In 2004, the body of New Jersey resident Bill McGuire washed up in Virginia. He had been dismembered and his remains had been placed in three different suitcases, all of which someone apparently tried to dispose of by tossing them into the Chesapeake Bay. The subsequent investigation centered on Bill’s wife, Melanie.
The police theorized that Melanie, a nurse at a fertility clinic, was having an affair with a doctor and murdered Bill so that she could end her marriage without losing custody of her kids. Melanie claimed that Bill, a Navy veteran who was a computer programmer at the time of his death, was chronically unfaithful and abusive. She also claimed that he had huge gambling debts and that he had probably been murdered by the mob.
Melanie McGuire went on trial in 2007. At that time, I wasn’t quite the Court TV fiend that I would later become, but I can still remember hearing about the case. The media dubbed Melanie “the Suitcase Killer” and reported on all of the strange things that Melanie had done in the days leading up to Bill’s death. For her part, Melanie had an excuse for every bit of evidence presented against her. For instance, when she was accused of moving Bill’s car, she claimed that it was just a prank that she enjoyed playing on him. When it was pointed out that she had taken a sudden trip to Delaware after the murder, she said she was taking advantage of Delaware’s lack of a sales tax. (That actually makes sense to me. Taxation is theft!)
Did Melanie murder her husband? When it comes to questions like that, it’s always good to remember the wisdom of Occam’s razor. Which possibility makes more sense? Was Bill shot and dismembered by someone who not only had the motive and the opportunity to kill him, but who had also recently traveled to Pennsylvania to buy a gun? Or was Bill murdered by a mysterious gambling syndicate that he had apparently never mentioned to anyone in the past? Personally, I thought Melanie McGuire was obviously guilty. The jury agreed.
In 2022’s Suitcase Killer: The Melanie McGuire Story, Lifetime tells the story of the ill-fated McGuire marriage. Candice King plays Melanie. Michael Roark plays Bill. Wendie Malick appears as the prosecutor who made the case against Melanie. As is typical of Lifetime true-crime films, it attempts to give equal credence to both sides. As such, Roark plays Bill as a temperamental philanderer, while Candice King plays Melanie as someone who is a bit too quick to smile whenever her story is challenged. Of course, by showing both sides, the film actually reminds us that Melanie’s story never made any sense at all.
If you’re a fan of true crime, the film will hold your interest. That said, it’s also a Lifetime film and, as such, some of the more gruesome details are downplayed. We see a hand in one of the suitcases, but that’s about it. We’re left to imagine what else was stuffed in that Kenneth Cole luggage. Myself, I was left to wonder why you would waste not only one but three suitcases on something like this. That’s another reason why I don’t buy Melanie’s excuse that the Mafia did it. The Mafia would have found a much more efficient way of getting rid of the body.
In the end, the main reason to watch this movie is Wendie Malick’s performance as the prosecutor who is determined not only to get a conviction but to have fun doing it. Seriously, Malick deserved her own spin-off.
As for the real Melanie McGuire, she is currently in prison, but she will not be eligible for parole until she is about 101.
