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00:00We live in a world where murder happens all too frequently.
00:20It takes a particularly twisted kind of killer to dismember a body.
00:26We found body parts in suitcases.
00:30Floating in the Chesapeake Bay.
00:32The severed legs of a white male.
00:35Man's head, torso, and arms.
00:39Who cuts up bodies?
00:41That's a mob move.
00:43Dismemberment, it takes some degree of planning.
00:45A reciprocating saw goes back and forth.
00:48We're gonna see those teeth marks.
00:51This image of human sawdust is very visceral.
00:55Bill's sister called and said,
00:57Bill is missing.
00:58And I'm scared.
01:00You get into debt.
01:01Will someone get murdered?
01:02Yeah, absolutely.
01:04He was having an affair.
01:06Passions were high.
01:08We found a clear vial of liquid with a syringe.
01:13So, what happened?
01:15This case had everything.
01:17Sex, drugs, murder.
01:19I want you to tell me the truth.
01:21I'm telling you the truth.
01:26Virginia Beach is a coastal town along the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia.
01:43It's a hot spot for tourists.
01:46And the crime rate is very low.
01:49So, when body parts start shelling up in the bay, that's a big cause for concern.
01:57Detectives.
01:58Hello.
01:59Especially for forensic specialist Beth Dunton and homicide detective Ray Patel,
02:04who were on call that day and have agreed to share their insights with me.
02:08So, this case, this was a hell of a complicated case.
02:15It's shocking when you have a dismemberment.
02:19I do think it's exciting that you and I, for the first time, can talk about this case.
02:23You know, one of the things that fascinates me about this case is you've got all the forensics
02:29of the dismemberment and the psychology of the dismemberment.
02:33Oh, yeah.
02:38It was May 5th of 2004.
02:41A beautiful day.
02:43And a boater and his family are boating out in the Chesapeake Bay.
02:47And they come across this suitcase floating underwater.
02:52They felt it might have come off a car that was traveling on the bridge.
02:56So, they went and they pulled it out of the water.
02:59It was a dark green Kenneth Cole.
03:02And they unzip it.
03:04And immediately, they see skin.
03:10And immediately close it.
03:13And they call 911.
03:17A marine patrol was dispatched out, boarded their vessel,
03:21and was able to examine that these were human remains.
03:28Within the suitcase, there were plastic bags with yellow drawstrings.
03:35They tore this open.
03:36Correct.
03:37They opened that up and saw it was legs from a white male.
03:43This doesn't happen very often, especially Virginia Beach.
03:47The first suitcase generated a lot of news attention.
03:51We are a resort city.
03:52We're getting ready to gear up for the summer.
03:55So, body parts and suitcases, you know, not the best thing for us.
04:01So, we transported it to the medical examiner's office to view exactly what we had.
04:06You get the legs into the ME.
04:10What's the first talk?
04:12There was an injury to the ankle where it looks like somebody was like,
04:15I'm going to cut the feet off, but then that bone is a little hard.
04:20So, they went up to the leg area where they were able to, you know, cut around the tissue,
04:27cut around the bone, and like disarticulate from the joint.
04:30Oh, yeah.
04:31That makes a big difference to me.
04:34Joint disarticulation is a procedure where a limb is removed by separating the bones at the joint,
04:41cutting through the tendons, rather than cutting through the bone itself.
04:46When I see a well-executed dismemberment, I think of someone who has medical knowledge
04:51or someone who has a good working knowledge of anatomy, perhaps someone who's done this before.
04:57This was pretty clean and pretty surgical is what I initially thought.
05:03The legs themselves were found in a black trash bag with the yellow pull ties.
05:08So, you automatically know that this person was driving the remains somewhere.
05:13Absolutely.
05:14You've got to contain all those bodily fluids and everything else that is going to come out
05:18and the trash bag's the best way to contain it all.
05:22There's no discoloration.
05:23Legs looked very fresh.
05:26These legs looked like they were recently placed into the water.
05:30But our timeline can also be skewed because at that point in May,
05:35the temperature of the water is anywhere between 55 and 65 degrees.
05:39So that can delay the decomposition of the body parts.
05:44And we have no identification on this person.
05:47We're looking for any kind of tattoos, anything that could help us identify them.
05:56Looking at missing persons, flyers, do we have a missing white male?
