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Nancy Grace
Nancy Grace Mysteries: Melanie McGuire, The Suitcase Killer
Aired December 13, 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)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When I remember my uncle, the first thing -- the first thing I see is a waterlogged suitcase. All we can ask is that you take her freedom as she took our Billy!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: First and foremost, Bill McGuire was an integral part of our family. We`ve had to endure our friend`s reputation being dragged through the mud. Bill`s minor imperfections were magnified to cover the acts of a selfish, arrogant and manipulative individual. I`ll never have another best friend like the one I found in Bill.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Suitcases -- a suitcase washed up on the shores of Virginia Beach, Virginia, just near the Chesapeake Bay bridge and tunnel. The suitcases contained body parts. The body parts were determined by the Norfolk medical examiner to belong to and be the body of William T. McGuire, age 39.
Mr. McGuire had been shot once in the head with a .38 caliber weapon. He`d been shot once in the chest with a .38 caliber weapon. He`d also been cut into pieces and placed in three separate suitcases. And those were the suitcases that washed up on three separate days on the Virginia shore.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: New Jersey mother of two Melanie McGuire drugged and murdered her husband, William McGuire, then drained him of his blood and hacked up his body, shoving it in three suitcases and throwing it into the Chesapeake.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NANCY GRACE, HOST: I remember that moment when a suitcase washed up on the shore with a human torso in it. And nobody knew at the time to whom it belonged, who was in the suitcase. I remember that moment. And then body parts trying to be put together.
I imagined some madman with a saw, like Dexter. It turned out to be a mild-mannered, basically office assistant/nurse in a reproductive doctor`s office, Melanie McGuire.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MELANIE MCGUIRE, CONVICTED OF MURDER: When the numbness subsides, it`s sort of interspersed with terror, so...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: "48 Hours" gave Melanie a camera to document her innermost thoughts and fears.
MCGUIRE: Pretty talkative today, considering how wiped out I am.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Melanie shot these video diaries in the quiet of her bedroom near the Jersey shore. They capture her in her most private and tortured moments.
MCGUIRE: I can`t keep up the momentum. I can`t keep up the pace!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Shown here for the first time, they are a rare glimpse into the mind of a complex woman some say is a caring mother, others say a calculating killer.
MCGUIRE: I can`t help but think that if I had made better decisions along the way and left the marriage earlier that I wouldn`t be sitting here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: That`s from CBS "48 Hours."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Prosecutors said McGuire killed her husband so she could be with her lover, a doctor who worked with her at a fertility clinic in Morristown. Prosecutors say McGuire wanted to avoid a costly and difficult divorce.
Prosecutors alleged McGuire picked up a throw pillow and used it to muffle the sound as she shot her husband once in the forehead and three times in the chest. After the murder, McGuire cut up her husband with a saw and small knife in the shower of their Woodbridge, New Jersey, townhouse.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: As the story unfolded, while we were still searching for the killer, everyone imagined all sorts of gruesome scenarios. Their scenarios proved true. The victim in this case, 39-year-old William McGuire, was shot multiple times. He was hacked apart with a reciprocating saw. His body was then divvied up and hidden in three separate suitcases and thrown into the water.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A good girl, never got in trouble, very supportive of her family, happy, wonderful, wonderful student.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Melanie became a nurse.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There were several times where she would see an accident on the side of the road, and she would stop the car and go over and assist. She was always there for people.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was a quality that caught the eye of 28-year- old Bill McGuire, a veteran of the U.S. Navy.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He was one of those people that just had a gift. He could talk to anyone, anywhere, any time.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Bill`s sister, Cindy Lagosh (ph), says from day one, Bill and Melanie were a perfect match.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They were equals. They both wanted the same things out of life, or so I thought.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The couple married in June 1999.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was a fairy tale wedding, everything it could have been and more.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. and Mrs. William McGuire!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: And that`s from CBS "48 Hours."
Bottom line, the only thing that was different in reality as compared to the chilling scenarios that everyone had concocted was that the killer was this petite little nurse from a doctors clinic.
Motive? Money, that she didn`t want to spend or lose in a divorce, and lust. She was having an affair and wanted to be with her boyfriend full-time.
