The Stranger She Loved

by Shanna Hogan

  In the fall, Robinson reenacted the route Martin had traveled on April 11, timing how long the drive would take under various conditions. The fastest he was able to drive from the Developmental Center to the MacNeill house was three minutes and seven seconds. The longest took him five minutes and thirty-nine seconds.

  Robinson also tested how long it took to drive from the Developmental Center to Ada’s elementary school and found that it took an average of one minute and twenty-four seconds. American Heritage School to the MacNeill home was approximately four minutes and thirty-nine seconds.

  Robinson concluded there would have been more than enough time for Martin to sneak off from the Developmental Center, return home, and kill Michele.

  * * *

  By early 2011, Gypsy had served the entire twenty-one months of her sentence and was about to be released from federal prison. While anxious to be free, she also knew the life she was returning to would be difficult.

  At thirty-four, she was now a convicted felon. She had no money, home, or job prospects. Martin had told her she could continue to live in the Pleasant Grove house, but her attorney advised against it, especially as he negotiated a plea for her to testify against the former doctor.

  In February 2011, Gypsy was transferred to Utah County Jail, where she would serve the last few weeks of her federal sentence before returning to court in Provo to answer for the state charges.

  In March, Alexis, Rachel, and Linda attended Gypsy’s plea hearings at Provo’s Fourth District Court.

  Wearing a red and white jumpsuit, her hands cuffed and chained around her waist, Gypsy nodded as she quietly spoke with her attorney. She glanced at the gallery, locking eyes with Martin’s daughters, and smiled.

  Standing in front of the judge, Gypsy pleaded guilty to one count of identity fraud, two counts of making false and inconsistent material statements, and one count of filing a wrongful lien.

  As part of the plea, she agreed to testify against Martin and avoid more jail time. Instead, she was sentenced to thirty-six months of probation. The judge noted that she should not have contact with Martin or his extended family or go near the Pleasant Grove home. To help her realize the impact of her decision on others, she also was ordered to go through a cognitive restructuring course to assist her with changing her manipulative behavior.

  While the plea would require her to potentially implicate the man she had professed her undying love for in letters, both Gypsy and her attorney doubted Martin would ever actually be charged with murder.

  Days later, on March 12, Gypsy was released.

  Meanwhile, Alexis and Rachel were terrified that Gypsy was now out of prison. Linda was also disturbed to see the woman who wronged her sister and stole Giselle’s identity appear so smug in court.

  “It was really hard,” Linda told the Deseret News. “The fact that she just glares at you and then smiles—it’s just hard to see someone who destroyed our family’s lives.”

  On May 17, Gypsy returned to court, a free woman, for another hearing. Alexis and Rachel sat toward the front of the courtroom. Gypsy stepped in, glanced around, and took a seat in the back. She wore a blue blazer with a gold crest on the front pocket, and her hair was swept into a bun. Alexis and Rachel recognized the jacket.

  It had once belonged to Michele.

  “We are completely horrified she’s out on the streets now,” Rachel told reporters outside the courtroom. “I’m very fearful for our family and our sisters. I’m afraid she will hurt and destroy other people as well.”

  * * *

  Gypsy spent the next few months attempting to rebuild her life. She took possession of the 2005 Silver BMW Z4 convertible Martin told her she could keep and stayed with friends while she searched for a job. Because she had lost her nursing licenses, she could no longer work in health care and had few career opportunities.

  “I’ve had a really, really difficult time finding a job,” Gypsy later explained. “I’m recognized all the time. I’ll be in the store and people will start talking to each other and looking at me.”

  Her life was in shambles—a fact for which she took little accountability. She still blamed Martin for her plight. “I loved Martin. I care for him on a very, very deep soul level,” Gypsy later said. “I can’t say I’m sorry I loved him but I think everyone’s lives would have been better if I had not met him.”

  The day she was released from jail, Gypsy ceased all contact with Martin. She took all the love letters from her time in jail, placed them in a box in the garage, and buried her feelings for her former fiancé.