06:01Really, there's not a lot to go on.
06:04We were kind of in a wading pattern at that point.
06:07Because you know what's coming next.
06:10A researcher who was walking along the shoreline comes across this suitcase.
06:20And it's washed up on the shore.
06:22She was curious and unzipped it a little bit and stopped right there.
06:28Once she smelled the odor of decomposition.
06:32So she calls the authorities.
06:35We go.
06:36We spawned Fisherman's Island.
06:38There's a Kenneth Cole green suitcase.
06:41It does look like it came from a set.
06:43It's in much worse condition, very waterlogged.
06:54We unzip the suitcase and inside we see those black trash bags with yellow drawstrings.
07:03Inside the trash bag was a torso that included the head, arms and hands of a white male.
07:12Also in the larger suitcase was a white medical blanket.
07:17So again, it's more leaning towards somebody in the medical field.
07:21So we again carefully peel away the trash bags.
07:26Well, what's the first thing you notice?
07:28He's got a penetrating gunshot wound through and through to his skull and two in his torso.
07:34Left behind.
07:35Left behind.
07:36No exits.
07:37Correct.
07:38Two bullets were recovered at autopsy.
07:40They were consistent with having been fired from a .38 caliber revolver.
07:47What did trace evidence come up with?
07:49It was a piece of fabric on the actual bullet.
07:55And what was interesting was one was encased in like this green synthetic fibrous material.
08:02And what would those green fibers possibly be?
08:08Well, first, we'll then think about clothing.
08:10Passing through is going to pick up fibers.
08:12Or, more commonly, the person is shot through a pillow to luffle the sound of the gunshot.
08:21The homemade silencer.
08:22The homemade silencer.
08:23Yeah.
08:24The homemade silencer.
08:25Yeah.
08:26Yeah.
08:28Now, with the second suitcase, we found other evidence in the bag.
08:34We found a metal weight.
08:37And that was in the front pocket.
08:39And it was only 5.5 pounds.
08:415.5 pounds isn't nearly enough to sink a body or even the upper half of a body.
08:48It takes almost four times the amount of weight that you're trying to sink to maintain negative buoyancy.
08:54Now, either the killer was in a rush and threw in what they had or, more likely, didn't know the science.
09:00I think the reason the weight was in the second suitcase, because the second suitcase had the head and hands, which are two of the biggest identifiers of who the individual is.
09:10Someone clearly took very careful measures to ensure that his body was either never found or found in a way he would have a very difficult time putting the case together.
09:23His face was in bad shape.
09:27The decomposition had really accelerated.
09:30Investigators attempt to run their fingerprints, hoping to obtain an ID for the John Doe.
09:36Because he's been in the water, we got a lot of pruning, and that makes it a little bit more difficult to get good quality fingerprints.
09:43But I took the fingerprints and turned them over to our latent fingerprint examiners.
09:49That can take several days to a week to search the entire databank.
09:56We're only missing one section, which is the pelvis and the thigh area.
10:00At this point, there was so much news.
10:03Everybody was looking for suitcases floating in the water.
10:06Then a third suitcase is found.
10:10The latest and third suitcase was brought to shore on Sunday, floating in the water off the second island of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel.
10:18This suitcase is found in the rocks off the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel.
10:24A Kenneth Cole, smaller than 30 inches, but larger than the smaller suitcase.
10:31So it's a good assumption that this is like the middle suitcase of a set.
10:35And there were two black trash bags, again with the same yellow drawstrings.
10:42Inside was the pelvis and the thigh area, severed from the knee up and the waist down.
10:50One of the things that fascinates me about these dismemberment cases is the instrument, right?
10:57So tell me, was there a saw cut in any of the bone found?
11:02I always thought these cuts, especially the leg, a scalpel could have done that.
11:07Maybe a larger knife for the torso.
11:10The M.E. thought it was a power saw, and the teeth were consistent with a sawzall.
11:17A sawzall is a saw that goes back and forth rapidly, doesn't make that much noise, and is pretty efficient.
11:25Which, again, points to someone who seemed to know what they were doing.
11:31We all felt in the unit, this was one victim.
11:35All the body parts have been recovered now.
11:40Without a hit on the fingerprints, Detective Backell tries another forensic tool to identify their John Doe and figure out why he was killed.
