The Stranger She Loved

by Shanna Hogan

  “A person cannot be accountable for his actions while he’s asleep,” the statement read.

  * * *

  Waging the latest battle in the war against their father, Alexis and Rachel attacked Martin where he was most vulnerable—his finances.

  Rachel contacted management at the Developmental Center and both she and Alexis prepared an official statement. In it they outlined their father’s conviction from 1977 and the pending charges of sexual abuse. The Developmental Center investigated, and in September Martin was fired from his prestigious job, partially for concealing his 1977 felony conviction.

  Martin was infuriated. And because of his disregard for legal and moral restrictions, he could be much more vindictive than his daughters could ever fathom.

  Martin planned to sell the Pleasant Grove home, undercutting Alexis’s legal right to the property. But because possession of the house was being challenged in probate court, it could not legally be sold. Meanwhile, Gypsy had her own catalog of troubles stemming from her substantial tax debt, and they were obstructing her future with Martin.

  The debt was crippling. With awful credit and no credit cards, Gypsy was unable to even open a bank account without the money being potentially seized by the Internal Revenue Service. If they were to legally marry, Martin feared he would be held responsible for her debts. Even adding Gypsy as a signer on Martin’s bank account posed a threat that his assets would be frozen.

  To untangle both of their financial snags, Martin employed the same skills he had developed in his early twenties when he committed check fraud. Once again he found a clever way to circumvent the law.

  And the latest deception would involve making one of his daughters disappear.

  27.

  The awful fall and winter of 2007 crept by sluggishly for all those ensnared in Martin’s life.

  While Alexis was fighting to gain permanent custody of Elle, Sabrina, and Ada, their sister Giselle, in Ukraine, languished in abject poverty. The tiny home in which she resided was dilapidated, the walls covered with mold and rust. The bathroom consisted of little more than a toilet and a small pan on the ground that served as a shower.

  For months Giselle tried to reach Martin. She had no money for food or school. He didn’t answer her calls and never returned her voice messages.

  Throughout her stay she heard no word from anyone in the MacNeill family. Giselle felt discarded and forgotten. She wasn’t sure if she would ever see the United States again.

  * * *

  Despite the lack of cooperation from the Pleasant Grove police, Linda, Alexis, and Rachel continued to investigate Martin.

  In the months following Michele’s death, Linda had been consumed with uncovering Martin’s dark secrets. Ultimately she would take a year off from her job in insurance claims, sacrificing her career to get justice for Michele.

  “It was a difficult time,” Linda recalled. “It took a toll on me.”

  The Somers family had always felt Martin received money illegally. They knew the timing of his schooling didn’t add up. But they dismissed their concerns because everyone seemed to accept Martin—he kept obtaining prominent and well-paying jobs.

  “Nothing seemed right with Martin MacNeill from the minute we knew him,” Linda later wrote on her Web site. “I guess I find it strange that he could fool so many people, but quite honestly he didn’t fool us ever.”

  Searching public records from each city he’d lived in, Linda collected documents. Eventually she would piece together a timeline of his questionable past, creating an overstuffed three-ring binder of evidence against Martin.

  Through her investigation, she developed a theory as to his motives. She believed he was done with Michele and wanted a divorce, but he was unwilling to give up any money, assets, or his status in the church.

  “It’s in his nature to be finished with people,” Linda later said. “He was on to bigger and better things and Michele was in his way and starting to figure him out.”

  For months Linda sent dozens of e-mails and letters to the Utah County Attorney’s Office, many of which she delivered personally to prosecutors. She phoned agencies across the state and repeatedly contacted the Utah governor, Jon Huntsman Jr. Her daughter Jill personally went to the capital to deliver information to the governor’s office, marked “urgent.”

  Alexis and Rachel also urged the police and prosecutors to investigate. When they were repeatedly stifled, the sisters contacted every newspaper in Utah. They received no response.

  “I could not understand why no one would listen,” Alexis lamented. “My mother was murdered. And no one cared.”

