The Stranger She Loved

by Shanna Hogan

  * * *

  Weeks after her arrest, Gypsy was granted pretrial release, and she remained free for the next few months. But since Martin was facing charges of fraud, identify theft, and sexual assault, he was denied bail.

  Still, Gypsy and Martin would not see or speak to each other for the next three years. Having been arrested for a scheme she was convinced her boyfriend coerced her to commit, Gypsy was initially livid. She blamed him for ruining her life. While embroiled in the criminal charges, she dated other men, eventually reconnecting with a former lover who lived in Texas.

  Meanwhile, when Gypsy’s family and many of her friends learned of her part in the scam, they turned on her. Although Howard and Vicki hadn’t spoken to their daughter in months, when they found out about the arrest, they were horrified. Soon, the truth was revealed about Gypsy’s affair during Martin’s marriage and the suspicious details of Michele’s death.

  It seemed to Howard and Vicki that their daughter was a sick individual.

  “When you’ve got a daughter that loses her morals and her spiritual guidance, she could be led on by a pathological killer,” Howard reflected on his daughter’s relationship with Martin. “The moment she found out Martin was married, she should have shut that relationship off.”

  When younger sister Julie Willis learned about the case, she would come to believe that Gypsy had found her match in Martin MacNeill. “In a bad way, they were perfect for each other,” Julie Willis said in an interview. “Together, I believe that they are perfectly capable of killing Michele.”

  This was the Willis family’s greatest fear—that Gypsy was somehow involved in Michele’s murder. “I hope and pray to God that she did not have anything to do with this thing. I just hope and pray,” Howard commented. “But if she did, I can’t help her. But I do hope that Gypsy looks at her life and says ‘I’ve got to make some changes.’”

  * * *

  When Michelle Savage learned of her former roommate’s arrest, she shuddered. Searching online, she came across Rachel MacNeill’s blog and sent her an e-mail. The story she had to tell was chilling.

  During Gypsy’s affair with Martin, her infatuation with him had spiraled into a dark obsession, according to Savage.

  While Savage lived at the house in Bountiful, Gypsy often spoke about the intense sexual chemistry she had with a married doctor she called “Neil.” After learning of Michele MacNeill’s death, Savage now believed that was an alias for “Martin MacNeill.”

  Though it seemed most of her boyfriends were married, Gypsy had been particularly obsessed with “Neil.” On one occasion Savage escorted her roommate to an event that Gypsy said she knew Neil would be attending.

  “That’s him.” Gypsy nodded in the direction of a handsome older man sitting with his wife at a table across the room.

  Later that evening Gypsy disappeared for about half an hour. Rejoining Savage, Gypsy whispered in her friend’s ear, “We just had sex.” Gypsy explained that she and Neil had slipped into a closet and made love while his wife believed he was using the bathroom, according to Savage.

  On another occasion, Neil came by their house in Bountiful. Gypsy gave Savage and another roommate two hundred dollars. “Why don’t you get lost for a few hours.” Gypsy smiled. “So we can have the place to ourselves.” Taking the money, the roommates left the apartment.

  Weeks later, Gypsy turned to prescription diet pills to lose weight for her boyfriend, Savage reported. After that she turned dark and violent.

  One night a sullen Gypsy told Savage that Neil’s wife had grown suspicious and he wanted to take a break from the relationship. “He said we need to cool things off for a while,” Gypsy explained.

  Furious with her boyfriend’s wife, Gypsy began to stalk the woman. She broke into the couple’s home to snoop around and steal a photograph of the wife, Savage said. Gypsy hung it in her closet, telling her roommate she needed to “know my enemy.”

  Gypsy spoke often about poisoning her lover’s wife or tampering with her car. “I heard her plot to cut the brake lines of her lover’s wife, saying that the woman’s children would be in car seats and should survive, as if the children were just an inconsequential annoyance to her as long as her objective was reached,” Savage later testified.

