Googling for Murder
Meet Melanie McGuire. This attractive 34-Year old is on trial for poisoning and shooting her husband. Then she took his body, dismembered it, shoved the pieces in suitcases, and dumped the suitcases into the Chesapeake Bay. Crabcakes taste like copper!
The trial presented some pretty damning evidence gathered forensically from her computers. The emails and google records points to an affair between Melanie and her boss at work, and research on methods for murder.
From the DailyRecord here:
At exactly 5:45:34 on April 18, 2004 a computer taken from the office of the attorney of Melanie McGuire, did a search on the words “How To Commit Murder.” That same day searches on Google and MSN search engines, were conducted on such topics as `instant poisons,` `undetectable poisons,’ ‘fatal digoxin doses,’ and gun laws in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Ten days later, McGuire murdered her husband, William T. McGuire, at their Woodbridge apartment, using a .38 caliber gun obtained in Pennsylvania, one day after obtaining a prescription for a sedative known as the “date rape” drug. The 34-year-old McGuire dismembered his body and placed body parts in three suitcases found in the Chesapeake Bay in May of 2004.
The murder took place the same day that a two-ounce prescription of chloral hydrate was purchased at a Walgreen’s in Edison. A search on April 26, 2004 of the computer seized by the state found that the user accessed the site www.walgreens.com/storelocator.
On Monday Yan Kim Lee, a pharmacist at the Walgreen’s testified that on the morning of April 28 she filled a prescription for chloral hydrate for a woman named Tiffany Bain, on script signed by Dr. Bradley Miller of Reproductive Medicine Associates in Morristown.
Melanie McGuire worked at the RMA office as a nurse, and at the time of her husband’s death she was having an affair with Miller.
A computer forensics expert was able to trace e-mails on Hotmail accounts allegedly used by McGuire and Miller. She said the e-mails seemed to indicate the two had a romantic relationship, with such phrases as “I love you,” and “I miss you.”
The defense is arguing that everything is circumstantial. But the forensics clearly show motive and method. Looking at her you wouldn’t think that she would slice and dice her husband to bits. Did she have help?