What`s interesting and disturbing is she`s also a mother, a mother of two. She murdered her husband the father of her children to be with a boyfriend, to save some money in a quickie divorce? Now her children have neither a mother or a father, neither one, because of Melanie McGuire.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Less than a year later, the McGuires had their first son. Melanie went to work at a fertility clinic and Bill began teaching computer science at a technical college.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Was it a happy time for you?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was. I saw Bill morph into kind of the family man that he always wanted to be. And it really touched me.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But as with so many couples, Bill and Melanie`s relationship did not withstand the test of time.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: According to McGuire`s version of events, on the night they closed on their new $500,000 home, they had a fight. William became abusive and left the apartment, vowing to change his identity and never return.
MCGUIRE: I can`t say his fault, my fault. Things changed, and we were no longer able or willing to meet in the middle.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: By the birth of their second son, the couple had grown even further apart. One reason, according to Melanie, Bill`s frequent trips to Atlantic City.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Would you say that Bill had a gambling problem?
MCGUIRE: Yes. Yes. For him, it was a goal. He needed more money. He wasn`t somebody who could sit there and be content with what we had. It was always it had to be a step better.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Melanie says Bill became increasingly erratic, even volatile. She remembers one night he called from the road in a rage after getting a speeding ticket. She hung up on him.
MCGUIRE: He called back, cursing any number of obscenities at me, and told me if I was there when he got home, he was going to kill me.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Prosecutors used the testimony of McGuire`s former lover to show they had planned to leave their spouses and start a life together. The affair started during the late stages of McGuire`s second pregnancy in 2002. The affair started with a birthday cake and flirting at the fertility clinic. McGuire`s lover, Bradley Miller, said the two planned to move in together and possibly have kids.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Now, interesting, Melanie McGuire might as well have taken out a billboard on 3rd Avenue that said, I murdered my husband and hacked his body up. She put his body -- it`s very interesting the way she did this. She put his body in three matching Kenneth Cole suitcases, the black and green ones. So she got expensive matching luggage in which to hide his severed body.
In one of the suitcases was a 5-pound weight, which shows premeditation in trying to get rid of the remains. She wanted to sink them to the bottom of the Jersey shore so they`d never be found again. Well, they float.
She also had in the bags, along with the body -- specifically, the Kenneth Cole suitcase that had her husband`s torso in it. She had wrapped the torso -- if you can imagine the frame of mind it must take to murder your husband, shoot him multiple times, hack him up with a reciprocating saw -- oh, yes, she drained all the blood out of his body. She didn`t want to make a mess.
She then wrapped the torso in a blanket that came from the fertility clinic where she worked as a nurse. So it could be tracked straight back to that clinic. And not only that -- I mean, doesn`t anybody watch TV anymore? Other remains were in garbage bags, trash bags that matched back to the home she shared with her husband and children. She, in fact, even gave away some of her husband`s clothing in those same bags.
Grocery bags can be -- grocery bags, trash bags, disposable bags, they can all be traced back to where they were made, where they were sold, even in which lot they are made.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The body of William McGuire was found in three matching Kenneth Cole black and green suitcases on three separate days in May 2004.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Let`s talk about the murder weapon. Two days before his death, she had bought a .38 caliber Taurus handgun. We know that in the week before she made that purchase, she began calling gun stores. And there`s documentation of that. We also know that she purchased the .38 caliber Taurus handgun with a fake driver`s license, a driver`s license she had created using a Pennsylvania address, specifically her aunt`s address.
She went to great pains to not only cover her tracks, but to leave tracks a mile wide in so doing. The covering up really lends to a premeditated claim by the prosecution, the fact that she used -- created and used a fake driver`s license -- she already had a driver`s license, but she created this Pennsylvania driver`s license only to buy the gun, OK? That`s why she had that license.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On May 5th, the first suitcase was found by a man fishing from a boat. On May 11th, the second suitcase was found by a birdwatcher on the shore of Fisherman Island, Virginia. It contained William`s upper body and head. On May 16th, the third suitcase was found floating near the second island of the bridge tunnel and contained William`s lower torso and other body parts.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mrs. McGuire, we believe, used certain kinds of tape to wrap up the body in the garbage bags. And we have discovered, through forensic examination on the tape, nail polish or paint that we believe is nail polish, that we believe links, once again, Mrs. McGuire to this killing.
GRACE: You know, normally, the local district attorney prosecutes a case like this. Why did it go to the AG`s office?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Commonwealth attorney in Virginia Beach sent it to us in September of 2004, asked us to investigate it. We put together a team, state troopers Division of Criminal Justice investigators headed by Assistant AG Patricia Prezioso (ph) and Deputy AG Lou Korngut (ph), and they began putting the case together. This is a forensic case, and we`ve always viewed it as a forensic case.
