Did Melanie McGuire dismember her husband?
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Melanie McGuire: I didn’t f**king do anything. I didn’t --- do anything, Jim.
Jim Finn: Then why are they all over you?!Melanie McGuire: Hello, because I bought a gun. Because I had an affair.
Could it really be that simple?
For five weeks, the prosecutor had depicted this petite young mother, a woman whose vocation since college had been nursing, as a ruthless, determined killer.
But her defense attorney, Joe Tacopina, says investigators had gotten it wrong. That they had zeroed in on Melanie McGuire from the start, focusing on evidence that incriminated her and disregarding other leads. The prosecution’s case, he said, was circumstantial at best, and utterly unconvincing.
Sara James, Dateline correspondent: Any forensic proof that she committed this crime?
Joe Tacopina, defense attorney: Clearly no forensic evidence that she committed this crime.
James: Any eyewitnesses?
Tacopina: No eyewitnesses.
James: What about motive?
Tacopina: There was absolutely no motive whatsoever.
At least that’s how he saw it. Tacopina’s strategy was tear down the prosecution’s witnesses on cross-examination and convert them into witnesses for the defense.
Tacopina: Every one of their witnesses, I was standing up and turning into our witnesses. And taking pieces of their evidence and making it our evidence.
Case in point: a forensic scientist who searched the McGuires’ apartment four times for evidence of the crime and found nothing.
(in court) Tacopina: You looked hard, didn’t you?
Forensic scientist: Yes. I believe we did, yes.
The prosecution argued there was no evidence because Melanie had carefully scrubbed away all traces of her crime.
James: Was it possible to do a crime like this, first, to murder him, and then to cut him up in this apartment and not have any sign?
Tacopina: It’s impossible. It is absolutely impossible.
The defense said there was a much simpler explanation as to why there were no traces of blood in the apartment: The murder never happened there.
But what about those particles of skin in the victim’s car? The prosecutor said the killer likely stepped in Bill’s remains and transferred the tissue into his car. Melanie had admitted being in that car.
Her defense attorney made another plea for common sense. Why wouldn’t traces of Bill’s skin be found in his own car?
And on cross-examination, the prosecution expert conceded there was no absolute proof that the human tissue came from a dead body.
Tacopina: You could get a cut and that could come from a live human being, correct?
Dr. Wah: If you get cut, you can shed, yes.
But what was the defense explanation for Melanie being in her husband’s car—at all—after he disappeared? Tacopina says she was just turning the tables on her husband, playing a little trick bill had taught her.
Tacopina: Bill had moved her car once before during a fight, so she would be stranded and not know where her car was.
The defense then grilled Dr. Bradley Miller, Melanie’s former lover and the man who prosecutors said embodied her motive for murder.
Remember, Miller had told investigators that he and Melanie were in love, that they had plans to be together someday. But under cross-examination Miller’s story now sounded different.
Tacopina: Never once, not before the death of her husband or after did she ever ask you to leave your wife, correct?
Brad Miller: No, she did not.
Tacopina: Nor did she ever insinuate to you, doctor, directly or indirectly that, “Hey, I’m available now. Wanna get together?” She never said that, did she?
Brad Miller: No, she did not.
Tacopina revealed to the jury that even though Miller told police he would tape his phone conversations with Melanie, he didn’t tell them he was still sleeping with her.
James: The woman he loves, he loves so deeply that he’s recording conversations secretly for the state?
Tacopina: And then going to meet her at night and having sex with her. I just find that to be phenomenal.
But Tacopina thinks Miller did his lover a favor by making those audiotapes.
James: Is she saying anything that incriminates herself?
Tacopina: Not only is she not saying anything that incriminates herself, she’s saying things that scream out innocence.
The defense also tackled a critical piece of evidence against his client: that gun. The prosecutor said it was highly suspicious that Melanie could never keep her story straight about why she had bought it. But Tacopina countered that Melanie couldn’t tell people the real reason-- the gun was always meant for Bill, a convicted felon who couldn’t buy it himself .
Tacopina: Melanie really was committing a crime by purchasing a gun under her name with the intention to let someone else use it.
One of Bill’s colleagues told the jury that buying a gun had been very much on Bill’s mind.
Then the defense called its experts to knock down the rest of the state’s circumstantial case.
A computer expert who suggested there was just as much evidence that Bill had made those incriminating online searches as Melanie. For example, a search for data on “undetectable poisons” was made almost immediately after a search for information on gambling. They were Bill’s past-time, not hers.
Defense attorney: And what is the time difference between the gaming source search and this search on Google for undetectable poisons?
Computer expert: It appears to be about 20 seconds.
A plastics expert who thought the prosecution’s analysis of the trash bags was sheer nonsense.
Sally Ginter: The bags from the victim and the bags that had the clothes in them from the apartment are not the same.
And finally “Melanie experts” - friends who said she was no killer.
As Tacopina prepared for closing arguments, he was confident he had riddled the prosecutor’s case with doubt.
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