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Nancy Grace
Doctor Murders Wife After Facelift
Aired October 01, 2013 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
911 OPERATOR: (INAUDIBLE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Need medical.
911 OPERATOR: Sir, what`s wrong?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My wife`s fallen in the bathtub!
911 OPERATOR: Who`s in the bathtub? Who`s in the bathtub?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My wife!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And she started to cry and she looked at me and said, Alexis (ph), if anything happens to me, make sure it wasn`t your father.
911 OPERATOR: OK. Is she conscious?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She`s not. I`m a physician.
911 OPERATOR: Sir...
(CROSSTALK)
911 OPERATOR: Sir, I can`t understand you. Can you calm down just a little bit?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I need help!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Prosecutors say MacNeill convinced his wife to have plastic surgery against her wishes, and gave her a dangerous mix of prescription drugs.
911 OPERATOR: OK, what -- your wife is unconscious?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She is unconscious! She`s under water!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Eight days after her surgery, Michele MacNeill was dead.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Prosecutors allege she was drugged and drowned, a murder plot so Dr. MacNeill could continue an affair with this woman, Gypsy Willis.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The world now knows that my father has committed a murder.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NANCY GRACE, HOST: Breaking news tonight, live, Utah. An emergency 911 call from a doctor trying to save his wife after her 6-year-old little girl comes home to find Mommy partially clothed, unconscious in the bedroom tub. She`s just eight days out of a full facelift in the hospital.
After interviewing her husband, a prestigious doctor and lawyer, the medical examiner rule natural death. But tonight, a full-fledged affair with a younger woman uncovered. The doctor brings the lover into the home as the new nanny.
Plus tonight, we learn of decades of the doctor/lawyer/husband forging it all the way to a medical degree, allegedly skimming government money, house loans, even his dead wife`s estate.
Bombshell tonight. In a stunning twist, the case reopened, suspected homicide.
We are live and taking your calls. Straight out to Jim Kirkwood, talk show host, KTKK. Thank you for being with us, Jim. A stunning development, as this case edges towards a trial, the judge ruling out, basically, deathbed admissions.
But let`s just take it from the start, Jim. What happened?
JIM KIRKWOOD, KTKK (via telephone): On the day of her death, she was getting a cocktail of drugs. I can`t believe they weren`t killing her the way they were, if you looked at that, Nancy. It`s unbelievable, the drugs her husband was giving her.
And then on top of that, on top of forcing her to take that, then she`s in the bathtub. And he has all kinds of alibis and excuses, but he was in and out of the house, and the next thing we know, she`s dead.
GRACE: Take a look at all of these drugs.
I want to go back to the beginning, Jean Casarez. They had been married for years, had eight children, including several children they actually adopted and brought over from Russia, the wife an actual beauty queen, a crowned beauty queen. You know, on the outside looking in, Jean Casarez, they had it all, a beautiful home. He`s a doctor and a lawyer. He marries a beauty queen, a devoted mom.
What happened, Jean?
JEAN CASAREZ, HLN LEGAL CORRESPONDENT: Nancy, they were the power couple, exactly as you`re saying. Well, all of a sudden, Dr. Martin MacNeill wants his beautiful wife to get a facelift, Nancy, and she really didn`t want to. She wanted to lose some weight. She wanted to get her high blood pressure under control.
But according to prosecutors, he pushed her and he pushed her. And finally, they went to this doctor that advertised in a newspaper, a plastic surgeon that nobody had heard of. And Dr. Martin MacNeill starts saying to the doctor, I want you to prescribe Ambien and Hydrocodone and all of these drugs. And this plastic surgeon, new to the area, said, I would never have prescribed all of those drugs, but he was a doctor, so I wrote the prescriptions.
GRACE: You know, Jean Casarez, isn`t it true that Dr. MacNeill had practiced in this area for a long time, but instead of going to a plastic surgeon that he knew to perform his wife`s surgery -- surgery that, I might add, he pushed her into -- she did not want a facelift. He kept on and on and on at her about how she needed a facelift, how he wanted her to have one.
He sets the whole thing up, and he actually finds a doctor he didn`t know, finds him in an ad in the newspaper in a different community, and that`s where she has the facelift.
CASAREZ: Exactly. And he had just moved to town. He was a brand-new doctor. And Nancy, she had bandages over her eyes after that facelift. And she told her daughter, He just kept giving me pill after pill after pill, and my eyes were covered and I didn`t know what pills they were.
