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Speaker 2: Hi, everyone, welcome back to Facing Evil. I'm Yvette Genti Lay.
Speaker 3: And I'm Rasha Pecuerero. So this week we are talking
Speaker 3: about the murder of Michelle McNeil. This was a shocking
Speaker 3: case that involved a perpetrator who weaved a huge web
Speaker 3: of deceit and crime that destroyed basically every single person
Speaker 3: that he touched. And that is just a small snippet
Speaker 3: of the story. Today, we'll be breaking all of this
Speaker 3: down with our guest m William Phelps, who many of
Speaker 3: you may know, an author and an investigative journalist known
Speaker 3: for the podcast Paper Ghosts and crossing the Line with
Speaker 3: m William Phelps. But first, our producer Trevor is going
Speaker 3: to take us through today's case.
Speaker 4: Was Martin McNeil about to get away with murder? That's
Speaker 4: what two unlikely accusers believe his daughters. They say he
Speaker 4: killed their mother, and they've spent the past six years
Speaker 4: trying to prove it.
Speaker 3: We did try to warn her, and there was no
Speaker 3: talking to It was like he had his grips around her.
Speaker 3: He had total control.
Speaker 2: Ever since the day my mom died, I was concerned
Speaker 2: that my father killed her. I've been fighting to get
Speaker 2: justice for this case ever since then.
Speaker 1: Michelle McNeil was a fifty year old woman who died
Speaker 1: under mysterious circumstances in two thousand and seven on April
Speaker 1: second of that year. She'd had cosmetic surgery a facelift,
Speaker 1: and by all accounts, it went well, but then kings
Speaker 1: took a turn for the tragic. Her husband of thirty years,
Speaker 1: Martin McNeil, was a physician, and had asked the surgeon
Speaker 1: to prescribe a variety of medications that wouldn't normally be necessary,
Speaker 1: and on April eleventh, she was found dead, fully clothed,
Speaker 1: in her bathtub. Investigators initially chalked her death up to
Speaker 1: a heart attack, but later toxicology reports would reveal something
Speaker 1: much more nefarious. Michelle's children had suspected their father was responsible.
Speaker 1: There were rumors that Martin was having an affair, and
Speaker 1: soon years of wrongdoing and deceit would come to light.
Speaker 1: Martin McNeil's reported crimes started back in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: when he forged thousands of dollars worth of checks in
Speaker 1: the state of California. That's also when he started scamming
Speaker 1: the Veterans Association for Disability Payments, hauling off more than
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand dollars over three decades. During this time period,
Speaker 1: he and Michelle had met at the Church of Latter
Speaker 1: Day Saint and quickly eloped. Soon after, Martin was briefly
Speaker 1: jailed in a separate case of forgery, theft, and fraud.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty four, he landed a residency in a
Speaker 1: New York hospital after falsifying transcripts to get into medical school.
Speaker 1: In two thousand, he resigned from a medical residency at
Speaker 1: Brigham Young Health Clinic in Provo, Utah, after being accused
Speaker 1: of having an affair with a patient, and in fact,
Speaker 1: he reportedly had a series of affairs, and one girlfriend
Speaker 1: later reported that Martin had told her he'd killed his
Speaker 1: own brother by drowning him in a bathtub. After Martin
Speaker 1: began an affair with a woman named Gipsy Willis, he
Speaker 1: became increasingly verbally abusive with Michelle. Martin wanted a divorce,
Speaker 1: but Michelle, a devout Mormon, wanted to save their marriage,
Speaker 1: and that's when in two thousand and seven, Martin proposed
Speaker 1: that she get facelift surgery, and Michelle, who by all
Speaker 1: accounts didn't need the surgery, agreed to do it. Martin
Speaker 1: then demanded that the doctors prescribe an unusually heavy duty
Speaker 1: cocktail of drugs for Michelle, and he got his way.
Speaker 1: The day after she was discharged, their daughter, Alexis, found
Speaker 1: Michelle unresponsive. She managed to briefly awaken her mother, but
Speaker 1: she had to go back to school. Before she did,
Speaker 1: her mother told her, quote, if anything happens to me,
Speaker 1: make sure it was not your dad. End quote. And
Speaker 1: a few days later, on April eleventh, Alexis got a
Speaker 1: phone call from her father telling her that her younger
Speaker 1: adopted sister had found Michelle face down in their bathtub, unresponsive.
