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Christmas is meant to be a time when schedules slow down, families gather & homes feel more magical than usual. However, on December 25, 2017, warmth & safety was forever shattered when three of the four members of one family were murdered.This case highlights the things that can be hidden behind closed doors & proves that we sometimes know little about the darkness that might be lurking behind a big smile.
Before Anthony Milan Ross became known as an inspiring public persona, he was buried in a pit of despair, struggling to walk even as far as the mailbox. Standing at 6’4”, Anthony, who went by his middle name Milan, finally stepped on the scale in 2013 to face his fears & he was shocked at the number that stared him straight in the face. His weighed had gone up to an alarming 518# & this ended up being the morning that changed everything.
Milan’s rock bottom moment happened during a 7th birthday trip for his son to Universal Studies. Although it had been his son’s wish to go on the Harry Potter ride with his dad, Milan realized he was unable to fit on the rollercoaster.
It was then that Milan made a decision to make an overhaul in his lifestyle & he promised his son that he would eventually get on that ride with him.
At the time Milan had been working for Whole Foods Market when he decided to join a weeklong immersion program that the company offered its employees. This program focused on a plant-based diet that helped participants identify healthier food options.
Feeling inspired, he switched to a plant-based diet & began walking which eventually morphed into jogging. Slowly but surely, the weight began to fall away & within the first three months, he lost 70# & was able to come off his blood pressure medications as well as pain medications for diabetic neuropathy. Over the course of two years, Milan shed more than 225# & went from a 60-inch waist to a 40.
As Milan began sharing his weight loss & health journey online, recording videos of himself chopping vegetables & working out, he started to gain a following. The before & after photos were remarkable & he was soon speaking at wellness events, teaching cooking classes & appearing on local television shows.
In 2016, Milan & Dr. Scott Stoll wrote & published the book, The Change, detailing his weight loss journey which promotes Dr. Stoll’s week-long intensive health program that changed Milan’s life.
In 2018, Milan appeared in the documentary, Eating You Alive, which discusses why Americans are so sick & what can be done about it. While he shared his story, viewers saw the smiling inspiring face of a man who appeared to have conquered it all.
However, behind the facade of his carefully curated social media posts & public appearances, his private world looked very different. Milan was married to 38-year-old Iris Sutherland Ross, a healthcare administrator at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix. She was described as a quiet, but steady & deeply compassionate woman, someone who would go out of her way to make another’s day better.
Iris was very much inspired by Mother Teresa & centered her life on helping others with the goal of making the world a better place. She & Milan married in 2009, years before his dramatic weight loss & lifestyle transformation. They had two children together & in 2017, Nigel was a sweet & creative 11-year-old boy with an engaging personality that was so bright it landed him on stage, performing with his peers. Anora, his younger sister, was only 9 months old.
Although you would have never imagined it, looking at the beaming face depicted in Milan’s social media posts, things were falling apart within his personal life. The long hours he spent cultivating his brand & the pressure to maintain a flawless image were taking a toll on his marriage.
Iris began noticing dramatic mood swings, sudden bursts of anger & the strange comments he was making. His volcanic temper & outbursts were usually followed by a tearful apology & she was never sure which version of her husband she was going to get on any given day. There were moments when he was tender, loving & attentive & other moments when he was distant & seemed consumed by something Iris wasn’t able to identify.
In July 2017, no longer able to continue on with the tumultuous environment that had become her life, Iris filed for divorce. She also began confiding in her close family members about Milan’s unpredictable, erratic behavior that left her feeling fearful for her safety & that of her children.
As the divorce papers were filed, the hidden cracks in Milan’s polished persona began to open wider. Family & friends began noticing that the once confident speaker seemed very restless & agitated.
According to Iris’s sister Mary Wojas his messages to Iris ranged from loving to violent. He would tell her how much he loved her & wanted to be a family unit again, but soon, he would be yelling at her, calling her disparaging names.
He began making erratic claims that he was working with a voodoo priest in New Orleans & that he was placing hexes on others, that there were dark forces shifting around & through him. With these messages, Iris’s family were understandably concerned while friends noticed that Milan wasn’t sleeping, sometimes for days on end. He seemed very manic, speaking at a rapid pace, moving from one topic to the next, the listener unable to follow his train of thought.
Milan began showing up at Iris’s home to pick the children up unannounced. According to her roommate, Lushanya Echeverria, when he once arrived with a firearm that he had tucked out of view, she realized that something serious was going on.