She actually went through with her daughter, Nancy, what everybody pill felt like so she would know what her husband was giving her after that facelift.
GRACE: Let`s see a full headshot of her, please, Liz. You know who she looks like to me, Jean? She looks like Lonnie Anderson in Lonnie Anderson`s heyday. If you look at these shots of her -- I mean, come on, eight children, a devoted mother.
But you know, Clark, there are so many other factors swirling around this. Again, just like I did with Jean, Clark, take it from the top with your knowledge of this case. What do you know?
CLARK GOLDBAND, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER: Well, Nancy, I think it`s important to point out here that about four to five months before she`s found dead, Martin MacNeill, according to prosecutors, is allegedly going around telling people he only has a few months to live and is dying.
GRACE: Stop! Stop, stop, stop, stop! So Clark, hold on. She`s the one that dies, but you`re telling me months before she dies, he`s starting to make public proclamations that he`s got cancer and he`s dying?
GOLDBAND: Yes, according to documents, yes. Nancy, in fact, according to these documents, he allegedly stands up in his church and makes a tearful plea that he only has a few months to live.
GRACE: Now, you know, when I first heard about that, Clark, I didn`t understand how it -- where`s Clark? -- how it fit in to the story. But this is what I finally figured out, Clark. Remember, he had the mistress, Gypsy somebody, and he would go see the mistress, but he would tell his wife he was going to, I believe he said, the Mayo Clinic in Arizona for cancer treatments, when, in fact, he was there just shacking up with the girlfriend. Right?
GOLDBAND: Yes, Nancy. He was at the Mayo Clinic, but he didn`t have any serious illness. Now, according to authorities, one of the girls and the wife uncovered an envelope from the Mayo Clinic in the mail that told Martin MacNeill, according to reports, he was fine.
GRACE: Out to the lines. Christine in Arkansas. Hi, Christine. What`s your question?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, Nancy. Well, my question to you is -- well, actually I had two questions. I was just looking at the story on the Internet, as well -- but firstly, do you feel that this gentleman showed signs of sociopathic traits? I do have some criminal justice background and I feel that he may exhibit signs like -- you know, lying about an illness is one sign of sociopathic traits (ph), which makes it more likely to be, you know, in that category of, you know, committing a murder. And then, two, do you think that he is going to face the death penalty?
GRACE: OK. Keep Christine in Arkansas because I want to address both of those separately. Number one, he`s headed to trial, but I don`t think they`re seeking the death penalty on him, are they, Jean?
CASAREZ: No, they are not. But as far as sociopathic tendencies, according to the documents I`ve read, he told another woman that he was seeing, another mistress, that he had killed his brother, killed his mother, actually killed some patients to put them out of their misery that had issues and would inject them with potassium to make it look like it was a cardiac death.
GRACE: Right. Several times, he allegedly told other people that he had committed murders in the past.
To Dr. Ramani Durvasula. All right, you`re the clinical psychologist joining me out of LA. Let`s throw out what Jean and I know because we now know that`s not going to come in at trial. The judge ruled that out. We`ve got to pretend it doesn`t exist, even though we know it does.
Look at his behavior in this case. Do you see evidence that he`s a sociopath? Now, that doesn`t mean a hill of beans to me because that`s not a legal insanity or mental defect defense. But that`s what Christine from Arkansas wants to know. What do you think?
RAMANI DURVASULA, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST: Yes. He`s a poster child for sociopathy. You can see his name in the dictionary. He continued to lie to his wife. He kept having affairs. He made up this -- these -- there was all this chronic lying about credentials, about his health, about everything.
And I think that all of that together, when you do it so easily and so regularly, it`s real easy to kill someone and lie about that, too. So I think the pattern was in place. Simply the infidelity alone is enough to raise our hackles.
GRACE: Well, hold on, Ramani.
DURVASULA: So this guy`s a sociopath, and you`re right...
GRACE: It`s not just Gypsy. It`s not just the girlfriend Gypsy...
DURVASULA: No.
GRACE: ... that he actually brings...
DURVASULA: No, it was not.
GRACE: ... into the home to be the nanny. He brings his lover into the home. But you know, Jean Casarez, he`s a long history of lying and forging documents, according to authorities.