Speaker 1: It took months for Michelle's adult children to convince authorities
Speaker 1: to investigate Martin McNeil, and it took years for Martin
Speaker 1: to finally get a trial where He was eventually convicted
Speaker 1: of murder and after just over two years of serving
Speaker 1: his sentence, Martin took his own life while in prison.
Speaker 1: And so who was Michelle McNeil, what actually led to
Speaker 1: her suspicious death and how does the story reveal a
Speaker 1: darker method of partner abuse involving deception, manipulation and drugs.
Speaker 2: All right, we are back and we have got a
Speaker 2: very special guest joining us today to talk about the
Speaker 2: case of Michelle McNeil. You may know him from the
Speaker 2: hit true crime podcast Paper Ghost, or you maybe read
Speaker 2: one of his many books including We Thought We Knew
Speaker 2: You or Don't Tell a Soul, just to name a few.
Speaker 2: We're talking, of course about em William Phelps.
Speaker 5: So welcome, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 6: I'm humble by it and I love your show and
Speaker 6: listen and yeah, it's great to be on.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks Matthew. I guess first of all, we always
Speaker 2: like to ask our guests like, how did you get
Speaker 2: into the true crime genre? Tell us like did you
Speaker 2: search it out or did it just happen? Tell us
Speaker 2: a little bit about yourself and how that all came about.
Speaker 6: That's an interesting story because the day before I was
Speaker 6: a true crime author. I didn't know I was becoming
Speaker 6: a true crime author. You know, I was a journalist.
Speaker 6: I wrote about politics, music, everything, and then my agent
Speaker 6: was like, listen, if you really want to make a
Speaker 6: go with this, you should write a book. So I
Speaker 6: was covering the story of a nurse in Northampton, Massachusetts
Speaker 6: who had killed a bunch of people and she was
Speaker 6: on trial. So I pitched that. I got a deal,
Speaker 6: and I thought I was writing a book about a
Speaker 6: bunch of different people, interesting people, one of whom was
Speaker 6: a serial killer. And I published that book and then
Speaker 6: all of a sudden, I was a true crime guy
Speaker 6: and that's all they wanted. The book was kind of successful,
Speaker 6: so that's what they wanted, and I followed it. And
Speaker 6: from that book, you know, TV came. They wanted to
Speaker 6: interview me on different shows for that book. So I
Speaker 6: got into TV that way, and then I continue to
Speaker 6: write books, continue to do lots of TV executive produce, produce,
Speaker 6: create TV shows, you know, all in the true crime space, documentaries,
Speaker 6: and then of course podcast companies came calling, and you know,
Speaker 6: here I am. I partnered with iHeart about three years
Speaker 6: ago and it's been great. I mean, they're a great
Speaker 6: company for what I want to do.
Speaker 3: They really are iHeart. I mean, we're part of the
Speaker 3: same o'honna, Matthew, the same family. Yeah, yeah, so I
Speaker 3: love that. I think you know, Yvett and I stumbled
Speaker 3: into true crime just because of our lineage, and you
Speaker 3: know who we're related to. But it's what you do
Speaker 3: with it when you have that voice given to you, right,
Speaker 3: So of course you know, today we are talking about
Speaker 3: Michelle McNeil, and I would love to know, Matthew, what
Speaker 3: was your first impression on this particular case.
Speaker 6: My first impression when I looked at this case was
Speaker 6: the LDS connection number one. I see a lot of
Speaker 6: that in my work. I see a lot of the control,
Speaker 6: course of control, almost cult like behavior. Not all LDS,
Speaker 6: of course, but I do see an amount of it.
Speaker 5: I see in a lot of these stories we cover.
Speaker 6: I mean, I just see a woman who as a
Speaker 6: kid was an a student, the golden child, if you will.
