March 9, 2023 • 34 mins
In 2007, 50-year-old Michele MacNeill died under mysterious circumstances in Pleasant Grove, Utah. At the request for her husband Martin, she had recently undergone facial surgery. Then, also at her husband's request, she was given a dangerous cocktail of medications following the surgery. And so, was Martin MacNeill responsible for his wife's death? We talk with podcaster and true crime writer M. William Phelps, host of 'Paper Ghosts' and author of books including ‘We Thought We Knew You’ and ‘Don’t Tell A Soul.'
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Facing Evil, a production of iHeartRadio and
Tenderfoot TV. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast
are solely those of the individuals participating in the show
and do not represent those of iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV.
This podcast contains subject matter which may not be suitable
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Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hi, everyone, welcome back to Facing Evil. I'm Yvette Genti Lay.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
And I'm Rasha Pecuerero. So this week we are talking
about the murder of Michelle McNeil. This was a shocking
case that involved a perpetrator who weaved a huge web
of deceit and crime that destroyed basically every single person
that he touched. And that is just a small snippet
(00:52):
of the story. Today, we'll be breaking all of this
down with our guest m William Phelps, who many of
you may know, an author and an investigative journalist known
for the podcast Paper Ghosts and crossing the Line with
m William Phelps. But first, our producer Trevor is going
to take us through today's case.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Was Martin McNeil about to get away with murder? That's
what two unlikely accusers believe his daughters. They say he
killed their mother, and they've spent the past six years
trying to prove it.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
We did try to warn her, and there was no
talking to It was like he had his grips around her.
He had total control.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Ever since the day my mom died, I was concerned
that my father killed her. I've been fighting to get
justice for this case ever since then.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Michelle McNeil was a fifty year old woman who died
under mysterious circumstances in two thousand and seven on April
second of that year. She'd had cosmetic surgery a facelift,
and by all accounts, it went well, but then kings
took a turn for the tragic. Her husband of thirty years,
Martin McNeil, was a physician, and had asked the surgeon
(02:07):
to prescribe a variety of medications that wouldn't normally be necessary,
and on April eleventh, she was found dead, fully clothed,
in her bathtub. Investigators initially chalked her death up to
a heart attack, but later toxicology reports would reveal something
much more nefarious. Michelle's children had suspected their father was responsible.
(02:30):
There were rumors that Martin was having an affair, and
soon years of wrongdoing and deceit would come to light.
Martin McNeil's reported crimes started back in the nineteen seventies,
when he forged thousands of dollars worth of checks in
the state of California. That's also when he started scamming
the Veterans Association for Disability Payments, hauling off more than
(02:52):
one hundred thousand dollars over three decades. During this time period,
he and Michelle had met at the Church of Latter
Day Saint and quickly eloped. Soon after, Martin was briefly
jailed in a separate case of forgery, theft, and fraud.
In nineteen eighty four, he landed a residency in a
New York hospital after falsifying transcripts to get into medical school.
(03:16):
In two thousand, he resigned from a medical residency at
Brigham Young Health Clinic in Provo, Utah, after being accused
of having an affair with a patient, and in fact,
he reportedly had a series of affairs, and one girlfriend
later reported that Martin had told her he'd killed his
own brother by drowning him in a bathtub. After Martin
(03:37):
began an affair with a woman named Gipsy Willis, he
became increasingly verbally abusive with Michelle. Martin wanted a divorce,
but Michelle, a devout Mormon, wanted to save their marriage,
and that's when in two thousand and seven, Martin proposed
that she get facelift surgery, and Michelle, who by all
accounts didn't need the surgery, agreed to do it. Martin
(04:01):
then demanded that the doctors prescribe an unusually heavy duty
cocktail of drugs for Michelle, and he got his way.
The day after she was discharged, their daughter, Alexis, found
Michelle unresponsive. She managed to briefly awaken her mother, but
she had to go back to school. Before she did,
her mother told her, quote, if anything happens to me,
(04:23):
make sure it was not your dad. End quote. And
a few days later, on April eleventh, Alexis got a
phone call from her father telling her that her younger
adopted sister had found Michelle face down in their bathtub, unresponsive.
It took months for Michelle's adult children to convince authorities
to investigate Martin McNeil, and it took years for Martin
(04:47):
to finally get a trial where He was eventually convicted
of murder and after just over two years of serving
his sentence, Martin took his own life while in prison.
And so who was Michelle McNeil, what actually led to
her suspicious death and how does the story reveal a
darker method of partner abuse involving deception, manipulation and drugs.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
All right, we are back and we have got a
very special guest joining us today to talk about the
case of Michelle McNeil. You may know him from the
hit true crime podcast Paper Ghost, or you maybe read
one of his many books including We Thought We Knew
You or Don't Tell a Soul, just to name a few.
(05:35):
We're talking, of course about em William Phelps.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
So welcome, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 6 (05:43):
I'm humble by it and I love your show and
listen and yeah, it's great to be on.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Well, thanks Matthew. I guess first of all, we always
like to ask our guests like, how did you get
into the true crime genre? Tell us like did you
search it out or did it just happen? Tell us
a little bit about yourself and how that all came about.
Speaker 6 (06:09):
That's an interesting story because the day before I was
a true crime author. I didn't know I was becoming
a true crime author. You know, I was a journalist.
I wrote about politics, music, everything, and then my agent
was like, listen, if you really want to make a
go with this, you should write a book. So I
was covering the story of a nurse in Northampton, Massachusetts
(06:31):
who had killed a bunch of people and she was
on trial. So I pitched that. I got a deal,
and I thought I was writing a book about a
bunch of different people, interesting people, one of whom was
a serial killer. And I published that book and then
all of a sudden, I was a true crime guy
and that's all they wanted. The book was kind of successful,
(06:53):
so that's what they wanted, and I followed it. And
from that book, you know, TV came. They wanted to
interview me on different shows for that book. So I
got into TV that way, and then I continue to
write books, continue to do lots of TV executive produce, produce,
create TV shows, you know, all in the true crime space, documentaries,
(07:15):
and then of course podcast companies came calling, and you know,
here I am. I partnered with iHeart about three years
ago and it's been great. I mean, they're a great
company for what I want to do.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
They really are iHeart. I mean, we're part of the
same o'honna, Matthew, the same family. Yeah, yeah, so I
love that. I think you know, Yvett and I stumbled
into true crime just because of our lineage, and you
know who we're related to. But it's what you do
with it when you have that voice given to you, right,
(07:49):
So of course you know, today we are talking about
Michelle McNeil, and I would love to know, Matthew, what
was your first impression on this particular case.
Speaker 6 (08:02):
My first impression when I looked at this case was
the LDS connection number one. I see a lot of
that in my work. I see a lot of the control,
course of control, almost cult like behavior. Not all LDS,
of course, but I do see an amount of it.
Speaker 5 (08:21):
I see in a lot of these stories we cover.
Speaker 6 (08:23):
I mean, I just see a woman who as a
kid was an a student, the golden child, if you will.
