For a time several years ago, Woodbridge was in the national news spotlight, and that was because of Melanie McGuire: wife, mother of two young sons, nurse, Woodbridge resident, and convicted murderer.
It wasn't just that McGuire murdered her husband, Bill. It was how the petite woman disposed of his body - by slicing him up into body parts, putting the pieces into her matching luggage, andflung them off a bridge into the Chesapeake Bay - that kept viewers tuned in to the latest in the McGuire murder saga.
Now Investigation Discovery (that's Channel 111 for Comcast customers) will be highlighting McGuire, dubbed by the media as the "Suitcase Killer", in a new series, Deadly Affairs, hosted by long time soap opera star Susan Lucci.
The show will air Saturday, September 29, at 10 pm.
McGuire was having an affair with the doctor who owned the Morristown fertility clinic at which she worked as a nurse. The day after she and her husband had closed on a new house and were going to move out of their Woodbridge condo, McGuire told friends that her husband had hit her and cursed at her, and stormed out of the house, and said he was never coming back.
Well, the last part turned out to be true. His body parts were found floating by fishermen in three suitcases in Virginia's Chesepeake Bay several days after Bill McGuire supposedly dumped his wife.
Friends of Bill McGuire recognized him from an artist's sketch. That put the spotlight on Melanie McGuire, but it took 7 months before she was arrested.
Middlesex County prosecutors found that she had purchased a gun in Easton, Penn. several days before her husband disappeared. The head and trunk in one of the suitcases had bullet holes consistent to the type of gun and ammo that Melanie McGuire purchased.
The gun, however, was missing. That didn't deter prosecutors. They found that the luggage in which Bill McGuire's severed body was found was part of a set taht Melanie McGuire owned. The trash bags in which his body parts had been stashed were found to forensically match a roll of trash bags still in McGuire's possession.
When all was said and done, Melanie McGuire was found guilty of murder and body dismemberment in 2007. The now 39-year-old killer won't be eligible for parole until she's 100 years old.
The show is on Comcast on Channel 111; if you have a different cable provider, you can check Investigation Discovery to find the time and channel of the series airing.
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