The Stranger She Loved

by Shanna Hogan

  The three women joined forces in their crusade against Martin. For more than a year they would document Martin’s past in an attempt to get police to investigate.

  Linda informed Martin’s daughters about his criminal past from 1977 and the psychological evaluations that determined Martin was a “latent schizophrenic.” While they knew he was bipolar, Alexis and Rachel had never seen any signs of schizophrenia, and believed he had faked symptoms to commit fraud.

  Michele’s daughters shared details with Linda about Martin’s intimate relationship with the nanny. Alexis also related her conversation with her mother, in which Michele had fretted about her own impending death: “If anything happens to me, make sure it wasn’t your dad.”

  Given what she had learned from Alexis, Linda reached out to Michele’s two other sisters, who both lived in California. In June, Terry Pearson and Susan Hare flew into Utah for the weekend to help convince police to investigate.

  On June 21, Linda returned to the Pleasant Grove Police Department with Susan and Terry. As soon as Detective Marc Wright and his supervisor stepped into the conference room, Linda said she could sense the skepticism. Before they even began the interview, Wright appeared defensive, she said.

  “We have very strong feelings that Martin had something to do with my sister’s death,” Linda told them. She explained what she had learned since their last meeting, including the fact that Alexis and Rachel also feared foul play, and Martin’s apparent affair with the nanny.

  “Alexis probably said that because she was mad at her dad for having an affair,” the detective scoffed.

  Undeterred, Linda mentioned she had heard of cases where bodies were exhumed for more testing after police learned new information.

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Wright’s supervisor said.

  As Linda and her sisters continued to explain their reasoning, Wright’s posture straightened. “Are you trying to tell me that I don’t know how to do my job?”

  “No. Not at all,” said Linda. “We have just learned new information that we thought you should be aware of.”

  After a few minutes, Wright spoke up.

  “The case is closed, ladies.” The detective rose from his chair. “That is that.”

  Neither Wright nor his supervisor asked any questions about Michele or took any notes, Linda said. “They were very rude. They made us feel like we were wasting their time and putting them out,” she recalled. “They were not interested in anything we had to say at all.”

  As the sisters exited the station, Linda felt deflated. She would get nowhere with the Pleasant Grove police; the detective had ceased the investigation. The brief report mirrored the investigation.

  “The victim had apparently slipped and fell after filling the tub with water,” the police report stated. “The case will be closed due to the autopsy results.”

  Information was later added about the family’s suspicions. The final report included a number of errors. Investigators apparently mistook Linda for her deceased sister: her name was transposed with Michele’s. “Linda’s death was natural,” the report stated. “Michele brought in documentation regarding Martin’s criminal past.”

  Alexis also contacted the Pleasant Grove police on a number of occasions, later submitting an official statement outlining her concerns. It too was ignored.

  * * *

  A few days after being kicked out of the home for the second time, for questioning her father’s relationship with the nanny, Alexis tried once again to make amends, appearing remorseful, loving, and obedient in a series of phone calls and text messages.

  “I was trying to calm things down,” Alexis recalled. “I wanted to get back into my home to protect my sisters and fight for custody. My goal was to take my sisters away from them and raise them.”

  In June, on break from medical school, Alexis went on a scheduled trip with friends to Cancún, Mexico. She spent most of her vacation e-mailing and calling her father, attempting to regain access to the home.

  “I went through five or six phone cards trying to talk to him,” Alexis later said. “I remember having to try and calm the situation down. I was very apologetic and tried to be sweet.”

  Martin didn’t return her e-mails, and most of her calls went to voice mail. She purchased a few postcards, scribbling her pleas for peace. “Sorry. Please forgive me. I want to come back home. I need to be back home.”

  On another she wrote: “Hi, Daddy. I hope you’re feeling better. Can’t wait to see you.”

  In mid-June, she also sent him a card for Father’s Day. “Hi Daddy. I love you and wish I was with you. I know we’ve had some hard times lately but we can get through anything.”

