by Shanna Hogan
“Dr. MacNeill doesn’t have to be there for the ceremony,” Frost said. “A member of the department could receive the award on his behalf.”
“He will be there,” Clark’s assistant replied.
Frost made calls from her office to inform employees that the ceremony would take place closer to the previously designated time.
Around 10:40 A.M., Frost received another call directly from Karen Clark.
“We’re going to do the award right now,” she said. “Get people in the room.”
Martin would only be there for a brief time, and the ceremony needed to happen while he was present, Clark said. “We’re doing it now.”
* * *
Just before 11 A.M., Martin made a call from his office to a cell phone—the same 800 number he had called earlier—lasting six minutes.
He then stepped out of his office and headed toward the conference room in the adjacent building. On the walk he would encounter several coworkers, who all remember the doctor was acting strangely.
In the hallway outside the medical area, he passed by the janitorial supervisor.
“Hello, Dr. MacNeill,” the woman said with a smile.
“I can’t talk,” Martin said, brushing past her. “I’m in a hurry. I need to get to the safety fair.”
It seemed odd—whenever she encountered the doctor, he always stopped to chat.
“He seemed to me to be very hurried to get over to the safety fair,” remembered the janitorial supervisor. “And he did seem very anxious, which I did not understand.”
Martin dashed across the campus. Outside the conference room, he passed by the human resources manager, John David Laycock. Martin stopped him.
“Hey. I need my picture taken,” Martin announced.
“For what?” Laycock asked. “Why?”
“I won an award and I need my picture taken,” Martin said, his tone adamant. Laycock pointed him toward the conference room.
Shortly after 11 A.M., Martin arrived at the safety fair. Frost had managed to gather a few people, quickly scurrying to accommodate the doctor.
When Martin briefly spoke to Frost, he seemed impatient and short-tempered. “If we’re going to get this done, we’ve got to do it now. I’ve got to pick up my daughter and go check on my wife.”
At 11:15 A.M., during a short ceremony, Dr. MacNeill was presented with an engraved plaque. Administrator Roma Henrie was handed a camera and asked to take a picture. With a wide smile plastered across his face, Martin held the plaque as Henrie quickly snapped a photo.
“Did you get me in that picture?” Martin asked Henrie. “Make sure you get me in that picture.” He seemed nervous and belligerent.
“Yes, Dr. MacNeill.” She nodded. “I got you in the picture.”
“Maybe you ought to take a second one,” Martin sniped, scowling.
Taken aback, Henrie assured him that he was in the image. Later, Henrie would be so distressed by the encounter that she would file a formal complaint.
After receiving the plaque, Martin stopped at one of the booths, where he chatted with another employee for about five to ten minutes. A few feet away, Frost could barely conceal her frustration.
“After we gave the award—we had this big rush to have it—he kind of stayed and talked to a vendor and I thought that was kind of odd to rush, and not have it when all the people could be there, and then there was no rush to leave,” Frost remembered.
By 11:30 A.M., Martin had left the Developmental Center. He called Michele’s cell phone again at 11:32 A.M. He left another voice message telling her he was on his way home to make her a “lovely lunch.”
At 11:35 A.M., Martin arrived at Ada’s private school, about five minutes late. Ada climbed into the car, surprised to see her father. All morning long she had been anticipating an after-school trip with her mom to McDonald’s, one of the kindergartener’s favorite fast-food restaurants.
“Can we get McDonald’s, Dad?” Ada asked.
“No,” he said brusquely.
Instead, Martin drove directly back to the house, arriving shortly before 11:45 A.M.
Ada ran inside as Martin leisurely sauntered into the kitchen.
“Mom. I’m home.” Ada dropped her backpack in the front room.
Michele didn’t answer.
She passed through the living room and peered down the hallway. “I’m home. I’m home. Mom?”
No response.
Entering her parents’ bedroom, Ada glanced around. She stepped farther into the room and turned the corner into the bathroom.
