True Crime Campfire - Episode 19: Dr. Martin MacNeill: The Doctor's Wife Part 1

Episode Date: December 13, 2019

The MacNeill family was, to all appearances, perfect. There was beautiful and kindhearted mom Michelle. There were EIGHT bright and accomplished kids--some biological, some adopted. And there was the famiy patriarch, Dr. Martin MacNeill. A doctor AND a lawyer, Martin was handsome, brilliant, wealthy, and a devout Mormon--a bishop in his church. But behind closed doors, there was a toxic mess getting more poisonous every day. Dr. MacNeill had always had a dark side, ever since he was a kid. Now that dark side was starting to eclipse all remaining light. And Dr. MacNeill's secrets were about to make themselves known in the most sinister way. Join Katie and Whitney for a twisting tale of love, lust, fraud, and premeditated murder. Sources:Book: The Stranger She Loved by Shanna HoganABC's "20/20": The Perfect Nannyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bw41mu251Mhttps://www.deseret.com/2017/7/21/20616225/martin-macneill-s-prison-death-officially-ruled-a-suicideFollow us, campers! Patreon: https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Charm and good looks can get you pretty far in life, which is fine, I guess, for those who are naturally blessed with those attributes. However, when all that smooth operator stuff hides a side, psychopathic heart and the cruelest of intentions, now we've got a problem. Sometimes an unsuspecting person can get lured in with a kind-looking smile and the promise of lasting love and end up in way over her head. And once you're in the clutches of someone who doesn't think he has to play by the rules, it can be really tough to get out. One woman learned that lesson in the hardest possible way. This is The Doctor's Wife, the murder of Michelle McNeil. So, campers, we're in Orham, Utah, April 11, 2007.

A 911 call came into the local dispatch at 1146 a.m. There was a hysterical sounding man on the line shouting, I need an ambulance. My wife has fallen in the bathtub. He said he was a physician. He said his wife was unconscious. underwater. He said he couldn't lift her out of the tub and she wasn't breathing. Scary. So the operator told him, you know, not to hang up, but he did it anyway, which was frustrating, I'm sure, for the dispatcher. A few minutes later, he called back. He said, look,

I need help. Don't you understand? And the dispatcher assured him help was on the way. He said, I have CPR in progress. And he told 911 that his wife was 50 years old and had just had a facelift a week prior and then he hung up again which again you're not supposed to hang up on the 911 dispatcher campers okay just future reference that really frustrates them when people hang up they need information so dispatcher was surprised by the caller's attitude he'd never encountered such an angry sounding caller the guy was just shrieking down the phone and i'm not doing that because i don't want to blast your eardrums out of your heads it's never necessary to do that no but he was really like shrieking, like yelling down the phone at this poor dispatcher.

So, paramedics arrived to a big, gorgeous home in a well-to-do area called Pleasant Grove, and they found the hysterical husband, whose name was Martin McNeil, and several neighbors kneeling beside a prone woman, clad in a black t-shirt and underwear with wet hair. Martin continued his insane behavior, angrily yelling, I told her about those pills. I told her. Paramedics began CPR, and as they did, the woman on the floor, expelled several cups worth of water from her nose and mouth, and this water was tinged with blood. It was quite a bit of water just kind of came spilling out of her as they got her on the

floor for CPR. The paramedics said that never in all their combined years of experience had they seen anyone act like this husband was acting. He was pacing, shouting, why did you have to do it? Why did you have to have the surgery? I told you not to do it. Just pacing back and forth and essentially just shrieking. He yelled at the paramedics for taking too long. He was waving his arms. You know, generally just acting like he was completely out of control. So that was odd.

Let's just put it that way for the paramedics. And the woman, Michelle McNeil, was cold. She wasn't breathing. So they intubated her, which means they put a breathing tube down her neck. And the EMTs attached sensors to her chest to try to detect a heart rhythm, but there was none. It's just flatline. And Martin started shouting at the ceiling at this point, apparently to God, After all I've done for you, after all the time I've spent in church, why have you done this to me?

I've been a bishop. I paid tithing and this is the way you repay me? This is what I get. Like seriously, like a cartoon, like shaking his fist at the sky and yelling at God. And then, and this was the most bizarre thing yet, he hissed down at his wife. Why did you take all those medications? Look what it did to you. and yeah I mean just just bananas behavior and the EMTs were wondering if they were going to have to restrain the guys they'd never seen anybody act like this before and finally they asked for him to be removed from the room because he was really distracting them from their work and getting in their way so the fire chief took Martin Dr. Martin McNeil aside and Dr. McNeil offered various explanations for what he thought it happened he said she may have slipped or tripped and fallen into the tub and hit her head he said he'd only

been gone 10 or 15 minutes and he had found her bent over the tub's ledge submerged in the bloody water face down. He said she was taking a lot of medication so she might have overdosed on pain pills. And those were his sort of various explanations for what might have happened. And he pretty much continued to be a nightmare to everyone there demanding they try this and try that. And then suddenly just shouting, she's dead. So that must have just been a kind of eerie and be really upsetting and frustrating for everybody there. Absolutely. Back in the bedroom, all the rescue efforts had failed.