She played the violin, she was a cheerleader, she acted
homecoming queen. It goes on and on and on, right, right,
So you know, we see these people a lot of
times who are It's like this person had so much
(08:45):
to offer humanity, and some buddy came along and took
that away from not only the world, but her inner circle.
Speaker 7 (08:54):
You know.
Speaker 6 (08:55):
So my first impressions were just as they generally are, sadness, yeah,
and a lot of frustration that no one saw what
was going on here.
Speaker 5 (09:06):
As this thing builds, you know, there's.
Speaker 6 (09:09):
A lot going on, a lot of red flags that
were missed.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
A lot of red flags, a lot a lot of flags.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
And you know, and one of the first things I
want to talk about is the major red flag. Who
is Martin, right, Martin McNeil. And the thing that is
so it's just mind blowing to me is that this
man was able to forge like documents for government, for
job qualifications, for medical and no one like Bada DENI like,
(09:41):
how how do we think that he got away with this?
Like for me, you know, being a biracial woman, like
I think about if it was a black man or
a Latino like I feel like they would have been
like stopped in their tracks, you know, instantly. But this
guy just seemed to get away with it. Do we
think it was because you know, he was a veteran
to start with.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 6 (10:03):
It's interesting because you mentioned the racial part of it,
and you know he's a white LDS guy. It's like,
you know, who's going to question that guy?
Speaker 5 (10:10):
Right?
Speaker 6 (10:11):
I mean, and we should you know, you know, you
should take everything out of it, right, and you could
just look at the behavior, right, and things he did
that the amount of prescriptions he was he was forging,
I mean, he was a.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
Doctor, right.
Speaker 6 (10:23):
So when I look at everything he's done in totality, right,
it's almost like you say that he was given a
free pass and no one questioned what he was doing.
And if someone just had taken even a second look
at what he was doing bank, right, I mean you
know they'd opened up a Pandora's box of criminal behavior.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Really exactly. I think you just hit the nail on
the head, Matthew, like the Pandora's box of criminal behavior.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Right.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
And you were saying earlier about like red flags.
Speaker 6 (10:57):
I mean, we're talking about a guy, right from what
I read, he attempted to kill his mother and allegedly
killed his brother.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Right, allegedly, yes, who was.
Speaker 6 (11:07):
Found faced down in a bathtub, which is an important
part of everything, right, absolutely, so, Prior previous behavior is
a good indication of behavior in the future for people
like this. Now, when we come to what you were
talking about, forging checks and all this manipulation, you start
(11:29):
to head down the road of a sociopath.
Speaker 5 (11:32):
Right.
Speaker 6 (11:34):
And the thing we can never forget about a sociopath,
but more so about a psychopath, is that we can't
underestimate how charming they are.
Speaker 7 (11:45):
Ah.
Speaker 6 (11:46):
Yes, sometimes we'll get pulled into the web of they're
charm and they won't even know it. I interviewed a
serial killer for nine years, and going into that, a
forensic psychologist friend of mine told me, Look, you invite
the devil into your house, you better be ready to
dine with him because if not, he's going to get
(12:08):
inside your head.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (12:11):
And throughout that whole time, I mean ninety eight percent
of the time, I kept I was m William Phelps.
I was never Matthew. I was M William Phelps the
whole time, Right, I was.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
That guy persona.
Speaker 6 (12:21):
Yes, But there were a couple of times where I
fell right in with him, not in evil things he
was talking about, but just like, hey, what are you
doing tonight?
Speaker 5 (12:30):
Phelps? When we get off the phone, or.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
When I went to go visit him in prison, Hey,
where are you headed now, well, I'm headed to No.
Speaker 5 (12:37):
No, no, you're.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Right, you're not friend, right, you're not friends? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (12:42):
So when we talk about Martin, we talk about the
same type individual. I'm not saying he's a psychopath, but
he clearly is heading down the road of a sociopath.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
You know, he was this supposedly right, this charming guy
who you know, Michelle loved him, but at the same time,
he was having an affair with this gypsy Willis who
was the nanny, right, And we always talk about this
a lot, like when women know, like Michelle knew what
was happening, but she still chose to stay. We always think,
(13:36):
from our perspective, well, why don't they just leave? Why
didn't they get out? Why are they staying with these people?
Why do you think she didn't after all the things
that he was doing.
Speaker 6 (13:48):
In these situations? And I spoke to a really great
expert on this, Laura Richards. Hear, what we're seeing in
this relationship between the two of them is course of control.
Speaker 5 (13:58):
Without a doubt.
Speaker 6 (14:00):
The numbers say this, a woman in a coercive control
marriage or relationship who's being abused, it takes her six
to seven times to leave meaning she she goes, she
comes back, she goes, if she's alive to leave at.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
The seventh time.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (14:19):
Wow, So in this case we see no. So to
answer your question, she was probably scared more than anything
else to leave.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
And she had children. You know, they had so many
children as well, Right, she had children.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
And you throw an LDS into it.
Speaker 6 (14:36):
LDS guilt into it, and the elder's probably telling her
you have to stay.
Speaker 5 (14:40):
That's your duty as a Christian.
Speaker 6 (14:42):
You have to stay. So she's getting it from all
ends here, right, and.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
She's scared right, right, And that's what we were talking
about earlier, like you don't break up the marriage in
this particular religion, in the Mormon religion, right, you just
you're not supposed to supposedly.
Speaker 6 (14:58):
I mean she caught him, you know, looking at pornography
and he threatened to kill her and himself with a
butcher knife.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
Right, So this is.
Speaker 5 (15:09):
The kind of atmosphere she's living under.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah, not pattern.
Speaker 5 (15:13):
Right.
Speaker 6 (15:14):
I am almost one hundred percent sure. And I'll say allegedly,
but I am one hundred percent sure. He said to
her many times, you leave, I'll find you, I'll kill you,
or I'll kill these kids. I guarantee. He said that
there's no doubt. Yeah, and so that's what she's living under.
Plus he's he's a doctor, right, so he's got medications
(15:35):
that he's giving to her without her knowledge. I would assume,
you know, so he's really really controlling this.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Woman, right. I was going to say he's a master manipulator.
Speaker 5 (15:46):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
So he somehow convinces his stunningly gorgeous wife, Michelle. She's,
by all accounts, this beautiful woman. She you know, is
a model at one point, I believe in just so beautiful.
But he convinces her to get a facelift, and that's
part of the manipulation, right, So she agrees and is like, Okay,
I'll get this surgery. And then that's when Martin asked
(16:11):
Michelle's doctor to prescribe her a laundry list of medications,
which eventually ends up killing her. So, you know, my
question for you, Matthew, like, how cunning do we feel
that this was, you know, compared to most of the
other true crime cases that you cover. I mean, have
(16:32):
you seen this a lot?
Speaker 6 (16:35):
Yeah, this is pretty classic stuff that he's doing. Sometimes
in life, we run into people and we don't realize
it but I call them soul suckers. They just start
sucking the soul out of your life. You don't even
realize what's happening. You're caught in the spiral. There's a
little bit of codependency on your part, right, So you're
(16:57):
in it, right, and you're scared, and they are using
the absolute best manipulation tactics that they have in their arsenal.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
To control you.
