Jury selection began Tuesday for the trial of Dr. Martin MacNeill, a Utah physician and lawyer whom prosecutors say forced his wife Michele to have a facelift and then purposely overmedicated her with a fatal cocktail of pain pills.
The MacNeills, who had eight children, had been married nearly 30 years when Michele MacNeill died in April 2007. Her body was found in a bathtub at the couple's Utah home a few days after she underwent a facelift procedure, which
Martin MacNeill insisted she get, according to CNN.
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The medical examiner reportedly found Diazepam, Oxycodone, Promethazine, and Zolpidem in her system, which, in the doses taken, sedated MacNeill and caused her to go into cardiac arrest.
The cosmetic surgeon, Dr. Scott Thompson, told officials that Martin MacNeill accompanied his wife on every pre-surgical visit and even gave the surgeon a list of medications he wanted prescribed for her.
Prosecutors say that Martin MacNeill had been carrying on an affair with a woman named Gypsy Willis and that Michele MacNeill had confronted him about it a few months before her death. Phone records show that Martin MacNeill exchanged 24 text messages with Willis the day of his wife's surgical procedure.
Willis and Martin MacNeill were both convicted of fraud in 2009 for stealing the identity of one of MacNeill's daughters to
make it appear that they were married, according to the Daily Herald.
Willis is expected to be called as a prosecution witness during the trial, according to CNN.
The defense has claimed all along that Michele MacNeill died of natural causes.
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