So they strapped Michelle to a gurney for transport to the hospital to try and, you know, use extraordinary measures. But Michelle McNeil was pronounced dead about 30 minutes after they got to the hospital. And as they stopped working on her, Martin, who had followed the ambulance there, shouted, I'll give you $10,000 not to stop. I'll give you everything I have. which wow the doctor said he had never been offered money

to continue rescue efforts before and soon after when he'd calmed down a bit he contradicted what he had told first responders by saying that she'd been down to one perkinset a day which was weird right and he continued shouting why god why why did she do this I told her not to just performing essentially

for everybody involved and everybody who had witnessed what came before this thought at the absolute strangest call they'd ever gone out on but Michelle was the mother of eight adopted children and biological children she was a loving wife she was a devoted friend and sister and daughter and it was a sad day so the autopsy was conducted the next day by the medical examiner named was Dr. Fricky and you know Michelle was only 50 which made her death unusual So that's, I assume, why they did an autopsy.

There were no obvious signs to show cause of death. Her stomach was full of frothy, bloody water. There were no defensive wounds or overt signs of trauma. Some slight issues with her liver, but nothing serious. And it should be noted that drowning is very hard to prove slash detect on autopsy. There are no lab tests for it, and there might be no signs to show drowning. And in fact, people can suffocate. in water without having any water in their lungs. This is called dry drowning. Isn't that weird?

I'm not sure how it works, but there you go. And when there's no water in the lungs, pathologists have to determine drowning through other signs. So things like overinflated lungs and fluid in the lungs, but it's not always easy, and those things aren't always present. So it's tough. The medical examiner did note that Michelle's lungs were unusually heavy from a backup of fluid, and that could be a sign of drowning, but it could also be from prolonged resuscitation. efforts, so there was no way to be sure. She found that Michelle had an enlarged heart, which was a result of years of high blood pressure. She had some arterial narrowing, some inflammation, but there was no evidence of a heart attack. So it wasn't definitively the cause

of death, but she did have early stage heart disease. Now, Dr. Frickie knew that some medicines can exacerbate a heart condition. One of the risks of heart disease is an arrhythmia, which is what it sounds like. This causes cessation of breathing, and a pretty quick death if you have an arrhythmia. But you can't determine an arrhythmia. You can only assess a deceased person for risk or the possibility that this may have happened. So in the absence of a clear-cut answer,

Dr. Fricky thought that this was the most likely explanation for Michelle's death. A toxicology screen showed therapeutic levels of various pain relievers and sleep aids and anti-anxiety drugs. The doctor knew that she was recovering from facelift surgery, as Dr. McNeil had said. So days after her passing, the Utah State Emmy ruled her death due to natural causes from a heart arrhythmia.

But nothing in this story is as simple as all that, as we will soon see. So let's put a pen in that for a moment and talk a little bit about Michelle. Michelle's childhood, her youth, she had a pretty charmed life up until she met Martin McNeil. She came from a big devoutly Mormon family. She was close with her three sisters, especially. Linda the youngest and she had a pretty great childhood except for her absentee dad who was sadly an alcoholic and who wasn't around a lot but other than that she had a good childhood she loved animals she was kind of rough and tumble you know like to play sports and stuff and climb trees

she had a really big heart she once collected glass bottles for weeks to save money to buy her mama teapot that she wanted which is really sweet story oh i know isn't that sweet she loved school she turned stupid gorgeous in high school like we'll post pictures of her she was ridiculously pretty she was a straight-A student she played the violin she was in school plays she was homecoming queen everybody loved her you know that kind of classic like all-American upbringing right after high school she did some modeling and then she enrolled at brigham young university which is of course famously the Mormon university one thing that made her family worry a little bit when she went off to college was that Michelle tended to be attracted to flashy guys with big personalities,

guys who were pretentious, dramatic, you know, the types that her sisters would look at and just kind of roll their eyes, which I think is kind of funny. So they were a little bit worried about that. And lo and behold, she met Martin McNeil when she was 20 years old. She was still living at home. It was 1977, which just by the way happens to be the year I was born. And she was at a Mormon church function And Martin was at that stage in his life A force to be reckoned with He was handsome, tall, charming, bright white smile

You know, the whole package And Martin always came in like a freight train With the women he was interested in Just love Bomapalooza I'm going to pull out all the stops, right? 20-year-old Michelle, who'd had a pretty sheltered upbringing, Did not know what hit her So let's talk a little bit

but now about Martin. In contrast to Michelle's mostly idyllic upbringing, Martin had had a grim childhood. He was one of six kids. He had two older brothers and one younger plus two sisters, and they grew up really poor in one of the most crime-ridden cities in the country at the time, which was Camden, New Jersey. Their parents fought all the time, usually fueled by a lot of alcohol,

so pretty much the McNeil family was the definition of dysfunction. Very sad for all six kids, right? And after her husband eventually got tired of the boozy fights and left, Martin's mom, Lillian, turned to sex work. And unfortunately, the kids were forced to listen to her having sex with clients on the regular. Their sleeping areas were divided only by a sheet hanging from a wire, so this left nothing to the imagination. Now, we're not passing any judgment on sex workers here.