  * * *

  After going through rapid detox, Vanessa had stayed clean for about a year. But by 2011, dealing with the grief of her mother’s and brother’s deaths, coupled with her father’s arrest, she returned to heroin. At the time she was dating a man named Jeff Grange, who was tall with light blond hair, a sloping forehead, and a neck tattoo.

  Vanessa and Jeff were living together in a basement belonging to a friend, Derek Clay, a burly twenty-seven-year-old with a shaved head who was on probation for drug charges. At the time Vanessa wasn’t working, and to raise cash she and her boyfriend resorted to stealing and selling copper piping and wire from construction sites.

  In March, on a tip in an investigation of one such theft, the police arrived at Clay’s doorstep. While questioning the man, the officers searched through Clay’s basement, discovering Vanessa and her boyfriend surrounded by stolen copper wiring and a stash of drugs.

  All three were arrested for stealing about two hundred pounds of copper from businesses around Orem. Vanessa and Jeff were also charged with possession of heroin and drug paraphernalia.

  Vanessa and her boyfriend initially denied stealing the wiring, but Clay confessed to driving them to two businesses to commit the crimes. Officers also matched Vanessa’s shoes to prints left at a crime scene. Clay and Grange were held on $10,000 bail; Vanessa was bailed on $7,500.

  In her mug shot Vanessa appeared frightened. Her hair was thinning, her skin dull, gray, and covered with blemishes.

  Vanessa eventually took a plea, and while serving a jail stint, she finally found sobriety. She went through rehab and turned her life around.

  Once she was off drugs, Alexis and Rachel embraced her, and Vanessa was finally able to build a relationship with her biological daughter, Ada. Later, Vanessa reunited with Jeff Grange and the couple had a son.

  * * *

  In 2011, Martin petitioned for early release into a halfway house. Alexis and Rachel wrote letters to the prison, asking for him to remain confined due to the fact that they thought he was guilty of murder. Based partially on his daughters’ pleas, Martin was ordered to remain jailed to serve the rest of his sentence.

  When Martin learned an early release was denied, he was furious with his children. He stomped down the jail hallways, passing by inmate Von Harper.

  “He came down the hallway and he had this mad look on his face,” said Harper later. “I was like ‘Doc. What’s wrong?’”

  Martin rolled his eyes. “My fucking daughter and my bitch wife!”

  “Whoa, Doc,” Harper replied. “You’re talking ill of the dead, you know what I’m saying?”

  Martin shook his head and walked away.

  Frank Davis also ran into Martin that day. “He was talking about the halfway house. He was mad,” Davis later said in court. “He said he was tired of being around all these child molesters and everything.”

  Martin would spend another year behind bars. As his release date grew closer, he became increasingly stressed. He was angry and short-tempered, fellow inmates reported. Something appeared to be weighing on him heavily.

  * * *

  By the summer of 2011, Utah County investigators resubmitted the homicide investigation to prosecutor Chad Grunander. Because the pathologist, Todd Grey, was unwilling to declare the death a homicide, Grunander authorized a forensic review of the medical examiner’s report.

  Remembering Dr. Perper’s appearanc
e on Nancy Grace, Grunander suggested Robinson hire him to review the findings. Robinson subsequently provided Perper with the autopsy, photographs, and the police and medical reports.

  Perper was unable to state with reasonable certainty the manner in which Michele died, although he specifically ruled out natural causes, accident, or suicide. He also found there was no evidence of acute or active myocarditis.

  The cause of death he determined: drowning.

  * * *

  On Friday, July 6, 2012, Martin was released after three years in federal prison. At fifty-six, he was still under federal and state probation, requiring him to remain in Utah for the next three years.

  He returned to the house where his family once lived and where his wife had died.

  36.

  Dandelion weeds sprouted from the unkempt front yard of the house at 3058 Millcreek Road. Overgrown hedges masked the brick façade. Cobwebs hung in the entryway.

  The house had been vacant for nearly four years.

