Police station: 911

Sally: I just shot my husband because he hit me.

EP: Did you shoot him?

Sally: Si. Estoy en 1802 South Tremont Street

PS: Who’s crying?

Sally: Mi hija

EP: Okay, is he dead?

Sally: The missing…

EP: Okay, what’s his name?

Sally: My name is Sally McNeil… Don’t knock on the door Shantina!

EP: How old is your husband?

Sally: He hit me, he beat me up.

Shantina: “Dad, not dad. My God, he’s got shot!

EP: Do you breathe?

Sally: Yes.

…

The life of the McNeil family changed dramatically after what happened that February 14, 1995the day that Sally, fed up with her husband’s mistreatment and in the midst of a new attack, took the sawed-off shotgun that she had in her bedroom closetshot him twice and then called the police to confess his crime.

Ray McNeil was a famous bodybuilder from the 1990s known as Mr. California after the title he got in the IFBB Championship (1991), created for amateur athletes looking to make the leap to professionalism. However, his love for weights had started long before, while He was a member of the United States Marine Corps.

There, day after day, he exercised his muscles with his companions, until he met Sally, an athletic young woman who worked as a cook in the Navy and who had been captivated by her body physiognomy. Quickly They started to get outwhile sharing their passion for the gym.

By 1989 they were already married and they had become a sensation within the armyespecially after winning the Navy Bodybuilding Championships separately, he in the men’s category and she in the women’s.

Both were clear: they wanted to be professional bodybuilders. He made it and instantly decided to resign from the Marines after getting his pro card after being crowned the IFBB Championship. But that passion ended up becoming an obsession, to the point of developing “reverse anorexia”, as experts call it, where He wanted his body to be bigger and bigger.

By that time, the couple was already known in the media for the impression that these two bulky bodies caused on stage. But back then steroids played a key role in the formation of the muscles of bodybuilders, who consumed them regardless of the side effects they might suffer.

As a result of that they began to transit financial difficulties because of how expensive the doses used to be, and with that the discussions began: all the substances had to be for Ray because he was the professional, he said, while she only consumed them to have her husband’s physical approval.

With the aim of being able to help pay for the expenses, Sally took advantage of her already defined figure to work in a wrestling program. Seeing the repercussion generated by her body, she took one more step and she became professionally independent by filming her own videos beating men and defining himself as Killer Sally (The murderer).

She never turned professional, even placing fifth in an amateur competition in 1993. However, money was no longer an issue because of the fame she gained from making those recordings. But as she increased the money, they were also upping the steroids for Ray.

The long-awaited event finally arrived for Mr. California: had qualified to compete for Mr. Olympiathe most prestigious tournament in the world of bodybuilding.

Despite having made steroids a routine diet, Ray failed to get past fifteenth place, which turned out to be a very hard blow to his self-esteem, which he ended up taking out on Sally. The consequences of consumption in large quantities were already taking effect: Ray had gone from being a charismatic and great athlete, to a six foot monster with sudden mood and personality changes.

“The first time he hanged me I thought he was going to kill me. It was shocking. Many times, when he attacked me, he would instantly choke me. I shouldn’t have let it come to that, I should have left much sooner. I should have left him on the third day of marriage. That day he hit me and then he told me that he was sorry, that he would not do it again and I believed him, ”Sally commented in the documentary of Netflix Killer Sally: The Killer Bodybuilder.

February 14, 1995: the day that changed everything

Ray y Sally they had been living together for 8 years in the midst of a relationship marked by violence, infidelity, weights and steroids. She had even decided to move in with her children (that she had with another couple) weeks before that day, but what happened completely changed her plans.

Era Valentine’s Day. Ray and Sally hadn’t seen each other all day, and when night fell, she put on her makeup and decided to go find him at a bar he always went to after training. When she started to open the door, Mr California entered the house. After an argument, Ray pounced on her and began choking her. It was then that Sally wriggled free, ran into the room, grabbed the rifle cut out of the closet with two cartridges and, after asking him to leave and receiving a negative answer, Shooting.