We should make that clear. But I imagine it would be pretty traumatic to have to, like, watch and listen to your mom-see clients, just as it would be to watch your parents have sex. period, like, nobody wants that, right? So probably a little traumatic for young Martin and his siblings, right? Right. And the McNeil kids didn't do well for themselves, and by and large, by 2007, the year of Michelle's murder, almost all of them would be dead. Wow. Yeah, so one of his sisters killed herself by strangulation in her 20s. His oldest brother died of stroke at 64 after a lifetime of alcoholism. His brother Rufus died of an overdose, and another brother took his life

at the age of 45. Jeez, Louise, that's sad. Right. And his sister, Mary, was the only one who did well for herself. She went to college, got a good job, got married and started a family. And Martin considered his family weak and pathetic. But he had his own issues. He was just better at hiding it than the other siblings, at least sometimes. Yeah, at least for a while. Yeah. Yeah. So as you might have noticed, campers, he had a dramatic theatrical personality.

He was smart as hell, got good grades, read voraciously. He was weird enough, though, that his classmates called him Martin the Martian. And he was one of those that would come out with, like, inappropriate. comment sometimes, like in the middle of like a normal conversation. I would never do that. Never. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in his late teens, which seems early to me. It does actually, yeah.

But it was like the 70s. Yeah, that's true. Different time. He did have wild mood swings and he could get toweringly angry. And Martin had this amazing gift for reading people's moods. Their motives, their weaknesses, he got really good at using that gift to manipulate people. We see that a lot with psychopaths, of course. Yes, absolutely.

And Martin would create a pattern early on in his life that would follow him forever after, lying to get what he wanted. Martin would not know the truth if he fell over it. For example, in 1973, at 17, Martin lived. lied about his age to enlist in the army. And he didn't do well there. He was often insubordinate and hard to deal with. Plus, he spoke often of hearing voices that urged him to kill.

Yikes. Yikes. So that's interesting because it sounds like either he was starting to have mental health issues or he was trying to get out of the army by malingering. Right. Right. One of the two. Either he's genuinely hearing voices or he's malingering and he's trying to get distranging.

and he's trying to get discharged. I would venture to guess it's the second. Yeah, I mean, I would certainly be suspicious of that as well. Yeah, just because it's so specific, they're urging me to kill. And because of what we know about him, that he's a consummate liar. I mean, he's... Yeah. Yeah, who knows, though?

Yeah, we don't know. We're not psychologists. And we can't diagnose from afar, unfortunately. Certainly not. And that includes, by the way, when we say that people have traits that psychopaths have, We're not saying they are psychopaths. We're just saying that we're identifying things that we know can be psychopathic traits. And we invite you to, you know, consider with us whether this might be the case with this person.

But we're not trying to, you know, hang a label on anybody, really. Yeah, we're both English majors. We don't know anything. I'm very knowledgeable. Speak for yourself. So after two years of service, a CEO, a committing officer, I mean, sent him for a psych evaluation. and the doctor diagnosed Martin with latent schizophrenia. He was discharged from the army and applied for benefits through the VA and the Social Security Administration, and he got them.

Around this time, he was introduced into the Mormon Church through missionaries. He got into it and even went on a mission. But where most missions last for years, Martins only lasted a few months. Now, his fellow missionaries were freaked out by his mercurial moods in erratic, behavior, and they told him they didn't require his services as a missionary anymore. You know, the interesting thing about this to me is that it doesn't seem like anybody tried to get him help. Like, they were just like, you're freaking us out, bye. Leader. Good job, church community.

Real nice. Yeah, I would hope that somebody would reach out and say, hey, uh, maybe talk to the pastor at least. Absolutely. So despite what seemed like some fairly significant mental health issues, Martin had big plans for his life. He enrolled in college and studied psychology and sociology. He wanted to be a doctor, but he had a fatal flaw, a dangerous combo of intelligence, ruthlessness, ambition, and proneness to boredom. And of course, some of those are common psychopathic traits as well, the proneness to boredom, the ruthlessness. And Martin wouldn't be able to restrain himself from criminal activity for very long. Once, after seeing a news story about a similar scheme and thinking he could do better,

Martin decided to try his hand at check fraud. And it's interesting. He really seems to have done this largely out of bored, I'm in it, and like a curiosity to see if he could pull it off. That's kind of fascinating. He spent $35,000 at a single store. She's. He bought an absurd combination of stuff, everything from furniture to socks.