It hadn’t been until years into their marriage when Iris learned that Milan had previously abandoned his wife & children in an attempt to reinvent himself. In 2003, Nicole Ross filed for divorce from her husband, Anthony Milan Ross, in St. Louis, Missouri. Despite many attempts to find him, court documents indicated that she had been unable to do so. He vanished, leaving his wife & four daughters behind, a time when his youngest had been only a toddler.
When Nicole & her daughters were later tracked down, they shared stories of a hellish abuse they suffered at his hands that had been both physical & psychological. He would withhold food from his family for extended periods of time as a way to exert control.
It was somewhere between four & seven years into their marriage when Iris discovered the truth about Milan’s family. This was when she realized that the man she married wasn’t who she thought he was. However, she tried to make it work, believing that people had the ability to change. It wasn’t until June 2017 when she filed for divorce after she could no longer deny just how erratic & potentially dangerous he was.
As Christmas 2017 began approaching, Milan’s behavior was growing increasingly alarming. However, he was still hanging on to some semblance of normalcy & had even proposed to his girlfriend three days before Christmas. He also adopted a dog & had been making plans for the future. On Christmas Eve, he wrote himself a business check.
However, no one had been aware of the fact that during his sleepless nights, Milan began making highly disturbing searches online. In the days before Christmas, he researched silencers, battery acid, sulfuric acid & skin-melting acid. He looked up articles about a man who killed his family on Christmas Day. He also told someone close to him to expect something big on Christmas.
On Christmas Eve, Milan had Nigel & Anora with him at his apartment near 16th Street & Highland Avenue in Phoenix. Rather than having a peaceful time connecting with the kids, Milan had been drinking heavily & hadn’t slept. Before noon, he’d consumed half of a bottle of whiskey. He was incessantly texting family & friends & while some of these messages were angry in tone, others were apologetic & some were chilling.
That morning, he had been sending rambling text messages to Iris; he spoke about how he felt hurt & depressed, he blamed himself, he blamed her, he was apologetic one moment & writing concerning messages the next.
At some point on Christmas Eve, Milan posted a video to his business Facebook page that depicted himself as an incredibly loving father. He & 11-year-old Nigel were happy & smiling as they began to sing Santa Claus is Coming to Town.
The video seemed like a fun, loving moment between a father & his son, but sadly, it was the last carefully constructed moment from a man whose entire existence had been a performance.
On Christmas Day, Iris drove to Milan’s apartment in the early afternoon to pick up the children. Neighbors within his apartment complex suddenly saw a terrified woman running across the courtyard. It looked like she was trying to escape a man who was running closely behind.
According to witnesses, when Iris reached the patio area she turned back & appeared to be pleading with Milan when he suddenly raised a hand that held a gun. Before anyone could intervene, he pointed the gun at a witness, forcing them back inside their apartment.
While Iris remained motionless on the patio, frantic neighbors began dialing 911 as they heard two to three more shots coming from inside his apartment.
At 2:52 pm, Iris’s sister Mary received a devastating text message from Milan that read, I just killed Iris & the kids. Seconds later he wrote, With a gun.
Police arrived & found Iris unresponsive on the ground while Nigel & Anora were nowhere to be seen. As officers surrounded the building, they called out to Milan, encouraging him to surrender. He yelled out from his apartment, saying that the children were okay, threatening to harm them if the officers didn’t leave. However, only minutes later, he claimed that he had already killed them.
While negotiators continued to keep Milan talking, they frantically tried to come up with a plan that could potentially save the children. But as hours passed & the sun began to set, the team heard the sound of gunshots coming from inside the apartment.
At about 7:30 pm, Milan began firing directly at officers, striking one with shrapnel. The injured officer was rushed to the hospital as SWAT teams deployed robots. After the first robot went through the doorway & down the hall of Milan’s apartment, the feed depicted a small, motionless figure.
Tragically, this made it clear that 9-month-old Anora had not survived. As the robot continued forward into another room, it came upon the motionless body of Nigel, who was lying amongst broken debris & overturned furniture.
After nearly seven hours of negotiation, it was about 10 pm when Milan once again opened fire. This time, the tactical team retaliated & within minutes, Milan surrendered, uninjured.
As word of what happened reached the public, no one could comprehend how the man who had sat on his couch singing Christmas carols with his son only the evening before had just killed his entire family. As the Christmas Eve video spread across the internet, it haunted all who saw it, knowing what followed only hours later.