CASAREZ: Identity theft, right, and that`s one of the reasons prosecutors believe he said he was dying of cancer because then he put the house in his wife`s name, Michele. But then he ultimately puts the house name in Gypsy Willis`s name, his mistress. And then he also had his girlfriend, Gypsy Willis, assume the name of his daughter for identity theft purposes, so she...
GRACE: You mean the adopted daughter he tried to send back to Russia?
CASAREZ: That he did send back to Russia.
GRACE: Unleash the lawyers, Susan Moss, joining me, New York, Trent Copeland defense attorney, LA, Danny Cevallos, defense attorney, New York.
All right, let`s see Cevallos up for a moment. Let`s see all the lawyers -- Sue Moss, Danny Cevallos and Trent Copeland.
All right, to you, Cevallos. This is the fact that I really like, OK? So the daughter, Alexis, she`s a grown woman. She`s a med student, all right? So the night of the surgery, Cevallos -- she has a seven-hour plastic surgery. The husband, Martin MacNeill, insists -- throws a big fit at the hospital that he wants to bring her home and care for her himself at home.
Well, the attending physician at least had the wherewithal to say no to that. So after a big brouhaha at the hospital, she stays overnight. She comes home the next day. Daughter Alexis, med student, stays by her side, seated there, won`t leave. The father, Martin MacNeill, keeps saying, You`re tired. You need to go to bed. She`s, like, No, I`m fine. No, you`re tired. Go to bed. You need to rest. No, I`m really fine, Dad. She won`t leave her mom`s side.
That morning -- we`re now into the morning of, I think, the 5th. She has surgery on the 3rd, spends the night. Daughter`s at her bedside the whole day of the 4th. Daughter finally goes to sleep, comes back in, mom is unresponsive. She goes, Dad, what happened? What happened? And he goes, Oh, oh, I think I might have overmedicated her. Thoughts, Cevallos?
DANNY CEVALLOS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Thoughts? That statement about the overmedication going to be a problem. But your narrative just proved a very important point, that you can crowbar in any set of facts to make everything else that you led up to sound very guilty. He wanted to bring her home. he insisted on caring for her at home. Those facts by themselves are rather innocent.
GRACE: A seven-hour surgery? Who in their right mind would bring their...
CEVALLOS: He`s a doctor.
GRACE: ... wife home from the hospital after seven hours of surgery?
CEVALLOS: Yes. So the jump you`re trying to make is that because he wanted to...
GRACE: Not trying to make it!
CEVALLOS: ... observe her at home -- well, that requires...
GRACE: It`s made!
CEVALLOS: ... quite an inference. I think the prosecution might do better just proving the cause of death.
GRACE: That cow is out of the barn, all right? It`s gone! I`m not trying to make a jump -- and here`s another fact, Cevallos.
CEVALLOS: I`m listening.
GRACE: Let me see how you try to turn this one around on me! So the mother is found by one of her 6-year-old daughters. The daughter finds her dead in the tub in and pinkish-brownish, frothy water, you know, out of her gourd on all of these drugs, the husband`s been giving her. And that night, the medical student daughter comes back home from school. She leaves school and comes home. Only, you know, 48 hours have passed since she left her mother.
Put Cevallos up, please! I don`t want to look at -- at Valium. Cevallos, when Alexis gets home from school, OK, she`s only been gone 48 hours. This is the day her mother dies, that morning. The husband`s already gone in there and cleaned out all of her clothes. All the clothes are packed away, gone. All of the mother`s stuff is gone. All of these medications that he had prescribed for her himself had been thrown away at his order the day his wife dies, Cevallos!
CEVALLOS: Well, that -- that again, you`re taking the facts -- cleaning up, that`s a problem for him, definitely a problem. But everything else, you start lowering -- you start backing up the dump truck, and now you`re assuming that every fact...
GRACE: It`s all true!
CEVALLOS: ... is somehow incriminating. I didn`t say it wasn`t true.
GRACE: I`m not driving a dump truck!
CEVALLOS: You`re backing up...
GRACE: What -- why? Why is it when defense lawyers are faced or confronted with the truth, they suddenly -- it`s my fault. I didn`t make these facts up. Martin MacNeill did this, not me! I`m just telling you what the police report says.
SUSAN MOSS, FAMILY LAW ATTORNEY: If it looks like a duck and it quacks, it`s probably a duck. He allegedly killed his wife after getting her tipsy. Also, he can spend time with this mistress named Gypsy. You can`t make this stuff up!
