Melanie McGuire Case
Melanie McGuire is a New Jersey woman best known for being the perpetrator in the media-dubbed "suitcase murder." She was convicted of murdering her husband in April 2004 and was sentenced to life in prison on July 19, 2007. Melanie is serving her sentence at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Clinton, New Jersey. Barring a successful appeal, she will not be eligible for parole until she is 100 years old.
Melanie was from New Jersey in the US and was married to Bill McGuire for five years. They had two children together and had just bought a big house and were preparing to move in. That move would never happen. In Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, some 300 miles from their New Jersey home, a suitcase was discovered by a fisherman. He made a gruesome discovery. The case had a pair of human legs inside. Shortly afterwards two further suitcases were found, both containing body parts. The dismembered body was that of Bill McGuire.
Investigators determined that in the weeks before her husband’s murder, Melanie McGuire used their home computer to research topics including “how to commit murder,” how to illegally purchase guns, and “undetectable poisons.” She also did searches related to the powerful sedative chloral hydrate and its availability at Walgreens Pharmacy. On the morning of the murder, after dropping her sons off at daycare, she purchased chloral hydrate at a nearby Walgreens in Edison using a prescription she forged in the name of a patient at her clinic.