Did Melanie McGuire dismember her husband?

Spring is trophy fishing season in the Chesapeake: bluefish, perch, striped bass, they’re all here. Chris Henkle and Don Connor thought they might get lucky with a catch or two from the bay that day in early may 2004.  Instead, they noticed a suitcase bobbing in the water.

Chris Henkle: It’s right next to the Bridge tunnel. I’m thinking immediately that it probably blew off somebody’s luggage rack driving down the road or something like that.

Connor’s excited 12-year-old son pulled the case onto the boat—a real live treasure chest. He quickly opened it and found a swirl of black plastic bags.

Henkle: The boy was upset. So I grabbed a hold of him and just tried to calm him down and I looked in there again and yes, it was a set of legs.

They were bloodless human legs severed at the knees. 

And then a week later: Virginia Beach crime scene supervisor Beth Dutton had already been processing the first case when police hauled in the second.  It contained a five pound weight, those same black trash bags and more human remains. This time it was a man’s head and torso. Gunshot wounds told the cause of death.  But when he had been killed was still a mystery. 

The third and final suitcase surfaced on May 16^th.  This time holding the man’s hips and thighs.  But who was the man?  Virginia Beach police launched an intensive investigation to identify the victim.

Jon and Susan rice had been hearing about the bizarre story for weeks on their local news.  They live in Chesapeake, Virginia.  But by then they were more engrossed in another bizarre tale.  This one involved their favorite couple: the McGuires.  Jon and Susan Rice had heard about the beautiful new home their friends had just purchased in western New Jersey.  On April 28, Bill closed on that house, calling the electric company, turning the lights off at the old apartment.

Bill McGuire moving onto the next phase in life.  But it was a chapter he would never get the chance to write.   A few days after that recording was made, Melanie talked with the Rices to say she and Bill had had a terrible argument about that dream home, just hours after they signed on the dotted line.  She said Bill got physical with her.  Then he stormed out of the apartment, vowing never to return.

Sara James, Dateline correspondent: Did that sound like Bill to just go off and say “I’m not coming back”?

Jon Rice: No. Not and leave the boys. He just closed on a house.

James: It didn’t add up.

Rice: No. No.

But Melanie insisted he had left and he had hit her. She had even gotten a restraining order, in case Bill tried to come crawling back.  This is Melanie describing the fight to a family court judge.

(at family court) Melanie: He told me that I was a stupid ****.  And slapped me and...

Judge: Where did he slap you Ma’am?

Melanie: In the face.

While the Rices were stunned, there were some friends who lived closer to the McGuires in New Jersey, who were not.  

Selene Trevisas, Melanie's friend: I don’t think he was a good husband, nor I don’t think he was a great father.

Selene Trivisas has known Melanie almost her whole life.  For years, she’d thought that Bill was stressed by all his responsibilities.  He was quick to anger and the light-hearted repartee between husband and wife, the banter the Rices had so enjoyed? It eventually became a one-way tongue lashing...

Trevisas: She was no longer fighting back. The arguing—it wasn’t back and forth. It was more one-sided. She was just tired.

The way Selene saw it, maybe her friend was better off without Bill.  But where was he?  Selene and another friend, Allison Licalsi, say Melanie later confided in them about Bill’s other problem: gambling.  Maybe Bill had fled to Atlantic City, gone on a bender and met up with the wrong people... 

Allison Licalsi: Well, she knew that Atlantic City had always been a monkey on his back. But she also wasn’t sure the extent of what he was involved with.

The Rices would tell you that’s nonsense, that Bill didn’t have a gambling problem, and did not hang around unsavory characters.  But they did think it possible that their dear, missing friend was in Atlantic City.

Rice: We actually started calling some hotels in Atlantic City just to check for ourselves, "Had Bill checked in?"

And when one week turned into the next with no word from  or no sign of Bill. Concern became fear. 

Susan started paying attention to that other strange story she’d been hearing—the one about the suitcases and that poor, unidentified man inside.  The TV was on...

Susan Rice: The reporter said the police had released a sketch. So I came out of the bathroom and I looked at the sketch.

Something about the hair looked familiar.  Susan compared it to a photo she had of her friend. 

Susan Rice: I just remember my heart just sunk to my stomach.

She told Jon, then called the Virginia Beach police.

James: So you were more doing it just so that you knew it wasn’t?

Jon Rice: Absolutely.

Susan Rice: "Tell us that it’s not Bill. Just tell us it wasn’t Bill."

But it was.

Jon Rice: We were physically sick. We couldn’t—just a state of shock. I just couldn’t believe it was...

Virginia Beach Detective Ray Pickel was the one who had broken the horrible news to the Rices.  Now that he had the victim’s name, the detective might be able to figure out who hated Bill McGuire enough to saw him into thirds.  He was especially interested in speaking with the victim’s wife:  Melanie McGuire.  He needed her help most of all.  Little did he know just how much help she would be.

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