A shallow pool of murky, brownish water filled the bathtub. Michele’s body was slumped under the faucet. Her head sagged to the side, hair floating toward the drain.
Her glassy eyes were open, gaze fixed toward where Ada stood gawking in the doorway.
Turning away, Ada darted out of the room and found her father in the kitchen. Grabbing his hand, she led him to the bathroom. “Something’s wrong with Mommy.”
Martin trudged forward slowly. Confused, Ada yanked his arm.
“Come quick.” She tugged harder, leading him down the hall. “Come quick.”
Martin stepped into the bathroom; Ada stayed in the bedroom. A second later he hollered to his daughter. “Run. Get help!”
Ada’s small voice asked, “Where should I go?”
“Go next door,” he screeched. “Get help. Quick!”
16.
“I need an ambulance!” Martin MacNeill roared at the 911 operator.
“Okay. What’s the problem, sir?” the dispatcher asked. “Sir, what’s wrong?”
“My wife has fallen in the bathtub!” Martin cried as he knelt beside Michele’s body and drained the water from the tub.
Dialing 911 from his cell phone, Martin had connected with the Utah County dispatch in Spanish Fork at 11:46 A.M. Seconds into the call, he hysterically spit out his home address in a garbled slur. The dispatcher attempted to map out the location on her computer screen as she assessed the nature of the caller’s emergency.
“Who’s in the bathtub? Who’s in the bathtub?” the female dispatcher asked, the clicking of her keyboard rattling audibly in the background.
“My wife!” Martin cried out.
“Okay. Is she conscious?”
“She’s not.” His voice cracked. “Actually, I’m … I’m a physician.”
“Okay, sir…”
“I’m in trouble.” Martin spoke over her abrasively.
“Okay, sir. I can’t understand you,” the dispatcher said. “Can you calm down just a little bit?”
“I need help!”
“Okay. Your wife is unconscious?”
“She’s unconscious. She’s underwater!” Martin’s voice rose.
“Okay. Did you get her out of the water?”
“I can’t. I couldn’t lift her. I let the water out. I have CPR in progress.”
“She’s under the water?” the operator asked.
“She’s under the water. Now when are you going to get me an ambulance?” he spat condescendingly.
“Okay. Is she breathing at all?”
“She’s not!”
“Okay, sir. The ambulance has been paged. They’re on their way. Okay. Do not hang up.”
Ignoring the operator, Martin disconnected the call.
“Sir?” the operator asked, but the dial tone resonated over the phone line.
* * *
During the call, Martin’s phone number had not been recognized by the dispatcher’s caller identification. And because he called from a cell phone, his location could not be traced.
Using the address Martin had given, the county dispatcher narrowed the location of the emergency to the Creekside subdivision, then connected to the Pleasant Grove Police Department, who serviced that jurisdiction and had an ambulance in the area. Pleasant Grove senior 911 dispatcher Heidi Peterson took the call.
“Hey, we got a distressed caller from 305 Millcreek,” the county dispatcher told Peterson. “A
ll we could get is 305 Millcreek. He sounded really stressed out. I don’t know what it was. It may have been a medical, I think. It sounded more like a medical. He mentioned something about his wife.”
Peterson used her computer to search for the address, but the house number the dispatcher heard—305 Millcreek—was not accurate. The MacNeill home was located at 3058 Millcreek Road. Peterson explained to the county dispatcher that she was having trouble finding the address. “Was it 305…?Did he give a west or south?”
“We tried to get that out of him and then he disconnected. And nothing came up on our caller ID.”
“I know it’s a gated community we have. So I know…” Peterson skimmed the computer screen. “Could it have been 3005 North Millcreek, I wonder?”
“It could have been,” the county operator said.
Two minutes after Martin made the call, Peterson dispatched police to the wrong address. They would not reach the MacNeills’ property until 11:55 A.M.—a seven-minute delay—due to the confusion over the address. It would take an additional five minutes for the ambulance to arrive.
Meanwhile, precious seconds ticked by and Michele remained unconscious in the tub.