Speaker 6: She played the violin, she was a cheerleader, she acted
Speaker 6: homecoming queen. It goes on and on and on, right, right,
Speaker 6: So you know, we see these people a lot of
Speaker 6: times who are It's like this person had so much
Speaker 6: to offer humanity, and some buddy came along and took
Speaker 6: that away from not only the world, but her inner circle.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 6: So my first impressions were just as they generally are, sadness, yeah,
Speaker 6: and a lot of frustration that no one saw what
Speaker 6: was going on here.
Speaker 5: As this thing builds, you know, there's.
Speaker 6: A lot going on, a lot of red flags that
Speaker 6: were missed.
Speaker 3: A lot of red flags, a lot a lot of flags.
Speaker 2: And you know, and one of the first things I
Speaker 2: want to talk about is the major red flag. Who
Speaker 2: is Martin, right, Martin McNeil. And the thing that is
Speaker 2: so it's just mind blowing to me is that this
Speaker 2: man was able to forge like documents for government, for
Speaker 2: job qualifications, for medical and no one like Bada DENI like,
Speaker 2: how how do we think that he got away with this?
Speaker 2: Like for me, you know, being a biracial woman, like
Speaker 2: I think about if it was a black man or
Speaker 2: a Latino like I feel like they would have been
Speaker 2: like stopped in their tracks, you know, instantly. But this
Speaker 2: guy just seemed to get away with it. Do we
Speaker 2: think it was because you know, he was a veteran
Speaker 2: to start with.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 6: It's interesting because you mentioned the racial part of it,
Speaker 6: and you know he's a white LDS guy. It's like,
Speaker 6: you know, who's going to question that guy?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 6: I mean, and we should you know, you know, you
Speaker 6: should take everything out of it, right, and you could
Speaker 6: just look at the behavior, right, and things he did
Speaker 6: that the amount of prescriptions he was he was forging,
Speaker 6: I mean, he was a.
Speaker 5: Doctor, right.
Speaker 6: So when I look at everything he's done in totality, right,
Speaker 6: it's almost like you say that he was given a
Speaker 6: free pass and no one questioned what he was doing.
Speaker 6: And if someone just had taken even a second look
Speaker 6: at what he was doing bank, right, I mean you
Speaker 6: know they'd opened up a Pandora's box of criminal behavior.
Speaker 3: Really exactly. I think you just hit the nail on
Speaker 3: the head, Matthew, like the Pandora's box of criminal behavior.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: And you were saying earlier about like red flags.
Speaker 6: I mean, we're talking about a guy, right from what
Speaker 6: I read, he attempted to kill his mother and allegedly
Speaker 6: killed his brother.
Speaker 3: Right, allegedly, yes, who was.
Speaker 6: Found faced down in a bathtub, which is an important
Speaker 6: part of everything, right, absolutely, so, Prior previous behavior is
Speaker 6: a good indication of behavior in the future for people
Speaker 6: like this. Now, when we come to what you were
Speaker 6: talking about, forging checks and all this manipulation, you start
Speaker 6: to head down the road of a sociopath.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: And the thing we can never forget about a sociopath,
Speaker 6: but more so about a psychopath, is that we can't
Speaker 6: underestimate how charming they are.
Speaker 7: Ah.
Speaker 6: Yes, sometimes we'll get pulled into the web of they're
Speaker 6: charm and they won't even know it. I interviewed a
Speaker 6: serial killer for nine years, and going into that, a
Speaker 6: forensic psychologist friend of mine told me, Look, you invite
Speaker 6: the devil into your house, you better be ready to
Speaker 6: dine with him because if not, he's going to get
Speaker 6: inside your head.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And throughout that whole time, I mean ninety eight percent
Speaker 6: of the time, I kept I was m William Phelps.
Speaker 6: I was never Matthew. I was M William Phelps the
Speaker 6: whole time, Right, I was.
Speaker 3: That guy persona.
Speaker 6: Yes, But there were a couple of times where I
Speaker 6: fell right in with him, not in evil things he
Speaker 6: was talking about, but just like, hey, what are you
Speaker 6: doing tonight?
Speaker 5: Phelps? When we get off the phone, or.
Speaker 6: When I went to go visit him in prison, Hey,
Speaker 6: where are you headed now, well, I'm headed to No.
Speaker 5: No, no, you're.