  Amid simmering tensions, Alexis eventually returned to the house.

  * * *

  Martin had no desire to spend eternity with his dead wife. But because the marriage had been sealed in the Mormon temple, Martin was spiritually tied to Michele forever in the view of the church. Once he died, his spirit would join hers in heaven, where they would be together for eternity.

  Now Martin wanted to spend his life and afterlife with Gypsy.

  The couple discussed marriage, and by June Martin was inquiring about “unsealing” his cursed union to Michele so that he could have a celestial marriage with Gypsy in church. Although Gypsy had turned her back on the LDS faith years before, with Martin she suddenly embraced her Mormon roots. Because Gypsy had also been married in the temple, she sought out information on unsealing her own marriage to Jayson Jensen.

  Both Martin and Gypsy seemed enthusiastic about getting engaged as soon as possible.

  Searching online for rings, on June 26 Martin placed a bid on an online jewelry auction Web site called bids.com, purchasing a four-point-five-carat diamond engagement ring for seven thousand dollars.

  Two days later, Gypsy contacted an astrological Web site, comparing her and Martin’s respective zodiac signs to determine a potentially fortuitous wedding date.

  To celebrate their pending engagement, in early July 2007 Martin and Gypsy took another trip to Wyoming to visit with Vicki and Howard Willis. In nearby Cheyenne, Martin rented a banquet room at a restaurant called Poor Richard’s to host a party. Martin paid for the food and purchased bottles of sparkling cider for a toast. On July 3, Martin, Gypsy, her parents, siblings, and family friends gathered for the celebration.

  “There was a big party,” Vicki remembered. “It was a big deal.”

  When it came time for the toast, Martin got down on one knee and professed his love for Gypsy. “I’ve loved you from the moment we first met,” Martin said, looking up adoringly at his girlfriend. “Will you marry me?”

  Tears filled Gypsy’s eyes as she enthusiastically gasped, “Yes.”

  It seemed Gypsy would finally have her happily ever after.

  “They were both very, very happy,” Vicki said years later. “He made a speech about his love for her and made a very public show of dropping to one knee and asking her to marry him … It was a happy event.”

  The next day Martin accompanied Vicki into town to run an errand. During the drive, Martin spoke of his adoration of Gypsy.

  “I never loved Michele. But I love Gypsy,” Martin told Vicki.

  Vicki was taken aback. “But Martin, you made a family with Michele!”

  Martin then amended his previous statement. “Well, I did love her—I loved her as a sister. But I did not love her the way I love Gypsy.”

  Following their engagement, Martin and Gypsy no longer tried to conceal their relationship. It soon became obvious even to the neighbors that they were a couple.

  “At first we learned she was the nanny,” Doug Daniels later said. “But everyone could tell the relationship was more than that. It morphed into ‘when are you getting married?’”

  Martin sent all his children an e-mail informing them he had fallen in love with Jillian and that they would be wed in the temple.

  Alexis and Rachel were disgusted.
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br />   On July 20, Martin and Gypsy obtained a marriage license. But the happy new couple would never actually wed.

  Still, Gypsy would discover a vile way to become the new Mrs. MacNeill.

  26.

  The profound grief caused by Michele’s death erased the last twisted shred of pretense remaining in the MacNeill family. The house in Pleasant Grove was in turmoil. Martin was preparing to marry his mistress. The younger children hated their new nanny. Alexis was desperate to get custody of her sisters. And Martin’s daughters suspected their father of murder.

  But not everyone in the family had turned on Martin. Damian stuck firmly by his father, eventually becoming his sole defender. By then Alexis’s conviction that her dad was a murderer was absolute. It drove a wedge between the sisters and brother.

  “I had talked to him about my concerns, and he didn’t want to believe that my father was capable of killing my mom,” Alexis later said in an interview.

  The constant fighting caused Martin’s mood to fluctuate erratically. Even Gypsy found life inside the house insufferable.

