Where Is Melanie McGuire Now? Inside the Suitcase Killer's Life After Murdering Her Husband and Dumping His Dismembered Body in 3 Bags By Emily Blackwood

It’s been over two decades since Melanie McGuire shot her husband, dismembered his body and stuffed his partial remains into a set of dark green Kenneth Cole suitcases she later dumped into the Chesapeake Bay. Though she was convicted of murder in 2007, the former New Jersey nurse has maintained her innocence.

“The killer is out there and it’s not me,” she said in a September 2020 interview on ABC News’ 20/20. “After all these years, I still feel hurt. I still feel bothered. Like, how could somebody think that I did that?”

According to family friends, Bill McGuire went missing on April 28, 2004, per Oxygen. Within days, a boater found a suitcase containing human legs floating in the bay, followed by two more suitcases over the next week, The Star-Ledger reported.

Police quickly identified the victim as Bill and determined that he was shot three times. Melanie filed for divorce from her husband the same day and told investigators that she hadn’t seen him since they got into a physical altercation on April 28.

Officials later linked a medical blanket found in one of the suitcases to the fertility clinic where she worked, uncovered her two-year affair with a coworker and learned that she had recently purchased a gun matching the bullets recovered from Bill’s body. Melanie, later dubbed the “Suitcase Killer,” was arrested in 2005 and convicted of her husband’s murder two years later.

The case inspired the 2022 Lifetime movie Suitcase Killer: The Melanie McGuire Story, now streaming on Netflix.

So where is Melanie McGuire now? Here’s everything to know about the convicted killer and her account of what happened to her husband.

Bill went missing in April 2004

According to friends and family, Bill disappeared on April 28, 2004 — the same day he and Melanie had closed on a $450,000 home in Warren County, N.J. The Star-Ledger reported that the couple had been married since 1999 and lived with their two children in an apartment in Woodbridge, N.J. Melanie worked as a nurse at a fertility clinic, and Bill, a Navy veteran, was an adjunct professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

“We found that we wanted the same things out of life,” Melanie later told ABC News in June 2007. “The best times were after we were married and after our first son was born. The sun rose and set over that child and over me.”

However, she claimed her husband had a violent side, one she was even warned about by his ex-wife, Marci Paulk, who had previously filed a restraining order against him. Melanie told police that the last time she saw Bill, they had gotten into a fight where he had slapped her and stuffed a dryer cloth in her mouth.

After she locked herself in their bathroom, the New Jersey mom said Bill fled, and she never saw him again. His car was discovered the following day outside a hotel in Atlantic City.

His partial remains were found across three suitcases that washed up on Chesapeake Bay 

In May 2004, police recovered three suitcases containing various body parts of a White male, per The Star-Ledger. They determined that the unidentified man had been shot three times with a .38-caliber revolver: once in the head and twice in the torso, per Oxygen.

After releasing a composite sketch of the victim’s face, the wife of one of Bill’s Navy friends recognized the 39-year-old father of two. Melanie, who had filed for divorce the same day her husband’s body was identified, told ABC News that she “burst into tears and probably sobbed for about an hour or so” when police called with the news.

However, the detective who interviewed the widow after Bill’s death described her reaction differently. “She made expressions like she was crying,” Detective Ray Pickell told ABC News, “but she never had a tear in her eye.”

She alleged that Bill was a gambling addict and was killed over a debt

In her first interview with police, before her arrest, Melanie told authorities that Bill had a gambling problem and could have been in debt to dangerous people. She stuck to that account throughout her arrest, subsequent trial and conviction.

“He found he could make some money gambling,” she explained in an old clip of her interview with ABC that re-aired on 20/20 in 2020. “He wanted what he wanted, and he couldn’t get it fast enough, and with that came frustration, and eventually that frustration became directed at me.”

Though Melanie said she believed that Bill was killed over money he owed, no evidence ever emerged to support that account.

Melanie was arrested after police discovered her affair

Though she had no prior criminal history or obvious motive for murder, police slowly began to uncover circumstantial evidence to arrest Melanie for first-degree murder in June 2005, per The Star-Ledger.

Investigators later revealed that the mom had a two-year-long affair with Dr. Bradley Miller, a married doctor who worked at her clinic. She admitted to ABC News that she was “deeply in love” with her coworker, but they had no plans to divorce their spouses because “the children came first.”

In addition to her secret romance, police also learned that Melanie had purchased a .38-caliber revolver from a store in Easton, Pa., days before Bill went missing. She also searched “undetectable poisons” and “how to commit murder” on her home computer.

Years after her conviction, the former nurse told 20/20 that Bill asked her to buy that gun, and she believed he did so because “he was in some sort of trouble.”

Melanie was sentenced to life in prison in 2007

Melanie’s trial began in March 2007, with prosecutors arguing that she killed Bill so she could start a new life with Bradley. Oxygen reported that the doctor had an alibi for his whereabouts during the murder and allowed police to secretly record his phone calls with Melanie.

In April 2007, the former nurse was convicted of first-degree murder as well as possession of a firearm for an unlawful purpose or perjury, Attorney General Stuart Rabner announced. She was found not guilty on four additional counts involving anonymous communications sent to law enforcement.

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“Melanie McGuire went to extraordinary lengths to cover up her crime,” Rabner said in a statement. “I’m pleased to say that the state also went to great lengths to expose and convict her.”

Three months later, Melanie was sentenced to life in prison.

Where is Melanie McGuire now?

Melanie has been serving out her life sentence at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in Clinton, N.J., since 2007. She has unsuccessfully attempted to appeal her case numerous times, citing in 2017 that the trial court wrongly refused to let her defense examine and test certain evidence on her computer, per Courier News and Home News Tribune. The appeal was denied.

When asked in her 20/20 interview if she still thought she was innocent, she said, “Absolutely.” However, she did not have much hope of being released.

“I’m terrified to hope,” she said. “Because to have it thwarted in here, it’s absolutely soul-crushing.”