GRACE: Is, long story short, sir, nobody knows where the body -- where the murder happened, or where the body was dismembered?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We believe we can prove that Mr. McGuire was killed in New Jersey and dismembered in New Jersey. He was shot in the head. He was also shot in the chest, a .38 caliber weapon.
GRACE: You found the bullet in the head, right?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That`s correct.
GRACE: Did she buy -- the wife buy a .38 caliber weapon under an assumed name a few days before the murder?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Her name -- April 26th, 2004, Melanie McGuire purchased a .38 caliber weapon in Pennsylvania...
GRACE: OK.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... using her name but a false address.
GRACE: Now, I know it`s -- looking at your hands, it`s not your pattern to buy fingernail polish, but you may want to become an expert in it after this case. Explain.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: True. The body parts, as you know, were found in three separate suitcases. In those suitcases were the body parts wrapped in garbage bags, wrapped in tape. On one of the pieces of tape, we found a paint chip that`s consistent with nail polish.
GRACE: I want to meet that forensic specialist and that crime tech that found one chip of paint -- that I assume is tying back to fingernail polish in her home?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The matter is still under investigation. And as we`ve said publicly, look, she`s presumed innocent, and we want to be sure she gets a fair trial. But we also want to be sure that the victim here, William McGuire, also gets a fair day in court, as well, because our system, as you know, is set up to vindicate the rights of the victim.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRACE: The murder weapon could have only been one of five guns, handguns, types of handguns in the world, which includes a Taurus .38. Melanie McGuire, when asked, gave conflicting stories about why she decided to buy a handgun. And to this day, the murder weapon has never been found.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Despite the ongoing battles, Melanie agreed to buy a new house with Bill.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If you were so unhappy, why would you bother to look forward to the future? I mean, that`s a 15 to 30-year commitment.
MCGUIRE: For the kids. Even though we weren`t happy, we weren`t ending this marriage any time soon that I could see.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They would never move into that new home. On the night of April 28th, 2004, back in their apartment after the closing, Melanie says they got into the fight that finally convinced her to leave Bill. Believe it or not, it was all over a simple dryer sheet.
MCGUIRE: He hated them. He hated them. And I always left them in the pile of laundry. And from there, the fight progresses to me getting slammed up against the doorway and getting the dryer sheet shoved in my mouth and slapped across the face. At this point, one of the kids is there. I grab them, scoop them up, lock myself in the bathroom.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What was he saying to you through the doorway?
MCGUIRE: I`m going to take the kids, and you`ll never see them again.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Melanie says Bill packed his bags and stormed off in his car. Two days later, she filed a restraining order.
MCGUIRE: With that restraining order, he could not go to school and pick up the kids and take off with them. And that was my biggest fear.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But Bill never tried to contact Melanie, their kids or anyone else. He simply vanished.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: What you`re seeing is from CBS`s "48 Hours."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Two days before the murder, McGuire purchased a .38 caliber Taurus handgun and bullets consistent with those used to kill her husband. The owner of the gun shop testified that McGuire purchased the gun and paid $9.95 for a box of Ultramax bullets. The owner remembered McGuire because, quote, "She was well-dressed," end quote, and was the only nurse he ever knew to come into his shop to buy a gun.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: William`s legs were cut off at the knees. William`s torso was cut from his pelvic area below his ribs, but above his hips.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And that was after he`d been shot twice. William McGuire`s remains were found floating in three suitcases in the Chesapeake Bay of Virginia in May, 2004. Now his widow, Melanie, a fertility nurse who was having an affair with a doctor, is accused in his gruesome death.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The evidence that you will hear in this case will be completely circumstantial. There`ll be no witness that comes to the witness stand and tells you, I saw her do it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That circumstantial evidence includes Melanie McGuire bought a .38 caliber handgun in Pennsylvania days before her husband vanished. The gun and bullets purchased match those found in his body. The garbage bags his body parts were found in matched those from a box in the McGuire`s Woodbridge apartment. But the evidence is inconclusive, according to the defense.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ms. McGuire did not murder her husband, William McGuire. She didn`t dismember her husband, and she doesn`t know who did.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Prosecutors say it is likely Melanie McGuire did not act alone, but no accomplice was ever charged. McGuire`s only show of emotion came when pictures of her husband`s severed legs were shown to the jury.