11:51You have to reverse engineer the man whose body parts were discovered, his life, and the people in it.
11:59What's my next step?
12:01Well, I went to our sketch artist that works for the police department.
12:08The face was unrecognizable, but a good forensic artist can recreate it using the bone structure.
12:15They got a good likeness and put it out to the public.
12:18I was in the seventh grade.
12:27My mom was watching the morning news, and she had seen this sketch.
12:32And she calls my dad in, and she says, John, look at this. This looks like Bill.
12:37My dad and Bill were best friends, and we called him Uncle Bill.
12:42Bill was very charismatic, very warm.
12:45He had a really great energy.
12:47He was very funny.
12:48He was a big personality.
12:50That night, the police department receives a phone call from Mr. and Mrs. Rice.
12:59So I asked if they could come in that night for an interview, and they did.
13:04And then I showed them the sketch.
13:09Right away, Mrs. Rice sat up in her chair, and she looked right at me, and she gave me a nod.
13:18This was their friend, Bill Maguire.
13:21He had been missing since April 28th.
13:25We find out from Bill's friends that he's a 39-year-old Navy veteran married with two kids, and that he lives in New Jersey.
13:34If he lives in New Jersey, how did he wind up in Virginia Beach?
13:43This is a cold, calculated murder.
13:48They started their affair when she was actually pregnant.
13:51He has the medical knowledge to do a dismemberment.
13:54I want to know what happened that caused her to get this restraining pair.
14:07With the help of an anthropologic sketch, the dismembered victim found in three separate suitcases are identified as that of Bill Maguire.
14:18You want to know who may have motive to see harm come to Bill Maguire?
14:23And who had the opportunity?
14:26My parents were very close to Bill, so they wanted to participate in whatever way they could to shine light on who he was and to get justice for him.
14:35Bill Maguire was 39 years old, served in the Navy.
14:40He worked in the information technology field, which was emerging in the early 2000s.
14:45It was described to me that he had Irish charm, and he liked a good time.
14:50And then he met Melanie.
14:53My parents, they loved Melanie.
14:55They felt like Melanie was a really great counterpart for Bill, that she met him on his level.
15:01They were both very intelligent, and they had a really great banter back and forth.
15:07My dad was the best man in Bill and Melanie's wedding.
15:12Melanie was a beautiful bride, and they just thought he really hit the jackpot.
15:17Melanie Maguire was in her 30s.
15:19She was working as an RN.
15:21She was educated, mother of two sons that she shared with Bill.
15:26Bill was a really dedicated father. He was very involved.
15:29You could tell he put his heart and soul into parenting.
15:33There were no signs from the outside looking in that there was any trouble in his life.
15:40But in early May, Bill's sister, Cindy, had called and let my dad know that he was missing.
15:47Bill was a great person, so who could have done this?
15:51Generally speaking, in any relationship, the significant other, spouse, etc.,
15:56is usually the first person that anyone takes a look at.
16:00The fact that Bill Maguire's wife Melanie was a nurse lines up with the findings from the body,
16:06that whoever murdered Bill had enough medical knowledge to dismember him with precision.
16:13Before I actually notified his wife, I immediately contacted Woodbridge.
16:19Woodbridge Police Department in New Jersey.
16:22I just want to know what happened for the last few weeks.
16:27Had his wife reported him missing?
16:29Not missing.
16:30I found out that his wife Melanie had obtained a temporary restraining order on him on the 29th of April,
16:40and we're finding the first suitcase on May 5th.
16:44Interesting.
16:45I want to know what happened that caused her to get this restraining order.
16:53I wanted to travel to New Jersey and notify Melanie Maguire because I want to see the emotion when I tell her her husband was found deceased.
17:03But I discovered that the local police department made the death notification without my knowledge.
17:11So the element of surprise was no longer there.
17:15So my bosses are telling me, go to New Jersey, do as much background on this family as possible, and then if you can, find out where it happened.
17:27So you're thinking he was killed?
17:30In New Jersey.
17:31So on June 1st, 2004, myself and my partner, we drove to Teaneck, New Jersey, and we interviewed Bill Maguire's sister.
17:45She was desperate to find out what happened to her brother, but she wanted justice done.
17:52Cindy loved her brother. It was obvious.
