Explore With Us' Wade Allen Video: The Sturgis Case Behind the Title
Kelly Jean Warner-Miller, known as KJ, was 42 when she went missing in Sturgis, Michigan, in April 2019. On May 22, 2019, police acting on a tip went to Wade Allen's apartment and asked to look inside a large cooler. What they found turned a missing-person case into a homicide investigation on the spot.
Explore With Us has built one of YouTube's largest true crime audiences — 7.61 million subscribers — on long, procedure-led documentaries that stay with bodycam, interrogation footage and testimony rather than re-enactment. This video, published in June 2024, is a representative example, and its reach reflects that: more than 22.4 million views.
At just over an hour, it is longer than most single-case videos in this slot. That length is the point: the documentary can follow the case from the tip that brought police to the door, through Allen's shifting account in the interview room, to the testimony that contradicted it and the sentence that ended the case in 2023.
At a Glance
| Video | “Cops Make the Worst Discovery of Their Lives” |
|---|---|
| Channel | EXPLORE WITH US |
| Published | June 17, 2024 |
| Length | ~64 minutes |
| Views | 22.4M+ |
| Subject | The 2019 killing of Kelly Jean Warner-Miller in Sturgis, Michigan; the investigation of Wade Allen |
What the Video Covers
The video opens with the discovery on May 22, 2019, in Sturgis, Michigan. Police acted on an anonymous 911 call — later attributed in the video to a friend Allen had confided in — and went to 35-year-old Wade Allen's apartment. Allen resisted letting an officer look inside a large cooler. When it was opened, police found KJ's dismembered remains, with her legs in a second cooler, and arrested him.
The middle section follows the interrogation. Allen first told detectives that KJ had fallen and died in a bathtub, and that he had kept and dismembered her body to fit it in the coolers. The video then sets that account against what others described: testimony from a neighbour, an ex-girlfriend and Allen's jail cellmates portraying prolonged control and torture, including tying her up and strangling her with a white ribbon and reviving her with CPR. As the video presents it, the autopsy ruled the death a homicide by unspecified means.
It closes with the legal outcome. In 2023, Allen pled no contest and was convicted of second-degree murder and mutilation of a dead body, and was sentenced to 39 to 60 years in prison — the result the documentary leaves viewers with, after an hour spent inside the evidence that produced it.
Strengths
The primary footage carries the account. Bodycam of the visit to the apartment and the interrogation that followed let viewers judge Allen's account for themselves, in his own words, rather than through summary. The channel's procedure-first editing — timeline, evidence, interview — keeps a complicated case followable.
Conflicting accounts are tested, not just presented. The documentary's most useful move is structural: it lets Allen's bathtub account stand, then brings in the neighbour, ex-girlfriend and cellmate testimony and the autopsy finding, so the viewer can see exactly where the first story fails.
It follows the case to a conclusion. Because the video was made after the 2023 plea and sentencing, it does not end at an arrest or a charge. Viewers get the full arc — disappearance, discovery, interrogation, conviction and a 39-to-60-year sentence.
Weaknesses
The title undersells the victim. “Cops Make the Worst Discovery of Their Lives” centres the officers' experience of a case in which a 42-year-old woman was killed. The video itself is more careful than its title, but a viewer choosing on the title alone would not know whose case this is.
Graphic material is central, not incidental. The discovery footage and the testimony about what preceded KJ's death are the substance of the documentary, not brief references. Viewers sensitive to descriptions of dismemberment or coercive control should treat the content note above as a real warning, not a formality.
Testimony is doing heavy work. Much of the account of KJ's final period comes from witnesses — including jail cellmates — whose evidence viewers must weigh for themselves. The video presents it clearly, but it remains testimony reported in a documentary, not a substitute for the court record.
Who Should Watch
- Interrogation and bodycam viewers — the apartment visit and the interview room are the core of this documentary.
- Explore With Us regulars — a full-length, procedure-led entry in the channel's established format.
- Viewers who prefer resolved cases — the story runs from the 2019 disappearance through to conviction and sentencing.
- True crime viewers who can handle graphic cases — the subject matter is severe throughout, and the video does not look away.
8/10
A thorough, footage-led documentary that tests a suspect's account against testimony and follows a grim Sturgis case all the way to sentencing. The title centres the police rather than the victim, and the material is graphic throughout — but as case reconstruction, it is careful and complete.
Source: EXPLORE WITH US on YouTube (“Cops Make the Worst Discovery of Their Lives,” published June 17, 2024); case details as presented in the video, including the 2023 plea, conviction and sentence in the Wade Allen case.