The Department of Corrections released Scottye Miller from prison on Oct. 15, 2012 after he had served part of a sentence for assaulting and threatening to kill his ex-girlfriend, Tricia Patricelli, 10 months earlier.

On Oct. 30, 2012, Miller killed the 33-year-old Auburn woman in her apartment, stabbing her at least 22 times in her neck, face, torso and back.

Miller is serving a 50-year prison sentence for the murder at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.

Now Patricelli’s mother, Cathy Harper, has filed a lawsuit against the State of Washington, the Washington Department of Corrections and Rhonda Freeland, the DOC employee assigned to supervise Miller. The suit alleges that the state miscalculated in releasing Miller before he had completed his full sentence and that Freeland failed to supervise Miller after his release, despite the obvious danger he posed to Patricelli.

Harper’s suit, filed Dec. 4, alleges wrongful death, negligence, loss and emotional distress.

“(The state’s) gross negligence gave Miller the opportunity to find Ms. Patricelli and complete his long-thwarted plan to murder her,” the suit alleges.

Harper is asking for damages in an amount to be proven at trial, including past and future medical expenses and other health care expenses, pain and suffering, mental and physical, past and future permanent partial disability and disfigurement, loss of enjoyment of life, damages to property, past and future, special and economic damages, loss of income and earning capacity, loss of consortium, damage and or destruction of the parent-child relationship and other damages.

As the lawsuit states, the horrible sight of Patricelli’s murdered body was not spared her mother.

“The defendant’s grossly negligent acts or omission foreseeably caused Cathy Harper to find the lifeless body of her daughter, Tricia Patricelli, immediately after she was stabbed more than 20 times by Scottye Miller and before emergency medical technicians arrived,” the suit claims. “In viewing (the body) in that gruesome state, Cathy Harper has suffered emotional distress that manifests itself through objective symptoms.”

Harper was unavailable for comment.

At the time of the murder, Miller had already wracked up more than 15 convictions for domestic-violence-related offenses over a 10-year period involving Patricelli and other victims, including convictions for felony harassment, fourth-degree assault, six court order violations, third-degree assault, tampering with a witness and telephone harassment.

According to the lawsuit. Patricelli and Miller began dating and then living together in 2009. Soon afterward he pushed her down some stairs. Later that same year, he hit her with a bat and threatened to kill her.

On Dec. 30, 2011, he hit her in the face, for which he was sentenced to spend one year and one day in prison.

According to the lawsuit, Miller wrote threatening letters to Patricelli from prison.

“Although inmate mail is subject to inspection, [the Department of Corrections] failed to intercept these letters or respond to them in any way,” the lawsuit states.

Upon his release, the state gave him rules to follow. For one thing, he had to find “clean and sober housing” — but he never intended to follow the rules, the lawsuit alleges. It claims as well that the DOC never looked into where Miller was living;. He only told the DOC that he was “couch surfing.”

In the teeth of a no-contact order Miller contacted Patricelli after his release,. But when she told him to move out because of his abuse, he broke into her apartment and killed her.

Here, according to court records, is what happened.

At about 8:30 a.m., on Oct. 30, 2012, a downstairs neighbor heard a woman screaming in Patricelli’s apartment. Shortly after that, another neighbor looked outside and saw a man, later identified as Miller, descend the stairs to Patricelli’s apartment, throw items over a fence, jump the fence and run east.

The neighbor saw another man, Patricelli’s roommate, who had discovered her body, walk down the stairs and stand outside talking on a cell phone. The roommate. who was talking to Patricelli’s mother, asked another neighbor to call police.

Police later found Patricelli dead in her bathroom. Later that morning, patrol officers saw a man with blood on his clothing who matched the description of Miller and arrested him at the nearby Top Food & Drug on Auburn Way North.

Miller later told detectives that he had been involved in a romantic, dating relationship with Patricelli for about four years and that the two had previously lived together. Although at first he denied stabbing Patricelli, he later admitted to having sent her numerous texts threatening to beat and kill her. He claimed he had found her dead, but according to the police statement at last admitted that he had gone to Patricelli’s apartment and argued with her. Miller told detectives that he had “snapped”, put on a pair of gloves, armed himself with two knives and stabbed her to death in her bathroom.

Patricelli was the client advocate for New Connections of South King County in Kent.