And as the total rose, the owner of the store got suspicious and called the cops. Martin was arrested and charged with 14 felonies. The defense argued mental illness and had him psyche-valed, and again, he spoke of homicidal fantasies and hearing voices telling him to kill. Again, yikes. It was while he was fighting the fraud charges that he met Michelle. And this probably won't surprise anyone. He was possessive and controlling from the start.

start. But the flip side was, he was also passionate and exciting. Michelle had concerns early on, though, both because of his controlling bullshit and because when she tried to break things off with him early in the relationship, he freaked out and threatened to kill himself. He pulled a pistol out of his glove compartment and put it to his head, said he couldn't live without her. Whoop, whoop, whoop, red flag. Yeah, it's the red flag alarm. I don't even know where to start with this one. Yeah. Not good.

Yeah, the love bombing early on is something you definitely need to look out for. Yeah. Like, if something, if you're immediately sucked into this whirlwind romance. Fairy tale and they want to move super, super fast. Yeah, dangerous. Dangerous. And then anyone that would threaten suicide. Yeah, that's a hugely manipulative.

So dangerous. Do not. Like, what I think you mean is, like, threaten suit. Like, if you leave me, I'll, you know, like as leverage against you. Yeah, that's very manipulative. That's manipulative and you're not responsible for somebody else's actions, period. Exactly, exactly. Because so many people have been coerced into staying in abusive relationships with that very threat, myself included, when I was much younger. So I have experienced that firsthand, somebody saying, if you leave, I'll, you know, take my own life and then you feel like it would be your fault, which it would not be.

No. Everyone's responsible for their own actions. So this kind of emotional experience. extortion would be a pattern for the rest of their relationship. Michelle couldn't bear to think of him killing himself over her, so she took him back. Barton had told her all about his dysfunctional childhood, and when her family tried to talk her into leaving, she'd always point to that. Hi, I'm Darren Marler, host of the Weird Darkness podcast.

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check out Spreker.com. That's S-P-R-E-A-K-E-R.com. It's not his fault. He had a terrible childhood. I can help him overcome it. He's a good person. No. Oh, no, no.

It's so sad, and it's such a common attitude, and again, common reason why people end up staying in abusive situations, and I am here to tell you, you cannot fix somebody who doesn't take that responsibility to fix themselves. You can't fix somebody. When you try to fix an abuser, all you get in exchange for that effort is more abuse. And again, I know this from experience, so please fight through that shit. It will not work. Do not let yourself be guilted into staying with someone who makes you feel like garbage. Right, and there's this perception of a relationship should be two halves of a whole. Oh, God, yes, definitely.

And you as a person are not half a person. No, that's one of the big lies that our culture tells us about love, for sure. Yeah, and you're a whole person, the other person should be a whole person too. Most definitely. Most definitely. And, of course, all this took a toll on Michelle. She lost weight and seemed anxious a lot of the time. But when you're young and inexperienced, Obsession can seem and feel like passionate love.

Yep. Michelle fell into that trap, unfortunately. She just wasn't prepared for something like Martin McNeil. Anyway, Martin was fighting his legal trouble for the check fraud. Michelle knew about it, but only what Martin told her, which was just that it was a stupid mistake he'd made in a moment of weakness and financial need. He pretty much just downplayed it. But he needed money for his defense.

And on Halloween night in 1977, Michelle and Martin were at a play when he suddenly looked at her and said, I feel like something happened to my dad. Whoa. Yeah, it was an odd moment, to say the least. But the next day, lo and behold, Albert McNeil, Sr. turned up dead. Yeah, Martin went to check on him and found his body. And Michelle was astonished. Martin had a premonition.

Well, bless her heart, for Pete's sake. He is psychic. And coincidentally, our psychic friend Martin inherited almost exactly the amount of money he needed for his legal defense. Oh, boy. Now, old Albert's death was ruled natural. He was old and he had health problems. Martin seemed devastated. But he still cashed out on that insurance policy pretty quick. Martin sensed how Michelle's family felt about him.