Speaker 6 (17:09):
Like this cosmetic surgery, the facelift. She decides to do it,
but then he first wants her to lower her blood.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
Pressure and then lose some weight.
Speaker 6 (17:19):
Right, so these are more tactics to tell her you're ugly,
you're overweight, and you need to do these things if
you want me to treat you better. Yeah, so this
is all classic manipulation course of control on his part.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
It's very classic. I've seen it many times.
Speaker 6 (17:39):
I've written about it a dozen times, probably in forty
something books.
Speaker 5 (17:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
I always like to look for the light in the darkness.
And the thing about her children, like they spoke.
Speaker 5 (17:51):
Out about him, there's the light.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
There is a light. You know.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
They were so courageous and so brave and they knew it.
Speaker 7 (18:00):
You know.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
It's like when you get that feeling, right, that intuitive
feeling that something is not right, and they took initiative,
you know, to do the right thing.
Speaker 6 (18:10):
I find that to be very courageous on their part
and very much a sense of love. You know, they
it's love. You know, we're going to try to bust
through all this with love.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (18:24):
So many people don't do that today.
Speaker 5 (18:26):
You know.
Speaker 6 (18:26):
It's it's so much easier to love, right, it's harder
to hate.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Wow.
Speaker 7 (18:32):
Yeah, yes, yeah, you know with a guy like this,
from just being on the outside, they knew, not even
being in the inner part of their marriage, just on
the outside, they knew this guy was a steamroller just
running through their mother's.
Speaker 5 (18:47):
Life and eventually he was gonna take that life. And
they knew that. They sensed that for sure.
Speaker 7 (18:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
I love that you said that, Matthew. Though, like you know,
they chose love like and I can only imagine and
how conflicted they were because this man was their father.
You know, he wasn't the biological father to all of
the children. I believe some of them were adopted and
you know, some were biologically his. But it is it
is easier to love, and you know, even after all
(19:16):
of that, you know, their mother essentially being killed and
murdered just a little bit after that. And I'm not
going to go into details because I'm the one. I can't.
I can't say all the nitty gritty, gross details. I'm
sure that you can, Matthew, but I cannot. But I
do know that, you know, Martin ended up sexually assaulting
(19:38):
one of his daughters just a short time after Michelle
was killed. It was his daughter Alexis, and she I
think she was home right before she was herself going
back to medical school. She was on break and she
woke up to him sexually assaulting her. I'm not even
going to go into the nitty gritty. And this is
what Alexis said that her father, Martin said to her
(20:02):
when she woke up and discovered what was happening. He said, quote, oh,
I'm sorry, I thought you were your mother. End quote.
Like how disgustingly gross is That makes me stick to
my stomach.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
I mean, he is a predator, But just the fact,
like what we were talking about earlier, you know, just
that had happened to her, and that she still had
the strength and the courage to speak up.
Speaker 5 (20:29):
Right, She wasn't afraid of him.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
She wasn't afraid.
Speaker 6 (20:32):
You know, this type of behavior, it tells me a lot,
the absolute eu brisk, the absolute gaul, tells me a
couple of things that he's probably done it before. Hmmm, right, okay,
this is not his first rodeo with this, right right.
Speaker 5 (20:49):
And we know when.
Speaker 6 (20:50):
I say we in my profession, we know that a
guy like Martin, his type of behavior, it never de escalates, It.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
All escalates, I see, always gets worse.
Speaker 6 (21:04):
Yeah, so if we look back, we see, you know,
he attempted to kill mom. He allegedly killed his brother
in a.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Bathtub, which is how Michelle was found as well.
Speaker 6 (21:15):
Prior behavior good indication of later behavior. So she's dead
and now he's going to start to openly sexually abuse
the children. So yeah, this is classic, classic sociopath behavior.
I mean, I did read some stuff about him perhaps
being diagnosed mentally ill early on, but I've not seen
(21:37):
those reports, the actual psychological reports, and I'd love to
see those. I'd love to see those, because a sociopath
can easily manipulate a psychologist into believe.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
In that they have a mental illness.
Speaker 6 (21:51):
Yeah, they have a mental illness. That's all part of
the you know the game. So unless I see those
psychology reports, I'm not believing that he was mentally you know,
I'm not buying it.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
You know, we do so many of these cases.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
And the thing that is so frustrating about a lot
of these cases is that it always takes not always,
but a lot of the time. It takes so very
long for these predators, murders, you know, to actually do
the time. And for I mean for Martin, it took
six years for him to finally go on trial for
(22:48):
the murder of Michelle, Like why is this so common?
Speaker 6 (22:52):
Justice runs a lot of times for the worst criminals
at a snail's pace because they they get these lawyers.
Speaker 5 (23:01):
To muck up the whole situation, to.
Speaker 6 (23:04):
Just start to file motions and argue every single little
bitty thing, try to get venues changed, the whole thing.
So they just keep prolonging this prolonged and this hoping
something pops for them. And it's very frustrating because look,
you're dragging the family through the six years, right, so
(23:24):
these these family members who have lost a loved one
are just being revictimized now all over again, over and
over and over. Every time there's a I have a
case now that I've been waiting on for I don't know,
ten years, and this guy's been in prison.
Speaker 5 (23:42):
And for justice, yeah, and for the trial to start.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Wow, a decade. A decade, ridiculous, A decade, I.
Speaker 6 (23:50):
Mean it just postponement after postponement after postponement. The other
part of it too, sometimes, which shouldn't take more than
a year, is that some times prosecutors will want to
you know, they'll want to wait because they hope maybe
they can cut a deal and avoid trial for everybody.
So they start to talk to the defense attorney and
(24:11):
maybe talk about a deal, talk to the family, Hey,
would you accept twenty five years, you know or whatever.
So that can take a little bit of time, right right, Yeah,
But this five, six, ten year stuff is just our
justice system is broken.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
I have to agree with that.
Speaker 6 (24:29):
I had a case I covered on Crossing the Line
where a girl that I went to school with was
murdered at the bus stop in the woods.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
I'm so sorry, And.
Speaker 5 (24:41):
They caught the kid who went to school with us.
Speaker 6 (24:43):
So long story shorty, I mean, he went to trial.
Speaker 5 (24:47):
You know, he got.
Speaker 6 (24:48):
Twenty five years, he's out in seventeen years. Her family
fought that fought, that fought, that fought that he gets
out in seventeen years. He moves south, meets a girl,
gets her prey, and then he kills her in front
of the baby. Oh there's more. He gets twenty five
to forty years for that, and he just got out
(25:09):
last fall.
Speaker 5 (25:10):
No, this man is murdered to women.
Speaker 6 (25:13):
He's walking the street as we speak.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Justice system is broken. I'm at a loss for words.
Speaker 6 (25:19):
Yeah, it makes no sense to me how some of
these cases sometimes are adjudicated. It especially when it comes
to sexual assault cases. Given these three four year sentences
to guys who judges.