  Later, Savage and Gypsy were watching a story on CNN about a doctor who poisoned his wife with a drug. The next day, Gypsy demanded Savage reveal the name of the drug, claiming she needed to get rid of the woman keeping her from “her man.”

  “Gypsy tried to pressure me into telling her about a common ER injectable I had heard about on CNN that would kill people without a trace unless someone specifically looked for it in an autopsy. It made it look like a plain old heart attack,” Savage said in court.

  Suddenly fearful of the woman she’d once called a friend, Savage and her daughter abruptly moved out of the home. “I was scared. I’m still scared of her,” Savage later explained. “I was scared to death of Gypsy when I moved out, that’s why I moved.”

  After hearing the unnerving stories, Rachel MacNeill connected Savage and her daughter with prosecutors and investigators. Both women would later testify in court during a preliminary hearing. The validity of their statements would become a contentious issue.

  Gypsy would claim Savage was lying about the entire account and had fabricated the character of “Neil.” Gypsy added that by the time she met Martin, she had no contact with her former roommates and had sold the home in Bountiful.

  Suspicious that Gypsy may have been involved in Michele’s death, Witney and Robinson would spend months investigating, trying to tie Martin’s mistress to the murder. But it appeared she had an alibi and was miles away from Pleasant Grove on the day of Michele’s death.

  * * *

  Given the mountain of evidence against Martin, his attorney, Randall Spencer, advised Martin to cut a deal.

  Months after the arrest, Martin pled guilty to two counts of aiding and abetting for the aggravated identity theft, one felony charge of making false or inconsistent statements, as well as charges of recording a false or forged instrument and accepting benefits from false or fraudulent insurance claims.

  Martin was sentenced to forty-eight months in federal prison on August 8, 2009. He had also pled guilty on state charges, but, as part of the plea, his sentences would run concurrently.

  Gypsy also pled guilty to one count of aggravated identity theft and was sentenced to twenty-one months behind bars. A month before she was scheduled to begin her sentence, she flew to Texas to see her new boyfriend. When investigators found out she had left the state, they were convinced she was attempting to flee to Mexico. When her plane landed back in Salt Lake City, she was arrested at the airport and thrown in prison to begin serving her time.

  While all this was going on, Linda, Alexis, and Rachel attended their father’s final sentencing hearing. As he was handcuffed and led away by officers, Martin sneered at Alexis. “I hope you’re happy with what you’ve done.”

  33.

  Rows of barbed-wire fencing cage the cluster of squat buildings that make up the Texarkana Federal Correctional Institute. A looming white tower overlooks the low-security prison in the northeast corner of the state of Texas, along the Arkansas border. The surrounding landscape visible through the fencing is flat and barren.

  More than fifteen hundred inmates are housed at the prison, most of them convicted of drug crimes or robbery. In August 2009, Martin Joseph MacNeill—the doctor, lawyer, and newly convicted felon—became inmate number 16083-081.

  On a hot, humid morning in September, Martin, then fifty-three, checked in to the prison. Like all inmates, he went through an orientation and was given a work assignment as a temporary orderly. Turning in his clothes, he was provided a standard-issue khaki uniform to be worn every day.

  Martin’s new home was a section of the prison known as the G-Unit, one of three semiautonomous living quarters. His new roommate was a wiry, shaggy-haired Hispanic man in his early twenties
named George Martinez, who was serving time for his first felony, conspiracy to sell cocaine and marijuana.

  Martin and Martinez would share a six-by-eight-foot cell furnished with a set of bunk beds and a stainless steel toilet bolted to the floor.

  The doctor got along well with the other inmates, several of whom would come to call him a friend. Word quickly spread that Martin was a doctor “on the outside.” He used his medical knowledge to assist other inmates with ailments, and was soon known behind bars as “Doc.”

  When speaking with the other inmates, he was often elusive about the reason he was imprisoned, insinuating that his conviction was related to writing phony prescriptions. Perhaps behind bars prescription fraud was more noble than stealing the identity of your sixteen-year-old adopted daughter.