17:56She told us he and Melanie just purchased a brand new home.
18:00Bill was very excited about the closing on this house.
18:04The last time that Bill had called my dad, he thought he was about to embark on a new chapter of life.
18:12What was very interesting was that Bill's sister did not know about the restraining order.
18:19According to Bill's sister, Bill Maguire was happy in his life raising his two sons with his wife.
18:28We know something happened in order to get this restraining order.
18:34So what happened?
18:36We're going to have to talk to Bill's wife and figure this one out.
18:49We met Melanie Maguire face to face for the first time at her attorney's office.
18:57It was a non-threatening, non-accusatory interview.
19:02Melanie says their marriage was on the rocks. They fought all the time. They had grown apart.
19:08I asked her when was the last time she ever seen her.
19:13And she told me that on April 28th of 2004, they had closed that evening on a new house.
19:20She and Bill went back to their apartment and they were both exhausted.
19:27But Melanie says they both wake up about 1.30, 2 o'clock in the morning and almost immediately start arguing about money and the new house.
19:38Melanie's accusing Bill of, you're the one that wanted this house.
19:42Yeah.
19:43And he's accusing her of not being a very attentive mother.
19:49According to Melanie, emotions are high, passions are high.
19:53Melanie said even though they fought constantly, this time Bill was violent.
19:59He pushes her up against the wall. He has a dryer sheet and he stuffs this dryer sheet in her mouth.
20:05Melanie said that she then escaped and locked herself in a bathroom.
20:12And she said she was terrified and feared for her life.
20:16As police interviewed Bill's wife Melanie, she alleges that after being violently assaulted by Bill, she barricaded herself in the bathroom, fearing for her life.
20:40She could hear Bill rummaging through the house, the drawers.
20:44Next thing she hears is, you're the reason why the kids are not going to have a father and you'll never see me again.
20:52And she states that Bill stormed out of the house.
20:56He took three suitcases and he disappeared.
21:00So Melanie said she went to the local courthouse the next day and filed for the temporary restraining order.
21:10She was asked, you know, why didn't she report him missing?
21:15And she said, well, he wasn't missing because he left on his own.
21:20So he was not missing.
21:22So I'm watching her demeanor. I'm watching her expressions.
21:27I'm looking at her eyes and I did not see the eyes tear up.
21:31Clearly, Bill and Melanie weren't the happy couple everyone thought they were.
21:36But that doesn't mean she murdered him.
21:39And dismemberment takes some degree of planning.
21:41It's not the sudden crime of passion where you shoot someone in a love argument and then decide, oh, I'm going to take him upstairs, cut him on cases.
21:50This is a cold, calculated, planned, intentional murder.
21:56And then she said her husband gambled in Atlantic City.
22:01Sometimes he would lose thousands of dollars.
22:04Melanie said he may have been in over his head to someone in Atlantic City.
22:10What happens to people that can't pay their gambling debts when they're dealing with some unsightly characters in the gambling world?
22:19They end up dead.
22:21Who cuts up bodies?
22:23That's a mob move.
22:25Melanie said that he left in his 1998 black Nissan Maximum and that you would probably find his vehicle in Atlantic City.
22:36Police immediately put out an APB on Bill's vehicle, then focus in on the timeline.
22:44Time of death?
22:46We have to put it with definitely when was the last time we saw somebody saw him alive.
22:53And that would have been closing on that new house.
22:57OK, so the 28th.
22:5828th.
22:59OK, so you're thinking these were all thrown in at the same time, right?
23:02I think because the window of opportunity to throw the suitcases over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge is so narrow they have to go over and I think at the same time.
23:16Spanning the Chesapeake Bay is the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
23:20It is 17 miles long with two one-mile tunnels.
23:24And then there are specific pull-off spots.
23:27There's no cameras on the bridge.
23:30So it wouldn't take much to pull over on the side, get the suitcases out of the back of the car and flip it right on over.
23:41Melanie suggested Bill's gambling may have resulted in him being murdered and dumped in the water.
23:48Investigators have to follow up on that information.
23:51Bill was known to put a couple bucks on the ponies as they sit.
23:56But anyone who understands gambling knows people don't always hit it big.
24:02They lose and they lose big.
24:05This is what happens in gambling.
24:06You get into debt and he might have been in a gambling debt and went and got money someplace else.
