by Shanna Hogan
21.
“Everything needs to return to normal,” Martin told his daughters.
He repeatedly insisted that his family resume their own lives, and said he would hire a nanny to care for the adopted girls, then sixteen, fourteen, thirteen, and six.
“I want you to continue living your life as you were before,” Martin announced. “I don’t need your help.”
On April 17, Martin asked Rachel to meet him at the temple to “pray about finding a nanny.” Rachel found it strange—although Martin had always been involved in the church, he wasn’t particularly spiritual and rarely expressed an interest in going to the temple simply to pray.
“My father was adamant that we go to the temple to pray about getting a nanny,” Rachel said years later. “It was right away—very soon after my mother’s death.”
Rachel met her dad outside the Manila Stake Center at Mount Timpanogos Temple, where Michele’s funeral had been held just days earlier. As they walked up to the building, they passed by two of Martin’s neighbors from Pleasant Grove.
“How unusual to run into them here, huh?” Martin commented to his daughter. Rachel shot her dad a curious look. Many of the Mormon families that attended the temple lived just down the street. It wasn’t odd to encounter one at church.
Inside the temple, Rachel expected they would partake in an endowment ceremony where they would be together to pray. Instead, Martin said he just wanted to do an initiatory, a preliminary ritual preceding the endowment proper. They parted ways into the separate male and female quarters, where they would be anointed.
“We’ll meet after,” Martin said.
Once she had completed the ceremony, Rachel searched the temple but could not find her father. She stepped outside and looked around, but he was not there either.
“I walked out to the right, got into my car. I thought maybe he had gone back to work since it was right across the street,” Rachel recalled. “I went to go look for him, so I drove.”
Once she arrived at the Developmental Center, Rachel scanned the parking lot in search of his vehicle. Just then her phone rang—it was her father.
“Rachel. Where are you? We were supposed to meet!” Martin sniped.
“I was looking for you,” Rachel said. “I couldn’t find you.”
“I’m outside on the bench,” he shouted into the phone. “There’s no way you could have missed me!”
“I’m sorry,” she replied quickly. “I didn’t know you wanted to meet outside the temple.”
Never before had they sat outside the building together. Rachel drove back to the temple, parked, and headed toward the stake center, where she found Martin sitting on a bench.
“I went back and my father was very upset, so I had to apologize,” Rachel later said in court. “He said he was on the bench outside and there’s no way I could have missed him. But I had gone out the other way.”
Plopping down beside her father, Rachel apologized again. “I’m sorry, Dad.”
Martin spoke to her about nannies for about five minutes before they were approached by a woman dressed in white, her long brown hair flowing loose.
It appeared as if she was headed to the temple. Instead, she walked directly to the bench where Martin and Rachel were seated.
“I am so sorry for your loss,” the woman told Martin. “I was at the funeral.”
“Oh. Thank you.” Martin paused, peering up at her. “I’m sorry. I know you. I recognize you. What’s your name again?”
“I’m Jillian,” she said, shaking his hand. “We met before.”
“Now I remember.” Martin smiled. “We worked together.”
Rachel studied the woman curiously, vaguely recognizing her from the funeral.
A moment later, Martin rose from the bench. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to excuse myself and go to the restroom.”
Martin turned and walked inside the stake center, leaving Rachel alone with the dark-haired stranger. The woman began to chat about her background. “I’m going to nursing school,” Jillian said.
Peering off in the distance, Rachel nodded.
“Your father once told me you were interested in nursing school,” Jillian continued. “You look like a nurse.”
Rachel half smirked but continued to stare blankly into the distance. The woman prattled on about nursing. So soon after her mom’s death, Rachel had no interest in making small talk with this stranger. “This woman kept talking to me,” Rachel recalled. “She just kept talking to me about nursing things and I just wasn’t interested at all … I just wanted her to go away.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t really talk,” Rachel wearily told the woman. “My mother just passed away. I’m just trying to breathe.”
But Jillian didn’t leave. “I have some pamphlets about my school in my car.”
“She just continued to stay there.” Rachel later shook her head at the recollection. “I just wanted her to go away … I remember thinking, what in the world is going on with my dad? He’s been in the bathroom for a while … She just kept talking.”
After a few more awkward moments, Martin returned.
“What’s your name again?” he asked the woman.
“Jillian.” She grinned. “I was just telling your daughter about nursing school. I’m taking classes.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful.” Martin glanced down at his daughter.
“I’m not interested.” Rachel sighed.
Martin ignored his daughter. “We should get more information about it. Can I get your number?”
As she rattled off numbers, Martin typed the digits into his cell phone. When they parted ways, Jillian turned back toward the parking lot.
“She looked like she was going to go into the temple,” Rachel recalled. “But she never went into the temple. I never saw her go in. She came and talked to us and then went back to her car. It was bizarre.”
Once Jillian was gone, Rachel expressed her discomfort with the woman. Martin berated his daughter for being rude.
“She seems really nice,” Martin exclaimed. “But what’s her name again?”
“Jillian, Dad! Her name was Jillian.” Rachel rolled her eyes in exasperation.
