April 25, 2007
SHE wanted her husband dead so that she could be with her boss and lover.
So Melanie McGuire (right), a 34-year-old nurse, killed her husband MrWilliam McGuire, hacked up his body and dumped the parts into Chesapeake Bay using three matching suitcases.
Yesterday, she was convicted of murder, desecration of a corpse, perjury and a weapons offence and faces 30 years in jail.
During the six-week trial, prosecutors said McGuire, 34, organised the 2004 murder using her expertise as a nurse.
They said that Internet searches on topics such as 'undetectable poisons' and 'ways to kill people' were made in the couple's home.
Assistant attorney general Patricia Prezioso told jurors McGuire forged a prescription for a powerful sedative, chloral hydrate, using the name of a patient from her clinic on 28Apr 2004, the day her husband disappeared.
Two days before her husband was last seen alive, McGuire bought a gun and bullets that matched those in her husband's body.
The verdict from the jury of nine women and three men came after about 13 hours of deliberations over four days.
McGuire's attorney, Mr Joseph Tacopina, had argued that the petite nurse was physically incapable of killing her 190cm-tall, 95kg husband and it would have been impossible to do so without neighbours hearing something or leaving behind some physical evidence.
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
The prosecutor acknowledged that there were some unanswered questions, but said there was still 'overwhelming' evidence to convict the mother of two.
The defence portrayed Mr McGuire as a man with gambling debts who might have been killed by a creditor.
The guilty nurse, who sobbed as she heard the verdict, was acquitted on two counts of hindering prosecution and falsifying evidence.
The defence said that they will be appealing the decision.