by Shanna Hogan
“Probably.”
43.
The state’s star witness, Alexis Somers, took the stand next.
Having just given birth to twins, and on maternity leave from her job as a general practitioner, she wore a loose black blouse with a beige sweater, her hair partially pulled back in a barrette.
Unlike Rachel and Vanessa, who could not hold back their torrent of emotions, on the stand Alexis was subdued, repressing her anger and anguish. But there was a great sadness in her eyes, her voice, and demeanor.
No one wanted this for the family.
“I always wanted my dad to be proud of me.” Alexis stared vacantly at the floor for a moment.
Because she had been present for each step of her mother’s surgery and aftercare, Alexis was able to paint for the jury exactly what occurred in the days leading up to Michele’s death.
She spoke about her mom’s desires to delay the surgery, to give herself a chance to lose weight and lower her blood pressure. “My mom was hesitant to get the surgery. She was talking to my dad, saying that maybe we should delay the surgery,” Alexis testified. “He got really angry and said, ‘No, you cannot do that. If you don’t have the surgery now, you’re not doing it.’”
She discussed finding her mom extremely sedated following the one night Michele was left in Martin’s care. “I went over there to try to wake her up and she wasn’t waking up,” Alexis said. “I went to my father and I said, ‘What happened? Obviously Mom is overmedicated.’”
She also told the jury how Michele wanted to feel each pill in her hands so she knew what she was being given. Because the judge had deemed the statement hearsay, the jury was not allowed to hear the statement that Alexis said Michele had told her: “If anything happens to me, make sure it wasn’t your dad.”
Alexis explained that she took over as primary caregiver, keeping a meticulous log of what Michele ate and what medications she took.
“Do you recall ever giving your mom any Valium during the week you were caring for her?” Grunander asked.
“No. I never did.” She shook her head. “She wasn’t having any issues with anxiety.”
“Did you ever administer Ambien?”
“No. She never had any issue sleeping,” she said. “She didn’t like narcotics.”
Alexis returned to school the evening of April 10 and spoke with her mother the next day. “She was upbeat and happy, I could hear it in her voice,” she said, her own voice breaking from emotion.
Three hours later, a brusque Martin told his daughter her mom wasn’t breathing. “I screamed. I dropped my bags. And just ran. Ran to get in my car to drive to the airport to fly home,” Alexis testified.
The prosecutor also asked about Michele’s bath routine.
“She’d start the water up. Then she’d get in it. Then turn it up as hot as it could go. She liked it really, really hot. Then once it was full she’d turn off the water,” Alexis said.
On cross-examination, Spencer attacked Alexis personally and professionally—going so far as to imply that she lied on her medical school application by claiming she worked as a nanny because she cared for her siblings.
For hours over two days of questioning, Spencer played clips from Alexis’s appearances on 20/20 and Nancy Grace and compared her testimony to that from the preliminary hearing. For ten minutes they debated what defined the word “lucid,” when describing how long it took for Michele to recover from being overmedicated.
Throughout it all, Alexis remained unflustered.
“You sued your dad to try and get the family home, claiming that your dad can’t inherit from your mother because the house was in her name,” Spencer pressed.
“I was appointed the executor of my mom’s estate before her death. It’s my duty as the executor for my siblings…” She paused.
“To sue your dad.”
“No. Not to sue my dad, but to make sure the estate is processed like it should be,” she said.
Spencer juxtaposed statements Alexis made on the stand, attempting to catch inconsistencies with her testimony from the preliminary hearing and interviews with investigators.
“You’ve recently been made aware of an inconsistency with your previous statement,” he accused her. “And you’ve modified your testimony here at trial today, right?”
“No, that’s incorrect,” she said.
As for Alexis’s testimony about her mother’s bath routine, Spencer suggested she was making it up. “You never told anyone until today that it was your mother’s habit to start the tub and then get in?”
“That’s not true. I e-mailed Doug Witney,” she said.
“You weren’t with your mother all the time when she took a bath?”
“Every single time she took a bath?” She wryly smirked and shook her head. “Yeah. I couldn’t be.”
Contention grew as the hours passed.
As she was speaking about the last time she’d talked to her mother, Spencer attempted to trip Alexis up on timing.
“It took me a while to put it all together,” Alexis said.
“So what you’re saying is it took you a little while to put together your story.” Spencer’s voice rose.
“No. That’s not what I was saying,” she replied calmly.
“You’ve made up this story that you’ve told today,” he berated her.
“No, I have not,” she said, her voice low and steady.
On redirect, Grunander addressed two important issues.
“Do you stand to gain anything financially if your father is convicted of killing your mother?” he asked.
“Not at all. I’ve already spent so much more money than I’d ever receive. I don’t stand to gain anything,” she said.
“Why were you seeking information about your mother’s death?” he asked.
“Because I believe my father killed her.”
44.
The experts next squabbled over the amount of drugs in Michele’s system, the severity of her heart disease, and how much water was in her lungs.