  * * *

  Meanwhile, Gypsy was discovering that life with Martin was anything but a fairy tale.

  As he had been with Michele, Martin was controlling and domineering in his relationship with Gypsy. After she had moved into the house, she also learned he was bipolar. Suddenly, Gypsy was dealing with his rapid cycles between mania and depression. While he could be fun and exciting, about once every six weeks he would become paranoid, angry, and belligerent.

  “When he was manic, he was very lively and would do random things,” Gypsy said years later. “After I’d known him for about a year I realized he was bipolar.”

  To assist with his mood swings, Gypsy employed the same calming tactics she had learned as a nurse working with mentally disturbed patients.

  Recognizing these nursing strategies, Martin reprimanded her. “Cut the psych nurse shit.”

  For Gypsy it was exhausting. Eventually, she even began to empathize with how Michele must have felt throughout her marriage to Martin. “I could see how she was worn out dealing with that,” Gypsy later said. “In the space of a year and a half that I was with Martin I broke out in shingles twice.”

  After Martin was fired, he was furious and grew hostile toward Gypsy. At one point, things became so bad he turned violent. Martin hit her, leaving bruises, which she documented on her cell phone camera. In November, she called the police and filed criminal charges for domestic violence. But soon after, Martin apologized and the couple reunited.

  A few weeks after she’d reported the battery, Martin escorted Gypsy to the police station to request the charges be dismissed. Martin controlled the conversation with officials, as if he had scripted the interview. In the notarized documents, Gypsy’s last name is even spelled wrong.

  Still, Gypsy remained loyal to Martin.

  She would later claim that being with someone so successful, accomplished, and educated caused her to settle into a more passive role in the relationship. She relinquished total control of her own life—which in a strange way was freeing for Gypsy. As the eldest child, she had always been the one held responsible for her siblings. Working as a nurse, she was charged with caring for dozens of patients. Allowing Martin to draft their futures was alluring.

  “I felt like he was the one in charge. At the time I was happy to some degree to let that happen. Because I had never really felt taken care of,” Gypsy later said. “To have someone say ‘I’ll take care of you. This is how we’re going to do things.’ I let that go. And that’s the number one thing I regret.”

  * * *

  Martin’s latest scheme was utterly diabolical.

  To mask Gypsy’s debt and poor credit, she would assume a new name and take on a new Social Security number. Gypsy Jyll Willis would become Jillian Giselle MacNeill, the new wife of Martin MacNeill.

  Martin created this new persona for his girlfriend by stealing the identity of his own sixteen-year-old daughter, Giselle Marie MacNeill.

  Martin used Giselle’s birth certificate and altered it by twenty years. Gypsy’s new birth date was March 13, 1971, making her five years older than her actual age. With the fake birth certificate, Martin took Gypsy to apply for a new Social Security card under the name Jillian, essentially creating two separate individuals with the same Social Security number. In the fall of 2007, Gypsy obtained a new Utah ID card. By moving forward with the new ident
ity, they were able to wipe away her tax debts.

  Martin then accompanied Gypsy to the U.S. military offices to obtain a military identification card, which she was eligible for as the “wife” of an army veteran. On the application, Gypsy stated her name as Jillian G. MacNeill. The military ID allowed “Jillian” access to military bases and gave her the ability to open bank accounts.

  In a deplorable twist, when Martin and “Jillian” filled out the application for the ID, they listed their supposed wedding date as April 14, 2007—the day Michele was buried.

  Through each move of the elaborate scheme, Gypsy knew what they were doing was illegal. But she claimed Martin was so persuasive, he convinced her to take part in the scam, telling her it would be mutually beneficial.

  “This was Martin’s idea. This was Martin’s activity. I didn’t want to do it. I told him I didn’t want to do it,” Gypsy later said. “He said this is the best way to do it. It’s temporary. It’s not going to hurt anybody. No one will notice.”

  Martin accompanied Gypsy to Zion’s First National Bank in Utah to open a checking account, on which they both were signers.