They thought he was fake, controlling, pretentious, superior, and a liar. And he may have known that the Summers Bishop had gone to them to tell them about Martin's criminal issues. So, as abusers often do, he worked hard to alienate her from them for the rest of her life. And after only one month of dating, Martin whisked Michelle away for a courthouse wedding that her family knew nothing about. When the family showed up at the couple's new apartment to see Michelle after their elopement, Martin said,

It's too late to do anything now. We're already married. Like, basically, this was Neener, Neener, Neener, I stole your daughter. God. What a dick. Yeah. Oye. But the McNeil's

family life, on the outside at least, was perfect. Like the friggin' Von Trapp's perfect, but the kids kids, which they soon started having one after another, always found themselves apologizing for their dad, Martin. People found him abrasive, arrogant, judgmental. I'm shocked to hear all of this. Martin moved around from job to job a lot. At some point in here, he went to law school because he wanted to be both a doctor and a lawyer. Martin, you're exhausting. So the governor of the state appointed him at one point in his

career to a position as director of BYU, a clinic for people with mental disabilities, and boy, was that unfortunate. And despite the perfect facade of the family he'd created, Martin's mask started slipping as life went on. Just a few examples.

First, porn. This was a huge no-no in the Mormon church. Michelle considered it a betrayal, which, I mean, you know, it's not, obviously, but that's I mean, in the Mormon church, porn is like a new new.

Yeah, yeah. And Michelle considered it like cheating. So she would catch him with it every now and again and it would lead to a big towering argument. And on one occasion during an argument, Martin threatened to kill both Michelle and himself. So yet again, just like in the car, that first time she tried to break up with him, here he goes again. He brandished a knife and their 15-year-old son, Damien, had to get between Martin and

Michelle, which is just heartbreaking to think of a child getting between his dad with a knife and his mom, Michelle called the police, and Martin ended up on a 72-hour hold, like a psych hold. And that wasn't the only violent altercation between Martin and Michelle. These would happen now and again, all throughout the marriage. Anytime Michelle threatened to leave, especially, that seemed to be the trigger. He would threaten to kill himself, just as he had when they were first dating. We do what works, folks, and that always worked.

So he continued to do it. You ever heard that expression? We teach people how to treat us, you know? Yeah. So if you let somebody get away with something, I'm not trying to blame Michelle. Obviously, I blame him. But just, you know, if you let people get away with something and it works, then they're going to try it again. So you don't ever convince yourself, oh, this was a one-time thing.

He won't do this again. Yeah. Yeah, he will. He will. Believe them when they show you who they are. If it got him what he wanted, he'll do it again. And that was the case with Martin. And Martin cheated on Michelle left and right all through their marriage.

So much for the facade of the good Mormon husband, right? And despicably, remember a minute ago I said it was unfortunate that he was named a director of a place for people with mental disabilities? Yeah, that's because he took sexual advantage of female patients, some of whom were mentally disabled, which is just disgusting and shame on him. Most of the women that he sought out for affairs were vulnerable in some way, single moms, recent divorcees, and after Michelle's death, several people came forward with allegations, women alleged inappropriate. interactions of various kinds. One man said that he'd witnessed Martin raping a woman in the 80s. One wonders why the hell he didn't call the police about that, but there you go. Dude.

Yeah. And his entire career was punctuated with stuff like this, allegations of sexual assault, allegations of malpractice, misconduct, it was a mess. And in 1990, he was accused of Medicaid fraud. So add that to the list. he pled no contest he was banned from medicaid for 12 years and then in 1994 he was accused of sex with a patient and every place he worked martin faced some kind of trouble but nevertheless he never had trouble getting a new job and i don't know about you but i'm thinking back to sinister minister matt baker aren't you same exact pattern

and it just makes you want to barf up everything you've ever eaten so the chaos in the mcneal house scarred each of their kids in different ways the biological kids were Rachel, Vanessa, Alexis, and Damien. All except Alexis had issues with depression and anxiety, and Vanessa battled a serious drug addiction for years. The McNeil's youngest child, Ada, was actually Vanessa's biological daughter, who she'd had when she was a teenager. And Martin was, far from being supportive, contemptuous of his daughter for all this.

For having a kid out of wedlock, for her heroin addiction. He just thought of her as an embarrassment to the family, They would just, hello, may I introduce you to the concept of irony, sir? But there you go. Once the biological kids were out of the house, with only little Ada still there, Michelle and Martin were both in their mid-40s, and in 2003, they shocked everybody by making the decision to adopt three girls from Ukraine, which to me, like, you were almost out. Like, when people, like, raise grown kids and then, like, have another kid, it's like,

you, but you were almost out. You were so close. Anyway, and Michelle had never expressed an interest in this before, so it was weird. And later, her family wondered if Martin had pressed for this to occupy her so that he could screw around, or so that he could swank around and act like he's all philanthropic while Michelle did all the actual work of, you know, raising them. Which sounds very on brand for Martin. So I think they're probably right about that. But whatever the reason, they moved forward with it.