Speaker 5 (25:32):
No, are going to go back out do it again.
Speaker 6 (25:36):
I'm getting myself heated here and I don't want to
do that on your show.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
It's just so frustrating, like you said, And it gets
into our heart and our soul and our mind and
our spirit because we see it so often. You know,
where they get in, they get out, or they never
even get in at all.
Speaker 6 (25:53):
We try to your words, find the light in this right?
We always I do, as an EmPATH, as a as
a perfect Yeah, yes, try to find the light.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
In this Where's the light in this right? Where is it?
Speaker 6 (26:05):
And sometimes it's not there. It's just not there. You know,
you'd think, oh, it's going to be the judge. Oh,
it's going to be the prosecutor.
Speaker 5 (26:12):
Where is it? You know.
Speaker 6 (26:14):
So but there's hope, you know, you get you can't.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Lose hope, always, always, always hope. Well, Matthew, what I
was going to say as a fellow mpath which my
sister Yvette and I are just like you. I think
that's why we all do what we do, right. We
are here for a reason to shine light. And I, Anyvette,
I know, always always always try to find the light,
(26:37):
even when it feels like it it's so dark that
you can't see it. In this particular case, at least
after a twenty two day trial, Martin was finally found
guilty of first degree murder, and on that day, his
daughter Alexis, but more importantly, Michelle's daughter Alexis said, quote,
(26:58):
there was justice for my mind. Today. We are just
so happy he cannot hurt anyone else. Quote.
Speaker 5 (27:06):
And it didn't.
Speaker 6 (27:07):
Didn't Alexis take on her mom's name instead of his name.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
She sure did. She didn't want to be doctor McNeil.
Speaker 5 (27:14):
No so much respect that you know.
Speaker 6 (27:16):
It's so I've seen other cases where kids are involved, where.
Speaker 5 (27:22):
They take sides.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Yeah, look at.
Speaker 6 (27:25):
To Michael Peterson case, the staircase, right that that kind
of divided.
Speaker 5 (27:29):
Those kids in that case.
Speaker 7 (27:30):
Right.
Speaker 6 (27:31):
But here, I'm so happy to see her say what
she said, not not only that, but to take.
Speaker 5 (27:36):
On mom's name. Come yeah, doctor.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Somers strong, a strong woman right there, you know, and
she will carry the torch for her mom, you know,
and pay it forward to the next generation. So that
is the light.
Speaker 6 (27:52):
That is that is the light. The light is starting
to creep in there.
Speaker 5 (27:56):
Sure you know.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Lastly, we're going to end on on this, and this
is a very important question for all of us. We
do know that in April twenty seventeen, Martin actually did
successfully he committed suicide. You know, we know he had
tried many times before, but this was only two and
a half years into his prison sentence.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
So the question here is do we think he was
truly mentally unstable? And the last part of the question
is do we think that if someone would have recognized
these signs in him, could he have been saved? Could
he have been a different human being?
Speaker 6 (28:42):
I think nothing was going to stop him from causing
chaos and evil throughout his life.
Speaker 5 (28:48):
That was his nature.
Speaker 6 (28:50):
That's what he was going to do, whether it was
with Michelle or somebody else. I think his suicide was
more of a coward, this move to get out of
spending life in prison and being a person who sexually
abused his own kid and a murderer. He probably wouldn't
have lasted long. Yeah, you know, to the question of
(29:11):
noticing earlier on, that's a really important question that is
being studied a lot today. Can we do brain scans
on potential psychopaths and because most psychopaths, I never want
to say all, but all the psychopaths that I've seen
brain scans of and this work that's going on in England,
(29:33):
they all are missing the empathy love part of their brain.
It's that there's literally a whole So I mean, and
I know this from interviewing serial killer psychopaths. It's not
that they don't love, it's they can't love. They have
no understanding of what love even means because they've never
(29:53):
felt it. So that's an interesting question I think with
the sociopath is kind of learned. You learn behavior in yourself,
you grow into it. Psychopath kind of neuture and nature, right,
there's the two combined. But with a sociopath, it's I
think it's all nurturing. I think it's all as you
grow into this this person, you realize that you can
(30:14):
get things by manipulation, pathological lying, you know, all of
this stuff.
Speaker 5 (30:18):
So Martin, I don't think. I don't think his.
Speaker 6 (30:22):
Path would have ever been different if somebody pointed out, hey,
you know, you know you're not right, dude, you got
to get some help.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
He was going to do what he wanted to do regardless.
Speaker 6 (30:31):
Yeah, we see that earlier in his life with the
attempted murder and the alleged the murder. We see that, right,
We see how he sets up his life. That's this
is who I am. You know, he's telling us right,
and then he proceeds to get worse and do worse things.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Gosh, that resonated so deeply what you just said, and
it I feel like, Rassia, you know, this is such
a wonderful conversation with you because I feel like we're
like minded. You know that we're coming coming from the
same point of view, you know, always trying to tell
the story, but have an immense amount of empathy for,
(31:11):
you know, those that are all involved in it.
Speaker 6 (31:13):
Right, right, right, and and understand that you know, a
victims of murder.
Speaker 5 (31:20):
Once the victim of murder.
Speaker 6 (31:22):
Is dead, there's a ripple effect that travels throughout the
family forever and ever and ever and ever, friend's family,
the community. Sometimes right, yeah, it's it's yeah. So we
have to take that into consideration all the.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Time, always and hold them in the light as well.
Speaker 5 (31:39):
In the light.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Yes, well, m William Phelps, the one and only mahalanuis Law,
thank you so much for being here on facing evil.
But you'll always be Matthew to us, thank you, thank
you for having me. Today's final message of hope and
(32:00):
healing goes out to Rachel, Vanessa, Alexis, Giselle, El Sabrina
and Ada. They are the children and adult children whose
lives were scarred by the death of Michelle McNeil and
by the death of their brother Damien, who took his
own life three years after the death of their mother.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
It is our hope for you that as the years
go on, you are able to celebrate the lives of
those you held so dear and honor their legacy. As
you are released from old wounds, that you are able to.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Cherish the lives that you shared.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
The sorrow will always remain, but it is our sincere
hope that the light finds you again and again and again.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
And if you listening right now find yourself in a
time of grief and pain, know that this is our
wish for you as well. Onward and upward. B moua
E moua. Well, that's our show for today. We'd love
to hear what you thought about today's discussion and if
(33:07):
there's a case you'd like for us to.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Cover, find us on social media or email us at
Facingevil pod at tenderfoot dot tv.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
And one small request if you haven't already, please find
us on iTunes and give us a good rating and
a good review. If you like what we do, your
support is always cherished. Until next time, Aloha.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Facing Evil is a production of iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV.
The show is hosted by Russia Pacuerero in a Vetchentile,
Matt Frederick and Alex Williams our executive producers on behalf
of iHeartRadio, with producers Trevor Young in Jesse Funk, Donald
Albright in Payne Lindsay, our executive producers on behalf of
(34:05):
tenderfoot TV alongside producer Tracy Kaplan. Our researcher is Carolyn Talmadge.
Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Find us on
social media or email us at facingevilpod at tenderfoot dot tv.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV, visit the
(34:25):
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
You're listening to Facing Evil, a production of iHeartRadio and
Tenderfoot TV. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast
are solely those of the individuals participating in the show
and do not represent those of iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV.
This podcast contains subject matter which may not be suitable
for everyone. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hi, everyone, welcome back to Facing Evil. I'm Yvette Genti Lay.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
And I'm Rasha Pecuerero. So this week we are talking
about the murder of Michelle McNeil. This was a shocking
case that involved a perpetrator who weaved a huge web
of deceit and crime that destroyed basically every single person
that he touched. And that is just a small snippet
(00:52):
of the story. Today, we'll be breaking all of this
down with our guest m William Phelps, who many of
you may know, an author and an investigative journalist known
for the podcast Paper Ghosts and crossing the Line with
m William Phelps. But first, our producer Trevor is going
to take us through today's case.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Was Martin McNeil about to get away with murder? That's
what two unlikely accusers believe his daughters. They say he
killed their mother, and they've spent the past six years
trying to prove it.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
We did try to warn her, and there was no
talking to It was like he had his grips around her.
He had total control.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Ever since the day my mom died, I was concerned
that my father killed her. I've been fighting to get
justice for this case ever since then.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Michelle McNeil was a fifty year old woman who died
under mysterious circumstances in two thousand and seven on April
second of that year. She'd had cosmetic surgery a facelift,
and by all accounts, it went well, but then kings
took a turn for the tragic. Her husband of thirty years,
Martin McNeil, was a physician, and had asked the surgeon
(02:07):
to prescribe a variety of medications that wouldn't normally be necessary,
and on April eleventh, she was found dead, fully clothed,
in her bathtub. Investigators initially chalked her death up to
a heart attack, but later toxicology reports would reveal something
much more nefarious. Michelle's children had suspected their father was responsible.
(02:30):
There were rumors that Martin was having an affair, and
soon years of wrongdoing and deceit would come to light.
Martin McNeil's reported crimes started back in the nineteen seventies,
when he forged thousands of dollars worth of checks in
the state of California. That's also when he started scamming
the Veterans Association for Disability Payments, hauling off more than
(02:52):
one hundred thousand dollars over three decades. During this time period,
he and Michelle had met at the Church of Latter
Day Saint and quickly eloped. Soon after, Martin was briefly
jailed in a separate case of forgery, theft, and fraud.
In nineteen eighty four, he landed a residency in a
New York hospital after falsifying transcripts to get into medical school.
(03:16):
In two thousand, he resigned from a medical residency at
Brigham Young Health Clinic in Provo, Utah, after being accused
of having an affair with a patient, and in fact,
he reportedly had a series of affairs, and one girlfriend
later reported that Martin had told her he'd killed his
own brother by drowning him in a bathtub. After Martin
(03:37):
began an affair with a woman named Gipsy Willis, he
became increasingly verbally abusive with Michelle. Martin wanted a divorce,
but Michelle, a devout Mormon, wanted to save their marriage,
and that's when in two thousand and seven, Martin proposed
that she get facelift surgery, and Michelle, who by all
accounts didn't need the surgery, agreed to do it. Martin
(04:01):
then demanded that the doctors prescribe an unusually heavy duty
cocktail of drugs for Michelle, and he got his way.
The day after she was discharged, their daughter, Alexis, found
Michelle unresponsive. She managed to briefly awaken her mother, but
she had to go back to school. Before she did,
her mother told her, quote, if anything happens to me,
(04:23):
make sure it was not your dad. End quote. And
a few days later, on April eleventh, Alexis got a
phone call from her father telling her that her younger
adopted sister had found Michelle face down in their bathtub, unresponsive.
It took months for Michelle's adult children to convince authorities
to investigate Martin McNeil, and it took years for Martin
(04:47):
to finally get a trial where He was eventually convicted
of murder and after just over two years of serving
his sentence, Martin took his own life while in prison.
And so who was Michelle McNeil, what actually led to
her suspicious death and how does the story reveal a
darker method of partner abuse involving deception, manipulation and drugs.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
All right, we are back and we have got a
very special guest joining us today to talk about the
case of Michelle McNeil. You may know him from the
hit true crime podcast Paper Ghost, or you maybe read
one of his many books including We Thought We Knew
You or Don't Tell a Soul, just to name a few.
(05:35):
We're talking, of course about em William Phelps.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
So welcome, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 6 (05:43):
I'm humble by it and I love your show and
listen and yeah, it's great to be on.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Well, thanks Matthew. I guess first of all, we always
like to ask our guests like, how did you get
into the true crime genre? Tell us like did you
search it out or did it just happen? Tell us
a little bit about yourself and how that all came about.
Speaker 6 (06:09):
That's an interesting story because the day before I was
a true crime author. I didn't know I was becoming
a true crime author. You know, I was a journalist.
I wrote about politics, music, everything, and then my agent
was like, listen, if you really want to make a
go with this, you should write a book. So I
was covering the story of a nurse in Northampton, Massachusetts
(06:31):
who had killed a bunch of people and she was
on trial. So I pitched that. I got a deal,
and I thought I was writing a book about a
bunch of different people, interesting people, one of whom was
a serial killer. And I published that book and then
all of a sudden, I was a true crime guy
and that's all they wanted. The book was kind of successful,
(06:53):
so that's what they wanted, and I followed it. And
from that book, you know, TV came. They wanted to
interview me on different shows for that book. So I
got into TV that way, and then I continue to
write books, continue to do lots of TV executive produce, produce,
create TV shows, you know, all in the true crime space, documentaries,
(07:15):
and then of course podcast companies came calling, and you know,
here I am. I partnered with iHeart about three years
ago and it's been great. I mean, they're a great
company for what I want to do.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
They really are iHeart. I mean, we're part of the
same o'honna, Matthew, the same family. Yeah, yeah, so I
love that. I think you know, Yvett and I stumbled
into true crime just because of our lineage, and you
know who we're related to. But it's what you do
with it when you have that voice given to you, right,
(07:49):
So of course you know, today we are talking about
Michelle McNeil, and I would love to know, Matthew, what
was your first impression on this particular case.
Speaker 6 (08:02):
My first impression when I looked at this case was
the LDS connection number one. I see a lot of
that in my work. I see a lot of the control,
course of control, almost cult like behavior. Not all LDS,
of course, but I do see an amount of it.
Speaker 5 (08:21):
I see in a lot of these stories we cover.
Speaker 6 (08:23):
I mean, I just see a woman who as a
kid was an a student, the golden child, if you will.
She played the violin, she was a cheerleader, she acted
homecoming queen. It goes on and on and on, right, right,
So you know, we see these people a lot of
times who are It's like this person had so much
(08:45):
to offer humanity, and some buddy came along and took
that away from not only the world, but her inner circle.