Speaker 3: Right, you're not friend, right, you're not friends? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 6: So when we talk about Martin, we talk about the
Speaker 6: same type individual. I'm not saying he's a psychopath, but
Speaker 6: he clearly is heading down the road of a sociopath.
Speaker 2: You know, he was this supposedly right, this charming guy
Speaker 2: who you know, Michelle loved him, but at the same time,
Speaker 2: he was having an affair with this gypsy Willis who
Speaker 2: was the nanny, right, And we always talk about this
Speaker 2: a lot, like when women know, like Michelle knew what
Speaker 2: was happening, but she still chose to stay. We always think,
Speaker 2: from our perspective, well, why don't they just leave? Why
Speaker 2: didn't they get out? Why are they staying with these people?
Speaker 2: Why do you think she didn't after all the things
Speaker 2: that he was doing.
Speaker 6: In these situations? And I spoke to a really great
Speaker 6: expert on this, Laura Richards. Hear, what we're seeing in
Speaker 6: this relationship between the two of them is course of control.
Speaker 5: Without a doubt.
Speaker 6: The numbers say this, a woman in a coercive control
Speaker 6: marriage or relationship who's being abused, it takes her six
Speaker 6: to seven times to leave meaning she she goes, she
Speaker 6: comes back, she goes, if she's alive to leave at.
Speaker 5: The seventh time.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 6: Wow, So in this case we see no. So to
Speaker 6: answer your question, she was probably scared more than anything
Speaker 6: else to leave.
Speaker 2: And she had children. You know, they had so many
Speaker 2: children as well, Right, she had children.
Speaker 3: And you throw an LDS into it.
Speaker 6: LDS guilt into it, and the elder's probably telling her
Speaker 6: you have to stay.
Speaker 5: That's your duty as a Christian.
Speaker 6: You have to stay. So she's getting it from all
Speaker 6: ends here, right, and.
Speaker 2: She's scared right, right, And that's what we were talking
Speaker 2: about earlier, like you don't break up the marriage in
Speaker 2: this particular religion, in the Mormon religion, right, you just
Speaker 2: you're not supposed to supposedly.
Speaker 6: I mean she caught him, you know, looking at pornography
Speaker 6: and he threatened to kill her and himself with a
Speaker 6: butcher knife.
Speaker 3: Right, So this is.
Speaker 5: The kind of atmosphere she's living under.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not pattern.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: I am almost one hundred percent sure. And I'll say allegedly,
Speaker 6: but I am one hundred percent sure. He said to
Speaker 6: her many times, you leave, I'll find you, I'll kill you,
Speaker 6: or I'll kill these kids. I guarantee. He said that
Speaker 6: there's no doubt. Yeah, and so that's what she's living under.
Speaker 6: Plus he's he's a doctor, right, so he's got medications
Speaker 6: that he's giving to her without her knowledge. I would assume,
Speaker 6: you know, so he's really really controlling this.
Speaker 3: Woman, right. I was going to say he's a master manipulator.
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: So he somehow convinces his stunningly gorgeous wife, Michelle. She's,
Speaker 3: by all accounts, this beautiful woman. She you know, is
Speaker 3: a model at one point, I believe in just so beautiful.
Speaker 3: But he convinces her to get a facelift, and that's
Speaker 3: part of the manipulation, right, So she agrees and is like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'll get this surgery. And then that's when Martin asked
Speaker 3: Michelle's doctor to prescribe her a laundry list of medications,
Speaker 3: which eventually ends up killing her. So, you know, my
Speaker 3: question for you, Matthew, like, how cunning do we feel
Speaker 3: that this was, you know, compared to most of the
Speaker 3: other true crime cases that you cover. I mean, have
Speaker 3: you seen this a lot?
Speaker 6: Yeah, this is pretty classic stuff that he's doing. Sometimes
Speaker 6: in life, we run into people and we don't realize
Speaker 6: it but I call them soul suckers. They just start
Speaker 6: sucking the soul out of your life. You don't even
Speaker 6: realize what's happening. You're caught in the spiral. There's a
Speaker 6: little bit of codependency on your part, right, So you're
Speaker 6: in it, right, and you're scared, and they are using
Speaker 6: the absolute best manipulation tactics that they have in their arsenal.