The reality is, all the circumstantial evidence in this case points to one person, and we know, based upon those prior statements of the victim, what the motivation was, what the -- why this happened at all. And I do think, just like in Drew Peterson, there`s going to be a conviction.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My father orchestrated this whole plan.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A dangerous mix of prescription drugs. He later told police he found Michele unconscious in the bathtub.
911 OPERATOR: Who`s in the bathtub? Who`s in the bathtub?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My wife!
911 OPERATOR: OK. Is she conscious?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She`s not! I`m a physician!
911 OPERATOR: OK, sir.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I believed from the beginning that he murdered my sister, and (INAUDIBLE) to get justice for Michele.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Welcome back. To caller Christine in Arkansas. So Christine, did I answer your question.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You sure did, and which led me into another one, if you don`t mind.
GRACE: Sure.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) ask real quick. I was wondering if this was true. In 2007, MacNeill told her daughter, Alexis, if anything happens to me, make sure it wasn`t your dad. Is that correct? Am I reading right (INAUDIBLE)
GRACE: Oh, you know, Christine, you totally stole my punchline. I was going to throw that hardball at Cevallos and Copeland. I was holding it in my back pocket, but now I can`t argue with it. It`s true, Christine.
To Jim Kirkwood, KTKK. Oh, if only the jury knows what Christine in Arkansas knows, but a judge has ruled that`s not going to come into evidence, isn`t that right, Jim, in the last hours, actually?
KIRKWOOD: That is correct, and that`s a shame. But the most damning piece of evidence is the fact the daughters believes him to be guilty. And that`s going to be hard to get around, Nancy.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
911 OPERATOR: Sir, what`s wrong?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My wife`s fallen in the bathtub!
911 OPERATOR: Who`s in the bathtub? Who`s in the bathtub?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My wife!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My mother confronted my father about this woman, and he denied it. And then right after her death, he told me that he found the perfect nanny to come move in the home. And he said her name is Gillian. And I said, Dad, Gypsy Gillian Willis? Mom told me about that woman. She was concerned you were having an affair, and you`re not to bring her into this home.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: What a horrible feeling this woman must have endured before her death, Michele MacNeil, mother of eight children, a former beauty queen, married the love of her life. He`s a doctor and a lawyer. Well, the tables quickly turned. He suddenly began pressuring her to have a facelift a full-on facelift. You can see she obviously didn`t need it, Michele MacNeill.
After a seven-hour surgery, Martin MacNeill, a doctor himself, insists on bringing his wife home. The attending physician refused. Ultimately, he brings her home, where she dies.
Out to the lines. Mary in Virginia. Hi, Mary. What`s your question?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, Nancy. This is Mary from your Nancy Grace Group. I called once before.
GRACE: Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You`re welcome. I just wanted to say, this guy didn`t wait a single minute to try to kill her. He`s a medical doctor. He knows the exact combination in the cocktails to put what amount to see if - - what amount is fatal and what amount is not and which of the three of the four drugs are the ones who probably killed her, not Valium. Phenergan (ph), Percocet and Ambien. And (INAUDIBLE) came back from a seven-hour surgery post-op two days after surgery, you`re not going to have the wherewithal to figure out what combination of how many drugs to take to make it -- you know, to accidentally O.D.
GRACE: You know, hold Mary in Virginia one moment. I`m going to come back to her.
C.W. Jensen, retired police captain joining me out of Cave Creek. C.W., this particular fact really struck me. She was bandaged. She had bandages over her eyes and face, all around her head, seven-hour plastic surgery. She herself became so suspicious of what her husband was giving her, all this medication, that she, according to her daughter, started trying to feel the pills to find out what they were.
Can you imagine, in that state, after a seven-hour surgery, you can`t see through the bandages, trying to feel the pills to determine what your husband is giving you?
C.W. JENSEN, RETIRED POLICE CAPTAIN: Oh, my God, Nancy! It`s -- I mean, this poor woman. I mean, obviously, this guy just -- this was his whole plan. Of course, it`s all falling all apart.
I talked to my daughter on the phone today, and I told her about this segment, and I said -- I go -- she goes, Dad, why do you think he did it? I go, One, because he was having an affair. Two, because he was having an affair with a girl named Gypsy!
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Alexis and her siblings believe their father killed their mother, Michele MacNeill.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everything was stolen from us, everything.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) need an ambulance!
