Melanie McGuire

Melanie Lyn McGuire (née Slate; born October 8, 1972) is an American former nurse who was convicted of the murder of her husband. He was murdered on April 28th, 2004, in what media dubbed the "Suitcase Murder". She was sentenced to life in prison, on July 19, 2007 and is serving her sentence at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Clinton, New Jersey. She will not be eligible for parole until she is 101 years old.

Early life and education Melanie Lyn Slate grew up in Ridgewood and Middletown Township, New Jersey, attending Middletown High School South. She enrolled at Rutgers University, with a double major in math and psychology, and graduated in 1994. She married United States Navy veteran William T. "Bill" McGuire (born September 21, 1964) in 1999. The couple had two sons and lived in a Woodbridge Township, New Jersey apartment but planned to move that month to a larger home in Warren County. They closed the documents on their new house on April 28 but never moved in. That night, according to the prosecution, McGuire drugged her husband, shot him to death with a .38 caliber revolver, and subsequently dismembered his body. She put his remains into a 3-piece suitcase set. Those three pieces were later found in the Chesapeake Bay.

During the investigation, incriminating evidence against Melanie was uncovered. On April 26, 2004, Melanie had purchased a .38 caliber handgun from a store in Easton, Pennsylvania. Bill had been killed with a .38 caliber handgun with wadcutter cartridges. Melanie's receipt for the gun also listed an unspecified purchase of $9.95. There were only two items in the store for that amount, and one of them was a box of wadcutter cartridges. Through her attorneys, Joe Tacopina, Steve Turano, and Marc Ward, she pleaded not guilty to the charges.

After being released on bail, Melanie faced additional charges, on October 11, 2005. A four-count indictment came down from a state grand jury. Her bail was raised to $2.1million (equivalent to $million in ), but she was again released. More than a year later, on October 26, 2006, McGuire was charged with two counts of hindering apprehension, for allegedly writing letters to police aimed at getting them off her trail. She again pleaded not guilty and was released after posting $10,000 bail .

Almost three years after the crime, McGuire's murder trial commenced at the Middlesex County Courthouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on March 5, 2007. She was also convicted of the lesser charges of perjury, desecration of human remains and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose. The jury acquitted McGuire of the two counts of hindering prosecution, as well as tampering with evidence and possession of alprazolam without a prescription.

Shortly after her conviction, but before sentencing, McGuire appealed for a new trial, on the basis of the story of jailhouse informant Christopher Thieme that her husband was deeply in debt and may have been killed by Atlantic City mobsters. Prosecutors established that the informant was "entirely incredible and routinely and habitually fabricates stories", according to a New Jersey State Police investigation, before the informant recanted and accused McGuire's attorney of suborning perjury. With the story debunked, the request for a new trial was withdrawn. On July 19, 2007, at the age of 34, McGuire was sentenced to life in prison.

Aftermath During her arraignment on murder charges, McGuire's case was dubbed the "Suitcase Murder" by various media outlets. Author John Glatt wrote a book about the case, titled To Have and To Kill. The case has been profiled on television outlets: Snapped Oxygen Network; Dateline NBC; 48 Hours Mystery CBS; and The Investigators TruTV; Deadly Affairs Investigation Discovery and Forensic Files II, among other true crime television shows.

McGuire's conviction was affirmed by an appeals court on March 16, 2011. The three-judge panel affirmed that McGuire must serve more than 63 years in prison before she is eligible for parole. On September 20, 2011, the New Jersey Supreme Court declined to hear her further appeal. On April 29, 2014, McGuire filed a motion for post-conviction relief, alleging ineffective assistance of counsel and newly discovered evidence.

On September 25, 2014, McGuire appeared in court with her new attorney, Lois DeJulio, a public defender, to try to get a hearing that could overturn her 2007 murder conviction on the grounds that her previous legal representation by Joe Tacopina was inadequate or ineffective. The request was subsequently denied.

Adaptation In 2022, Lifetime produced a movie called Suitcase Killer: The Melanie McGuire Story, as part of its "Ripped from the Headlines" series of movies for television. The film stars Candice King as Melanie McGuire, Michael Roark as William McGuire, Jackson Hurst as Bradley Miller and Wendie Malick as Patricia Prezioso.