Melanie McGuire made $2 million bail and has been free since her arrest in 2005. She`s hired a high-profile defense team. Reportedly, former patients at the fertility clinic where she worked, are helping foot the bill. In New Brunswick, New Jersey, John Bathke (ph) for CNN.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A 5-pound weight was found in one of the suitcases. Evidence found with the body also included garbage bags linked to McGuire`s apartment that were used by McGuire when she gave away her husband`s clothing.
After the remains were found, McGuire conducted a small graveside service with his ashes in an urn. The next day, she told friend Susan Rice that it was time to get on with her life and made no plans for a more formal funeral.
GRACE: Is it true that the wife started giving away her husband`s possessions before the body even washed up? Nobody even knew he was dead?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. In fact, when she gave away the possessions, there was -- she gave them away in a garbage bag. And there were three garbage bags that were found in the three suitcases, and part of that forensic study said that the same manufacturer, came from the same lot, those garbage bags that were -- the body was in and were found in the clothes that he (sic) gave away.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRACE: According to police, on the day of the murder of William McGuire, Melanie McGuire, his nurse wife, sedated him with chloral hydrate. Just after she does that, she gets a call from her doctor boyfriend -- she works in his office at a reproductive fertility clinic -- and the boyfriend is angry. He`s pressing her about, Why are you buying a new home with your husband when you want to start a whole new life with me?
She tries to calm him down. And then later, she texts him that everything will be OK. She then calls the boyfriend, the doctor boyfriend, to reassure him that her husband has fallen asleep. She didn`t mention the chloral hydrate, apparently.
Police say she did a lot more than ask him for a divorce, that she actually used a pillow to hold over his face to muffle the sound of the gunshots, that the pillow muffling the sound of the gunshot made it virtually impossible for anyone living nearby to hear the sound of the gun.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Forensic evidence can be overwhelming sometimes to a defense case if done in the right way. And obviously, with the attorney general involved, showing the weight of the case, and his staff, clearly it`s a high-profile case. It involves the body washing up in Virginia. And he`s taking great pains to make sure that he`s working the case as best that he can.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think we may see a battered women syndrome here. This is -- the victim was a person who had a long history of violence. And we know whatever happened was severe violence against this man, if it was by this woman.
GRACE: Severe violence? His body was in three separate suitcases.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Shot him in the head.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: McGuire gave conflicting statements as to why she purchased the gun. A witness for the state, James Finn (ph), one-time friend of McGuire, testified that McGuire changed her story. Finn said before William was killed, McGuire said she wanted the gun because she feared her husband, saying that he was acting weird and suffering from hallucinations possibly due to alcohol and drug abuse.
The location of the gun remains a mystery. McGuire is the last person known to have possession of the gun. She told cops she put the gun in a lockbox. But when cops located her lockbox, the gun was not found.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She didn`t have a record. She had no criminal record. She had roots in the community. And so the judge, in his...
GRACE: Wisdom?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... her wisdom...
GRACE: What judge was that?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What judge was that?
GRACE: Oh, I stumped you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Middlesex County.
GRACE: The first night you`ve been on my show, I stumped you. I`m going to give you a chance to look in that little reporter`s notebook I know you`ve got going on there. Bail, just because she doesn`t have a prior?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: New Jersey...
GRACE: What was in what suitcase, number one? Was the head in one, the torso and then the legs in the others?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Still subject to our investigation, but remember...
GRACE: So you`re telling.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... New Jersey -- yes. New Jersey does not have a preventive detention statute. We have a constitutional right under our state constitution to bail. So bail must be set. As to whether or not the defendant can meet is another question.
GRACE: What was the bail in this case?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: $750,000 cash.
GRACE: So she basically had to put up $7,500.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not 10 percent cash alternative here. But remember...
GRACE: What did she have to put up?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, family members have assets, and people can post it.
GRACE: Oh, collateral. OK. Back to Rick Malwitz (ph). Do you know the name of the judge? Because I want to know who set bond at -- basically, she can make it at $7,500 or a neighbor could put up -- a family member could put up a house.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I`ll probably have to get a 96 on this test. I don`t know the name of the judge for right now.
GRACE: I`m going to have you back on this...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, OK.
GRACE: ... because it`s very rare, Rick, that one body turns up in three designer suitcases, of the victim`s suitcases.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thursday, I started to call him. No answer. Friday, I started calling more frantically. No answer at any of his numbers.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As days turned to weeks, Cindy questioned why Melanie had not filed a missing person`s report.