  Since it was a minimum-security prison, Martin was not confined during the majority of his day, and had the freedom to take part in educational programs, exercise in the rec yard, and watch television. To fill his days, he read, wrote letters, and took classes, including a computer course. Because he had put on weight while in jail and was concerned about his physical appearance, he exercised daily in the prison yard, running four to five miles a day and lifting weights.

  Mostly, however, Martin thought of Gypsy.

  About 250 miles west of the Texarkana prison, Gypsy was serving her sentence in the FMC Carswell Women’s Correctional Institute in Fort Worth, Texas. It had been nine months since Martin and Gypsy last saw each other, but his feelings for her had not diminished. During his prison stay, Martin often talked of Gypsy to other inmates, referring to her as his wife and admitting she was also behind bars.

  Soon after they both were confined, Martin began writing to Gypsy. Over the next two years, he would write her lengthy, romantic letters, sometimes sending one each day. In the handwritten letters, Martin described his jailhouse routine, daily workouts, and the books he was reading. In flowery prose, he professed his love and made plans for their future once they were released. Most of the letters were addressed, “Dearest love.”

  In one dated October 1, 2009, Martin told Gypsy he considered her his common-law wife and attached a document attesting to that fact. “The only reason I do anything is because I want to be as good as I can be when I get out of here so that you will still feel the same way about me,” he wrote. “I love you and miss you more than you can imagine.”

  Behind bars, Gypsy had time to reflect on her relationship with Martin. Letting Martin convince her to steal Giselle’s identity had ruined her own life. At her sentencing, Gypsy told the judge she had ended her relationship with Martin. Yet, two days after receiving his letter, she wrote back, reciprocating his feelings and signing her correspondences, “your girl.”

  Because it is against prison policy for convicted felons to communicate with one another, they sent letters through a third party, a friend of Gypsy’s named Carol Smith, who acted as a go-between, forwarding their communications to the prisons.

  Out of concern the letters could end up in police custody, Gypsy warned Martin to be wary. “Babe, be very careful about what you send in your mail,” she wrote.

  Gypsy later contended that her time behind bars was bleak, lonely, and depressing. Desperate for contact with the outside world, she said she wrote Martin back simply so he would continue sending her letters. “At the time I had lost most of my friends and all of my family. I wanted to be in contact with anyone I could be,” she said years later. “I was so lonely. I was thrilled out of my mind to get a letter.”

  Her letters, however, seemed to reveal an undying love for the man she’d once planned to marry. While she had many regrets, being with Martin didn’t appear to be one of them. “I would not change the fact that you and I were together but certainly regret all else,” Gypsy wrote to Martin.

  At Texarkana, Martin was elated to receive a letter from Gypsy in early October and quickly wrote her back. “Dearest love,” he penned on November 3. “I wish I could sleep for the next twenty months and do nothing but dream of being with you. I love you with all of my heart and think of nothing but a future with the two of us, never to be separated again.”

  Weeks later he reaffirmed that he had loved her from their first meeting in 2005. “It really is a combination of small things that makes me realize how much I miss you and how much I love you,” he wrote on November 9. “Know that I love you and have loved you from the day we met. I will work hard to keep your love for me.”

  Gypsy’s correspondence was equally amorous: “I hope you know that I love you and I think about you all the time.”

  Despite what their relationship had cost them, Gypsy was still concerned about losing Martin. In her letters she wrote about her worries that he would leave her. Martin tried to ease her fears.

  “Stop worrying about anything to do with me abandoning you. It is not going to happen,” Martin wrote on November 12. “As far as giving up on you, how silly. I thought that you had given up on me. Remember I love you more than you love me. As far as common-law marriage, why don’t we just get married for real?”

  In another letter, he sent her a marriage agreement. “I have enclosed a common-law statement that I have created. Hopefully it will do the trick. But if not let’s get married and shut these people up once and for all,” Martin penned on November 17.