Speaker 5: To control you.
Speaker 6: Like this cosmetic surgery, the facelift. She decides to do it,
Speaker 6: but then he first wants her to lower her blood.
Speaker 5: Pressure and then lose some weight.
Speaker 6: Right, so these are more tactics to tell her you're ugly,
Speaker 6: you're overweight, and you need to do these things if
Speaker 6: you want me to treat you better. Yeah, so this
Speaker 6: is all classic manipulation course of control on his part.
Speaker 5: It's very classic. I've seen it many times.
Speaker 6: I've written about it a dozen times, probably in forty
Speaker 6: something books.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I always like to look for the light in the darkness.
Speaker 2: And the thing about her children, like they spoke.
Speaker 5: Out about him, there's the light.
Speaker 3: There is a light. You know.
Speaker 2: They were so courageous and so brave and they knew it.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like when you get that feeling, right, that intuitive
Speaker 2: feeling that something is not right, and they took initiative,
Speaker 2: you know, to do the right thing.
Speaker 6: I find that to be very courageous on their part
Speaker 6: and very much a sense of love. You know, they
Speaker 6: it's love. You know, we're going to try to bust
Speaker 6: through all this with love.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So many people don't do that today.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: It's it's so much easier to love, right, it's harder
Speaker 6: to hate.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yes, yeah, you know with a guy like this,
Speaker 7: from just being on the outside, they knew, not even
Speaker 7: being in the inner part of their marriage, just on
Speaker 7: the outside, they knew this guy was a steamroller just
Speaker 7: running through their mother's.
Speaker 5: Life and eventually he was gonna take that life. And
Speaker 5: they knew that. They sensed that for sure.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love that you said that, Matthew. Though, like you know,
Speaker 3: they chose love like and I can only imagine and
Speaker 3: how conflicted they were because this man was their father.
Speaker 3: You know, he wasn't the biological father to all of
Speaker 3: the children. I believe some of them were adopted and
Speaker 3: you know, some were biologically his. But it is it
Speaker 3: is easier to love, and you know, even after all
Speaker 3: of that, you know, their mother essentially being killed and
Speaker 3: murdered just a little bit after that. And I'm not
Speaker 3: going to go into details because I'm the one. I can't.
Speaker 3: I can't say all the nitty gritty, gross details. I'm
Speaker 3: sure that you can, Matthew, but I cannot. But I
Speaker 3: do know that, you know, Martin ended up sexually assaulting
Speaker 3: one of his daughters just a short time after Michelle
Speaker 3: was killed. It was his daughter Alexis, and she I
Speaker 3: think she was home right before she was herself going
Speaker 3: back to medical school. She was on break and she
Speaker 3: woke up to him sexually assaulting her. I'm not even
Speaker 3: going to go into the nitty gritty. And this is
Speaker 3: what Alexis said that her father, Martin said to her
Speaker 3: when she woke up and discovered what was happening. He said, quote, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I thought you were your mother. End quote.
Speaker 3: Like how disgustingly gross is That makes me stick to
Speaker 3: my stomach.
Speaker 2: I mean, he is a predator, But just the fact,
Speaker 2: like what we were talking about earlier, you know, just
Speaker 2: that had happened to her, and that she still had
Speaker 2: the strength and the courage to speak up.
Speaker 5: Right, She wasn't afraid of him.
Speaker 3: She wasn't afraid.
Speaker 6: You know, this type of behavior, it tells me a lot,
Speaker 6: the absolute eu brisk, the absolute gaul, tells me a
Speaker 6: couple of things that he's probably done it before. Hmmm, right, okay,
Speaker 6: this is not his first rodeo with this, right right.
Speaker 5: And we know when.
Speaker 6: I say we in my profession, we know that a
Speaker 6: guy like Martin, his type of behavior, it never de escalates, It.
Speaker 3: All escalates, I see, always gets worse.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so if we look back, we see, you know,
Speaker 6: he attempted to kill mom. He allegedly killed his brother
Speaker 6: in a.
Speaker 3: Bathtub, which is how Michelle was found as well.