  On September 28, Martin obtained and recorded a quit-claim deed on the house in Pleasant Grove. The deed would later be integral for Martin’s next phase of the plan—to sell the house out from under Alexis.

  That fall Martin also made changes to his will. Alexis was removed as executor of his estate. Instead, Martin willed everything to Gypsy, under the name Jillian MacNeill. When he died, each of his children would receive just one dollar.

  * * *

  Martin had effectively tossed away his adopted daughter Giselle. He thought she wouldn’t be missed, that no one would look for her. However, as Linda continued investigating Martin for murder, she discovered that Giselle remained in Ukraine. Both Linda and her daughter, Jill Harper-Smith, were compelled to bring her home.

  But they had no contact information for Giselle or her sister—no e-mail and no idea how to find her. Searching on the Internet, Jill discovered comments on Michele’s online obituary from a woman named Yulia Shust—the MacNeills’ translator from Ukraine. Clicking on the woman’s name, Jill found an e-mail contact for Yulia.

  Jill wrote to Yulia and asked if she knew how to reach Giselle. Days later, Jill received a response from Yulia with a phone number for Giselle. Jill called the number, eventually making contact with the teenager.

  On the call with her cousin, Giselle sobbed about how she had been abandoned with no money. “He just left me here.”

  Without notifying Martin, Linda secretly purchased a plane ticket and sent Jill to Ukraine to bring Giselle back. Before leaving, Jill also obtained Giselle’s passport from Alexis, who still had it in her possession. After arriving in Ukraine, Jill saw the conditions in which Giselle had been living, and was appalled. “I’ve never seen anything that horrible,” Jill later said.

  Giselle flew back to Utah with her cousin. Once she had returned, Linda decided to adopt the teenager.

  In a bid to obtain guardianship of Giselle, Linda filed a protective order against Martin, paying for an attorney at her own expense. But despite having deserted his adopted daughter, for the next few months Martin peculiarly fought for custody of Giselle. Due to the legal battle, Giselle had to spend months in foster care before returning to Linda’s home.

  Dejected by her abandonment, Giselle was bitter and wanted no contact with the MacNeill family. She would never speak to her sisters again.

  28.

  The first anniversary of Michele MacNeill’s death was agonizing for her loved ones. Adding to their pain, Michele’s grave remained unmarked by a tombstone or plaque. For her grieving daughters it was just another sign of disrespect toward their mother.

  When they had still been speaking to their father, Rachel, Vanessa, and Alexis had complained that he hadn’t yet purchased a gravestone. They offered to put one up themselves, but Martin forbade them.

  During a court hearing concerning custody of her sisters, Alexis addressed the issue with the judge. “He doesn’t even have a headstone up for my mom,” Alexis said.

  About a month later, Linda was at her home in Spanish Fork thinking of Michele when she had the sudden urge to visit her grave at the Highland City Cemetery, about forty-five miles away. Linda drove to the cemetery, parked her car, and walked across the graveyard. As she approached Michele’s burial site, she stopped in her tracks. Martin and Damian were kneeling by the grave.

  Returning to her car, Linda retrieved a pair of binoculars. Conspicuously flipping up the hood on the jacket she was wearing, she scurried across the cemetery, crouched by a gravestone, and pretended to be paying her respects. Using her binoculars, she observed as Martin and Damian poured wet cement into a mold atop Michele’s grave, creating their own tombstone.

  “I happened to go there the same day that they were there, which is weird … I saw them up there,” Linda recalled. “And they were up on the lawn pouring cement, pouring their own headstone. It was so bizarre.”

  After about fifteen minutes, Martin and Damian left, pulling a trailer across the lawn of the cemetery and back to the parking lot. Once they were gone, Linda dashed down to Michele’s grave to observe what Martin had constructed. “It was the craziest-looking thing I had ever seen,” she later said. “It was like cement scratched with a rock.”

  When she returned later, she saw that someone had polished the cement to make it appear more finished. Several months later Martin added a plaque with Michele’s name and a poem to the slab.