“Oh,” he said. “We should call her about getting together to go to lunch to discuss nursing school.”
“I thought we were here to talk about a nanny,” Rachel protested.
“Rachel, you’re worthless,” Martin snapped. “You’re never going to amount to anything in life. You think everything’s going to be handed to you.”
At the nasty comment, Rachel dissolved into tears.
Over the next few weeks, the strange encounter with the dark-haired woman stuck with Rachel. “This was the first time I realized something was wrong,” she later said in an interview. “The whole thing had been scripted.”
* * *
The seemingly happenstance encounter at the temple was, in fact, just another staged scene in the ghoulish third act of the play directed by Martin MacNeill.
Cast in the role of Jillian was Martin’s mistress, Gypsy. The setting had been selected to create the illusion that meeting “Jillian” was somehow a sign from God and answer to Martin’s prayers. The woman he pretended not to recognize was the mistress he had called and texted more than one hundred times in the last seven days.
Prior to the encounter, Martin had rehearsed the script with Gypsy. “I was supposed to walk up and introduce myself and maybe strike up a small conversation and then leave. It was just an introduction,” Gypsy later said. “He wanted me to meet his family on the best possible terms.”
The plan had always been for Gypsy to become the nanny and for her to live with Martin in the house, essentially replacing Michele. But first, Martin would need to manipulate his children into welcoming a new woman into his life.
On the afternoon of April 19, Martin called Alexis.
“Alexis,” he said enthusiastically. “I found the perfect nanny!”
“Oh really?” Alexis asked.
“What’s her name?”
“I think it’s Jill…,” he stammered.
“Gypsy Jillian Willis?” Alexis interrupted. “The woman Mom thought you were having an affair with?”
“Alexis!” Martin shot back.
“Dad!” she spoke over him. “I know that woman! I know Mom was worried you were having an affair with her! You are not to bring her into the home!”
“How dare you!” he yelled indignantly. “How dare you accuse me!”
Martin told his daughter she was no longer welcome at home and was not to have contact with her younger siblings.
“He got irate. He was screaming at me,” Alexis recalled. “And hung up on me.”
That same day Martin called a family meeting with his other adult children—Rachel, Damian, and Vanessa. Because Alexis had this “ridiculous” notion that he was having an affair with some woman, Martin said, he wanted nothing more to do with his daughter.
“It’s ridiculous. If she’s going to be this way, Alexis is no longer a member of the family,” Martin said.
He also asked his children to assist in the hiring process for the new nanny. He said he had posted flyers around the Developmental Center, local colleges, and the Mormon institute in Orem, advertising for the position. Martin wanted their help interviewing applicants.
Upon hearing that Alexis had been disowned, Rachel refused to participate. Martin dismissed his eldest daughter’s apprehensions and asked Damian’s girlfriend, Eileen Heng, to be a part of what he deemed the “nanny hiring committee.”
The next day the “committee” expected to interview candidates. Although Martin said three or four women had applied, only one showed up for an interview—a woman calling herself Jillian.
Vanessa, Damian, Eileen, and Martin congregated in the front room of the house; Jillian sat across from them. Martin conducted the interview, asking questions mostly about nursing school. Jillian described her background and experience in the medical field. Vanessa, Damian, and Eileen asked a few questions.
After she left, Martin addressed the “committee.”
“What do you think?” he asked. “Should we hire her?”
“What about the other applicants?” Vanessa interjected.
Martin stated the others had all canceled their appointments. Vanessa, Damian, and Eileen were aware of the suspicions of Alexis and Rachel. Because of the turmoil surrounding this woman, Eileen pulled Martin aside and recommended he find another nanny.
“I knew that there was some tension between Alexis and Rachel with Jillian, so I encouraged Martin to not hire her because it could separate them even further,” Eileen remembered.
Martin tersely shrugged aside the concerns. “I’m sick of my children trying to run my life.” He made it clear he would be hiring Jillian as the nanny.
Later that afternoon, Vanessa phoned Alexis to tell her about the one and only nanny applicant.
“Was her name Gypsy?” Alexis asked.
“No,” Vanessa replied. “Her name was Jillian.”
Alexis explained she thought Jillian and Gypsy were the same person, but Vanessa insisted there had to be a mistake. “There is nothing to worry about,” Vanessa told her sister.
“I was convinced that she wasn’t somebody to worry about that my dad might be involved with,” Vanessa recalled, “because she was nothing like my mom.”
22.
Alexis MacNeill needed to be cunning.
If she was going to protect her little sisters and expose her father as a murderer, being forthright wouldn’t work. She would have to resort to duplicitous tactics to take him down.
She didn’t have to look far for inspiration to play that part. For twenty-four years she had unknowingly witnessed her father ruthlessly manipulate, scheme, and lie to bend others to his will. Now that she had been banned from the home, she’d employ similar strategies.
To get back in Martin’s good graces, Alexis called and e-mailed her father, apologizing for her accusations about Jillian. “These e-mails were strategic for me to get my sisters, to appease the fighting my father and I had, in order to get back into the home and get my sisters and take them out,” Alexis explained years later.