24:12For instance, an organized crime member.
24:15And generally speaking, will someone get murdered?
24:17Yeah, absolutely.
24:18The next day, I get a phone call from my department from Virginia Beach saying we've located Bill McGuire's vehicle.
24:30The vehicle is located in Atlantic City.
24:34So we immediately drive to Atlantic City.
24:38We respond to this motel called the Flamingo Motel.
24:45This motel is not on the main strip.
24:47It's one of these no-tell motel kind of places.
24:51Talking to the management, we discovered that Atlantic City Forensics towed the vehicle to their facility.
24:56We also know they have security cameras.
24:59Detective Piquel arranges to have the security footage picked up, then heads to the forensic lab to examine the car.
25:09Investigators meticulously searched this vehicle.
25:13In the front passenger seat, there were two brochures.
25:18One from Atlantic City and one from Virginia Beach.
25:22Almost looked staged.
25:23We continue our search, and there's a clear vial of liquid in the glove box with a syringe.
25:36I remember looking at it like, that's kind of odd.
25:40That would be sent off for analysis.
25:42Police did trace evidence on the floorboard of the vehicle, and they were able to recover skin cells.
25:53These were particles from subcutaneous muscle and bone deep inside.
25:59The only way that they're going to come out of the body is through some sort of force trauma.
26:06Dismemberment of a body is messy.
26:09If you use a saw, there is a lot of skin and blood and tissue matter that is going to be flying throughout the air, landing on various surfaces.
26:18This image of human sawdust is very visceral, right?
26:21Because it's like, you know what sawdust is.
26:23You put a 2x4 down, you start...
26:26So even if you're keeping things really clean, you're going to, at some point, walk through that biological dust.
26:35These skin cells got attached to the driver of that car, who transferred it to the floorboard of Bill Maguire's vehicle.
26:46This is a huge piece of evidence.
26:49It tells us that somebody who was involved in that murder was the driver of that car.
27:01After finding human sawdust in Bill Maguire's car, investigators send the samples to the lab for processing.
27:07It seems that whoever drove that car may have staged it to look like Bill met his demise at the casino.
27:15The next day, we were able to get the security footage off of the Flamingo Motel's security equipment.
27:23Bill's car was seen driven to a particular spot, and an individual leaves that vehicle.
27:33But because there was some kind of a security light shining at the camera, you could not make out the person that was driving.
27:43Without any solid identification from the surveillance footage, investigators turned to the lab results.
27:50The skin cells actually came back to Bill Maguire.
27:58At this point, the theory that he was murdered because of his gambling habits is losing steam with investigators.
28:05If it's a lob hit, they wouldn't have left any evidence behind.
28:10In this case, you have the bullets, the bone dust, and a hypodermic needle and syringe.
28:15And, of course, the surveillance video.
28:19It suggests an amateur killer, which leads detectives back to the one suspect still on their radar.
28:26Melanie Maguire.
28:30We learned that Melanie had just moved completely out of the apartment where she and Bill were living.
28:35We contacted the management, and they gave us permission to search the apartment.
28:42When we walked in, it was absolutely spotless and smelt of fresh paint.
28:47I'm thinking somebody left that apartment so clean that maybe somebody's trying to hide something.
29:00Where could a dismemberment happen?
29:03How about upstairs in the big stall shower?
29:07Police comb every single inch of that bathroom.
29:11They even take out the drain pipe.
29:16It's not just absent of blood and bone.
29:19It's absent of everything.
29:21In a shower, you'd expect to see, oh, some hair, some soap, soapy stuff on the floor.
29:28No, this shower is spotless.
29:32We didn't find any evidential value of processing that apartment.
29:36With no new evidence from the apartment, law enforcement returns to the blanket found in one of the suitcases and discovers a surprising link to Melanie Maguire.
29:48In the 30-inch suitcase where the torso head and hands were was a medical blanket.
29:57And the tag was still on the blanket.
29:59And the tag said HCSC.
30:03Wouldn't you know it? HCSC materials, linens, and bedding were utilized in the practice where Melanie worked.
30:12Detectives meet with Melanie's boss, Dr. Bradley Miller, who runs the fertility clinic where she worked.
30:19Detectives press Dr. Miller about the white medical blanket found inside one of the suitcases.
