard's rotting corpse speaks out
BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA: The man, who found the body of a missing Georgia man wrapped in plastic and a carpet in an empty lot, revealed what happened as he made the grisly discovery. The body of Nathan Millard, 42, was found on Monday, March 6, after he went missing on a business trip to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on February 23.
The man, who spoke on condition of anonymity, recalled the "stench" in an interview with UWK. The foul smell brought him to the 2900 block of Scenic Hwy at 3.34 am, about three miles from the Irish pub where Millard was last seen at 11.30 pm.
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A father-of-five, Millard was in the area to scout out a job site for the construction company he worked for when he went missing. His cause of death is still not known.
'Something was rotting'
"It smelled like something was bad or something was rotting," the man told UWK, adding, "At first, I thought it was a dead animal, but I didn’t see anything." The man was driving north of Baton Rouge when he decided to stop and check out where the smell was coming from. He got out with a flashlight to take a closer look when he came near the abandoned lot with car ports. It was at that moment the man saw the rug behind a carport.
"At first I thought it was someone throwing out food, and then I saw the feet. That’s when I got really scared and my stomach was just turning in knots," he recalled. Millard's body was identified with the help of his fingertips, authorities reported. "I was really terrified because I’ve never, ever seen or found a deceased person," the man added.
Nathan Millard's suspicious death
Texas EquuSearch, a nonprofit dedicated to help finding missing people, offered a reward of up to $10,000 for any information about Millard's whereabouts and started their search last week. A spokesperson for the organization told 11Alive that police got a call from a passerby who said that he came across a foul odor in the vacant lot.
Millard had traveled to Baton Rouge for what was supposed to be a 24-hour business trip, his wife, Amber, had previously said. However, he never made it back to his hotel room after a Louisiana State University basketball game and drinks at a pub with his client. The room was reportedly not disturbed and he failed to appear at the scheduled meeting the next morning. His phone was found not far from his hotel and his debit card was used following his disappearance.
Millard was seen leaving the Courtyard Marriott where he was staying that night with his work client in a surveillance footage. Amber reportedly said that he had FaceTimed her that night from the LSU basketball game. She said that she found it very unusual not to find any text from him when she woke up the following morning. Amber added that authorities told her that they had a video footage which showed a man withdrawing money using Millard's debit card at the ATM near a Greyhound bus station.
No arrests have been made as of now. Police say that the investigation is still ongoing. "This is an ongoing investigation. Additional information will be released as it becomes available," police said.