Jurors will be selected Tuesday for the alleged homicide of wife and mother Michele MacNeill, a former pageant queen found dead in a bathtub six years ago.
EMS workers came to the home of Michele and Martin MacNeill, parents to eight children, in April of 2007 to find her unresponsive, CNN reported. Martin MacNeill was hysterical and angry, blaming his wife for her recent face-lift, according to law enforcement officials at the scene.
The autopsy report determined she died of natural causes due to cardiovascular disease. But three years later, a toxicology report newly analyzed at the urging of her children has changed everything.
At her husband's demand, Michele MacNeill underwent a face-lift surgery in 2007 about a week and a half before she was found dead. According to the affidavit for an arrest warrant, during the last consultation with the plastic surgeon before the procedure took place, Martin MacNeill gave the doctor a list of medications he wanted for his wife.
The combination of medications, including Diazepam, Oxycodone, Promethazine and Zolpidem, were found in Michele MacNeill's system and determined to have contributed to her death.
Although none of the drugs alone was at toxic levels, Dr. Todd Grey, chief medical examiner of the Utah State Medical Examiner's Office, determined that, in combination, the drugs could have led to sedation and heart arrhythmia, resulting in cardiac death, according to CNN.
Michele MacNeill's cause of death was changed on October 6, 2010, to "combined effects of heart disease and drug toxicity."
Prosecutors began building a case against Michele MacNeil's husband. The couple, who had been married for almost 30 years, had serious problems, according to prosecutors, who say Martin MacNeill led a double life on the side with multiple affairs.
Legal documents state Martin MacNeill announced to his wife and family several times in the years preceding his wife's death that he wanted out of the marriage. While the couple did not divorce, prosecutors are calling his relationship with Gypsy Willis, a star witness in the trial, the base of his motive for murder.
Willis moved into the MacNeill home as a nanny shortly after Michele MacNeill's death.
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