Lies shatter Utah family

Copyright 2009 Deseret News

PLEASANT GROVE — Rachel MacNeill's nightmares are better than her reality.

Her mom died, her dad's in federal prison for fraud and she and her sister, Alexis, are trying to take care of their three adopted sisters whom she says her dad tried to give away to another family.

Almost every day, the 29-year-old said she learns something new about her father — something he lied about in the past, something he did that made no sense to her at the time.

Many of the pieces of a bizarre family puzzle are finally coming together for her and her sisters, she says. But there are big pieces still missing from that puzzle — including a central piece concerning the circumstances surrounding their mother's death in April 2007.

It was Michele MacNeill's death that prompted family members to begin asking questions that eventually led to investigators unraveling years and years of lies by Martin MacNeill.

Jeff Robinson, the chief investigator for the Utah County Attorney's Office, compared Martin MacNeill's life to "Catch Me If You Can" but said the movie "paled in comparison."

In August, Martin MacNeill, the former director of the Utah State Developmental Center in American Fork, was sentenced to four years in federal prison after pleading guilty to two counts of aiding and abetting in aggravated identity theft.

In September, the Pleasant Grove doctor and attorney pleaded guilty to three felonies of making false and inconsistent statements, insurance fraud and forgery in Provo's 4th District Court and was ordered to serve three years in jail.

Past is prologue

But this is only the beginning to his past, Robinson said.

Rachel said she started questioning her dad after he took her to an LDS temple to pray about a nanny just six days after her mom — his wife — died in April 2007. Rachel MacNeill told her father they did not need to get a nanny because she could take care of her younger siblings until her sister, Alexis, came home from medical school for the rest of the summer.

But he was insistent.

Just outside the temple, a woman named Gypsy Willis, whom her dad pretended not to know, walked up to Rachel and Martin MacNeill. Willis began talking to them, and Rachel MacNeill said her dad acted very strange.

"This was the first time I realized something was wrong," she said. "The whole thing had been scripted."

She says her dad not only knew Willis but had been dating her for three years before his wife's death.