  Still, it was an undeniable monstrosity.

  The final stone was a crude, six-foot-tall concrete slab that resembled a surfboard. When Alexis went to the cemetery to see it, she was shocked. She wasn’t sure of Martin’s motive behind it, but she assumed it was to save money.

  Many complained to the Highland City Cemetery management about the “eyesore.” When the cemetery manager spoke to Martin, the widower threatened to sue: he could pour his own headstone if he wanted, Martin argued.

  Linda returned to the cemetery religiously on her sister’s birthday and the anniversary of her death to feel closer to her spirit. That year Linda also went to the cemetery on Michele’s wedding anniversary—out of curiosity to see what Martin might be doing.

  At her sister’s grave, Linda peered down and noticed a card with a picture of an angel. Immediately Linda recognized it—it was the same Christmas card she had received the year before from her sister. She picked it up to examine it.

  Crudely pasted over the lettering “Merry Christmas” was a yellow Post-it note with Martin’s handwriting: Till we meet at Jesus’s feet. Martin.

  Beside it was a plastic flower arrangement covered in a thick layer of dust. Linda took a picture with her cell phone and sent it to Alexis.

  OMG! My mom used that for Relief Society, Alexis replied. He just grabbed something from the garage.

  Linda kept the card and stored it as evidence.

  “He just grabbed something out of their garage, sat the … flower arrangement on there. And he took an old Christmas card and glued a yellow sticky note over the Merry Christmas and brought it out. That’s what he sat on her grave,” Linda recalled with disgust. “Like he just had to stick something there because he knew other people would be coming.”

  * * *

  In April 2008, Alexis’s charges of sexual assault against her father were dismissed, just weeks before the scheduled trial date. The judge ruled that there wasn’t enough evidence in the case and said prosecutors did not have a “good faith” basis to proceed.

  Martin thought he won. And Alexis worried that her father would never be held accountable for the crime.

  But soon prosecutors in that case would have a reason to take a closer look at the life of Martin MacNeill.

  * * *

  Following her mother’s death and the implosion of her family, Vanessa’s drug addiction had once again spiraled beyond her control. But she never lost her desire to find sobr
iety.

  In June 2008, Vanessa went to her father, hoping he’d pay for her to go through rehab. Instead, he suggested another way of defeating her addiction: ending her life. Martin told her they could go to heaven together.

  “Take my hand and leave with me.” Martin loomed over Vanessa. “I will end your life and I will end my own.”

  “What are you talking about?” Vanessa said, her eyes flooding with tears.

  “That’s the only way you’ll feel peace,” Martin said calmly.

  Vanessa sobbed, suddenly afraid her father would kill her.

  “Don’t be afraid.” He reached out for her. “Take my hand.”

  Fearful, Vanessa called Alexis for a ride. When she arrived, Vanessa told her sister what had happened.

  They were both horrified.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, as Martin feuded with his daughters, Gypsy’s own family issues reemerged.

  Gypsy owned an Italian greyhound, and that summer she had temporarily placed it in her parents’ care while she searched for a rescue organization. She drove to Wyoming to take custody of the dog, but when she arrived, her mother refused to return the animal. They argued, and the squabble turned violent.

  Gypsy pounced on Vicki, biting her.

  “She lunged forward and she bit me on my upper left bicep—a bad bite. You could see every single tooth mark,” Vicki said of the incident. “She doesn’t care who gets hurt. She doesn’t care what circumstances are ruined.”

  Gypsy claimed her mom grabbed her from behind and choked her, leaving her injured. “I was bruised from head to toe. I had a sprained knee. I had choke marks around my neck,” Gypsy later said.

  They tussled for a few moments. Once they’d separated, Vicki told her to leave. “Get out of here. You will never see Heidi again.”

  Gypsy called Martin, but her mother grabbed the phone, hung up, and dialed the police. Jumping into her car, Gypsy drove away. As she was leaving she saw fire trucks and an ambulance heading to her parents’ house. No charges were filed, but police took a report.