by Shanna Hogan
Using Linda Cluff’s amateur sleuthing as a starting point, Witney and Robinson dug deeper. The Somers family had often doubted Martin’s educational credentials—specifically how he was in school long enough to earn a medical and law degree. Additionally, they suspected he might have an illicit source of income. With those leads, the investigators began speaking with officials and requesting records, working to piece together a timeline leading back thirty years.
After obtaining Martin’s military record, they traced his first deception to when he was seventeen and lied about his age to enlist in the military. Two years later he had been deemed a latent schizophrenic and was discharged from service.
There is no cure for schizophrenia. And although medication can mask symptoms, Martin had no prescriptions for the disorder. His family believed he had fabricated symptoms of schizophrenia during his time in the military to commit fraud. Witney and Robinson would also come to believe Martin’s mental illness was feigned to gain an early discharge and collect military benefits. In 1975, Martin applied for and received Veterans Benefits Administration and Social Security benefits.
Despite gaining dual degrees, becoming a successful doctor, and earning a six-figure salary, Martin continued to collect disability benefits illegally from the Veterans Benefits Administration for the next thirty-five years, amassing a total of more than one hundred thousand dollars. By the time Witney and Robinson uncovered the scam, Martin was receiving three thousand dollars in benefits a month.
Searching through the reports, the investigators kept returning to Martin’s college transcripts. How did he get accepted into medical school while on felony probation? Why did he spend so little time in Mexico?
Witney and Robinson obtained Martin’s college transcripts from Washington, California, Mexico, and Utah. While living in Washington, it seemed that Martin had graduated from Saint Martin’s University. To acquire degrees in psychology and sociology, Martin had transferred sixty-five credits from the army’s extension program. But there were no records to show if those military credits were legitimate.
After graduating college he was arrested for the check-forging scheme. Once again he used an apparently fictitious mental illness in an attempt to plead not guilty by reason of insanity.
Later that year, while living in Mission Viejo, Martin met and married Michele. Around that time, Helen Somers had discovered the seal from Saint Martin’s University, which Linda provided to investigators.
Comparing the transcripts Martin used to get into medical school with the originals from the colleges, Witney and Robinson discovered he had falsified transcripts with inflated grades, and had lied on applications. It appeared he had obtained another student’s school transcripts and changed the name to his own.
“He obviously took somebody else’s transcripts,” Witney later explained. “There was a different date of entrance, different date of graduation, and all of them were straight As.”
With those phony transcripts, Martin had been accepted into medical school in Mexico, where he did not disclose his recent felony conviction.
“Here is a man who went to jail for one hundred and eighty days,” Witney later said. “He was on felony parole when he went into medical school.”
After just one semester, Martin transferred to Western University of Health Sciences in California, claiming he’d spent a full year in Mexico. Witney tracked down the original application.
“He had actually been there for a semester,” Witney explained. “It was very obvious … it was totally falsified as well.”
The same year, Martin had an interview with the army for a checkup on his disability leave, during which he told the examiner he had not been working or attending school. It made him eligible for 50 percent disability pay from the Veterans Benefits Administration; he later received 100 percent pay. Martin also managed to receive 100 percent pay from Social Security.
In 1983, after three years in school, Martin used his falsified records to obtain a medical degree and get a license as an osteopathic surgeon in California and later in Utah. From there Martin spent two decades as a successful doctor. In 1998, he also used those same bogus transcripts to get into BYU’s law school.
“It is an amazing story about how he got from one place to another through lies,” Robinson commented. “Whenever you can become a doctor and an attorney based on lies, that is an amazing thing.”
In addition, as Witney and Robinson interviewed former colleagues at the various hospitals and clinics in which Martin had worked, they learned of multiple accusations of misdiagnoses and sexual assaults. At each job Martin also failed to disclose his diagnosis of a psychological disorder or his felony conviction.
The investigators were now convinced that Martin MacNeill was anything but the esteemed doctor he claimed to be.
“This was a case that because nothing was known about the individual, nothing was done,” Witney stated. “The guy is brilliant. I am not saying that he is not smart … he just lies.”
Sitting down with Martin’s daughters in late 2008, Witney and Robinson revealed the totality of what they had uncovered. Rachel and Alexis were shocked and angry.
“He was able to hide an entire life from us,” Rachel said years later. “We basically found out that our entire lives had been based and surrounded on lies. That everything about our experience with our father was a lie.”
For days all Rachel could do was cry and erratically scream. “The father that I knew was a fictional character. It was an act the whole time,” she said in an interview.
For Alexis it was agonizing to realize that the man she patterned her career after was a fraud. “The father we knew … he was just a façade,” Alexis later said. “He betrayed us to our very core. I mean, everything that we thought in our life was just all shattered. It was a sham. It really is. It’s been a whole sham.”
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Emboldened by what she had learned about her father, Rachel launched a blog about Martin. On it she made a request pleading for witnesses to come forward with information.
During the next few months she would receive calls from people across the country with disturbing stories of their encounters with Martin. Some women said they had been propositioned by the doctor, one man claimed he witnessed a rape. However, no one ever reported Martin to the police and no charges were brought.