911 OPERATOR: OK. Is she breathing at all?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She is not!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They say he devised a scheme to make his wife`s death look accidental.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Her name is Gypsy. At first, we -- you know, (INAUDIBLE) a stripper.
911 OPERATOR: What kind of surgery did she have?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She had a facelift!
911 OPERATOR: She had a facelift?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes!
911 OPERATOR: OK. Do you know how to do CPR?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I`m doing it!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My mother was just a wonderful human being. She deserves justice. She should never have trusted my father, ever.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: We are live and taking your calls. To Clark Goldband, and on the story, Clark, I want you to describe the scene, and then I want to go to our physician tonight, Dr. Michelle Dupre, to get her analysis. The scene that was found by their 6-year-old little daughter.
GOLDBAND: Yes, Nancy. The 6-year-old enters the home. The first thing she typically does is look for her mom. That`s what she does this day. She runs ahead in the home and finds her mom dead in the tub lying on her back. About a quarter of the tub was full in this brownish-reddish water. She runs to get her dad. It said in reports that in fact the dad doesn`t really hustle that much. Dr. MacNeill walks over and then tells the 6-year-old to go grab a neighbor.
Now, during this time the doctor calls 911, however, throughout this 911 call, he hangs up, and he also, according to authorities, gives the wrong address to his home. A female neighbor enters the home. She tries to pull Michele MacNeill out of the tub, but Martin MacNeill according to authorities interjects and says he needs a man to do the job and doesn`t want her to pull Michele out of the tub. Things just keep on going on from there, Nancy. In fact, authorities, when they arrive and take over CPR on the scene, have to ask Dr. MacNeill to leave because he was screaming at Michele MacNeill according to documents, why did you get this surgery? And was pounding on her chest, according to reports --
GRACE: And cursing at her. Cursing at her dead body.
GOLDBAND: That`s right. According to documents.
GRACE: Also, after she got to the hospital, isn`t it true, Clark Goldband, that he made a production of offering one of the doctors $10,000 to keep trying to resuscitate his wife?
GOLDBAND: Yes. $10,000, Nancy, and this had been after these efforts had gone on about an hour or so.
GRACE: To Dr. Michelle Dupre, medical examiner, forensic pathologist, joining me from Columbia. I`d like to hear your analysis.
DUPRE: Nancy, this is just incredible. A physician would know, certainly know better than that, that it would be fruitless at this point. Any help you can get to pull someone out of a bathtub, it would be very unlikely to be able to do CPR in the bathtub. Certainly the two of them could have gotten her out of the bathtub. To try to bribe someone to continue -- incredible.
GRACE: To Jean Casarez, legal correspondent, joining us out of New York tonight, Jean, very interesting. You know, a case rises or falls on the facts. Right? Now, we already know in the last hours the trial judge has already ruled that her deathbed statement, that if anything happens to her, he did it, her husband did it. That`s not going to come in. What are the other facts that we know are coming in?
CASAREZ: Well, we know that in conjunction with that, she also said, he just keeps giving me pills. Pill after pill. He just keeps giving me all this medication. That will come before the jury. We know that the allegations by the mistress, that he had killed other people, will not come before the jury. But what he said to her allegedly, that he intentionally killed people by injecting them with potassium, makes it look like it`s a heart-related death, will come before the jury.
GRACE: To Mary in Virginia. Hi, Mary. Did we answer your question?
CALLER: Ah, yes. Like I said, he thinks he`s a fox, but he`s not that great of a fox.
GRACE: You know, speaking of him being a fox, which you equate with being conniving and sneaky, to Jim Kirkwood. Talk show host, KTKK, is it true that the day his wife died, he was at some sort of a medical fair of sorts, and he went out of his way, and insisted that several people take his picture there?
KIRKWOOD: That is correct, Nancy. He was director of the developmental center, which is a handicap center, and that certainly gave him a lot of access to help with people, by the way, but he was there and he was getting pictures taken. Making sure everybody saw him. Which is suspicious in itself.
GRACE: Also, just before her death, Jean Casarez, it`s my understanding that with this fake claim that he had cancer, that he brings his adult children in. They`ve got eight children. And gives each one of them -- this just before their mom dies -- he gives each one of them about $5,000, claiming that he knows he`s going to die of cancer and wants them to enjoy the money now. But when you look back on it in hindsight, it seems more like, buttering them up. Let me put that euphemistically. I won`t say so far as to say a bribe, but I will go with buttering them up.