At 11:48 A.M., after hanging up on the dispatcher, Martin dialed 911 a second time. Once again he was briefly connected to the county operator. Then he was transferred to Peterson at the Pleasant Grove Police Department.
“I need help!” Martin shouted at Peterson. “Do you understand?”
“Sir. Sir. They’re on their way,” she said. “Is your wife breathing?”
“She is not. I am a physician. I have CPR in progress. Do you understand?”
At this point, however, the neighbors had not entered the bathroom. Michele was still in the tub and CPR was not being performed.
“You’re doing CPR?” Peterson asked. “Sir, how old is your wife?”
“My wife is fifty years old. She just had surgery here a couple of days—or a week ago.”
“What kind of surgery did she have?” Peterson asked.
“She had a face-lift!” He sounded irate.
“She had a face-lift?”
“Yes!”
“Okay. Do you know how to do CPR?”
“I’m doing it!” Martin hollered before abruptly hanging up once again.
“Okay. Do not hang—” Peterson said as the call disconnected.
At 11:52 A.M. Peterson tried to call Martin back, but he didn’t answer.
It was an unusual call. In over a decade working as a dispatcher, Peterson had never received an emergency call from someone as angry and emotional as Martin. Years later she would still recall his abrasive shrieks.
“He was just screaming at me,” Peterson remembered. “I’ve taken a lot of calls, but I’ve never taken one where someone was just screaming at me like that man.”
* * *
Next door, Ada had reached the Daniels family’s front door.
When her father sent her for help, Ada had first tried banging on the door of the neighbor to the north of the MacNeill house. When there was no answer, she backtracked toward the Danielses’ house.
Kristi Daniels was in the front room visiting with Angie Aguilar and another mother who lived in the neighborhood. As her guests were preparing to leave, there was a low, soft thump on the front door—which Kristi recognized as that of a child’s knock. Cracking open the door, she found Ada MacNeill staring back up at her.
“My dad needs some help,” the girl said.
* * *
What began as a crisp, quiet April morning in Pleasant Grove erupted into an afternoon of chaos and confusion for the residents of Creekside. Patrol cars and ambulances mobbed the MacNeill property, the rotating red and blue lights illuminating the front lawn. Clusters of concerned and curious neighbors gathered outside their homes, flooding into the street.
Inside the house at 3058 Millcreek, paramedics surrounded Michele. Just before noon, Pleasant Grove detective Marc Dana Wright arrived at the scene. Burly and bald with a short goatee and mustache, the twelve-year veteran of the Pleasant Grove Police Department was assigned as the lead detective on Michele’s death.
The investigation would be cursory. Scant evidence was collected and only eight photos were taken at the scene. The only witness to be interviewed was Martin MacNeill. The subsequent police report consisted of a few pages.
Detective Wright entered through the open front door of the house and made his way to the bedroom, where he was briefed by one of the first responders.
“She was found by the husband,” an officer told Wright, nodding in Martin’s direction. “He’s pretty hysterical.”
Wright attempted to take a statement from Martin, jotting down notes. Martin explained to Wright and to several of the first responders that he’d found Michele slumped over the edge of the tub, her face in the water. He told Wright he wasn’t sure who let the water out of the bathtub, but that he thought it was Doug Daniels. On the 911 call, however, Martin had admitted he let the water drain, a detail he would also later confirm to the pathologist.
Martin was allowed to return to his wife’s side and Wright began his search of the house. In the bedroom, the detective noted Michele’s sopping, bloody clothes strewn on the carpet. He used a digital camera to snap a picture of her shirt, bra, and undergarment, as well as the hospital bed and a tote full of medication.
Wright then scanned the bathroom, scribbling notes about the layout. The tub was affixed to the back wall and flanked by a stand-alone shower stall and closet. Adjacent to the tub was a marble countertop with double sinks mounted atop the wooden cabinets. The bathroom walls were painted taupe, the floors marbled brown tile.
From the doorway, Wright aimed his digital camera toward the tub and snapped a wide view of the bathroom. The flash reflected off the water puddle in the center of the tile floor.