Ukrainian law requires a child to be at least five years old before they're eligible to be adopted by American parents. They ended up adopting three girls from two orphanages with the help of a translator named Julia. There was 13-year-old Noel, 12-year-old Giselle, and 10-year-old L. Michelle enrolled them in elementary school in ballet classes. She called them her princesses. And most of them did really well. Jazele had some trouble with the language because she was a little older. she was 12 and kids made fun of her accent

which was hard on her. Noelle the oldest was the most troubled. She had trouble bonding with the family and one day she just disappeared and Michelle's sister came to visit and was like, where's Noelle? And Michelle said we couldn't deal with her. We had to send her

away, which is just stunning. And away was a treatment center for teens with reactive attachment disorder which is a rare condition where a kid doesn't doesn't form an attachment with their caregivers. So Martin and Michelle eventually undid Noel's adoption,

and she became a ward of the state of Michigan, where the treatment center was, which is just horrifying, honestly. Noel did reach out to her adopted siblings years later after Michelle's death, but Michelle never saw her again. So I've got to say, you know, Michelle doesn't come off too well in that story, and obviously neither does Martin, and if anything, I suspect he was the one who pushed for it but you know right people tend to gloss over the faults of murder victims for understandable reasons but I don't think we can gloss over this it's pretty awful no it's horrible and and here's the thing is

when you adopt a child that is your child yeah that's I mean you're taking responsibility for a human life brought a human being to a foreign country yep a child knowing yeah that these children aren't going to be easy. Yeah. And then you abandon her? How does this return to send her? I mean, geez. How dare you?

We don't know what the situation was obviously, but like it just very much read to me like she was just difficult and I mean, we guess we weren't there, but dang, man. And of course Michelle did not deserve what ended up happening to her. We're not saying that at all. I just think, I think Michelle was very much an abused wife. I think she was in a bad situation all around.

But that poor kid, man, I mean, getting a taste of what it might be like to have a family and then just boom abandon it's just heartbreaking and like it would be one thing if they had like continued contact with her and visit but michelle never saw her again after that like she was a she was a she was a tween girl yeah you remember being 13 yeah it was rough Whitney it sucks yep no one has fun being 13 and she's in a foreign country where she doesn't speak the language and now she's like oh it's rough man so anyway In 2004, soon after Noel left, they adopted another girl. So I guess this was a do-over.

11-year-old Sabrina, also from Ukraine. Sabrina had a great experience in the McNeil family. She says her new family was everything she'd ever dreamed of. And I'm so glad that she did. I'm so glad she had a good experience. She felt like a princess. She adored Michelle. Martin, though, was a different story.

All the girls remember him as mostly not being around. But Giselle's experience wouldn't be. that. She remembers him as cruel and mean, and she was scared of him. And this next bit is dark, y'all. I'm not going to lie. Giselle says that on one occasion, one occasion, she was alone with him in the living room, and that he, quote, started touching me in weird places. Now, she doesn't specify any more than that, but it seems very clear what she means. And afterwards, she told Michelle, and infuriatingly, Giselle says that Michelle's response was, you can't have this conversation with him right now. He's under a lot of stress. Why does Giselle have to have this

conversation at all? Yeah, that's not her responsibility. Your responsibility as her mother is to call the police and get this investigated. So, I mean, you could argue that maybe she was worried about Martin losing his shit on everybody and pulling a knife again, which is very likely. A hundred percent, yeah. But in my opinion, there is no excuse for this. She failed that child. We can't gloss over it. She was the adult. It was her responsibility to protect this child, and she didn't do it. And thank God, according to Giselle, it's only happened once. But once is enough.

I mean, it's traumatic enough if it ever happens once, for God's sake. And then she had to go on living in that house, not cool. Not okay. After you were basically told your experience isn't valid. Doesn't matter. Like, he's under a lot of stress right now. You can't bring this up with him. Seriously, not okay.

So in 2005, there was a perceptible shift in Martin and Michelle's marriage. before he'd always been like occasionally abusive, frequently unfaithful, in many ways a shittier than shitty husband, but he'd always seem to want to keep Michelle and the marriage going. But now he was acting really distant. The verbal abuse started up again with a vengeance, a lot more frequent than it had ever been before. He treated Michelle with just undisguised contempt, which is an emotion that seems to come really naturally to this ridiculous asshole, despite the fact that he himself is a hot mess on toast.

So again, irony. He had wild mood swings. He became totally unpredictable. You know, one day he would be hugging on her and affectionate and bringing her flowers in the next. He'd be all bitter and pissed off. And Michelle was never sure which version of her husband would be there when she got home, which must have just been terrible and kept her off balance all the time. Oh, sure.

I don't know what precipitated this sudden dissatisfaction with the life that he had built for himself, but it shouldn't surprise anybody to hear that in 2005, Martin had two affairs with two different women, both of whom would play their own parts in the drama that was about to unfold. Mistress number one is a woman named Anna Osborne Walthall. She was a single mom raising two little boys. When she met Martin, she was going through a nasty divorce. Again, Martin liked women in vulnerable circumstances, so she was perfect for him. But she was also smart and opinionated and well educated.