  “They were fighting all the time,” Gypsy recalled. “It was terrible. It was so hard. And then dealing with Martin was very difficult also. Because everything had to be on his terms.”

  Unaware of how to help him combat the stress, Gypsy wanted him to stop fighting with his daughters and just make peace. The adopted girls wanted to be with their older sister—Gypsy told him he should just give up custody to Alexis.

  * * *

  In July, two months after she had been fondled by her father, Alexis called the Pleasant Grove police. But she still wasn’t ready to file charges. Instead, she inquired about procedures to report abuse.

  By then Martin had lost all desire to fight for the adopted children, but he still wasn’t ready to give them to any of his biological daughters.

  Late that summer, Martin, Alexis, Rachel, and the younger girls took a trip to California, where they visited with family friends, the Bledsoes—whom Alexis hadn’t seen for sixteen years. Martin told the Bledsoes that following his wife’s death he was having difficulty caring for his young daughters and discussed the possibility that they adopt the girls. Alexis, who had repeatedly expressed desire to take custody of the children, had no idea what her father was proposing until much later.

  Alexis would later report that during their trip she was sleeping in her hotel room when she awoke for a second time to find her father fondling her. Disgusted, Alexis shot out of the bed, screaming.

  Once again, Martin apologized, claiming he mistook Alexis for his wife. But by then Alexis had no doubt: her father was a sexual predator.

  Still, she did not call the police. Her main priority remained the welfare of her sisters. And she worried that if she pressed charges, the tenuous bond she had with her father would dissolve.

  After they returned home, Martin made a request of Alexis. Giselle, then sixteen, had long planned on spending the summer in Ukraine with relatives. Martin asked for Alexis to escort the teenager on the trip. “We’ll go get her after the summer,” Martin told Alexis.

  At first, Alexis rebuffed him. She and her father argued, and Martin once again threatened to keep her from her sisters. “If you don’t do this, I won’t let you see the girls,” he sniped.

  Fearful of losing her sisters, Alexis did as her father commanded. In July, Alexis flew with Giselle to Ukraine. Because it was simply a summer visit, Giselle packed only a small bag of clothing.

  Martin had also instructed Alexis to keep Giselle’s U.S. passport. “Giselle might lose it,” he said. “Bring it back so I can keep it safe.”

  Leaving Giselle with the girl’s biological sister in Ukraine, Alexis flew back to Utah with the passport. But instead of turning it over to her father, Alexis kept the passport.

  A few weeks later, Martin sent a text message to Rachel, Vanessa, Alexis, and Damian: I’m turning over custody of the girls to the Bledsoes in California.

  In desperation to get her sisters, Alexis hired an attorney, and, soon after, Martin received legal documents concerning custody. Enraged, Martin called his daughter.

  When he once again refused to give up the girls to her, Alexis threatened to report him to the police and child protective services for sexual assault stemming from the two fondling incidents.

  Over the next few weeks, Martin waged a furious campaign of intimidation. But Alexis remained firm. “I’ll do whatever it takes to protect them.”

  Martin was willing to let things get ugly. “If you fight me, I’m going to get you thrown out of medical school,” Martin screamed over the phone. “I’ll destroy you.”

  But he had no clue of the lengths his children were willing to go to at that moment. Upping the ante, both Alexis and Rachel contacted their father.

  “We’ll go to the police,” Alexis told her dad. “We’ll get them to reopen the investigation for Mom’s murder.”

  The very next morning, the girls were dropped off at Alexis’s Nevada apartment.

  That same day, Rachel packed up and moved to Nevada to assist Alexis with their care. Departing Utah abruptly, Elle, Sabrina, and Ada had packed only a few bags and abandoned most of their toys and possessions. Ada’s collection of dolls and her beloved princess bed also remained in the home in Pleasant Grove.