  On Sunday, July 8, Martin took a bus from northeast Texas to Utah and was picked up at the station by his attorney. Randall Spencer pulled up to the house, and Martin got out of the car. Neighbors peeked through the window blinds to get a glimpse of the man whose face had dominated the front pages of the newspapers left on their porches.

  Word of his return spread quickly throughout Creekside through text messages and phone calls. Martin MacNeill was out of jail and back in Pleasant Grove.

  No one knew how long he’d stay, and opinions on his presence were mixed. Those who knew him from church had difficulty reconciling the Martin they knew with the crimes for which he had been accused. Others were nervous about what he might do next.

  Just thirty-five miles north of the Pleasant Grove home, Alexis Somers was living with her husband and raising Sabrina and Ada, then eleven years old. Elle, nineteen, was attending a trade school called Bridgerland Applied Technology College and living on her own in Logan, a college town about one hundred miles from Pleasant Grove.

  In the fall, eighteen-year-old Sabrina would also move to Logan to attend Utah State University.

  With Martin living so close by, Alexis was fearful. “It’s really sickening to me,” she later said. “I am back into this panic feeling, just really nervous knowing what he is capable of doing.”

  Upon Martin’s release, Alexis cautioned the girls that their father was now free. Sabrina and Ada were scared and confused. Ada often woke in the middle of the night and crawled into Alexis’s bed, complaining of nightmares. Ada confided in Sabrina, sharing her fears. “What do I do if he shows up at school?” Ada asked her sister.

  Alexis would do whatever it took to protect the girls. But she was also unwilling to back down. For Martin’s entire life, he had gotten away with crimes using coercion and scare tactics, but for the last five years she had tried to stand up and show the world what he had done. She was not going to be intimidated. She was not going to run.

  “He’s lived his whole life getting away with things,” Alexis later said. “I don’t want him to get away with murder.”

  * * *

  While Martin was free, Gypsy had actually returned to Utah County Jail.

  She had been arrested on July 6—the same day Martin was freed—for a probation violation, stemming from a failure to keep her address current with probation officers and a lie about driving the silver BMW Martin gave her, claiming she had no vehicle and was getting rides from friends.

  When confronted by her probation officer about the lie, Gypsy reluctantly admitted to driving the vehicle. The car had remained registered to Martin due to her back taxes.

  Gypsy was jailed for more than a week before she could see the judge. In court her attorney argued the violations were minor. “This probation violation report has some of the most benign allegations I’ve seen,” John Easton told the judge.

  Gypsy believed she was locked up to ensure she wouldn’t run away with Martin.

  “I was so scared,” she said in an interview. “I didn’t even know when Martin was being released, and wasn’t allowed to have contact.”

  Ten days after she was arrested, Gypsy was granted bail at five thousand dollars and released. Now she and Martin were both free, for the first time in four years.

  * * *

  In July, Grunander said he soon planned to file homicide charges against Martin. For assistance on the case, Grunander teamed with two other attorneys at the Utah County Attorney’s Office: Samuel Pead and Jared Perkins.

  Pead was a Mormon and 2007 graduate of the Brigham Young University school of law, and had practiced as a lawyer in Utah since 2008. Slim and balding, Pead was known to be tenacious and aggressive in court.

  Perkins was also a Mormon, and had graduated from BYU law in 2003. Raised in Upstate New York, he moved to Utah with his family in 1991 and served a mission in Brazil two years later. He attended Cambridge in England, graduating with a master’s degree in philosophy before going to law school. Broad-shouldered with coiffed brown hair and strong, handsome features, Perkins was a skillful and confident attorney.

  The three lawyers negotiated their legal strategy. Expecting that Martin would call Gypsy and discuss the case now that he was free, they went to a judge and got a warrant to place a wiretap on Martin’s phone line, which was put in place on July 17. Martin did attempt to call Gypsy, but having just been released from jail, she was fearful of revoking her probation and avoided all contact.

  After his phone calls had been monitored for just ten days, the wiretap was suspended because of a lack of relevant information.