And in 2005, she was running her own laser hair removal business in Salt Lake City. And that's how she met Martin. Utah law says that you have to have a licensed doctor to oversee that kind of a cosmetic medical facility. Seems like a good law, right? So in the fall of 2005, Anna hired Martin as the medical director of her hair removal spot. He was always switching jobs because he was so terrible. And they bonded quickly. She confided in him about her divorce.

He offered her legal advice. Their relationship was passionately sexual. And Martin's version of pillow talk was, let's call it unusual. They would talk about the usual big stuff like religion and family and philosophy and stuff, but also Martin told her some dark secrets. One night, he told her that his entire life he had struggled with homicidal urges and he told her he hadn't always won the struggle. Yikes. He said that he had tried to kill for the first time at age eight. his mom Lillian had passed out drunk on the couch

and wee little eight-year-old Martin had gathered up all the medication from the medicine cabinet and put it into a beer and then he shook his mom awake and helped her raise her head and put the beer up to her lips he said I helped her sit up and drink it and then he sat and he watched as she stopped breathing

which is terrifying creepy kids really just Creepy kids are a trigger for me. I have nightmares. Martin's sister Mary had come home just right as Lillian lost consciousness and called 911. So their mom was saved in the nick of time. And everybody thought it was a suicide attempt and Lillian didn't remember what had happened. So there was never any need or any thought of investigating this any further.

So when Anna asked him if he regretted it later, he said, and I quote, I regretted there wasn't more medication in the house Dang, man, that's an eight-year-old kid. You know, between this guy and Dyson and Coff, these dudes' version of pillow talk really leaves a lot to be desired. Dyson and his aliens and fringe science.

And this guy in his frickin' murder attempts, it's just creepy as hell, God. Because here's the thing, is if you're in bed with him don't try not to think about that too hard campers I'm sorry please not you and the guy you're into starts talking about how he murdered people

uh huh yep yep you there's no way out of that situation you just have to smile a nod I think I would 100% expect that I was getting ready to be murdered like I would just be laying there waiting for it like as soon as he stops talking he's going to smother me with a pillow That's what I would assume. You're like slowly as he's talking, pulling on clothes. Yeah, I'm just going to just kind of sidle out to the kitchen and get a tree and then just

do to do, do, do, do, do, you know. Yeah, yeah, there's, yeah, it's just because, yeah, there's no way out of that situation of a thing. That's terrifying. Get this. He also told her he'd killed his brother Rufus years later. I mentioned Rufus was a drug addict. And once, Rufus had called Martin to say he'd hurt himself and was feeling suicidal.

Martin rushed right over to find Rufus lying unconscious in the bathtub with a few superficial cuts on his wrists. He told Anna he'd knelt down by the tub and held his brother's head under the water until he stopped struggling. Whoa. Remember how Michelle was found? I sure do. He said he never worried he'd get caught. It's not unusual for cutters to drown. They lose enough blood and they slip under the water.

What a horrifying thing to say? Anna was disturbed, but also intrigued. She was into serial killers and had written letters to David Berkowitz, which Berkowitz, if you don't know, Campers, was the son of Sam. Why? Why does anybody pick him? I don't understand. He's the least interesting one. he's the worst

serial killer ever he's just not that interesting he made up that crap about the dog it was just mingering people call him down about Berkowitz he was a schlubby loser

he really he really wasn't obviously but like he's not even interesting in my opinion he's just like he's the most loser out of losers he's a losery one extra losery bottom of the bottom of the

bottom of the pile And she's like into serial killers in like a gross way, like a fan-girly way. Yeah, not in the campers way. Yeah, not in the, we're interested in the psychology like us. She's interested in like writing them letters and, you know, fangirling them, which is gross, in my opinion. Yeah. Yeah, she may have had a touch of the old bristophilia. She was scared of Martin, but drawn to him too. And as they got deeper into their relationship, Martin brought this stuff up more and more.

I guess he could see she was receptive. He said he'd been tempted to kill his daughter Vanessa because of her being a drug addict and he felt it was an embarrassment to the family. Once, he even offered to kill Anna when she was upset about her divorce. Romantic, right? Wow, that's true romance. Yeah. And possibly most to discuss. He told her he'd killed several patients over the years.

He said he'd been even anonymously posted an article on mercy killings for the Journal of the American Medical Association. He also told her his favorite murder method was injecting the person with potassium because it mimics a heart attack. And potassium is found naturally in the body, so it doesn't tend to look weird in an autopsy. Martin said he'd never get caught killing, and if he did, he'd never plead insanity. When Anna asked him why not, he looked at her really intensely with those dead-ass eyes of his and said, Because I always know exactly what I'm doing. Ah, that was scary. Joll.