  Frightened of their father, Alexis, Rachel, and the girls went into hiding. They lived out of hotels around Nevada, avoiding security cameras in case Martin was searching for them. “We feared for our safety and for the safety of our younger sisters,” Alexis later said in an interview. “The stress we felt when we woke up every morning was incredible.”

  Now that the girls were in her care, Alexis became ruthless in her war against her father. Currently stonewalled by the police in the murder investigation, Alexis pursued other legal avenues. Her attorneys filed a lawsuit to take possession of the family home in Pleasant Grove.

  When Michele died, the house had been in her name because of Martin’s puzzling plans to prepare for his own death. Also due to his supposed terminal illness, Alexis had been appointed executor of her mother’s estate.

  The home was paid off, and although the property value had plummeted due to a slump in the housing market, it was currently valued at $363,000—all in equity.

  To provide her sisters an inheritance, Alexis wanted to take possession of the house, sell it, and split the assets to pay for the girls’ college education. Despite the fact that the will granted the house to Martin, Alexis filed motions stating that her father had killed her mother and should not benefit from his victim’s death.

  For the next seven years, legal ownership of the home would be entangled in probate court.

  On September 11, Alexis also called Pleasant Grove police and child protective services to press charges for the sexual assault. Martin was charged with forcible sex abuse, a second-degree felony.

  “Alexis stated there had been two incidents where she had been fondled by her father within three months of her mother’s passing,” the police report stated.

  When Martin learned Alexis was pressing charges, he threatened to take back the girls. Their confrontations grew vicious. To build a case against her dad, Alexis secretly recorded many of their phone conversations.

  During one call, Martin admitted he put his hands down Alexis’s pants. “I’m still a sexual person,” he said in a recorded conversation. “I have desires that need to be met.”

  In an attempt to extort Alexis, Martin told her if she signed a statement denying he’d ever touched her, he would relinquish all rights to custody of the girls.

  Alexis refused and took the recording to police. Martin was then slapped with an additional criminal charge: witness tampering, a third-degree felony.

  Now in serious need of legal representation, Martin consulted a former Brigham Young University law school professor, who recommended an attorney. Randall Spencer would become Martin’s loyal and trusted advocate for the next seven years.

  By 2
007, Spencer had already built a formidable reputation in the field of criminal defense. In his midforties, with a toothy grin, narrow face, and wire-rimmed glasses, Spencer was married and had three children, including a son with cerebral palsy.

  Born in Illinois and raised as a Mormon, Spencer was a graduate of Brigham Young University law school and had begun his legal career working as a public defender for the state of Utah before entering private practice at a firm known as Fillmore and Spencer.

  Spencer had risen to prominence by representing the controversial video store owner Larry Peterman in the infamous “MovieBuff” pornography case. Peterman rented out X-rated material from his stores in American Fork and Lehi, in Utah County—one of the most conservative parts of the country. Police conducted a raid on the stores, uncovering explicit material, and Peterman was brought up on obscenity charges, including fifteen misdemeanors for distributing pornography.

  As a Mormon family man, Spencer found pornography morally repugnant, but he also viewed the charges against Peterman as legally unjust.

  “I quickly became passionate about the case despite the fact I despise pornography. But this was a case that wasn’t about pornography,” Spencer recalled. “In my opinion it was a case where the prosecution was seeking to impose moral standards on one person.”

  The case went to trial, and in 2000, Spencer secured an almost immediate acquittal.

  Now, as he got to know his newest client, Dr. Martin MacNeill, Spencer felt MacNeill was also being unfairly persecuted.

  “He is obviously a very intelligent and articulate man,” Spencer later said. “As I learned his story I believed then as I do now that he’s not guilty of the murder.”

  In his representation of the sexual assault charges against Martin, Spencer’s legal strategy mostly involved filing motions to have the charges dismissed based on technicalities.

  In a statement about the case, Spencer also argued that Martin should not face criminal charges of sexual assault, because he was asleep when he fondled Alexis.