30:24He vehemently denies knowing anything about it.
30:28However, what he did tell them was an entirely different story.
30:33Dr. Miller told investigators he was having an affair with Melanie Maguire.
30:42There's some details about when the affair started that are particularly salacious.
30:47We find out that they started their affair when she was actually pregnant.
30:55And it was a two year long sort of affair where they had kind of talked about leaving their respective spouses.
31:03But, you know, they couldn't really figure it out because that would be a really messy sin kind of situation.
31:08He had a family, she had a family. What were they going to do?
31:12Dr. Miller never, I believe, was going to leave his wife for Ms. Maguire.
31:18And I think Ms. Maguire hoped that, you know, someone would come in and save her.
31:24But he insists that he had nothing to do with Bill Maguire's death.
31:28And he doesn't appear willing to say anything else.
31:31Dr. Miller could be an accomplice.
31:33We know she was having an affair with Dr. Miller.
31:37And it was a blanket utilized in the practice.
31:43As detectives finish with Dr. Miller, they're suspicious.
31:47But without more evidence, their hands are tied.
31:50But detectives get lab results from the mystery liquid found in Bill Maguire's car, leading to another shocking connection.
31:59It was chloral hydrate, which is a sedative, often used in medical practices.
32:05Police tracked down the prescription for chloral hydrate, written by Dr. Bradley Miller.
32:13Why would Bill Maguire have this sedative in his blood box?
32:18This is an intoxicant that would have incapacitated Bill Maguire.
32:23His defenses would have been gone.
32:25Is Dr. Miller the mastermind of this brutal murder?
32:30Or are they in it together?
32:33He's a man.
32:34He's strong enough to lift suitcases full of body parts.
32:38And, of course, he has the medical knowledge to do a dismemberment.
32:42And he just happened to be in an intimate relationship with the victim's wife.
32:48Dr. Miller was in love with Melanie Maguire.
32:52Dr. Miller has motive.
32:53Not only was Melanie Maguire working for Dr. Bradley Miller, it came out that she was having a multi-year affair with Dr. Miller.
33:12There's all kinds of motives for murder, but to me, someone deeply in love with another person, that provides a special kind of desire to kill the spouse.
33:25Detectives question Dr. Miller about the prescription for chloral hydrate, but he denies writing it.
33:35But he does confess to police that Melanie sometimes wrote prescriptions and forged his signature.
33:40We believe the murder took place on April 28th or April 29th. The first suitcase appeared on May 5th. The doctor claims he can provide proof of his whereabouts during that entire window of time.
33:56Bradley didn't believe that Melanie could have done it.
34:02You have this slight young woman accused of a brutal murder and the dismemberment of her husband.
34:09It defies expectations. It defies the common human experience.
34:13Investigators again approached Dr. Miller. His alibi had checked out, but they were shocked to learn that he was still carrying on an affair with Melanie.
34:23At this point, the investigators turn up the heat on Dr. Miller, and they ask for his assistance, and he agrees to wear a wire in conversations with Melanie.
34:36After 10 months of building their case, detectives secure the cooperation of Dr. Miller and obtain a warrant for a wiretap.
34:45We set up the electronic devices to listen to Ms. McGuire's conversation.
34:50We listened to over hundreds of phone calls of Ms. McGuire, some to Dr. Miller.
34:57I think part of him was trying to find out that, did it actually happen? Could it be true? Is this woman capable of murder?
35:07It is now 2.30 p.m., May 31st, 2005. Brad Miller making an outgoing call to Melanie McGuire.
35:16Hello?
35:17I've told them everything that I know. That they're, you know, they just told me.
35:27No, they want you to break.
35:30The wiretaps went on for months.
35:32I mean, if you want us to stick together, I've got to know everything now.
35:35What do you mean you absolutely know everything now?
35:39I mean, there's no other secrets between us.
35:42I'd like you to.
35:44But we weren't hearing a confession from Melanie.
35:47Well, Melanie had another gentleman in her life named James Finn.
35:52James Finn knew Melanie from nursing school.
35:55I think Jim probably looked at her as a potential girlfriend.
36:00But James was in the friend zone.
36:03And when he learned of her relationship with Dr. Miller, he began to assist investigators in this case.
36:10James Finn told investigators that Melanie had approached him about buying her a gun because she needed protection from her husband.
