Fertility Clinic Nurse Dismembers Husband

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Woman Accused Of Dismembering Husband

Trenton, New Jersey — Nearly three years after suitcases full of body parts washed up along Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, a nurse who helped infertile women conceive is to go on trial this week on charges that she killed and dismembered her husband.

Melanie McGuire is charged with first-degree murder in the April 2004 killing of her husband, 39-year-old state computer analyst William T. McGuire. She pleaded not guilty and has remained free on $2.1 million bail.

Her trial was scheduled to open Monday at Middlesex County Courthouse in New Brunswick, and state Superior Court Judge Frederick DeVesa estimated the proceeding will last four to five weeks.

The judge has instructed lawyers in the case to restrict their comments outside the courtroom.

McGuire, 34, has maintained her innocence, and her lawyer, Stephen Turano, said the state's case is weak.

"What the state did, they very quickly came to a conclusion that it was Melanie McGuire," Turano said. "Anything that suggested she was not involved they ignored or minimized."

He said no decision has been made on whether McGuire will testify.

According to pretrial motions, prosecutors contend McGuire killed her husband in part so she could continue an affair with her boss at a Morristown fertility clinic.

The state will try to prove that McGuire drugged her husband with a sedative on April 29, 2004, shot him in the head and chest and dismembered his body in the bathroom of the Woodbridge apartment they shared with their two preschool sons.

The state says bits of human tissue were found on McGuire's shoes, which "puts her with the body," said Assistant Attorney General Patricia Prezioso, who is prosecuting the case.

Prezioso also is expected to attempt to show that McGuire conducted Internet searches before her husband's disappearance on topics such as using pesticides as poisons, state gun laws and ways to commit murder.

Prezioso claims McGuire bought the pistol used to shoot the victim in Easton, Pa., two days before the slaying, and that she forged a prescription for a powerful sedative.


UPDATE:

Prosecutors: McGuire Drugged, Then Killed And Dismembered Husband

Middlesex County: Prosecutors say that Melanie McGuire drugged her husband before killing and dismembering him, using the knock-out drug, chloral hydrate.

So far, the evidence supporting their contention is a prescription form from her employer made out to an Old Bridge woman who told the jury Tuesday she was never prescribed the drug. The prescription was filled out at an Edison Walgreens.

A forensic analysis of the McGuires' home computer that Melanie McGuire turned over to investigators through her attorney shows searches about murder, chloral hydrate and a store locator for Walgreens. A vial of the drug was found in the glove compartment of William McGuire's car.

But analyses of blood and urine taken during an autopsy of William McGuire's remains never revealed the substance or any of the chemicals associated with its breakdown, a witness told a jury today in Superior Court, New Brunswick.

Prosecutors have contended that what limited testing was performed was done too late to show the drug.

Dr. George Jackson, the chief toxicologist for New Jersey, said investigators first told his office to look for ""all poisons, everything'' in the blood and urine samples received from authorities in Virginia Beach, Va., where William McGuire's remains were found.

But by the time investigators told him to check specifically for chloral hydrate, the blood and urine samples were gone. He had to rely on the results of a broad test showing the "fragments'' of all compounds in the blood and urine to check for chloral hydrate and its byproducts. He found neither the knock-out drug or those byproducts, he said.

The chances were "small to none'' that the blood tested when New Jersey took over the case in the fall of 2004 would have shown chloral hydrate or its breakdown compounds, he said. The deterioration of the blood and urine, which he related to milk being kept in a refrigerator over time, would have made it difficult to analyze, he said.

Under cross-examination by defense attorney Stephen Turano, Jackson acknowledged it's possible there was never any chloral hydrate used on McGuire.

In the morning, the jury heard from a forensic anthropologist who testified that a reciprocating saw and a short knife were most likely used to dismember McGuire's body.

Melanie McGuire, a 34-year-old nurse and mother of two who is charged with murder, desecration of human remains and other offenses in the case, has denied any role in the killing of her husband.