Martin MacNeill

Michele Marie MacNeill, (née Somers; January 15, 1957 – April 11, 2007) was an American homemaker and model. Michele was married for nearly 30 years to the physician Martin MacNeill and was the mother of eight children. She died in Pleasant Grove, Utah, on April 11, 2007, while at home recovering from cosmetic surgery performed eight days earlier. At her husband's request, the operating surgeon prescribed four medicines for her recovery; two of the drugs, Diazepam and Oxycodone, would not normally be prescribed to his patients.

Michele had been concerned during her recovery that Martin was having an affair and that she had been given medication by him inappropriately. Her daughter Alexis, a medical student at that time, then took responsibility for giving Michele her medicine. Michele recovered sufficiently for Alexis to return to school but Michele died the following day. Initially, police and autopsy reports concluded that Michele died of cardiovascular disease, but after being pressed to review the toxicology report, the state's chief medical examiner found that the combination of medicines in her body could have contributed to cardiac death.

During the trial, which began on October 17, 2013, Chief Prosecutor Chad Grunander stated, "It was an almost perfect murder, [MacNeill] pumped her full of drugs that he knew would be difficult to detect once she was dead."

Martin MacNeill was sentenced to 17 years to life. He committed suicide in prison in April 2017. Michele grew up in Concord, California, where she played violin, acted, and was a cheerleader and homecoming queen. She was a straight-A student, and an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Four months after the marriage, Martin served a six-month jail sentence for forgery, theft, and fraud. However, although Ada MacNeill was adopted by Michele and Martin, Ada is actually the daughter of Vanessa MacNeill, and Michele and Martin's biological granddaughter.

Martin MacNeill was the medical director of Utah State Development Center in American Fork, Utah. He was formerly a physician practicing in Pleasant Grove, had served in the military, and had received a law degree, He was a law student at New York Law School at the time. Prior to Damian's death, the Utah County Attorney's Office sent a letter to New York Law School stating that "investigators in the Utah County Attorney's Office deemed him [Damian] to be a very dangerous individual who possessed homicidal impulses and discussed the 'joys of killing,'" and that "Damian was present in Pleasant Grove on the date of his mother's death."

Events leading up to the murder Troubled marriage According to Rachel MacNeill, Michele MacNeill heard Martin threaten to commit suicide many times. In 2005, Martin threatened to commit suicide once more when Michele caught him looking at pornography again.

Health condition During the weeks leading up to the murder, MacNeill gave the impression that he had contracted a medical condition that required him to walk with a cane. His medical records showed that he had been in good health. Martin MacNeill also "had been collecting veteran benefits for decades, saying in an application he had bipolar or anti-social disorders". He was released from prison on the identity theft charges in July 2012, whereupon Utah county officials announced that Martin was a suspect in the murder of his wife.

In 2011, Willis was sentenced to three years' probation for her part in the identity theft scheme, with credit for 180 days in jail awaiting trial.

Murder charges and trial On August 24, 2012, the Utah County Attorney's Office charged Martin with murdering Michele. Martin MacNeill pleaded not guilty, claiming his wife died due to accidental death. Medical examiners did not rule that her death was the result of murder, but prosecutors convinced the jury that Martin MacNeill was responsible for killing his wife by drowning and prescription drugs. the Utah 4th District Court, upholding a state rule which went into effect on April 1, ruled that the trial could be broadcast and live-streamed—the first in Utah history. Coverage would exclude video of testimony by federal inmates who feared retaliation.

The 22-day trial was litigated by Chief Prosecutor Chad Grunander, and Martin MacNeill's defense team included Randall Spencer In his closing statement to the jury, Grunander stated, "It was an almost perfect murder, [MacNeill] pumped her full of drugs that he knew would be difficult to detect once she was dead." by attempting to make Michele's death appear accidental. In addition to the murder trial, Martin was found guilty of forcible sexual abuse of his daughter, Alexis Somers, and was sentenced for one to 15 years for that crime. In July 2014, an eight-person jury in Provo heard less than one day of testimony from three witnesses in the trial of MacNeill. The jury found MacNeill guilty and he was convicted of forcible sexual abuse, a second-degree felony. Because MacNeill refused to admit wrongdoing or to cooperate with investigators, he was ineligible for sex offender treatment and could not have been considered for probation. |group="nb"|name="sexual abuse conviction"

Sentencing and death in prison On September 19, 2014, MacNeill was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for his first-degree murder conviction, and one to 15 years in prison for his obstruction of justice conviction. Since Fourth District Judge Derek Pullan ordered that the sentences for murder and obstructing justice were to run consecutively to each other and the sexual abuse sentence, MacNeill would have been required to serve at least 17 years before being eligible for parole: allowing credit for 748 days already served, his earliest parole eligibility date was theoretically September 1, 2029. ; however, since MacNeill would have been 96 years of age at that time if he was still alive, he would have almost certainly spent the rest of his life in prison.

On April 9, 2017, four years and seven months into his sentence, MacNeill was found unresponsive on an outside yard near the prison's greenhouse: a report from the Unified Police Department determined that MacNeill had committed suicide by using a hose and a natural gas line that provided fuel for a greenhouse heater.

In popular culture The television talk show series Dr. Phil episode "The Doctor, His Wife, His Mistress, the Murder" (season 12, episode 51; air date: November 19, 2013, lay summary) interviewed Gypsy Willis, the mistress of the former doctor convicted for his wife's murder. Willis discusses the affair, the crime along with her own 2009 conviction of fraud.

The South Korean variety program Crime Scene adapted aspects of the Michele MacNeill case for an episode in 2014.

The crime documentary series Corrupt Crimes released the episode of the MacNeill murder, subtitled "Corrupt Crimes: The Makeover Murder" (season 2, episode 48; air date: June 30, 2017). The episode details the former beauty queen's death and the years of her sister and daughter's persistence to re-examine her death. Their commitment finally leads officials to request her cause of death to be The toxicology report reveals lethal levels of painkillers at the time of death, leading to Martin MacNeill's arrest, conviction and sentencing for the murder of his wife of 30 years.

Dateline NBC aired an episode entitled "Secrets in Pleasant Grove" on July 27, 2018. It was episode 60 of season 26.

20/20 aired an episode entitled "The Perfect Nanny" on June 14, 2019.

The Good Father: The Martin MacNeill Story aired on Lifetime on October 2, 2021, dramatizing the case as "based on true story" with Tom Everett Scott in the leading role.