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The day after murderer Martin Joseph MacNeill died at the Utah State Prison, his victim's sister said he was a man who felt sorry only for himself and never showed sorrow for the wife he killed.
On Monday, Linda Cluff said she knows the former physician killed Michele MacNeill and that "a jury of our peers knew this too and found him guilty."
"He is an evil man who carefully planned her death," Cluff said. "He was stone-faced in court and during my victim's impact statement he even laughed."
Correctional officers found MacNeill unresponsive at 11:23 a.m. Sunday in the yard of the Olympus facility in Draper, according to a Department of Corrections news release. MacNeill could not be revived and was pronounced dead at the prison at 11:50 a.m.
The body of the 61-year-old inmate has been taken to the Utah Medical Examiner's Office for an autopsy. Chief Deputy Justin Hoyal of the Unified Police Department, the agency investigating the death, said it could be weeks before the results are released because of the time needed for toxicology tests.
The prison news release said there were no obvious signs of foul play. But attorney Randy Spencer, who defended MacNeill at his murder trial, has said he suspects his client committed suicide.
MacNeill, a well-known Utah County doctor who also had a law degree, was serving a sentence of up to life in prison for the murder of his wife. The couple lived in Pleasant Grove and were the parents of eight children.
Michele MacNeill was found unconscious in her bathtub on April 11, 2007, by her then-6-year-old daughter and taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead. An autopsy ruled the 50-year-old woman died of natural causes, the result of heart inflammation and high blood pressure.
But those closest to her — her daughters, her sisters and her niece — said they knew Martin MacNeill was involved in the death. They pushed authorities to take another look and an investigation was opened. In August 2012, Martin MacNeill was charged with first-degree felony murder and second-degree felony obstruction of justice.
At MacNeill's 2013 trial, prosecutors alleged the doctor gave his wife a deadly mixture of prescription pills after she came home to recover from plastic surgery in April 2007. They argued his bad or odd behavior — including the growing seriousness of his affair with a woman named Gypsy Willis, his insistence that his wife have a face-lift and his request that extra medications be prescribed to her — added up to murder.
A 4th District jury returned a guilty verdict and MacNeill was later sentenced to up to life for murder and one to 15 years in prison for obstructing justice. Cluff and two of MacNeill's daughters had asked for the maximum sentence.
The two prison terms were to run consecutive to a one-to-15 year prison sentence MacNeill had received in a separate case for inappropriately touching his adult daughter.
MacNeill's appeals in both cases were turned down and his first chance of parole was to be at a hearing in August 2052, when he would have been 96 years old.
"I hope and pray his children's souls can heal as well as all of ours and we can find peace one day," Cluff said. "Martin's facade is over. The curtain has been drawn on his last and final act."
Twitter: @PamelaMansonSLC