MCGUIRE: It wasn`t that out of character for him to have a tantrum, pick up and be gone.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Three-and-a-half weeks later, with still no word from Bill, Melanie filed for divorce.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: While Melanie McGuire was taking measures to end her marriage, Virginia Beach police were analyzing those matching suitcases found in the Chesapeake Bay. A fingerprint check confirmed the man inside the luggage was Bill McGuire. But who killed him? And how did he end up here, more than 300 miles away from his home in New Jersey?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you believe all three suitcases were thrown off this bridge?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, I do.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: CSI investigator Beth Dutton (ph) quickly determined that Bill McGuire was shot in the head and torso with a .38 caliber gun. But other forensic evidence was far more difficult to come by.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The suitcases were saturated with water. It just destroyed a lot of that smoking gun type of evidence that probably was in the suitcase. The water became my greatest obstacle.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As investigators continued to search for clues, police informed Melanie her husband was dead.
MCGUIRE: I couldn`t feel the ground under me. I was devastated.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But there was one clue that caused investigators to question the grieving widow. A blanket found wrapped around her dead husband`s torso was the very same kind of blanket used at the fertility clinic where Melanie McGuire worked.
MCGUIRE: I just have to try to go on. So we`ll see what tomorrow holds.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: We learned that she dragged his body into a shower stall. She drained his body of blood. The shower stall -- very easy place to clean up. She then picks the children up from day care and leaves them at her parents`.
That gives her time to go back to the home, dismember his body, put it in plastic garbage bags from the home -- remember, she wraps the torso in a towel from the reproductive clinic. She then puts the plastic bags, the trash bags of body parts, into three matching Kenneth Cole suitcases.
She then finishes the cleanup and chooses to stay at the Red Roof Inn for the next three nights. She doesn`t want to see the murder scene. She doesn`t want to sleep in the home where she has just murdered and dismembered her husband, the father of their children.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: McGuire bought a 2-ounce bottle of chloral hydrate the morning of the murder. McGuire obtained chloral hydrate via prescription taken at the fertility clinic which she worked and forged with her lover`s name. The state said that McGuire served her husband the drug in a glass of wine.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Then we have the evidentiary trail. She left in William`s 2002 blue Nissan Maxima. Now, this is her, Melanie McGuire`s, story, that she can`t find her husband after they have a big argument and she goes looking for him. And she drives her Nissan to Atlantic City, looking for her husband. She finds his car parked at a casino.
She claims she`s angry, that following an argument with her, instead of making up with her and apologizing, he takes off to go to a casino. So she says out of spite, she moves his car to another location just to irritate him, that location being the Flamingo Hotel there in Atlantic City.
Well, after a few days pass, the employees at the Flamingo notice this car that`s been there doesn`t match up to anyone that`s been staying there at the hotel. So they call police.
When police come and look in the car, they find two very, very important clues. Number one, they find the prescription bottle for chloral hydrate in the glove compartment -- the prescription that she got, that she forged her boyfriend, the doctor`s, name on, made to a woman that never got the prescription. They find that in the car.
And number two, they find body matter. The DNA from that body matter matches up to her husband, William McGuire.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Melanie McGuire says she was devastated by her husband Bill`s death.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What is the last thing that you remember saying to Bill?
MCGUIRE: You`d have to edit it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Give me the gist.
MCGUIRE: "F" you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That`s the last thing you said to him?
MCGUIRE: Yes. And I have to live with that!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I immediately knew that his wife had done it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Bill`s sister Cindy refuses to believe that Bill had been violent with Melanie.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I know my brother. He would never lay a hand on a woman.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You never saw him abuse her?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Emotionally?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Physically?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Verbally?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No. And anyone that knew Melanie knew that no one would get away with that, no one could do that to her.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She insists Bill would never abandon his children.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He wanted to spend all of his time with his family, and that`s what he did.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I had contacted Melanie McGuire on her cell phone.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Virginia homicide detective Ray Pickel (ph) says Melanie reluctantly admitted those suitcases belonged to her and Bill.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I just felt that she was holding back some information, a lot of information.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRACE: You know, every time you drive through a toll, they take your picture. Also, if you have an EZ pass, as it`s called in many states -- every time you use your EZ pass -- it`s usually attached to your car right above the rearview mirror -- there is a computer that marks, that takes note of every time your EZ pass is used and where.
Well, apparently, Melanie McGuire didn`t know that. On May the 3rd, EZ pass toll records show that McGuire drove through the night to Delaware. Now, that`s significant because the suitcases, according to the state`s calculations, were discarded, thrown in the water, in Delaware. EZ pass records show that she traveled through the night through Delaware.