Speaker 7 (08:54):
You know.
Speaker 6 (08:55):
So my first impressions were just as they generally are, sadness, yeah,
and a lot of frustration that no one saw what
was going on here.
Speaker 5 (09:06):
As this thing builds, you know, there's.
Speaker 6 (09:09):
A lot going on, a lot of red flags that
were missed.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
A lot of red flags, a lot a lot of flags.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
And you know, and one of the first things I
want to talk about is the major red flag. Who
is Martin, right, Martin McNeil. And the thing that is
so it's just mind blowing to me is that this
man was able to forge like documents for government, for
job qualifications, for medical and no one like Bada DENI like,
(09:41):
how how do we think that he got away with this?
Like for me, you know, being a biracial woman, like
I think about if it was a black man or
a Latino like I feel like they would have been
like stopped in their tracks, you know, instantly. But this
guy just seemed to get away with it. Do we
think it was because you know, he was a veteran
to start with.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 6 (10:03):
It's interesting because you mentioned the racial part of it,
and you know he's a white LDS guy. It's like,
you know, who's going to question that guy?
Speaker 5 (10:10):
Right?
Speaker 6 (10:11):
I mean, and we should you know, you know, you
should take everything out of it, right, and you could
just look at the behavior, right, and things he did
that the amount of prescriptions he was he was forging,
I mean, he was a.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
Doctor, right.
Speaker 6 (10:23):
So when I look at everything he's done in totality, right,
it's almost like you say that he was given a
free pass and no one questioned what he was doing.
And if someone just had taken even a second look
at what he was doing bank, right, I mean you
know they'd opened up a Pandora's box of criminal behavior.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Really exactly. I think you just hit the nail on
the head, Matthew, like the Pandora's box of criminal behavior.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Right.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
And you were saying earlier about like red flags.
Speaker 6 (10:57):
I mean, we're talking about a guy, right from what
I read, he attempted to kill his mother and allegedly
killed his brother.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Right, allegedly, yes, who was.
Speaker 6 (11:07):
Found faced down in a bathtub, which is an important
part of everything, right, absolutely, so, Prior previous behavior is
a good indication of behavior in the future for people
like this. Now, when we come to what you were
talking about, forging checks and all this manipulation, you start
(11:29):
to head down the road of a sociopath.
Speaker 5 (11:32):
Right.
Speaker 6 (11:34):
And the thing we can never forget about a sociopath,
but more so about a psychopath, is that we can't
underestimate how charming they are.
Speaker 7 (11:45):
Ah.
Speaker 6 (11:46):
Yes, sometimes we'll get pulled into the web of they're
charm and they won't even know it. I interviewed a
serial killer for nine years, and going into that, a
forensic psychologist friend of mine told me, Look, you invite
the devil into your house, you better be ready to
dine with him because if not, he's going to get
(12:08):
inside your head.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (12:11):
And throughout that whole time, I mean ninety eight percent
of the time, I kept I was m William Phelps.
I was never Matthew. I was M William Phelps the
whole time, Right, I was.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
That guy persona.
Speaker 6 (12:21):
Yes, But there were a couple of times where I
fell right in with him, not in evil things he
was talking about, but just like, hey, what are you
doing tonight?
Speaker 5 (12:30):
Phelps? When we get off the phone, or.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
When I went to go visit him in prison, Hey,
where are you headed now, well, I'm headed to No.
Speaker 5 (12:37):
No, no, you're.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Right, you're not friend, right, you're not friends? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (12:42):
So when we talk about Martin, we talk about the
same type individual. I'm not saying he's a psychopath, but
he clearly is heading down the road of a sociopath.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
You know, he was this supposedly right, this charming guy
who you know, Michelle loved him, but at the same time,
he was having an affair with this gypsy Willis who
was the nanny, right, And we always talk about this
a lot, like when women know, like Michelle knew what
was happening, but she still chose to stay. We always think,
(13:36):
from our perspective, well, why don't they just leave? Why
didn't they get out? Why are they staying with these people?
Why do you think she didn't after all the things
that he was doing.
Speaker 6 (13:48):
In these situations? And I spoke to a really great
expert on this, Laura Richards. Hear, what we're seeing in
this relationship between the two of them is course of control.
Speaker 5 (13:58):
Without a doubt.
Speaker 6 (14:00):
The numbers say this, a woman in a coercive control
marriage or relationship who's being abused, it takes her six
to seven times to leave meaning she she goes, she
comes back, she goes, if she's alive to leave at.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
The seventh time.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (14:19):
Wow, So in this case we see no. So to
answer your question, she was probably scared more than anything
else to leave.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
And she had children. You know, they had so many
children as well, Right, she had children.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
And you throw an LDS into it.
Speaker 6 (14:36):
LDS guilt into it, and the elder's probably telling her
you have to stay.
Speaker 5 (14:40):
That's your duty as a Christian.
Speaker 6 (14:42):
You have to stay. So she's getting it from all
ends here, right, and.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
She's scared right, right, And that's what we were talking
about earlier, like you don't break up the marriage in
this particular religion, in the Mormon religion, right, you just
you're not supposed to supposedly.
Speaker 6 (14:58):
I mean she caught him, you know, looking at pornography
and he threatened to kill her and himself with a
butcher knife.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
Right, So this is.
Speaker 5 (15:09):
The kind of atmosphere she's living under.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah, not pattern.
Speaker 5 (15:13):
Right.
Speaker 6 (15:14):
I am almost one hundred percent sure. And I'll say allegedly,
but I am one hundred percent sure. He said to
her many times, you leave, I'll find you, I'll kill you,
or I'll kill these kids. I guarantee. He said that
there's no doubt. Yeah, and so that's what she's living under.
Plus he's he's a doctor, right, so he's got medications
(15:35):
that he's giving to her without her knowledge. I would assume,
you know, so he's really really controlling this.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Woman, right. I was going to say he's a master manipulator.
Speaker 5 (15:46):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
So he somehow convinces his stunningly gorgeous wife, Michelle. She's,
by all accounts, this beautiful woman. She you know, is
a model at one point, I believe in just so beautiful.
But he convinces her to get a facelift, and that's
part of the manipulation, right, So she agrees and is like, Okay,
I'll get this surgery. And then that's when Martin asked
(16:11):
Michelle's doctor to prescribe her a laundry list of medications,
which eventually ends up killing her. So, you know, my
question for you, Matthew, like, how cunning do we feel
that this was, you know, compared to most of the
other true crime cases that you cover. I mean, have
(16:32):
you seen this a lot?
Speaker 6 (16:35):
Yeah, this is pretty classic stuff that he's doing. Sometimes
in life, we run into people and we don't realize
it but I call them soul suckers. They just start
sucking the soul out of your life. You don't even
realize what's happening. You're caught in the spiral. There's a
little bit of codependency on your part, right, So you're
(16:57):
in it, right, and you're scared, and they are using
the absolute best manipulation tactics that they have in their arsenal.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
To control you.