“It’s horrifying to hear their stories and how their life has been affected by my dad,” Rachel later said. “He really knew who he could take advantage of. I thought I had an idea of who my father was, but I had no idea.”
For Rachel, not only was it disturbing to learn of her father’s perverse sexual secrets, it was also heart wrenching. Had any of her father’s former mistresses approached Michele before she died, perhaps she would have left the marriage.
“To think if my mom would’ve known, her life would’ve been saved,” Rachel lamented.
Alexis also believed that if Michele had understood the lengths of her father’s deception, she would not have stayed in the marriage. “If she would have known who my father was, she would have been gone in a minute,” Alexis commented. “She would have wanted to protect her children and she would not have stayed if she would have known what was going on.”
* * *
The case that had been composed of a single manila folder when the Utah County Bureau of Investigations first took it on soon spilled into boxes of evidence strewn around the investigators’ offices.
As Witney and Robinson continued to interview witnesses, the investigators gathered police reports, medical records, and financial documents. Witney subpoenaed cell phone records for Martin, Michele, and Gypsy. The Developmental Center’s office phone records were gathered as well.
Mobile phone triangulation—a common tool in police investigations—allows for cell phone signals to be traced by locating the tower origin of the last signal the phone received. In this case, if investigators were able to trace the location of the cell phones, they coul
d show who was at the house on the day of the murder.
Unfortunately, the data needed for such calculations is stored for only sixty to ninety days, depending on the cellular phone provider. By the time the bureau got the case, those records had been purged and could never be recovered. Also lost to time was the content of text messages, which phone providers store for a short period of time. Investigators would be able to review what time a message was sent and to whom, but not the contents.
Still, the phone records provided valuable insight into the relationship between Martin and Gypsy. The two had communicated regularly for more than a year, but in early 2007 the frequency of their communication increased dramatically. Each day the couple exchanged more than a dozen messages, many late at night.
The texting pattern also showed the apparent callousness Martin had toward his wife.
On April 5, the day she was drugged, Martin and Gypsy exchanged twenty-five texts. On April 12—one day after Michele had died—the two sent twelve messages back and forth, including two pictures. The next day they exchanged seventeen messages.
Using Martin’s work phone records, investigators were able to trace his activity on April 11. Witney cross-referenced those records with witness statements, creating a timeline of Martin’s whereabouts on Michele’s final day.
After arriving at work, Martin called Gypsy at 6:48 A.M. About an hour later he returned home to take the girls to school. Ada was dropped off just before 8:20 A.M. From 8:30 to 9:11 A.M., there was a gap in Martin’s traceable timeline.
At 9:26 A.M., he called Gypsy again. And at 11 A.M. a call from Martin’s phone was placed to an 800 number, lasting six minutes.
“We don’t know if Martin made this call,” Witney wrote in his notes.
The call Martin made from his office to Alexis was also peculiar—both because he didn’t call from his cell phone and because of the odd way he had expressed concern that Michele was not staying in bed.
“I believe Martin’s call to Alexis is likely a pretext call, being made from Martin’s place of employment, as an attempt at an alibi,” Robinson wrote in his report.
Shortly after 11 A.M., Martin arrived at the safety fair to accept his award, where coworkers said he was “nervous and belligerent,” so much so that a written complaint was filed against him. He had insisted he be photographed, “so people would know that he was present,” furthering his alibi.
By 11:35 A.M. Martin picked up Ada.
Records showed that Martin called 911 twice, at 11:46 A.M. and 11:48 A.M. Witney received a recording of the call. Because Martin was so angry, aggressive, and condescending on the call, it had been saved for training purposes.
And because Martin didn’t state his address clearly, nearly fifteen minutes elapsed before paramedics arrived.
There are only two time gaps in Martin’s schedule. From about 8:30 to 9:11 A.M., there are no phone records. And from about 9:30 to 11 A.M. Martin’s whereabouts were also untraceable.
Widening their investigation, Witney and Robinson delved deeper into Martin’s financial activity over the past year. When Linda had been unable to complete the adoption of Giselle because of the discrepancies with the birth certificate, she alerted Witney and Robinson, with suspicions that it could be related to another scam.
Soon they had uncovered Martin’s latest deception involving the theft of Giselle’s identity. Federal investigators were notified of the fraud, and an investigation was launched against Martin and Gypsy.
A federal agent from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service spent months collecting incriminating documents related to the financial fraud and identity theft. Because the crimes were widespread, the postal agency worked in conjunction with the Social Security office, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Professional Licensing.
It became clear to prosecutors that Martin had sent Giselle to Ukraine to fend for herself with the intention of stealing her identity. Prosecutor Karen Fojkt with the U.S. Attorney’s Office believed the trip was to be permanent.
“He knew he was plotting and planning to steal her identity,” Fojkt commented of the case. “This is the first time that anybody has put a timeline on this guy and has seen everything that has been going on with him for thirty years.”