Pee yourselves a little bit? I did. Yeah. You need to take a break so I can clean my chair. And when I say dead-ass eyes, I mean actual shark eyes. Yeah, he has scary, like doll eyes. It's awful. It's scary.

In the summer of 2005, Michelle got suspicious that Martin was cheating. She searched on his computer, found a big cache of porn. They argued, and Martin said, I don't love you anymore. I don't want to live here with you. This was the first time he'd ever said anything like this to Michelle, despite all the abuse. So clearly there was a sea change going on. And Anna was preparing for a future as Mrs. Serial Killer. I mean, Mrs. Martin McNeil.

I'm sorry, Dr. Mrs. Martin McNeil. Dr. Mrs. Serial Killer. Dr. Dr. Mrs. Serial Killer. Because, I mean, who wouldn't? What a catch. But it was not to be because in the fall of 2005, Martin was trawling the Internet, and he happened upon the profile of a pretty young woman with the username Phoenix Sheba. She listed astrology, sphinxes, which, oh, okay, and quantum physics as her interests. And like any good gatekeeping man on the internet, Martin messaged her.

What do you know about quantum physics? Barf. You know, insinuating that she was trying to seem smarter than she was. God, this guy's such an exhausting asshole. Anyway, this Phoenix Sheba was a 29-year-old divorce nurse named, regrettably, and I apologize for having to use this gross name, Gypsy Jillian Willis. Yeah, that's not great, obviously, but that's her name. I mean, it's a slur.

Like everyone else in our story, Gypsy, again, unfortunate, had grown up in a devout Mormon family. She'd had a baby in her teens, Heidi, and soon after that, she married, pretty much to please her parents and the Mormon church. And she and her husband, Jason with a Y, divorced before long. Jason with a Y. By 23, she'd fallen for a new guy. She wanted to move to a Salt Lake City with him, so her parents took guardianship over Heidi, and Gypsy eventually signed over parental rights entirely. For a while, she visited a lot, like every few weeks. wanting to be a part of her daughter's life, but tensions ramped up over her family's disapproval of her boyfriend and the fact that she'd essentially chosen a life with him over Heidi, and eventually Gypsy's parents told her not to come back for a while.

In fact, they took Heidi and moved to Wyoming, and Gypsy went years without seeing her daughter. Damn, that's rough. Yeah. She bought a house in 2004, but shortly before she hooked up with Martin, Gypsy started having financial issues. this was partly because her friend and roommate had moved out of her house after like a blow-up argument but mostly mostly it was because she hadn't paid her taxes in seven years and she owed the IRS 50,000 big ones and listen the U.S. government tends to take umbrage with that anyway she sold her house and got an apartment and she went back to

to nursing school, which she'd started and stopped a while before. Her relationship with her boyfriend ended, and she started a string of relationships with married men, one right after the other. Yeah, and according to her friends, she, like, reveled in dating married guys. She liked to make fun of their wives and talk about how much hotter she was than they were, which I think is just super gross, blech. Well, Anne, Gypsy didn't really want to get married again, so maybe this was her way of trying to ensure she wouldn't.

when she met Martin McNeil, he excited her enormously. She described him as an incredibly impressive person. After that first conversation online, Martin and Gypsy went on a first date. Martin told her who he really was. Online, he'd called himself Joe and said that he was 39 and a pharmaceutical rep. But oddly, Joe was married, so he didn't try to fake that. He told her his real age, 20 years older than Gypsy, and he told her about Michelle and his kids.

Said she was very beautiful, a great mother. He said, I have the perfect life, the perfect wife. Well, for Pete's sake. So, why are you here if your life is so perfect? Gypsy wanted to know. His reply? Boredom. Oh, barf.

Martin continued to see Anna for a while, too. She pressured him about leaving Michelle, but he was non-committal. For a while, Anna kept expecting to hear that Michelle had died. mysteriously. But soon, Martin dropped Anna like a hot brick. Gypsy had his attention now. And Anna was pissed. She wrote, I hate him, I hate him, I hate him, I hate him. I want to hurt him in her diary. She also told her psychiatrist that she'd been dating a serial killer. Why nothing was done about this? I can't imagine. Jeez, Louis. Again with like Matt Baker, like these psychiatrists hear this shit and it's like, oh, that's

interesting. Anyway, let's talk about your mother. Seriously? You're not going to probe that a little bit or maybe make an anonymous phone call to the police or something. I mean, yeah, good great. They don't want to get into it. I guess not. Just cash the check. Move on. Oi. So we'll break it there for part one, campers. But since we release both parts of a case on the same day, you can go right into part two now if you want, or save it for later, whichever floats your boat. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. You can follow us on Twitter at TC Campfire, Instagram at True Crime Campfire, and be sure to like our Facebook page. If you want to support the show and

get access to extras, please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash true crime campfire.