PROVO, Utah, Nov. 1 (UPI) -- Utah's chief medical examiner testified it was possible Dr. Martin MacNeill's wife died after being drugged and held down in a bathtub full of water.
Though it was possible Michele MacNeill was killed April 11, 2007, by her husband the way prosecutors allege, Utah State Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Todd Grey couldn't say for sure, ABC News reported Thursday.
"I did not feel I could reach a conclusion of homicide," Grey said Wednesday.
An initial assessment by a former assistant medical examiner, Dr. Maureen Frikke, determined Michele MacNeill died of cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and inflammation of the heart, but Grey reviewed the case and ruled the death was "undeterminable" because of the possibility drugs played a role in her death.
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Martin MacNeill's daughter, Alexis Somers, testified Wednesday she believes her father overmedicated her mother as she recovered from plastic surgery she had on April 4, 2007.
The then-medical student said she visited home to find her mother sedated shortly after the surgery and told her father, "I'm taking over" her mother's care.
"She actually had me take out every single pill from the pill bottles and she wanted to feel what the pills feel like in her fingers, so if my dad tried to give her anything, she would know what he was giving her," Somers said.
Somers said her mother "was feeling really well" when she left, but the next day her 6-year-old sister found their mother unconscious in a bathtub full of brown water. Michele MacNeill died less than two hours later.
Prosecutors allege Martin MacNeill convinced his wife to have plastic surgery so he could drug her and hold her under the water in the bathtub.