CASAREZ: That`s right. And I think prosecutors are going to use all that as part of motive. That he was trying to deflect the attention away from his wife, focusing it on him, that he was going to die. Giving the money, and then out of the blue, she died. As it was ascertained originally, of natural causes.
GRACE: Trent Copeland, that`s going to be a problem for the state, that the first medical examiner, the first ME did not have all the information we`ve got tonight, and ruled a death by natural causes, and that medical examiner herself has since died.
COPELAND: Yes, look. It`s a problem. I don`t think the evidence points towards MacNeill having killed that medical examiner. So I don`t think we can point every piece of evidence that`s negative against him, and I disagree --
GRACE: Well, the medical examiner died of breast cancer. So that`s not my point. My point is the defense is going to have that first autopsy report claiming natural causes. That`s my point.
COPELAND: No. There`s no question about it. They`re going to have that report, and they`re going to claim that it was natural causes, and I think that`s the evidence, and I don`t think the motive in this case is intended to be that he`s deflecting attention and he is giving the kids the money. I think the prosecution is going to argue that the motive is the mistress, and the mistress is the motive, and that was the reason he killed his wife. But every man that has an affair with the mistress -- and believe me, if you have an affair with someone named Gypsy, maybe that ought to be a crime in and of itself. But the fact is that every man that has an affair with a woman doesn`t necessarily kill his wife. So the prosecutor has got to link this all up. I think we can all stipulate this is a bad guy, but the prosecutor`s going to have to clean this case up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(VIDEOTAPE)
GRACE: He still maintains he is innocent and the case is headed to trial. In the last hours, the judge rules out critical evidence to the state, including a deathbed statement. This wife, the mother of eight, made just before her death. She tells her grown daughter, "if anything happens to me, he did it." The jury will never hear that, but what do we learn from Martin MacNeill, a doctor and a lawyer, now suspected murder? What do we learn from his 911 call? Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(INAUDIBLE)
GRACE: What do we learn from his statements in that 911 call? To Jean Casarez, HLN legal correspondent. Jean, what do you think?
CASAREZ: First of all, an inconsistency. She was in the bathtub, whether she was hanging over head first, as he says, or as the daughter says, she was propped up next to the faucet. You don`t do CPR in the bathtub. He was a physician, and prosecutors are going to argue that he wasn`t doing CPR, and I think the medical forensics showed that, ultimately.
GRACE: You know, Jean, we heard so much about that during the Michael Jackson case.
CASAREZ: Uh-huh. Exactly.
GRACE: How the doctor, Conrad Murray, claimed he was doing CPR, but Jackson was on a bed. Can`t do CPR on a soft surface. It has to be hard. That`s why the EMT always immediately put you on the floor and start CPR.
So here, was his claim actually that she`s still in the tub and he`s doing CPR?
CASAREZ: Yes. Because he said that he didn`t have the physical strength to get her out and he needed a man to help her, but there`s also going to be evidence that several weeks before this happened, he was carrying drywall by himself as he was finishing up the basement. Remember, he said he was dying of cancer.
GRACE: And I guess out to Sue Moss, the defense is somehow going to be able to explain away, then, that he gives 911 the wrong home address.
MOSS: Not only that, but he leaves her in the bath. I mean, you do the math. The reality is, is, what he said on that tape is very important. I need help. That means that he thought there was still a possibility of saving her. If there was a possibility of saving her, he should have gotten her out of the bathtub. He`s talking the whole time he says he`s doing CPR. You can`t do the two at the same time. Either he`s in the process of doing CPR or he`s speaking on the phone. You can`t do them both. He is lying. His own words are going to seal his fate.
GRACE: Well, not only that, you can`t perform CPR when somebody`s in a bathtub. He also said, I believe I heard him say, Jim Kirkwood, that he drained the water out. Then later he told police somebody else drained the water out. He cursed God. He cussed out his wife, who`s laying their dead, and he was so belligerent they had to drag him away. He was cursing at his wife so loudly, Jim Kirkwood, and his children are there.