Utah Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Todd Grey explained how the late Dr. Maureen Frikke originally ruled that the death was due to natural causes related to heart disease.
“How frequent in your experience is it that the cause of death is changed?” Grunander asked.
“Changing cause of death is pretty rare, particularly if you have done a complete examination originally,” the pathologist said.
Grunander’s voice was unwavering as he tried to get Grey to concede that Michele’s death may have been a murder.
“Dr. Grey, if you were to learn that the defendant told somebody or others that he had drugged up Michele MacNeill and convinced her to get into the tub and held her down a little bit and it caused her death, would that scenario be consistent with how Michele MacNeill may have died here?” Grunander asked.
“Yeah. Certainly,” Grey said. “It’s possible.”
Spencer cross-examined Grey about his decision not to rule Michele’s death a homicide.
“If drugs were a factor, it was not necessarily a homicide either, correct?” Spencer asked, turning toward the jury.
“I did not feel that I could reach a conclusion of homicide,” Grey said.
Next on the stand, Utah heart specialist Dr. David Cragun told jurors that after reading Michele’s medical reports and EKG readings, he came to the conclusion that her myocarditis was not severe.
“The lack of symptoms and the mild histology both suggest that her course would be benign generally. That the chance of a serious or life-threatening complication would be very rare,” Cragun testified.
Forensic toxicologist and clinical pharmacologist Dr. Gary Dawson—an expert witness for the prosecution—delivered detailed testimony about the drugs found in Michele’s system.
The combination of drugs at the levels in Michele’s blood would not have been lethal, Dawson said. However, he testified, the mix would have had a dramatic effect on her central nervous system, leaving
Michele unable to think properly, focus, or multitask.
“It would cause sedation and cognitive impairment. It would be likely that that person would be obtunded or unable to respond constructively to their environment,” he said. “They may be difficult to arouse and may not understand the circumstances surrounding them at that time.”
On cross, Spencer confronted Dawson with an e-mail sent to the investigators, Witney and Robinson, in which the pharmacologist seemed to imply the toxicology report did not support the theory of murder.
“There’s not a smoking gun in here, that I see,” Dawson had written. “There are a lot of empty casings on the ground, but there’s not a smoking gun.”
Dawson attempted to clarify that his “smoking gun” reference was meant to imply there was not one drug that could be identified as a lethal dose.
“In those five drugs there’s not one combination that’s lethal—that’s the smoking gun,” he said on the stand. “There is other evidence there that says there is contributing factors from all five drugs but not one that you can point to and say that’s the one that did the damage. That’s the fatal dose.”
Forensic pathologist Joshua Perper next gave his opinion—one that was most beneficial to the prosecution.
“My opinion was that Michele died as a result of drowning; in addition to that she had some drugs on board which were not in toxicology lethal levels but in my opinion could have contributed to her death,” Perper told the jury.
Randall Spencer paced back and forth in front of the witness stand as he questioned how Perper became involved in the case.
“Prior to being hired by the Utah County Attorney’s Office, you had appeared as a guest expert on the Nancy Grace show?” Spencer asked.
“Yes.” Perper nodded. “What I said on Nancy Grace was based on the information I had at the time.”
Later, Grunander questioned sheriff’s sergeant Spencer Cannon, who worked with the Utah State medical examiner and was the one to pick up Michele’s body from the hospital. At the time, he did not deem her death suspicious.
“If you had learned the defendant had thrown out a number of narcotics, and then told another person that the police had taken them, would that have raised suspicion in your mind?” Grunander asked.
“That would have, yes,” Cannon replied.
* * *
The next four witnesses shuffled into the courtroom shackled and dressed in prison garb. The names and faces of four inmates who had served time with Martin at Texarkana Federal Correctional Institute were not shown on camera, to avoid any of them being labeled a “snitch,” and facing violent repercussions from other prisoners.
Each inmate spoke of their interactions with the man they knew as “Doc,” and the comments Martin had made about his wife’s death.
On the stand, Von Harper identified Gypsy as the woman Martin referred to as his wife. In an amusing part of his testimony, Harper misspoke her name. “He said her name was Dipsy or Gypsy or something like that.”
On cross, Spencer aggressively confronted Harper about his criminal record, accusing him of making up allegations against Martin to get a reduction in his sentence.
“So as an inmate you understood that by providing information to law enforcement you could potentially get a reduction in your sentence?” Spencer said.
“I understand that if I help out with a federal investigation I can. But this is not a federal investigation. This is a state investigation, right?”
Spencer smiled smugly. “I’m asking the questions here.”
Frank Davis next told jurors of working out with “Doc” in the prison yard, and Martin’s comments that “the bitch drowned,” in reference to Michele’s death. During cross-examination, Spencer strangely got the inmate to admit he did not seek any benefit for his testimony, in a series of questions that seemed more beneficial to the prosecution.
“I never contacted any of these people. They contacted me,” Davis said.
Martin took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and sighed.
