Woman's scathing obituary that went viral plagiarized

A great-grandma’s scathing death notice that went viral after running in a small weekly North Carolina newspaper includes passages that were lifted from another mean obit.

The obit said June Miller died at 82 after a long battle with drug addiction and depression and had “no hobbies, made no contribution to society and rarely shared a kind word or deed in her life.”

“We speak for the majority of her family when we say her presence will not be missed by many, very few tears will be shed, and there will be no lamenting over her passing,” the obit said.

WTVC reported Thursday that it heard from a viewer who said those passages were not original.

After investigating the station found that much of Miller’s obit had been plagiarized. The original source was a California woman’s obit that bounced around the internet after a newspaper published it in 2008.

Miller’s son told the station that his sister wrote the obit and submitted it to the Cherokee Scout newspaper in Murphy for publication.

“Unbelievable,” Robert Miller said, according to the station. “Doesn’t even have the integrity to write something herself. Just goes out and steals something.”

The weekly ran the obit in June. Miller died in February in Florida. She spent summers in Murphy.

The publisher of the Scout told the station that the editor’s desire to reject the obit was overridden by “the family’s will.”

On Friday a new Miller obit written by the son appeared on the paper’s website, celebrating her life as a military wife, homemaker and church-goer.

“She also made a wicked lemon pound cake,” the obit said.