Speaker 6: Prior behavior good indication of later behavior. So she's dead
Speaker 6: and now he's going to start to openly sexually abuse
Speaker 6: the children. So yeah, this is classic, classic sociopath behavior.
Speaker 6: I mean, I did read some stuff about him perhaps
Speaker 6: being diagnosed mentally ill early on, but I've not seen
Speaker 6: those reports, the actual psychological reports, and I'd love to
Speaker 6: see those. I'd love to see those, because a sociopath
Speaker 6: can easily manipulate a psychologist into believe.
Speaker 3: In that they have a mental illness.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they have a mental illness. That's all part of
Speaker 6: the you know the game. So unless I see those
Speaker 6: psychology reports, I'm not believing that he was mentally you know,
Speaker 6: I'm not buying it.
Speaker 3: You know, we do so many of these cases.
Speaker 2: And the thing that is so frustrating about a lot
Speaker 2: of these cases is that it always takes not always,
Speaker 2: but a lot of the time. It takes so very
Speaker 2: long for these predators, murders, you know, to actually do
Speaker 2: the time. And for I mean for Martin, it took
Speaker 2: six years for him to finally go on trial for
Speaker 2: the murder of Michelle, Like why is this so common?
Speaker 6: Justice runs a lot of times for the worst criminals
Speaker 6: at a snail's pace because they they get these lawyers.
Speaker 5: To muck up the whole situation, to.
Speaker 6: Just start to file motions and argue every single little
Speaker 6: bitty thing, try to get venues changed, the whole thing.
Speaker 6: So they just keep prolonging this prolonged and this hoping
Speaker 6: something pops for them. And it's very frustrating because look,
Speaker 6: you're dragging the family through the six years, right, so
Speaker 6: these these family members who have lost a loved one
Speaker 6: are just being revictimized now all over again, over and
Speaker 6: over and over. Every time there's a I have a
Speaker 6: case now that I've been waiting on for I don't know,
Speaker 6: ten years, and this guy's been in prison.
Speaker 5: And for justice, yeah, and for the trial to start.
Speaker 3: Wow, a decade. A decade, ridiculous, A decade, I.
Speaker 6: Mean it just postponement after postponement after postponement. The other
Speaker 6: part of it too, sometimes, which shouldn't take more than
Speaker 6: a year, is that some times prosecutors will want to
Speaker 6: you know, they'll want to wait because they hope maybe
Speaker 6: they can cut a deal and avoid trial for everybody.
Speaker 6: So they start to talk to the defense attorney and
Speaker 6: maybe talk about a deal, talk to the family, Hey,
Speaker 6: would you accept twenty five years, you know or whatever.
Speaker 6: So that can take a little bit of time, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 6: But this five, six, ten year stuff is just our
Speaker 6: justice system is broken.
Speaker 3: I have to agree with that.
Speaker 6: I had a case I covered on Crossing the Line
Speaker 6: where a girl that I went to school with was
Speaker 6: murdered at the bus stop in the woods.
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry, And.
Speaker 5: They caught the kid who went to school with us.
Speaker 6: So long story shorty, I mean, he went to trial.
Speaker 5: You know, he got.
Speaker 6: Twenty five years, he's out in seventeen years. Her family
Speaker 6: fought that fought, that fought, that fought that he gets
Speaker 6: out in seventeen years. He moves south, meets a girl,
Speaker 6: gets her prey, and then he kills her in front
Speaker 6: of the baby. Oh there's more. He gets twenty five
Speaker 6: to forty years for that, and he just got out
Speaker 6: last fall.
Speaker 5: No, this man is murdered to women.
Speaker 6: He's walking the street as we speak.
Speaker 3: Justice system is broken. I'm at a loss for words.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it makes no sense to me how some of
Speaker 6: these cases sometimes are adjudicated. It especially when it comes
Speaker 6: to sexual assault cases. Given these three four year sentences
Speaker 6: to guys who judges.
Speaker 5: No, are going to go back out do it again.
Speaker 6: I'm getting myself heated here and I don't want to
Speaker 6: do that on your show.
