Paperback: To Have And To Kill (2004) is the true story of a marriage that turned deadly.
William and his loving wife, a registered nurse named Melanie, had just closed on their half-a-million-dollar New Jersey dream home. Little did William know about the nightmare that was in store for him.
For Melanie had been involved in a long-term affair with a married doctor at the fertility clinic where she worked - and she had plans for the future that didn't include William.
Investigators believe that on 29 April 2004, Melanie first drugged her husband, then murdered him in cold blood.
One by one, three waterlogged designer suitcases were pulled from the Chesapeake Bay. In each were body parts of a man. In a forensics room, the truth was discovered: William McGuire had been horribly murdered and dismembered.
A murder investigation was launched.
On 2 June 2005, Melanie was arrested and was charged with first-degree murder.
Her trial commenced in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on 5 March 2007 and lasted seven weeks.
On 23 April 2007, three years after America witnessed the details of the suitcase incident unfold - on 48 Hours, Dateline NBC, and ABC Primetime, and in People magazine, among other news outlets - Melanie was convicted of first-degree murder, third-degree perjury, second-degree possession of a weapon for unlawful purpose and desecrating William McGuire's human remains.
"The depravity of this murder simply shocks the conscience of this court," Middlesex Superior Court Judge Frederick De Vesa declared. "One who callously destroys a family to accomplish her own selfish ends must face the most severe consequences that the law can provide...In this case, the crime was so heinous, so cruel and so depraved, that the court finds that the maximum sentence should be imposed."
She was sentenced to life imprisonment plus fifteen years for the other charges.
She must serve more than sixty-three years before she is eligible for parole under New Jersey law, when she will be one-hundred-and-one years old. At present, she is incarcerated at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Clinton, New Jersey.
On 20 September 2011, the New Jersey Supreme Court declined to hear her further appeal.
About the author: English-born John Glatt is the author of nineteen true crime books and four biographies, and has over thirty years of experience as an investigative journalist in England and America. He wrote his first true crime book in 1998 entitled For I Have Sinned: True Stories of Clergy Who Kill. With more than one million books currently in print all over the world, Glatt is acknowledged to be one of the best true crime writers working today. He and his wife divide their time between New York, the Catskill Mountains and London. His latest publication is The Prince of Paradise (2013), a true story of a hotel heir, his seductive wife and a ruthless murder.
This is a Crime and Investigation Network documentary of nurse Melanie McGuire and her deadly plot:
Rating: 5/5
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