Martin quickly relented, and Alexis returned home. Over the next few months, depending on his mood, Martin would alternate from tolerating Alexis to ceasing all communication, banning her from the house.
Dangling on the fringes of her family’s life, Alexis was forced to pretend to love the man she was convinced killed her mother.
* * *
On a chilly day in May, just weeks after Michele’s death, Gypsy moved into the basement of the Pleasant Grove home.
That morning, Martin introduced the younger girls to “Jillian.”
“Okay, girls, come meet your new nanny,” Martin said. “She’s going to be living downstairs and taking care of you.”
Gypsy would later say she didn’t want to move into the home so soon after Michele’s death. She claimed she initially declined when Martin first asked if she would be the nanny. But because she wanted to be a part of Martin’s life on whatever terms possible, she changed her mind and agreed.
“He was rather insistent that he needed help and that I would be a great support to him and his life,” Gypsy later said. “I loved Martin—I really did. I would have supported him any way I could. So I was willing to fill that role.”
At the house, in front of the children, Martin and Gypsy both pretended as if they had no romantic relationship. Later, he even called Rachel to explain he was drilling a lock onto the bedroom door in the basement to give the new nanny privacy. Because he was widowed, he said, he didn’t want Jillian to worry about living with a “newly single man.”
Martin also made a request of Rachel. “I want you to come down and show her around. Make her comfortable.”
At that point Rachel was grappling with her own apprehensions about her father. And when she saw Jillian sauntering around the house, gazing lustfully at Martin, she was sickened.
“It was obvious. She was just goo-goo eyes at my dad,” Rachel later testified. “I expected her to cook or clean or take care of the children. Nobody was looking after the children. My dad was cooking and she was sitting there staring at him.”
Most glaringly, Jillian didn’t do anything a nanny should do, according to Martin’s daughters. She didn’t maintain the household, and rarely drove the children to school or ballet.
“I saw her come and go throughout the day. I never saw her pick up the children,” Alexis later said. “I never saw her do any cooking or cleaning. I saw her following my dad around a lot.”
Most distressing, Alexis and Rachel claimed the children were being neglected. On one occasion, Rachel said she stopped by to find Ada playing in the street unsupervised.
Over the next few months, Rachel and Alexis found themselves caring for their sisters. While observing the nanny and mourning their mother, both women were distrustful of their father.
While Rachel was guarded, she still clung desperately to hope that her father’s frigid demeanor was just his way of grieving. But for Alexis, the bewildering new nanny was further proof that Martin had murdered their mother. Quietly, Alexis began documenting and collecting evidence against her father. While she investigated, she had no idea at the time that Linda Cluff was building her own case against Martin.
But as Michele’s loved ones pondered what to do with their blossoming suspicions, the autopsy results were released.
* * *
Toxicology results arrived at the medical examiner’s office a few weeks after the autopsy. But they did little to solve the mystery of Michele’s death. Four different drugs were found in her system: Percocet, Valium, Phenergan, and Ambien. None were discovered at levels considered to be a lethal dose.
Dr. Frikke determined that all four drugs had been administered within an hour of Michele’s death. While the Percocet and Phenergan were at a fairly high concentration, all the drugs were within a therapeutic
range. Frikke concluded that Michele’s death was not the result of medication.
On May 22, 2007, Frikke officially certified the cause of death as natural. “This fifty-year-old Caucasian female, Michele MacNeill, appears to have died as the consequence of natural cardiovascular disease,” the autopsy report read.
The mechanism of death was ruled a result of hypertension and the heart inflammation, myocarditis, which led to an unexpected arrhythmia and sudden death.
It was classic heart disease, a cause of death all too common in middle-aged women—especially for one diagnosed with high blood pressure.
The medical examiner had the ultimate say when it came to cause and manner of death. And Dr. Frikke had concluded this was no homicide.
* * *
The findings did little to sway the suspicions of Linda and Alexis.
Alexis was most alarmed by the toxicology report. The entire time Michele had been in her care, she had never taken a Valium or an Ambien. And only once was she ever given that specific combination of medicine—Percocet, Valium, Phenergan, and Ambien—the night after the surgery, when she was alone with Martin.
Additionally, all the medication had been administered less than an hour before her death, according to the pathologist. And there would be no reason for her to take an Ambien at 10 A.M.
Alexis was gravely concerned.
But the Pleasant Grove police saw nothing suspicious. Detective Wright called Linda and informed her of the toxicology results. “Sorry,” the detective said. “I know it kind of shocks you because she was so young to have a heart attack.”
Linda sighed. “Actually, that doesn’t surprise me at all. Martin was a doctor. He would know how to cover up what he did to my sister.”
But much to Linda’s dismay, Wright said he would not be investigating further.
“I’m sorry for your loss, but there’s no crime here,” Wright said. “We’re closing the case.”
Linda’s stomach sank. She thought to herself, Martin is going to get away with it.
23.
As the MacNeill children mourned their mother, Martin’s relationship with his new live-in girlfriend flourished in secret.