  Gypsy responded with her own commitments of love. “Do not fear my loss, not ever. I have always loved you and always will.”

  In prison, money can buy better food and toiletries from the commissary. While incarcerated, Martin helped improve Gypsy’s locked-up lifestyle by putting money on her books, allowing her to purchase various sundries, including stamps, deodorant, toothbrushes, clothing, and snacks.

  “You are so sweet to send me money,” she wrote.

  In a November letter, Martin also told Gypsy she could take ownership of his BMW: “The car is yours.”

  “Whatever I have is yours,” he wrote amid professions of his love on November 24. “I can think of nothing but how wonderful you are.”

  The letters continued during the two years of Gypsy’s incarceration. During that entire time their passion didn’t diminish.

  “I love you and miss you every minute,” Martin wrote. “You are worth everything I go through to get you back in my life.”

  * * *

  With their father locked away, Martin’s daughters no longer had to live in fear. But they knew he would be released from jail in just a few short years. It was terrifying to think he might never be held accountable for Michele’s murder.

  Following her mother’s death, Alexis was plagued by panic and had difficulty sleeping. But each day she remained strong for the sake of the girls she was now raising. Elle, Sabrina, and Ada were thriving under her care. Meanwhile, Martin’s youngest but most persistent daughter continued fighting in court for ownership of the Pleasant Grove home.

  In 2009 a judge ordered that Michele’s estate go to Martin. Alexis appealed, asking Witney and Robinson to write a letter on her behalf to submit to the court. She had no intention of giving up.

  Shortly after her father’s incarceration, Vanessa showed up on her aunt Linda’s doorstep.

  When Linda saw Vanessa she was stunned. The twenty-seven-year-old was gaunt, with sunken cheeks, gray skin, thinning hair, and red-rimmed eyes.

  “I have nowhere else to go, Aunt Linda,” Vanessa told her.

  At the time, Giselle was living in Linda’s house, and the adoption process was pending. Because Vanessa needed help, Linda let her live in the basement. With both Vanessa and Giselle living under her roof, the house was chaotic. Linda often came home to find her basement filled with heroin needles.

  But Vanessa refused to abandon hope, and expressed a continual desire to find sobriety. Having located a rehab program online that promised patients no withdrawal symptoms, due to a method known as “rapid detox,” Vanessa pleaded with her aunt to help send her to the clinic.

  “That’s the only thing that’s go
ing to help me,” she told Linda.

  To aid her in her sobriety, Linda found a volunteer from church to donate the money to pay for the program. Her daughter Jill agreed to accompany her cousin to the detox center in North Dakota. Vanessa completed the program and returned to Utah a few weeks later with a new lease on life.

  “Thank you so much,” Vanessa cried when Linda picked her up from the airport.

  For Vanessa, sobriety was a daily struggle. After detoxing, she stayed clean for about a year before relapsing.

  Following Martin’s arrest, Damian briefly lived alone in the Pleasant Grove home. The relationship with longtime girlfriend Eileen Heng had ended. That fall he moved to New York to attend law school at New York University. He kept close to his imprisoned father, exchanging letters and speaking with him periodically by phone. Damian remained distant from his sisters, which was disheartening to Alexis.

  “Once my dad was sentenced, he kind of didn’t want anything to do with us,” Alexis recalled.

  * * *

  In December, the Utah Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing began the process of revoking Martin’s medical license based on his “unlawful or unprofessional conduct and the crimes of moral turpitude.” Martin agreed to voluntarily surrender his license to practice, acknowledging his guilt in the charges against him. He forfeited all rights to practice as a physician in Utah and agreed he would not reapply for another license for ten years.

  His attorney, Randall Spencer, considered at the time that his imprisoned client’s medical license surrender would be temporary. “He hoped after he got out of prison that he could prove himself worthy of getting his medical license back sometime in the future, after he did his time,” Spencer remembered. “Ultimately that didn’t end up being the case…”