Daughter Fears for Life After Her Father Is Freed from Prison
July 12, 2012— -- A prominent Utah doctor suspected in his wife's 2007 death was released from a federal prison in Texas last week after serving three years for fraud and now his daughter fears for her life after she said he killed her mother.
Martin MacNeill, doctor and former Mormon Sunday school teacher, was released from prison on Friday and returned to his Utah home where his wife, Michele MacNeill, was found dead in the bathroom.
"It's horrifying knowing that he's out. Knowing that he's walking around free," said MacNeill's daughter, Alexis Somers.
Somers vividly recalls the day her father called to inform her of the terrible news.
"When my father called I knew he killed her," said Somers. "I just started screaming he killed her. I knew it."
Now that MacNeill is free and still uncharged in his wife's death, Somers believes he's getting away with murder. Somers says her father has lived a life of lies: extramarital affairs, falsifying documents to get into medical schools and serving less than two years in the U.S. Army before being discharged because of a psychiatric disorder.
Somers discovered that over the next three decades, MacNeill was able to collect more than $100,000 in disability payments from the Veteran's Administration.
A search warrant filed last year lays out the seemingly perfect motive: MacNeill's alleged affair with Gypsy Willis, who moved into the family's home as a "nanny" two weeks after Michele's death. The warrant also states that MacNeill "intentionally overdosed" his wife after she had plastic surgery because she approached him about the alleged affair.
MacNeill's autopsy initially concluded that she died of natural causes. Later, investigators changed it to "Undetermined," saying new information raised "suspicion." It raised the possibility that the combination of drugs in her body could have killed her and she may have been forced to take them.
"A few days before her death, I was helping her wash her hair and she turned to me and said, 'Alex if anything happened to me make sure it was not your father,'" said Somers.
As long as her father is a free man, Somers says she will live in constant fear. "They have all the evidence …they have everything they need. They need to do the next step… the indictment."
MacNeill's attorney told a Utah paper that his client adamantly denies he did anything to hurt his wife.
In 2009, while facing the federal fraud charges, he pleaded guilty to three felonies for lying to investigators.
MacNeill served time after pleading guilty to fraudulently trying to obtain military, banking and Utah identification documents for another woman, who turned out to be Willis, the woman Somers and investigators say he was having an affair with.
When MacNeill applied for the military identification with Willis, he listed April 14, 2007, as their wedding day - the day his real wife was buried and just three days after police allege he killed her.
"He's had time to plan his next move and I am very fearful of him and my younger sisters are very scared," said Somers.