Stepping further into the bathroom, Wright approached the tub. Peering down into the basin, he noticed bottles of shampoo and conditioner tossed near the drain. It appeared as if they had been knocked over in the commotion.
Squatting down, Wright narrowed his eyes and closely examined the tub. A small blood spot blemished the white porcelain ledge across from the faucet. Framing a photo, Wright snapped a close-up of the blood.
Widening his perimeter around the bathtub, Wright discovered two more bloodstains on the tile floor, which he also photographed. Near the tub an amorphous pink blob was diluted with water. A smaller, darker blood pool dripped into the grout.
Meanwhile, Martin continued to dash in and out of the bedroom, barking orders at the paramedics. He grew increasingly erratic, and just before noon, Wright watched the fire chief escort Martin out of the house. While he had investigated hundreds of deaths, Wright had rarely encountered someone as belligerent as Martin MacNeill was that afternoon. But although the detective found his behavior bizarre, at the time he did not view it as suspicious.
If investigators had dug deeper, would they have uncovered Martin’s affair with Gypsy? Had they questioned the MacNeill daughters, could they have learned that it was Martin who insisted his wife undergo the face-lift?
Instead, Michele’s death was written off as an unfortunate accident. Within days of her passing, the case would be closed.
* * *
Since receiving her father’s voice message that morning, Alexis had been calling her parents’ home and Michele’s cell phone, attempting to get ahold of her mother. After each unanswered call, her anxiety swelled.
At 11:59 P.M., during another break in her class, Alexis called her father. By this point, Martin had been escorted outside. He was standing on the front porch with the fire chief when he answered the phone. The moment Alexis heard his voice, she knew something was wrong.
“Your mother’s not breathing,” Martin bellowed. “She’s in the bathtub. I called an ambulance.”
Before Alexis could ask a question or make sense of her father’s words, he hung up the phone. The color drained from Alexis’s fac
e. Dropping her bags, she screamed. She bolted toward her car and drove directly to the airport.
* * *
As the police and ambulances sped toward the MacNeill house, Sabrina MacNeill was on campus at her junior high school, having lunch. The warble of ambulance sirens sounded in the distance, growing louder as the minutes passed. Sabrina saw emergency vehicles whiz past the school.
I hope that’s not for anyone in my family, she thought to herself.
* * *
At the house, Martin phoned the Developmental Center, reaching nurse practitioner Jim Van Zant. “Paramedics are doing a code on my wife,” Martin said in a panic, requesting assistance at his house. He also phoned his son Damian and told him to meet him at the hospital.
At 12:05 P.M., Alexis called Martin’s cell again and he answered.
“We’re doing CPR,” he said, then hung up.
At the time, paramedics were the ones actually performing CPR.
Between 12:13 P.M. and 12:17 P.M., Martin and Alexis phoned each other four times, each call lasting just a few seconds.
Soon, Martin’s colleague Steve Nickelson arrived at the house. Van Zant had alerted him to the emergency, and Nickelson drove over, hoping to help. When Nickelson pulled up, Martin was on his front porch. He nodded at Nickelson. “Go inside. Michele’s in the bedroom.”
Nickelson went down the hall and entered the master bedroom. Seeing Michele bloody and unconscious, he quietly gasped. Over the years Nickelson had met Michele and several of the couple’s daughters at various charity benefits. Shocked and shaken, Nickelson observed as the medics worked to save her life. Once he realized there was nothing he could do to help, he left the bedroom and exited the house.
Outside, Martin dialed Alexis’s number. Before saying a word, he handed Nickelson his phone. “Tell Alexis,” Martin whispered. “I can’t.”
Dazed, Nickelson took the phone and put it to his ear.
“Is she okay?” Alexis shouted hysterically. “Is she okay? Tell me she’s okay!”
Despite nearly two decades of handling emergencies, at that moment Nickelson found himself speechless.
“I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that her mom looked like she was dead,” he recalled. Instead, he told Alexis that Michele had “coded.”