Sadly, Iris’s family had seen Milan’s mask slip away & recognized that he was an unstable man with a very dark side, but they never fathomed it could be this dark. As they established a GoFundMe page to cover funeral expenses, they wrote, In an unbelievable act of horror & violence, a mother & her two children were brutally murdered on Christmas Day. Iris was a loving, gentle mother who adored her children. Nigel, 11 & Anora, 9 months. The family is faced with the devastating loss & the funeral expenses for these three beautiful souls.
The online community who had watched Milan’s inspiring transformation were stunned to learn that he was now being charged with three counts of first-degree murder, multiple counts of aggravated assault & 17 counts of aggravated assaults on a peace officer.
His first court appearance came the following day on December 26 when he was held without bond. However, his trial didn’t begin for nearly eight long years in September 2025. The delay was related to multiple factors that included the complexity of a capital case, mental health evaluations, the backlog of the court system & the assembling of evidence in such a high-profile case.
The prosecution painted a clear picture of premeditation based on Milan’s searches for weapons, silencers & various types of acid as well as an article he searched about Christmas Day family murders. They focused on his growing obsession of maintaining his online presence & celebrity status & his dependence on Iris’s income to maintain the lifestyle he depicted online.
After Iris filed for divorce, his world came crashing down since his success was a facade that he hid his past & true self behind. He’d warned others to expect something big on Christmas which proved that this had not been a crime of passion within a moment of rage, but rather, very calculated & planned.
Meanwhile, the defense focused on Milan’s debilitating struggle with depression & a spiral into mental illness. His sleepless nights stretched on for weeks & his team of lawyers claimed that his nefarious internet searches had only been obsessive thoughts. They highlighted the fact that he had proposed to his girlfriend only days before Christmas & they’d adopted a dog, signs that he hadn’t considered ending his future or that of his family’s.
Milan’s lawyer, Carrie Gallagher, focused on the fact that he had consumed half of a bottle of whiskey by noon on Christmas Eve & paired with his mental state, he was a man in crisis.
The jury heard from witnesses who had seen Iris running for her life on the afternoon of Christmas Day. They heard about the seven hour stand-off with police, they reviewed his text messages & internet searches, they watched the video he recorded with Nigel less than 24 hours before he murdered his family.
On November 3, 2025, the jury found Anthony Milan Ross guilty on all counts & the 53-year-old’s sentencing has yet to take place although it was originally scheduled for January 9, 2026, a date that has come & gone.
Meanwhile, family members are left to navigate through their never-ending grief at the loss of Iris, Nigel & Anora. Through their grief, they’ve found something that resembles peace as they focus on who each victim was in life rather than how they died.
Iris’s colleagues at St. Joseph’s Hospital has kept her memory alive, remembering the kind & compassionate woman who made everyone feel valued. Nigel’s friends & classmates, who are now 19-years-old, remember the boy with a huge personality, someone who loved to be on stage. Little Anora was never given the chance to even take her first steps or say her first words, but she’s remembered & treasured through the memories & photos that remain.
Milan Ross’s daughters from his first marriage are still haunted by the abuse they suffered at their father’s hands while they watch the suffering & trauma he caused another family.
Milan’s case is about someone who was one person in front of the camera & another when the cameras were no longer rolling. He built a picture of someone who overcame so many uphill battles & was able to put his goals into action, transforming his body, all the while his mind further unraveled.
He depicted himself as an inspiring person while concealing his dark past behind the mask of fame, hiding the fact that he abused & abanoned his first family. As his second marriage came to an end, his mental health continued to deteriorate until the darkness within him consumed everything.
Only one month before the murders, Milan appeared on a 12 News segment where he was said to have not only transformed his body, but had also strengthened & improved his relationship with his family. As he spoke about a time he was unable to even stand in the yard & play catch with his son to now actively coaching Nigel’s teams, he was brought to tears. With a beaming smile, he went on to say that he had the freedom to live life to the fullest.
This tragic story proves that sometimes the people who appear the brightest are the ones who cast the darkest shadows. Anthony Milan Ross’s untreated pain festered & grew behind his bright social media posts & the motivational speeches he made. His untreated madness led to the loss of three precious lives; Iris, Nigel & Anora Ross.
References:
- Amazon: The Change: Transforming Yourself & Your Body Into the Person You Want to Be
- 9 News: This valley man lost 240# after switching to a plant-based diet
- Medium: When the perfect life shattered: The haunting tragedy of the Ross family
- YouTube: 12 News: Phoenix man loses 300# through vegan lifestyle
