MALONE — State Police spent Tuesday afternoon conducting interviews and searching a Chateaugay home in connection with Ravin Miller’s murder.

Troop B Commander Maj. Richard C. Smith Jr. declined to identify who owns the rundown house at 776 Route 52. Investigators cordoned off the debris-filled property and scoured the residence Tuesday afternoon.

Marked and unmarked police vehicles lined the rural roadway as authorities searched the two-story home for evidence connected to the 51-year-old’s death.

Smith said they started searching the house at 1 p.m., looking for “instrumentalities,” which usually means a weapon.

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Police have been actively investigating Miller’s death since he was found inside his Route 11 home in Churubusco Aug. 20, but it wasn’t until this week that it was deemed a homicide.

Autopsy findings have attributed the local contractor’s death to asphyxiation due to strangulation.

Authorities have not said whether they believe Miller was specifically targeted or fell victim to a random act of violence.

Smith said late Tuesday afternoon that several intense interviews were under way, though no arrests had been made.

He declined to identify any possible suspects or elaborate on how authorities believe Miller’s home was tampered with after his death, which was apparently made to look like a suicide.

Though more than two months passed before Miller’s death was officially classified as a homicide, Smith said, the uncertainty about his cause of death did not affect how the investigation was conducted.

“We work to the greatest extent possible” in every investigation, he said during an afternoon briefing in Malone.

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