Seeing his former cellmate, George Martinez, approach the witness stand, Martin’s jaw tightened and teeth clenched.
“Did the defendant ever talk to you about having cancer? MS? Notice he have a limp?” the prosecutor asked.
“No,” he responded.
When word got out on TV about Martin’s case, Martinez said, he asked Martin if the allegations were true. “He said his wife had had plastic surgery and that she had a heart attack and passed away.”
* * *
Michael Buchanan, Martin’s former friend from computer class, provided the most valuable testimony, documenting how TV host Nancy Grace ignited gossip throughout the prison.
Buchanan was the only one of the four Texarkana inmates to provide jurors with an explanation of how Martin killed Michele.
“He said he gave her some Oxys and some sleeping pills and got her to get in the bathtub,” the inmate said. “Later on he said he had to ‘help her out.’ I asked him what that meant. He said he had to hold her head under the water for a little while.”
Spencer grilled Buchanan, again attempting to get him to admit he was testifying against Martin to get a deal. Because it was not a federal case, he wasn’t eligible for a deal, Buchanan countered.
“Part of my rehabilitation coming back into society. I made some wrong decisions and I’m just trying to do right,” Buchanan said.
Spencer seemed annoyed as they went back and forth, trying to prove no inmate would testify without a deal.
This time, however, Randall Spencer may have got it right.
45.
“Did Martin talk about the relationship he had with his wife before she died?” the prosecutor asked Jason Poirier, Martin’s writing partner from Utah County Jail.
“That it was going downhill. That she’s trying to get his money. And that she was not going to let him keep cheating on her,” Poirier said.
Poirier later asked if he was “serious” about murdering his wife, to which Martin had remarked: “Look where I’m at.”
“At that point I believed what he was saying,” Poirier testified. “And I immediately told the guards I needed to switch sections. I didn’t want to be around him.”
The roughly fifteen minutes of directed testimony was countered with nearly an hour and a half of grueling cross-examination that seemed to confirm little more than Poirier’s extensive criminal record and poor financial state.
“Truthfulness isn’t your strong suit, though, is it?” Spencer asked.
“Yes it is,” Poirier insisted.
* * *
The man so integral to the criminal investigation against Martin MacNeill—investigator Jeff Robinson—was on the stand for mere minutes.
Robinson provided the only direct evidence he could: timing of the trips between the MacNeill home, Ada’s elementary school, and the Developmental Center.
Spencer pointed out that the trip did not include the time it would take to walk from the Developmental Center building to the parking lot.
* * *
Finally, Gypsy Willis was called back to the stand, on the twelfth day of trial.
Sam Pead questioned Gypsy extensively about her continuing relationship with Martin while they were both incarcerated.
On the stand, Gypsy claimed she wanted nothing to do with Martin. “I found myself in prison for two years as a result of being with this guy. That was terrifying to me,” Gypsy said. “The relationship was over after prison. I needed his support during that time. I had never had even so much as a speeding ticket up to that point, and I was terrified.”
But Pead pointed out that in her letters, Gypsy wrote of her love for Martin.
“You did reciprocate his feelings?” Pead asked.
“I did. I wanted him to write back to me,” she said.
At one point Gypsy scoffed at the idea the letters somehow proved she was devoted to Martin. “You know this was two years after she passed away. I don’t…” She let t
he thought trail off.
In many of the letters, Gypsy and Martin had discussed resuming their lives together once they were both released.
“Again alluding to future plans?” Pead thrust the letter toward Gypsy.
“Yes,” she admitted.
“Did you ever tell him the relationship was over in any of those letters?” Pead asked.
“I was so lonely. I was thrilled out of my mind to get a letter.”
“Ms. Willis, isn’t it fair to say you appear to be minimizing your relationship with the defendant?”
“I don’t believe so.”
Looming over her on the witness stand, Pead had Gypsy read dozens of jailhouse letters out loud.
“‘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,’” Gypsy spoke Martin’s words. “‘I love you and miss you more than you can imagine.’”
As he heard his professions of love, Martin became emotional. He looked down and dabbed tears from his eyes.
They were the first tears he had shed during the trial.
46.
After Gypsy left the courtroom, prosecutor Grunander stood and calmly said: “The state is resting at this point.”
The defense would call just four witnesses.
Jim Van Zant, a nurse practitioner who worked with Martin, told jurors he had noticed nothing unusual about Martin’s demeanor on April 11.
Ada’s kindergarten teacher, Linda Strong, confirmed it was Martin who picked the girl up from school that day.
Jason Poirier’s probation officer, Tammy Black, was called to speak about the misdemeanor offender’s character.
The defense’s only expert witness was an industrial hygienist for the Department of Labor, Brett William Besser, who testified there would be no way that Martin could lift his wife’s body from a tub. Based on his calculations, in fact, there would be no way for two people to lift Michele from the tub.
On cross, Sam Pead pointed out that two people had, in fact, gotten Michele out of the tub.