* * *
Unaware of the criminal investigation, Martin made plans to flee Utah. The Pleasant Grove property was still entangled in litigation, and although he was the legal resident of the home, it could not be sold. To avoid going through probate or paying taxes, in late 2008 Martin used Gypsy’s new identity to devise a scheme to sell the property.
Acting as if his wife were still alive, Martin masqueraded as Michele’s attorney. Then he had the property transferred into his own name. The same day the transaction went through, Gypsy filed a one-million-dollar lien on the house, under the name Jillian MacNeill, in order to discourage Martin’s daughters from claiming rights to the property.
It was an illegal transaction—there was no reason to file the lien.
Because federal agents had been monitoring Martin’s financial activity, they quickly became aware of the plan. Posing as a potential buyer, a federal agent made an offer to buy the house. Gypsy then went to remove the lien so the property could be sold.
Once the scheme was uncovered, a warrant was issued for the arrest of Martin MacNeill and Gypsy Willis.
* * *
If Michele had lived, January 15, 2009, would have been her fifty-second birthday. That day, Martin was returning to Utah after a brief trip to Washington for a job interview. Witney, Robinson, and a slew of federal investigators went to the Salt Lake City airport to await his flight.
Once Martin stepped off the plane, he was arrested on multiple charges stemming from the identity theft and fraud. As he was handcuffed, he looked stunned.
“It was quite a surprise,” recalled Robinson. “He had no idea what was going on … and that was the beauty of it.”
That same day Gypsy was alone in the kitchen of the Pleasant Grove home when a SWAT team dressed in bulletproof vests burst through the front door, shouting commands.
“Get out! You can’t be in here!” Gypsy yelled.
The FBI soon swarmed the house. Agents searched the premises and took photos. Detectives pulled Gypsy aside to question her. Exiting the house, she saw police cars lining the block.
“I was shocked, scared, and angry,” Gypsy remembered.
Gypsy was arrested and charged with eleven felony counts, including misuse of a Social Security card and aggravated identity theft. Martin was indicted in federal court on nine counts of aiding and abetting in aggravated identity theft, misuse of a Social Security number, and making false statements.
Both Martin and Gypsy would also face state charges for felonies including making inconsistent statements, insurance fraud, and forgery.
In January, Martin was also recharged with sexual abuse and witness tampering for the 2007 assault of Alexis. A new prosecutor took on the case and was determined to pursue charges. The defense filed an immediate appeal, arguing the prosecution hadn’t produced any additional evidence and that refiling charges violated Martin’s right to a speedy and public trial.
The case crept slowly through the justice system and would remain tied up for the next three years in appeals court.
* * *
Following the arrests, the investigators served a search warrant on the Pleasant Grove home. Witney and Robinson took measurements of the bathroom and collected evidence, including computers, cell phones, cameras, and camcorders. Numerous documents were also recovered, such as the report from Martin’s visits to the Mayo Clinic.
In addition to medical testing for his genetic condition, Martin had undergone a psychological evaluation, during which he made several statements that the investigators found intriguing.
Martin told the doctors he struggled with “death ideations,” and admitted he was bipolar but said he controlled his condition with medication. Martin also claimed
he was a psychiatrist who headed up a psychiatric unit of a Utah hospital.
The report also proved Martin wasn’t suffering from a terminal illness, despite telling his family, neighbors, and church congregants that he had six months to live. “At the time these statements were made, Martin MacNeill knew he was not dying of cancer or any other ailment,” Robinson wrote in his report.
The investigators would come to believe that Martin contrived his illness for months, inventing an excuse for why he would later be unable to lift an unconscious Michele from the tub and to deflect blame from himself for her death.
“These ailments seem to be used as a method of obtaining sympathy from those close to his family and thereby diverting any possible suspicion of complicity in Michele’s death,” Robinson wrote.
* * *
Much of the next few months passed by in court for Linda, Alexis, and Rachel, who attended hearings for both Martin and Gypsy.
Damian, who continued to advocate for his father, was also a regular at court hearings. Sauntering through the courtroom, he brushed past his sisters and sat next to Martin’s attorney. He gave his father a supportive glance and then winked at Randall Spencer.
The subsequent trials would be presided over by Judge Samuel McVey, a retired U.S. Marines colonel appointed to Provo’s Fourth District Court in 2004. With a law degree from Brigham Young University law school and a former law firm partner, McVey was in his sixties, with thinning white hair and a heavily lined face.
Through the next few months, Martin MacNeill would become a familiar face in McVey’s courtroom, where witnesses would testify about his staggeringly deceitful criminal past and how he used his credentials as a doctor and a lawyer to skirt the law.
“It was astounding that someone could have that amount of incidents in the past and avoid additional prosecution,” one witness told the judge. “I can tell you he was very articulate, intelligent, well-educated, and he premeditated these criminal acts.”
But far from being a brilliant forgery, Martin’s identity theft scheme was brazen and sloppy, explained Witney. “You are talking about a state ID card. You are talking about bank accounts that were opened up under false names, false Social Security numbers,” Witney later said. “We don’t know why these people did what they did, because it was so likely that they would be caught.”