Speaker 2: It's just so frustrating, like you said, And it gets
Speaker 2: into our heart and our soul and our mind and
Speaker 2: our spirit because we see it so often. You know,
Speaker 2: where they get in, they get out, or they never
Speaker 2: even get in at all.
Speaker 6: We try to your words, find the light in this right?
Speaker 6: We always I do, as an EmPATH, as a as
Speaker 6: a perfect Yeah, yes, try to find the light.
Speaker 5: In this Where's the light in this right? Where is it?
Speaker 6: And sometimes it's not there. It's just not there. You know,
Speaker 6: you'd think, oh, it's going to be the judge. Oh,
Speaker 6: it's going to be the prosecutor.
Speaker 5: Where is it? You know.
Speaker 6: So but there's hope, you know, you get you can't.
Speaker 3: Lose hope, always, always, always hope. Well, Matthew, what I
Speaker 3: was going to say as a fellow mpath which my
Speaker 3: sister Yvette and I are just like you. I think
Speaker 3: that's why we all do what we do, right. We
Speaker 3: are here for a reason to shine light. And I, Anyvette,
Speaker 3: I know, always always always try to find the light,
Speaker 3: even when it feels like it it's so dark that
Speaker 3: you can't see it. In this particular case, at least
Speaker 3: after a twenty two day trial, Martin was finally found
Speaker 3: guilty of first degree murder, and on that day, his
Speaker 3: daughter Alexis, but more importantly, Michelle's daughter Alexis said, quote,
Speaker 3: there was justice for my mind. Today. We are just
Speaker 3: so happy he cannot hurt anyone else. Quote.
Speaker 5: And it didn't.
Speaker 6: Didn't Alexis take on her mom's name instead of his name.
Speaker 3: She sure did. She didn't want to be doctor McNeil.
Speaker 5: No so much respect that you know.
Speaker 6: It's so I've seen other cases where kids are involved, where.
Speaker 5: They take sides.
Speaker 3: Yeah, look at.
Speaker 6: To Michael Peterson case, the staircase, right that that kind
Speaker 6: of divided.
Speaker 5: Those kids in that case.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 6: But here, I'm so happy to see her say what
Speaker 6: she said, not not only that, but to take.
Speaker 5: On mom's name. Come yeah, doctor.
Speaker 2: Somers strong, a strong woman right there, you know, and
Speaker 2: she will carry the torch for her mom, you know,
Speaker 2: and pay it forward to the next generation. So that
Speaker 2: is the light.
Speaker 6: That is that is the light. The light is starting
Speaker 6: to creep in there.
Speaker 5: Sure you know.
Speaker 2: Lastly, we're going to end on on this, and this
Speaker 2: is a very important question for all of us. We
Speaker 2: do know that in April twenty seventeen, Martin actually did
Speaker 2: successfully he committed suicide. You know, we know he had
Speaker 2: tried many times before, but this was only two and
Speaker 2: a half years into his prison sentence.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So the question here is do we think he was
Speaker 2: truly mentally unstable? And the last part of the question
Speaker 2: is do we think that if someone would have recognized
Speaker 2: these signs in him, could he have been saved? Could
Speaker 2: he have been a different human being?
Speaker 6: I think nothing was going to stop him from causing
Speaker 6: chaos and evil throughout his life.
Speaker 5: That was his nature.
Speaker 6: That's what he was going to do, whether it was
Speaker 6: with Michelle or somebody else. I think his suicide was
Speaker 6: more of a coward, this move to get out of
Speaker 6: spending life in prison and being a person who sexually
Speaker 6: abused his own kid and a murderer. He probably wouldn't
Speaker 6: have lasted long. Yeah, you know, to the question of
Speaker 6: noticing earlier on, that's a really important question that is
Speaker 6: being studied a lot today. Can we do brain scans
Speaker 6: on potential psychopaths and because most psychopaths, I never want
Speaker 6: to say all, but all the psychopaths that I've seen
Speaker 6: brain scans of and this work that's going on in England,
Speaker 6: they all are missing the empathy love part of their brain.