When she was questioned about that, she admits she went to Delaware, but she says she went to Delaware to look at, maybe purchase furniture because Delaware doesn`t have sales tax. That`s convenient.
Maybe she could have gotten away with that explanation, except for one tiny thing. After that, she calls the EZ pass office, demands that they cancel those notations on her record of when she drove to Delaware and then challenges them.
CBS`s "48 Hours."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Melanie`s phones were tapped...
MCGUIRE: Hello?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And she was put under surveillance. The covert operation soon uncovered a secret. His name, Dr. Brad Miller, Melanie`s boss. They had been carrying on an affair for more than two years.
MCGUIRE: I was looking for attention, affection, understanding, and I found it there. And I am deeply, deeply ashamed of that.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Detectives believed they had finally found Melanie`s motive for murder.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You did love him?
MCGUIRE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But Dr. Miller had a secret of his own.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I mean, if you want us to stick together, I`ve got to know everything now.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The police convinced him to betray his lover. So with tape recorders rolling, Dr. Miller asked Melanie pointed questions.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You swear you had nothing to do with this?
MCGUIRE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Detectives didn`t stop there. Jim Thin (ph), an old friend from nursing school, was also enlisted to secretly record conversations.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What about the gun?
MCGUIRE: I don`t have (EXPLETIVE DELETED) gun. I don`t have it!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Melanie never confessed on those tapes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ... charging possession of a firearm for an unlawful purpose between on or about April 26th, 2004, and on or about May 5th, 2004, in the township of Woodbridge, Middlesex County, New Jersey, elsewhere, and within the jurisdiction of this court.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Guilty.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How do you find as to the count of the indictment charging Melanie McGuire with the murder of William McGuire between on or about April 28th, 2004, and on or about May 5th, 2004, in the township of Woodbridge, Middlesex County, New Jersey, elsewhere and within the jurisdiction of this court?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Guilty.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How do you find as to the count of indictment charging Melanie McGuire with desecrating human remains between on or about April 28th, 2004, and on or about May 5th, 2004, in the township of Woodbridge, Middlesex County, New Jersey, elsewhere, and within the jurisdiction of this court?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Guilty.
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GRACE: She makes a call, apparently from her cell phone, to NJIT -- that`s her husband`s employer -- asking, Have you seen my husband? Where`s William? That may work, except she then followed up. She gave an encore performance to that call, and says then, Oh, yes, by the way, what can you tell me about his life insurance policy? He had over $200,000 life insurance, and she was calling not just to find her husband, to check out that life insurance policy. Ouch!
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I`ve been a friend of Melanie`s since 1987. Twenty years is a long time, and in that time, I`ve come to know Melanie as the person she truly is. I can honestly say she is not the woman depicted by the prosecution, the media and the Internet blogs. That creation, that fiction, bears no resemblance to Melanie.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Your honor, I will, as I always have in this courtroom, restrict my comments to the evidence that was presented at trial. And in doing just that, I would like to respectfully point out to the court that although there was much discussion about the victim in this case, Mr. McGuire, there was not one shred of evidence, Judge, not one shred, that came from that witness chair.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When I remember my uncle, the first thing -- the first thing I see is a waterlogged suitcase. All we can ask is that you take her freedom as she took our Billy!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And I am Billy McGuire`s big sister. And I spoke to my brother almost every day. I`ve been crying for three years. I love him and miss him more than words can ever say. This woman has displayed an inappropriate haughty arrogance for three years. And since she has committed this crime, she has not shown one ounce of remorse, shame or compassion. Give her a sentence that will wipe that arrogance off of her face.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The nature and the complexity and the scope of this criminal episode involved many, many overt actions committed over a three-week period spanning four different states, and reflected a woefulness and a malice that goes far behind the elements of the crime of murder in our law.
The desecration of William McGuire`s remains was particularly heinous and depraved. His body was treated as trash. It was cut and sawed apart and then packaged in garbage bags.
In this case, the crime was so heinous, so cruel and so depraved that the court finds that the maximum sentence should be imposed.
The desecration that has been considered by this court has been a significant element that causes this court to consider the aggravating factors associated with the murder and to impose the maximum sentence allowed by law.
All right, counsel, thank you for your patience and cooperation. The defendant is remanded to the Department of Corrections at this time. And ladies and gentlemen, thank for your patience and cooperation. These proceedings are concluded.
END