KIRKWOOD: Exactly. And this is supposed to be a religious family. The rest of them were, but -- the problem is, the water is a really critical area, and instead of dragging her out of the tub, why didn`t he just dump the water? that`s something he is going to have a hard time with in court, Nancy.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRACE: What turmoil this must leave those eight children in. To Dr. Ramani Durvasula, clinical psychologist joining me from L.A., take a listen to what one of the children had to say, Doctor.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A couple of days before my mother`s death, I was helping her wash her hair. And she started to cry. And said Alexis, if anything happens to me, make sure it wasn`t your father. She had been concerned about an affair. She had confided in me that she thought he was having an affair with this woman named Gypsy. There were things my father wasn`t acting -- acting normally, and she was just very concerned.
Only a day or so after, my mother confronted him about finding this number of Gypsy Willis that he out of the blue said you need a face-lift. He scheduled the surgery within a week or so, and yes, I definitely believe that was part of his plan.
I was washing her hair, and she started to cry. And she looked at me and said Alexis, if anything happens to me, make sure it wasn`t your father. And I, I said mom, you know, what are you talking about? And she just said make sure it wasn`t your father.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: That statement will never be heard by the jury. But we know it exists. I`d like to hear your thoughts.
DURVASULA: I mean, these daughters are put in the worst possible position. But they heard their mother, she, this woman was married to a controlling, lying, cheating man, and she knew it. She knew the risk there. Who knew her reasons for sticking out the marriage. But their daughters now have to hold this information. The fact is she knew something was coming. My guess is he was angry. He was cruel. He was nasty. He was emotionally abusive. I`m guessing all of this was happening, and this woman was starting to put two and two together. Knew he was having an affair and knew it was a matter of time before he did something dangerous.
This was not a man that you wanted to corner. He was either going to lie or he was going to get dangerous. Obviously he did both.
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GRACE: We remember American hero, Army Staff Sergeant Jaime Newman. 27, Richmond, Virginia. Purple Heart, Army Achievement Medal, Army Commendation Medal. Parents Helen and Angel. Son DeMarquez, daughter Jamie (ph). Jamie Newman, American hero.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I need help.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They`re on their way.
Is your wife breathing?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She is not. I`m a physician. I got CPR in progress.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You`re doing CPR?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Now the children, eight of them, are left to take sides, as this case heads to trial. The trial judge making critical rulings in the last hours as we go to air. Take a listen to what one of the daughters has to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He was actually not acting like he even missed my mom. I never saw him cry. At the funeral, he never even talked about my mother, except to say this woman in the box before me. He was joking to people, saying he`s a bachelor. You know, he was still -- Gypsy was there at the funeral. She was there. He was text messaging her actually at the funeral.
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GRACE: Whoa. Jim Kirkwood, KTKK.
KIRKWOOD: Yes.
GRACE: Salt lake city. Did I just hear the daughter say that the father is texting his lover during mom`s funeral?
KIRKWOOD: And there were a lot of texts, Nancy, not just a few. During every day and the funeral day, all of that.
GRACE: Tell me. What do you know?
KIRKWOOD: At least eight that day. And on the surgery day, I believe there was 37 texts is what I remember. I mean, it`s unbelievable what this guy was doing, Nancy.
GRACE: I`m just going to have to get used to the life of a bachelor, hanging out with buddies and playing golf. You know, that`s not exactly -- Danny Cevallos, Sue Moss, first to you, Cevallos. That`s not exactly what you expect a widower to be saying at the funeral.
CEVALLOS: Yes, that`s what we call a bad piece of evidence for the defense. However, some of those statements were not allowed in as evidence and probably properly so, not everything that everybody says is necessarily germane --
GRACE: Can you address what -- the point that I bring up? Because every time I confront you with a damning piece of evidence, you start talking about the rules of evidence.
CEVALLOS: I said it was bad.
GRACE: I know the rules of evidence. But how do you get around it as a defense attorney?
I know it`s bad, tell me something I don`t know. How is he going to get around it?
CEVALLOS: When it comes to that piece of evidence, you make the objection. You try to keep it out based on its relevance as to whether he did what he did. But candidly, it goes to his state of mind, it probably comes in. And it ain`t good for this defendant. Sometimes you have bad evidence.
GRACE: Jean Casarez, do we know if the state has the content of the texts or just that he was testing her during the funeral?
CASAREZ: In all the legal documents, I see the number of texts, and that`s a lot of texts. Let me tell you. I don`t see content.
GRACE: Everyone, this case heading to trial, and we will cover it. Dr. Drew up next. I`ll see you tomorrow night, 8:00 sharp Eastern. Until then, good night, friend.
END