Speaker 6: It's that there's literally a whole So I mean, and
Speaker 6: I know this from interviewing serial killer psychopaths. It's not
Speaker 6: that they don't love, it's they can't love. They have
Speaker 6: no understanding of what love even means because they've never
Speaker 6: felt it. So that's an interesting question I think with
Speaker 6: the sociopath is kind of learned. You learn behavior in yourself,
Speaker 6: you grow into it. Psychopath kind of neuture and nature, right,
Speaker 6: there's the two combined. But with a sociopath, it's I
Speaker 6: think it's all nurturing. I think it's all as you
Speaker 6: grow into this this person, you realize that you can
Speaker 6: get things by manipulation, pathological lying, you know, all of
Speaker 6: this stuff.
Speaker 5: So Martin, I don't think. I don't think his.
Speaker 6: Path would have ever been different if somebody pointed out, hey,
Speaker 6: you know, you know you're not right, dude, you got
Speaker 6: to get some help.
Speaker 3: He was going to do what he wanted to do regardless.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we see that earlier in his life with the
Speaker 6: attempted murder and the alleged the murder. We see that, right,
Speaker 6: We see how he sets up his life. That's this
Speaker 6: is who I am. You know, he's telling us right,
Speaker 6: and then he proceeds to get worse and do worse things.
Speaker 2: Gosh, that resonated so deeply what you just said, and
Speaker 2: it I feel like, Rassia, you know, this is such
Speaker 2: a wonderful conversation with you because I feel like we're
Speaker 2: like minded. You know that we're coming coming from the
Speaker 2: same point of view, you know, always trying to tell
Speaker 2: the story, but have an immense amount of empathy for,
Speaker 2: you know, those that are all involved in it.
Speaker 6: Right, right, right, and and understand that you know, a
Speaker 6: victims of murder.
Speaker 5: Once the victim of murder.
Speaker 6: Is dead, there's a ripple effect that travels throughout the
Speaker 6: family forever and ever and ever and ever, friend's family,
Speaker 6: the community. Sometimes right, yeah, it's it's yeah. So we
Speaker 6: have to take that into consideration all the.
Speaker 3: Time, always and hold them in the light as well.
Speaker 5: In the light.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, m William Phelps, the one and only mahalanuis Law,
Speaker 3: thank you so much for being here on facing evil.
Speaker 3: But you'll always be Matthew to us, thank you, thank
Speaker 3: you for having me. Today's final message of hope and
Speaker 3: healing goes out to Rachel, Vanessa, Alexis, Giselle, El Sabrina
Speaker 3: and Ada. They are the children and adult children whose
Speaker 3: lives were scarred by the death of Michelle McNeil and
Speaker 3: by the death of their brother Damien, who took his
Speaker 3: own life three years after the death of their mother.
Speaker 2: It is our hope for you that as the years
Speaker 2: go on, you are able to celebrate the lives of
Speaker 2: those you held so dear and honor their legacy. As
Speaker 2: you are released from old wounds, that you are able to.
Speaker 3: Cherish the lives that you shared.
Speaker 2: The sorrow will always remain, but it is our sincere
Speaker 2: hope that the light finds you again and again and again.
Speaker 3: And if you listening right now find yourself in a
Speaker 3: time of grief and pain, know that this is our
Speaker 3: wish for you as well. Onward and upward. B moua
Speaker 3: E moua. Well, that's our show for today. We'd love
Speaker 3: to hear what you thought about today's discussion and if
Speaker 3: there's a case you'd like for us to.
Speaker 2: Cover, find us on social media or email us at
Speaker 2: Facingevil pod at tenderfoot dot tv.
Speaker 3: And one small request if you haven't already, please find
Speaker 3: us on iTunes and give us a good rating and
Speaker 3: a good review. If you like what we do, your
Speaker 3: support is always cherished. Until next time, Aloha.
Speaker 1: Facing Evil is a production of iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV.
Speaker 1: The show is hosted by Russia Pacuerero in a Vetchentile,
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick and Alex Williams our executive producers on behalf
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio, with producers Trevor Young in Jesse Funk, Donald
Speaker 1: Albright in Payne Lindsay, our executive producers on behalf of
Speaker 1: tenderfoot TV alongside producer Tracy Kaplan. Our researcher is Carolyn Talmadge.
Speaker 1: Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Find us on
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