Did Melanie McGuire dismember her husband?

June 2, 2005: It had been more than a year since her husband’s shocking murder but for Melanie McGuire. Life was getting back to the old routine. She dropped the kids off at daycare. She was in a rush to get to work to get to her patients.  But on that particular morning, New Jersey had other plans for her.

After eight months of painstaking investigation, police finally made their move. They arrested Melanie McGuire and charged her with the murder of her husband, Bill.  She pleaded ‘not guilty.’

Prosecutor: No direct evidence, no eye witnesses, but certainly we amassed a great deal of circumstances that pointed to one person.

Nearly two years after Melanie’s arrest, prosecutor Patty Prezioso prepared to convince a jury that all those circumstances pointed to  Mrs. McGuire’s guilt.

The picture of a wife who had shot her husband while he slept. Dumped his remains like garbage into the sea—then ditched his car at an out-of-way motel to distract authorities.

Prosecutor (in the courtroom) : While Bill was engrossed in purchasing the house and all the closing details that go along with such a purchase, the defendant was very busy planning his death.

Beginning with Melanie’s purchase of a .38-caliber gun days before her husband’s death.

The prosecutor argued that the defendant only told friends about the gun after Bill’s death.  And even then, her stories shifted. She told some friends it was Bill who wanted the gun.  She told another it was she who wanted it as protection against Bill.

And then, the prosecution moved onto evidence it believed linked Melanie directly to the body.

Forensic scientist Tom Lesniak used a laser pointer to show the jury the visual similarities between the trash bags that were found with the victim and the trash bags Melanie had used to give away her husband’s clothes. His conclusion? They were manufactured on the same production line.

But it was what Lesniak didn’t find that the prosecutor found most suspicious.   His team had meticulously searched Melanie’s apartment, including its bathrooms. But they hadn’t been able to find a speck of blood. No DNA material whatsoever. No trace that the McGuires had ever lived there.

Patty Prezioso, prosecutor: Who scrubs a bathroom that well when they’re leaving an apartment?

But the forensic expert  went on to tell the jury that Melanie might not have hidden her tracks as well as she thought she had, because he found traces of the crime scene somewhere else.

Thomas Lesniak, forensic expert: I found particles that to me look like—it could be possibly human tissue.

The expert found microscopic particles of human tissue - Bill McGuire’s tissue - in vacuumings taken from the floor of Bill’s car.

James: How significant were those findings in the vacuumings in your view? 

Patty Prezioso: I think they were very significant.

Remember Melanie had admitted moving her husband’s car to the Flamingo motel parking lot that night.

The prosecutor said it all added up: that Melanie had probably picked up traces of Bill’s tissue on the soles of her shoes when his body had been cut up in the bathroom. That she’d then transferred that tissue to his car when she had driven it to Atlantic City.

Next the prosecutor told the jury about important evidence that showed the murder had been carefully planned. All of it was captured on the McGuires’ home computer.

A computer expert told the jury about incriminating Internet searches that had been done in the days before Bill McGuire’s death.

Computer expert: There were several searches that involved things like names of chemicals and poisons.  There were searches that involved guns and gun laws and things like that.

The expert said someone had browsed the Internet for advice on “How to commit murder.” And then there was this: a search for “chloral hydrate,”  a powerful but uncommon sedative. There was also a search for a nearby Walgreen’s pharmacy. 

Prezioso: Hooking it up with the computer search that led us to Walgreen’s was this very significant prescription written in a name of an RMA patient.

RMA—as in the clinic where Melanie worked.  The prescription was for chloralhydrate, and it was filled at a Walgreen's just a mile from the daycare center where Melanie dropped off the children.  There was something else about that prescription: it featured the signature of Dr. Bradley miller, Melanie’s former lover, and the state’s star witness.

Prosecutor: Sir, did you write that prescription?

DR. BRAD MILLER: No, I did not.

Prosecutor: Are you familiar with the handwriting on those two prescriptions?

DR. BRAD MILLER: Yes.

Prosecutor: And whose handwriting do you believe it to be?

DR. BRAD MILLER: It appears to be Melanie’s.

Patty Prezioso:  Certainly this defendant had written prescriptions for Dr. Miller in the past, and would be familiar with doing that, and would have access to those pads.

And listen to this:  the prescription had been picked up on April 28^th, hours before he disappeared and possibly the last full day of Bill McGuire’s life.  A vial of chloralhydrate was later found in Bill’s car by the police.  The prosecutor said the killer used the sedative to knock McGuire unconscious before shooting him.

But what had motivated Melanie to commit such a brutal and calculated crime?

DR. BRAD MILLER: We were hoping to be together in the future to have kids together.

Future plans that Melanie thought would never come true, the prosecutor said, while Bill McGuire was still alive.

Prosecutor in court: All of this evidence together leaves you no doubt that she participated in this murder.

In her closing, the prosecutor said the murder likely happened like this:  Bill McGuire drinking wine to celebrate his new home, no idea the drink is laced with chloralhydrate.  Or that his wife wants to grow old with her lover—not him.  The next day, with kids off to daycare—the killer shoots a still sleeping McGuire. A pillow muffles the noise.  The dead man is cut up in the bathroom, stuffed into bags and suitcases, driven  to the Chesapeake Bay bridge and tossed through the air and into the water.

Prosecutor: Melanie McGuire murdered Bill McGuire.  And the evidence is overwhelming.

It might have looked like a convincing case against Melanie McGuire.  But it rested on circumstantial evidence—no ‘direct evidence’  and no smoking gun.

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