Speaker 6 (17:09):
Like this cosmetic surgery, the facelift. She decides to do it,
but then he first wants her to lower her blood.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
Pressure and then lose some weight.
Speaker 6 (17:19):
Right, so these are more tactics to tell her you're ugly,
you're overweight, and you need to do these things if
you want me to treat you better. Yeah, so this
is all classic manipulation course of control on his part.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
It's very classic. I've seen it many times.
Speaker 6 (17:39):
I've written about it a dozen times, probably in forty
something books.
Speaker 5 (17:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
I always like to look for the light in the darkness.
And the thing about her children, like they spoke.
Speaker 5 (17:51):
Out about him, there's the light.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
There is a light. You know.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
They were so courageous and so brave and they knew it.
Speaker 7 (18:00):
You know.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
It's like when you get that feeling, right, that intuitive
feeling that something is not right, and they took initiative,
you know, to do the right thing.
Speaker 6 (18:10):
I find that to be very courageous on their part
and very much a sense of love. You know, they
it's love. You know, we're going to try to bust
through all this with love.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (18:24):
So many people don't do that today.
Speaker 5 (18:26):
You know.
Speaker 6 (18:26):
It's it's so much easier to love, right, it's harder
to hate.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Wow.
Speaker 7 (18:32):
Yeah, yes, yeah, you know with a guy like this,
from just being on the outside, they knew, not even
being in the inner part of their marriage, just on
the outside, they knew this guy was a steamroller just
running through their mother's.
Speaker 5 (18:47):
Life and eventually he was gonna take that life. And
they knew that. They sensed that for sure.
Speaker 7 (18:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
I love that you said that, Matthew. Though, like you know,
they chose love like and I can only imagine and
how conflicted they were because this man was their father.
You know, he wasn't the biological father to all of
the children. I believe some of them were adopted and
you know, some were biologically his. But it is it
is easier to love, and you know, even after all
(19:16):
of that, you know, their mother essentially being killed and
murdered just a little bit after that. And I'm not
going to go into details because I'm the one. I can't.
I can't say all the nitty gritty, gross details. I'm
sure that you can, Matthew, but I cannot. But I
do know that, you know, Martin ended up sexually assaulting
(19:38):
one of his daughters just a short time after Michelle
was killed. It was his daughter Alexis, and she I
think she was home right before she was herself going
back to medical school. She was on break and she
woke up to him sexually assaulting her. I'm not even
going to go into the nitty gritty. And this is
what Alexis said that her father, Martin said to her
(20:02):
when she woke up and discovered what was happening. He said, quote, oh,
I'm sorry, I thought you were your mother. End quote.
Like how disgustingly gross is That makes me stick to
my stomach.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
I mean, he is a predator, But just the fact,
like what we were talking about earlier, you know, just
that had happened to her, and that she still had
the strength and the courage to speak up.
Speaker 5 (20:29):
Right, She wasn't afraid of him.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
She wasn't afraid.
Speaker 6 (20:32):
You know, this type of behavior, it tells me a lot,
the absolute eu brisk, the absolute gaul, tells me a
couple of things that he's probably done it before. Hmmm, right, okay,
this is not his first rodeo with this, right right.
Speaker 5 (20:49):
And we know when.
Speaker 6 (20:50):
I say we in my profession, we know that a
guy like Martin, his type of behavior, it never de escalates, It.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
All escalates, I see, always gets worse.
Speaker 6 (21:04):
Yeah, so if we look back, we see, you know,
he attempted to kill mom. He allegedly killed his brother
in a.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Bathtub, which is how Michelle was found as well.
Speaker 6 (21:15):
Prior behavior good indication of later behavior. So she's dead
and now he's going to start to openly sexually abuse
the children. So yeah, this is classic, classic sociopath behavior.
I mean, I did read some stuff about him perhaps
being diagnosed mentally ill early on, but I've not seen
(21:37):
those reports, the actual psychological reports, and I'd love to
see those. I'd love to see those, because a sociopath
can easily manipulate a psychologist into believe.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
In that they have a mental illness.
Speaker 6 (21:51):
Yeah, they have a mental illness. That's all part of
the you know the game. So unless I see those
psychology reports, I'm not believing that he was mentally you know,
I'm not buying it.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
You know, we do so many of these cases.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
And the thing that is so frustrating about a lot
of these cases is that it always takes not always,
but a lot of the time. It takes so very
long for these predators, murders, you know, to actually do
the time. And for I mean for Martin, it took
six years for him to finally go on trial for
(22:48):
the murder of Michelle, Like why is this so common?
Speaker 6 (22:52):
Justice runs a lot of times for the worst criminals
at a snail's pace because they they get these lawyers.
Speaker 5 (23:01):
To muck up the whole situation, to.
Speaker 6 (23:04):
Just start to file motions and argue every single little
bitty thing, try to get venues changed, the whole thing.
So they just keep prolonging this prolonged and this hoping
something pops for them. And it's very frustrating because look,
you're dragging the family through the six years, right, so
(23:24):
these these family members who have lost a loved one
are just being revictimized now all over again, over and
over and over. Every time there's a I have a
case now that I've been waiting on for I don't know,
ten years, and this guy's been in prison.
Speaker 5 (23:42):
And for justice, yeah, and for the trial to start.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Wow, a decade. A decade, ridiculous, A decade, I.
Speaker 6 (23:50):
Mean it just postponement after postponement after postponement. The other
part of it too, sometimes, which shouldn't take more than
a year, is that some times prosecutors will want to
you know, they'll want to wait because they hope maybe
they can cut a deal and avoid trial for everybody.
So they start to talk to the defense attorney and
(24:11):
maybe talk about a deal, talk to the family, Hey,
would you accept twenty five years, you know or whatever.
So that can take a little bit of time, right right, Yeah,
But this five, six, ten year stuff is just our
justice system is broken.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
I have to agree with that.
Speaker 6 (24:29):
I had a case I covered on Crossing the Line
where a girl that I went to school with was
murdered at the bus stop in the woods.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
I'm so sorry, And.
Speaker 5 (24:41):
They caught the kid who went to school with us.
Speaker 6 (24:43):
So long story shorty, I mean, he went to trial.
Speaker 5 (24:47):
You know, he got.
Speaker 6 (24:48):
Twenty five years, he's out in seventeen years. Her family
fought that fought, that fought, that fought that he gets
out in seventeen years. He moves south, meets a girl,
gets her prey, and then he kills her in front
of the baby. Oh there's more. He gets twenty five
to forty years for that, and he just got out
(25:09):
last fall.
Speaker 5 (25:10):
No, this man is murdered to women.
Speaker 6 (25:13):
He's walking the street as we speak.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Justice system is broken. I'm at a loss for words.
Speaker 6 (25:19):
Yeah, it makes no sense to me how some of
these cases sometimes are adjudicated. It especially when it comes
to sexual assault cases. Given these three four year sentences
to guys who judges.
Speaker 5 (25:32):
No, are going to go back out do it again.