  Martin spent the next few weeks holed up inside his home. He left only to run errands, report to his probation officer, and meet with his attorney. When Martin spoke to Spencer, the attorney continued to express hope that he would not face charges for murder.

  After four years behind bars, Martin was broke. His last remaining thirty thousand dollars in the bank was earmarked through his attorney for paying back the Veterans Benefits Administration. At the same time, he informed his probation officer in July that he was in the process of obtaining financial assistance from Social Security.

  * * *

  In August, Grunander and the investigators decided the case was as good as it would get. If they were going to file charges for murder, the time to do it was now.

  Because Martin had tossed Michele’s medication following her death, Grunander decided he would also seek charges for obstruction of justice.

  Investigator Jeff Robinson put together an extensive fifty-seven-page motion for the arrest of Martin MacNeill. In it, all the circumstantial pieces seemed to align in support of the idea that Martin killed his wife. “The investigation shows Martin MacNeill led a life filled with contradictions, deception, and manipulation. I believe it was his intention to rid himself of his family and wife, and that he set into action a series of events leading to Michele’s death,” the report read.

  Robinson outlined the facts of the case. “In reviewing in totality the known events of Martin MacNeill’s life and the events leading up to the death of Michele MacNeill, Martin clearly had the motive, the intent, and the opportunity to kill his wife,” the report stated. “Martin’s attitude and actions show he wanted to be with Gypsy and Michele was keeping him from his new life. The consequences of divorce, including paying for two homes, spousal support, child support, and dealing with a social fallout, were not a viable option.”

  The motion was filed on August 24, 2012.

  Later that afternoon, Martin was checking in with his parole officer. When he stepped out of his car, he found himself surrounded by officers.

  “Martin MacNeill”—an officer slapped handcuffs on his wrists—“you are under arrest for the first-degree murder of Michele MacNeill.”

  After being fingerprinted and photographed, Martin was held in the Utah County Jail on one-million-dollar, cash-only bail, which he could not pay.

  At Martin’s initial court appearance on August 27, Miche
le’s loved ones made a powerful statement, intending to remind him of the woman he stole from their lives. Alexis, Rachel, Linda, and two of Michele’s nieces sat in the second row of the courtroom, holding pictures of Michele on their laps. The women kept their eyes trained on Martin as he lumbered into the courtroom in handcuffs and prison garb.

  Martin refused to acknowledge them. He waived reading of the charges. Other than quietly conferring with his attorney, he said nothing in court.

  “He saw us. He did,” Alexis told reporters. “We want people to remember our mother. And we want people to know that she lived and that she deserves justice.”

  * * *

  Following her father’s arrest for murder, an already troubled Rachel disintegrated. Days after his hearing, on August 31, she had a mental breakdown and was briefly hospitalized.

  That evening she was anxious and animated, rambling and rapidly shifting to unrelated subjects and topics. Her brother-in-law drove her to Intermountain Medical Center, where she was diagnosed with having delusions and psychosis. Rachel made a quick recovery. But Martin’s attorneys would later use her breakdown against her.

  * * *

  For Martin MacNeill, facing a potential life sentence, the stakes could not have been higher.

  He had no money to hire an attorney. He called Randall Spencer and asked if he would represent him on the murder. At that point, Spencer had been managing Martin’s finances and knew his client was broke. Because he was a private attorney, not a public defender, he wouldn’t get paid if he took on the case.

  “I knew he was out of money. After Martin was arrested, he called and asked if I would represent him. I originally told him no,” Spencer later explained. “I made the wrong decision and I called him back and told him I would do it.”

  Spencer expected it would take months of pro bono work. He had no idea he’d spend the next two years devoted to the case. He believed in Martin’s innocence and felt he was being crucified in the media.

  “Martin was an adulterer,” Spencer later said. “He was very egotistical, perhaps a narcissist. But I do not believe he is a murderer.” Because of Spencer’s resolute conviction of Martin’s innocence, his courtroom fight against prosecutors would grow viciously contentious.