“3 days before I had a show and had taken a lot of steroids. Five different. She didn’t know what Ray was capable of, he was a super human, super strong and super fast in a small apartment,” he recalled.

With Ray lying on the ground, Sally called the police and confessed to what had happened. While being transferred to the police station, Ray died in the hospital due to the injuries caused by the impacts. A shot went through her ribs and, a second, through her jaw.

“On February 14, 1995, at approximately 10:40 pm, Oceanside Police responded to 1802 South Tremont (the McNeil family apartment) regarding a shooting. Upon arrival, officers found Ray McNeil, 30, he had gunshot wounds to his face and stomach. McNeil was airlifted to Scripps Memorial Hospital, La Jolla, where he later died (while undergoing surgery two hours after the shooting). A preliminary investigation revealed that McNeil was shot by his wife, Sally, during a domestic dispute. Sally McNeil called 911 and was present when officers arrived. She was subsequently arrested and booked for murder in the San Diego County Jail ”, she was the official report of Sergeant Thomas A. Bussey.

The next day, medical tests revealed that Ray had tested positive for five substances used by bodybuilders: fluoxymesterone, nandrolone, oxymetholone, clenbuterol, and drostanolone, while Sally tested positive for nandrolone.

After the murder, the investigations to carry out the trial began and with them new revelations arose. Sally had a history of being violent and aggressive, according to several witnesses and the history of the service carried out in the Marines: “Argumentative, disrespectful, violent, seeks lawsuits.” She even had run-ins with the police in which up to five officers were needed to get her out of the house.

At the same time, one of Ray’s friends confessed that Sally starred in several violent episodes due to jealousy and infidelity problems and left the name Marianne on the table, a woman Ray had met at the gym and was leaving Sally for. Upon learning of that parallel relationship, she threatened her through a phone call. “It was not a jealous attack, it was fear”, she assured about the reason for her actions when asked about this episode.

What went from being a self-defense case for domestic violence began to take a drastic turn, especially after the district attorney in the case, Daniel Goldstein, gave two details that changed everything: “He was going to end up with her and had an affair with another woman. To me that’s premeditated homicide.”

In the second week of the trial, Goldestein made a key point in the forensic analysis that contradicted Sally’s opening statement: reloading the shotgun.

At the beginning, Sally had said that she went to get the gun and ammunition from the room and, after the first shot, she reloaded in the kitchen to immediately fire again while being attacked. However, the cartridge from the first impact was in the roomwhich meant she went back into the room, loaded the shotgun, and went back to the scene to fire a second time while Ray bled to death on the floor.

To test that conjecture, the prosecutor focused on a lamp that was in the room that night. The blood splatters were inside the light screen, which meant that Ray took the second shot to the face while he was on the ground, because the blood shot upwards.

Finally, through a test carried out on Ray’s body, it was also known that no trace of Sally’s DNA was foundwhich could mean that, despite the fact that she was a battered woman for years, there may not have been a physical fight in the minutes prior to the time of the crime.

In March 1996 the sentence arrived. Sally was found not guilty of first degree murder, which carries a sentence of between 35 years and life imprisonment. The jury understood that the murder was not premeditated, but it was found her guilty of second degree murder: meaning you intended to kill someone without provocation, excuse, or justification.

In summary, according to the experts who attended that verdict: “She decided that she was going to end his life, she shot him and finished him off, without being in any imminent danger.” She ended up being sentenced to 19 years in jail.

In one of his attempts to request parole, and after being denied it repeatedly, He accepted responsibility and dismissed the physical abuse he received. Initially, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned the conviction, but the State of California appealed to the Supreme Court and Sally was forced to serve her sentence at the Chowchilla Women’s Center.

Finally, in 2020 and after spending 25 years behind bars in California Correctional Facility, Sally McNeil was released.

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