Jury convicts Martin MacNeill of murdering his wife


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PROVO — Martin MacNeill murdered his wife Michele in 2007 by drugging her with pain killers and sleeping pills before getting her into a bathtub and holding her head underwater until she drowned, a jury decided early Saturday.

The decision from the five men and three women was read aloud in a 4th District courtroom at 1:10 a.m. after 11 hours of deliberation.

The former Pleasant Grove physician showed no emotion as the verdict was read, but later hugged defense attorney Randall Spencer. With his hand on the lawyer’s shoulders, MacNeill smiled slightly and said, “It’s OK, really.”

MacNeill’s daughters — Alexis Somers and Rachel MacNeill — and other family members who spent years fighting for an investigation of Michele’s death, yelped with joy when the verdict was announced, before dissolving into tears.

Afterward, Somers said the courtroom was filled with people who loved her mother.

“We are just so happy he can’t hurt anyone else,” said Somers, tears streaming down her face. “I can’t believe this has finally happened. We’re so grateful ... there was justice for Mom.”

"We're absolutely thrilled," prosecutor Chad Grunander said. "It was an amazing moment to meet with the family. This has been so long in coming for them. I am emotional ... I love it when the system works and the system worked over these last four weeks."

MacNeill was also convicted of obstruction of justice. The 57-year-old MacNeill could spend the rest of his life in prison when he is sentenced on Jan. 7, 2014.

Defense attorney Randy Spencer made a quick exit from the courtroom after the verdict and declined to say if they would file an appeal.

“Of course I’m disappointed, but I don’t have any comments right now,” he told the throng of Utah and national media.

Michele MacNeill, 50, was found unconscious in the bathtub of her Pleasant Grove home on April 11, 2007, about a week after having plastic surgery. The youngest of her eight children, 6-year-old Ada, was the first person to find her.

Five years later, after family members pushed for an investigation, prosecutors filed criminal charges against MacNeill, claiming he overdosed his wife and drowned her.


I love it when the system works and the system worked over these last four weeks.

–Chad Grunander, prosecuting attorney


Only one of three medical examiners who considered the case ruled that the death was the result of drowning, however. One said she died of natural causes related to heart disease and a third said a combination of heart disease and drug toxicity were the cause. None, however, could declare definitively that the manner of death was homicide.

But prosecutor Jared Perkins told the jury during closing arguments that medical examiners interpret scientific evidence of the body, not culpability or motive.

“The fact that they don’t find homicide is a limitation of their role and a limitation of their science,” he said, explaining that it is a jury's job to decide who is responsible for someone's death.

Prosecutors contended the motive for the murder was Gypsy Willis, a nursing student 20 years his junior, with whom he began an affair in 2005. MacNeill hired Willis as a nanny to his young children and moved her into the family home within weeks of Michele’s death and asked her to marry him about three months later.

They also say MacNeill used his wife’s plastic surgery as a cover for his alleged crime, by requesting the powerful cocktail of painkillers, anxiety medications and sleeping pills he said were most needed for her recovery. The pills were flushed down the toilet within hours of her death.

Testimony in the mostly circumstantial case lasted for four weeks and included some 40 witnesses — 36 called by the Utah County Attorney’s Office — knitting together stories about MacNeill’s odd behaviors and inconsistent statements to illustrate proof of his guilt.

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For example, MacNeill forced his wife’s facelift, but raged before neighbors and emergency personnel after her death that she didn’t need it. He offered a doctor $10,000 to keep resuscitating an already dead Michele, instructed his son to flush her medications down the toilet, insisted on an autopsy and worried out loud about whether the police might investigate.

Among the most damning pieces of evidence in the prosecution's view is the falsified military identification application that MacNeill sought for Willis — a document that also got both of them prosecuted federally for identity theft. The document, heartlessly listed April 14, 2007 — the date of Michele's funeral — as the new couple's fake wedding date, deputy Utah County attorney Chad Grunander noted in his closing argument Friday.

“That is nothing short of an admission of guilt. That screams to you about what happened on April 11, 2007,” Grunander said. “The defendant may well have said in his application: ‘I murdered Michele.’”

Five inmates also testified that MacNeill told each of them that investigators would never be able to prove that he had murdered his wife. One said MacNeill told him he was glad his wife was dead and another said MacNeill admitted he "had to help" his wife die by holding her head underwater.

Defense attorneys primarily relied on a MacNeill co-worker from the Utah State Developmental Center in American Fork, his young daughter’s teacher and an ergonomics expert to argue that MacNeill could not have been home at the time of Michele’s death and that he would have had trouble lifting her 180-pound body out of the oval-shaped sunken bathtub on his own.

In his own closing argument, defense attorney Randall Spencer said MacNeill was living an “alternative lifestyle,” maintaining the appearance of a perfect family life while keeping Willis on the side.

But however odd and eccentric his behavior or personality may be, MacNeill was not a killer and the circumstances of the case don’t add up to murder, Spencer countered.

Video contribution: Sam Penrod

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