36:20What struck me is the cold and callousness of Miss McGuire in her tone.
36:49in those conversations.
36:52I want you to tell me the truth.
36:54I'm telling you the truth.
36:56Well, what about the gun?
36:58What about the gun?
36:59I don't have it.
37:01Well, who does?
37:03I don't know.
37:05Now, the body did give us the bullets, but without a gun to compare them to, it's useless.
37:10If Melanie McGuire came from New Jersey and dumped bodies at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, she could have tossed that gun anywhere out on that stretch of road.
37:23The police check every gun shop in the area, looking for anyone that may have sold Melanie a gun.
37:30In New Jersey, it's very hard to buy a firearm. You have to have a background check. It's easier to buy a gun in another state like Pennsylvania.
37:38Detectives expand their search of gun stores, and they get a huge break.
37:44There was a receipt that was found that showed that Miss McGuire purchased a gun in Pennsylvania.
37:49Not just any gun. A .38 caliber gun. The same caliber of bullets that were found inside Bill McGuire.
37:57Investigators have tracked down a gun shop in Palmerton, Pennsylvania, just two hours away from the McGuire home, where they believe that Melanie McGuire purchased a .38 revolver and a box of bullets.
38:18When police went to the gun shop in Pennsylvania, the owner immediately was able to recognize Melanie, because he's like, we don't get a lot of women in here, right?
38:33So she just kind of like stood out.
38:35The gun owner remembers Melanie coming in two days before the murder, and she used a Pennsylvania driver's license.
38:43That license she used traced back to her aunt in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.
38:48So Melanie purchased a gun two days before the murder, and took efforts to cover up her residence, and bought the gun out of state. Highly suspicious. Highly circumstantial.
39:05Hey, Mel. State please stop at my parents' house today.
39:09Okay.
39:10They were looking for you.
39:12Okay.
39:13Apparently there was a gun store in Palmerton, and your name was on a receipt from having purchased a gun about a year ago.
39:20Okay.
39:21And they were looking for you.
39:23All right.
39:24All right.
39:25Is there anything I should know?
39:28Not particularly.
39:32On June 2, 2005, more than a year after her husband's murder, Melanie McGuire is arrested while dropping her children off at school.
39:41She is immediately booked and charged with first-degree murder.
39:46After she was arrested, that's where we ended up doing a search warrant on Melanie McGuire's computer.
39:53And when we were searching it, we found an interesting thing.
39:57She was searching how to get away with murder, certain intoxicants that would incapacitate a person, how to get a gun.
40:08That's pretty good circumstance if you ask me.
40:11Melanie has the medical knowledge to do a relatively clean dismemberment.
40:18And there's a strong personal motive for killing her husband.
40:23In spring of 2007, Melanie goes on trial for the murder of her husband.
40:31They never found the bloody crime scene.
40:33They never found that gun.
40:35They never found that crucial piece of DNA evidence that they could definitively say, yeah, murder happened here.
40:42And Melanie McGuire did it.
40:43So when you stand before that jury, a circumstantial case is made by telling a story, a compelling story.
40:53That's what you do. You run right through.
40:56We know she was having an affair with Dr. Miller.
40:58Purchasing a gun, the possession of hydrochlorine, her matching suitcase luggage, her easy pass records going down south.
41:09Melanie McGuire was ultimately convicted of murder, and she was sentenced to life in prison.
41:15There's a special place in hell for someone who's capable of carrying out this kind of planning and never walking away.
41:24How do you ever look these children in the face and say, not only did I kill your father, I planned it for weeks.
41:34How callous.
41:37For five years, this was a really big part of our lives.
41:40It was a really hard time for all parties involved.
41:44I've kind of left it in the past.
41:46There are multiple tragedies in this, right?
41:49The destruction of a family at the heart of it.
41:51Children who've had to grow up with no mother or father, and there's no way that they're ever going to be made a whole.
41:57Bill was eviscerated by Melanie with lie after lie after lie.
42:02Bill McGuire was a good friend. He was a great brother. He was a wonderful father.
42:07And people need to hear that.
42:10And so that's part of trying to give back to the family.
42:13Not only justice that Melanie McGuire is going to get punished for her evil acts, but justice to give back this man's good name.
42:20Good name.
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