Speaker 6 (25:36):
I'm getting myself heated here and I don't want to
do that on your show.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
It's just so frustrating, like you said, And it gets
into our heart and our soul and our mind and
our spirit because we see it so often. You know,
where they get in, they get out, or they never
even get in at all.
Speaker 6 (25:53):
We try to your words, find the light in this right?
We always I do, as an EmPATH, as a as
a perfect Yeah, yes, try to find the light.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
In this Where's the light in this right? Where is it?
Speaker 6 (26:05):
And sometimes it's not there. It's just not there. You know,
you'd think, oh, it's going to be the judge. Oh,
it's going to be the prosecutor.
Speaker 5 (26:12):
Where is it? You know.
Speaker 6 (26:14):
So but there's hope, you know, you get you can't.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Lose hope, always, always, always hope. Well, Matthew, what I
was going to say as a fellow mpath which my
sister Yvette and I are just like you. I think
that's why we all do what we do, right. We
are here for a reason to shine light. And I, Anyvette,
I know, always always always try to find the light,
(26:37):
even when it feels like it it's so dark that
you can't see it. In this particular case, at least
after a twenty two day trial, Martin was finally found
guilty of first degree murder, and on that day, his
daughter Alexis, but more importantly, Michelle's daughter Alexis said, quote,
(26:58):
there was justice for my mind. Today. We are just
so happy he cannot hurt anyone else. Quote.
Speaker 5 (27:06):
And it didn't.
Speaker 6 (27:07):
Didn't Alexis take on her mom's name instead of his name.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
She sure did. She didn't want to be doctor McNeil.
Speaker 5 (27:14):
No so much respect that you know.
Speaker 6 (27:16):
It's so I've seen other cases where kids are involved, where.
Speaker 5 (27:22):
They take sides.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Yeah, look at.
Speaker 6 (27:25):
To Michael Peterson case, the staircase, right that that kind
of divided.
Speaker 5 (27:29):
Those kids in that case.
Speaker 7 (27:30):
Right.
Speaker 6 (27:31):
But here, I'm so happy to see her say what
she said, not not only that, but to take.
Speaker 5 (27:36):
On mom's name. Come yeah, doctor.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Somers strong, a strong woman right there, you know, and
she will carry the torch for her mom, you know,
and pay it forward to the next generation. So that
is the light.
Speaker 6 (27:52):
That is that is the light. The light is starting
to creep in there.
Speaker 5 (27:56):
Sure you know.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Lastly, we're going to end on on this, and this
is a very important question for all of us. We
do know that in April twenty seventeen, Martin actually did
successfully he committed suicide. You know, we know he had
tried many times before, but this was only two and
a half years into his prison sentence.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
So the question here is do we think he was
truly mentally unstable? And the last part of the question
is do we think that if someone would have recognized
these signs in him, could he have been saved? Could
he have been a different human being?
Speaker 6 (28:42):
I think nothing was going to stop him from causing
chaos and evil throughout his life.
Speaker 5 (28:48):
That was his nature.
Speaker 6 (28:50):
That's what he was going to do, whether it was
with Michelle or somebody else. I think his suicide was
more of a coward, this move to get out of
spending life in prison and being a person who sexually
abused his own kid and a murderer. He probably wouldn't
have lasted long. Yeah, you know, to the question of
(29:11):
noticing earlier on, that's a really important question that is
being studied a lot today. Can we do brain scans
on potential psychopaths and because most psychopaths, I never want
to say all, but all the psychopaths that I've seen
brain scans of and this work that's going on in England,
(29:33):
they all are missing the empathy love part of their brain.
It's that there's literally a whole So I mean, and
I know this from interviewing serial killer psychopaths. It's not
that they don't love, it's they can't love. They have
no understanding of what love even means because they've never
(29:53):
felt it. So that's an interesting question I think with
the sociopath is kind of learned. You learn behavior in yourself,
you grow into it. Psychopath kind of neuture and nature, right,
there's the two combined. But with a sociopath, it's I
think it's all nurturing. I think it's all as you
grow into this this person, you realize that you can
(30:14):
get things by manipulation, pathological lying, you know, all of
this stuff.
Speaker 5 (30:18):
So Martin, I don't think. I don't think his.
Speaker 6 (30:22):
Path would have ever been different if somebody pointed out, hey,
you know, you know you're not right, dude, you got
to get some help.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
He was going to do what he wanted to do regardless.
Speaker 6 (30:31):
Yeah, we see that earlier in his life with the
attempted murder and the alleged the murder. We see that, right,
We see how he sets up his life. That's this
is who I am. You know, he's telling us right,
and then he proceeds to get worse and do worse things.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Gosh, that resonated so deeply what you just said, and
it I feel like, Rassia, you know, this is such
a wonderful conversation with you because I feel like we're
like minded. You know that we're coming coming from the
same point of view, you know, always trying to tell
the story, but have an immense amount of empathy for,
(31:11):
you know, those that are all involved in it.
Speaker 6 (31:13):
Right, right, right, and and understand that you know, a
victims of murder.
Speaker 5 (31:20):
Once the victim of murder.
Speaker 6 (31:22):
Is dead, there's a ripple effect that travels throughout the
family forever and ever and ever and ever, friend's family,
the community. Sometimes right, yeah, it's it's yeah. So we
have to take that into consideration all the.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Time, always and hold them in the light as well.
Speaker 5 (31:39):
In the light.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Yes, well, m William Phelps, the one and only mahalanuis Law,
thank you so much for being here on facing evil.
But you'll always be Matthew to us, thank you, thank
you for having me. Today's final message of hope and
(32:00):
healing goes out to Rachel, Vanessa, Alexis, Giselle, El Sabrina
and Ada. They are the children and adult children whose
lives were scarred by the death of Michelle McNeil and
by the death of their brother Damien, who took his
own life three years after the death of their mother.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
It is our hope for you that as the years
go on, you are able to celebrate the lives of
those you held so dear and honor their legacy. As
you are released from old wounds, that you are able to.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Cherish the lives that you shared.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
The sorrow will always remain, but it is our sincere
hope that the light finds you again and again and again.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
And if you listening right now find yourself in a
time of grief and pain, know that this is our
wish for you as well. Onward and upward. B moua
E moua. Well, that's our show for today. We'd love
to hear what you thought about today's discussion and if
(33:07):
there's a case you'd like for us to.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Cover, find us on social media or email us at
Facingevil pod at tenderfoot dot tv.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
And one small request if you haven't already, please find
us on iTunes and give us a good rating and
a good review. If you like what we do, your
support is always cherished. Until next time, Aloha.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Facing Evil is a production of iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV.
The show is hosted by Russia Pacuerero in a Vetchentile,
Matt Frederick and Alex Williams our executive producers on behalf
of iHeartRadio, with producers Trevor Young in Jesse Funk, Donald
Albright in Payne Lindsay, our executive producers on behalf of
(34:05):
tenderfoot TV alongside producer Tracy Kaplan. Our researcher is Carolyn Talmadge.
Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Find us on
social media or email us at facingevilpod at tenderfoot dot tv.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV, visit the
(34:25):
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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