42-Year-Old Woman Murdered for Not Wanting to Be Cheated On
Many people want to believe in fairy tales and happily ever afters, so when we meet somebody and we believe that they're the one, we hope everything will work out perfectly. But sometimes, the exact opposite happens. This is the story of Dana Mackay.
Dana grew up in Georgia and lived in Virginia where she worked at a flooring company. There, she met John Mackay, an army man who swore to give her something better than her first marriage, which had ended in divorce due to infidelity. She was scared to open up again, but after she met John, they quickly hit it off and got married. As much as Dana was scared to open herself up, her friends and family described her as a very loving person with a very kind heart.
Downward Slope:
In July of 2012, Dana had started to experience dizziness and headaches. Around November that year, she was diagnosed with hydrocephalus and had to go through brain surgery. This forced her to take a leave of absence from work, so John took care of her and had to get a second job just to pay off medical bills.
While John was at his second job, he met a 34-year-old woman named Nicole Houchin. Nicole was married to a military man named Nace Houchin but their marriage was crumbling, as was John's. John and Nicole started having an affair with each other.
When Dana found out about John's affair, she gave him an ultimatum; either he had to break off the relationship with Nicole or she would tell his commanding officer. John decided to work on his marriage with Dana and ended the affair with Nicole. This reportedly made Nicole very angry and she harassed Dana, who she blamed for the break-up. She would send Dana threatening messages and drive past her home several times a day. Dana started to get scared and confided in her friends about this around a month before her death.
The Murder:
On July 26th, 2013, John went to visit family in New York and Dana was left home alone. The next day, Dana’s mother Sarah Pearson tried to contact her daughter but couldn't get a hold of her. She was worried so she contacted one of Dana’s neighbors to do a welfare check. The neighbor walked in to find the house completely destroyed.
The police went to investigate and found Dana nude on the floor of her bedroom, near the rear side of the bed. She had been brutally attacked and beaten, with most of the wounds on her face and head. They also found a piece of a blue latex glove on Dana's back and there were some strands of blond hair in Dana's palm. This was all collected and sent to testing.
The Investigation:
The police got in contact with Dana’s mother and husband, who were both devastated. John said he would return home immediately. The police looked into Dana and John's financial problems and might have suspected that John was involved in the murder, but he was in New York with his mother and sister at the time, ruling him out as a person of interest. Dana’s autopsy showed that her cause of death was blunt-force trauma and, though she was nude, she was not sexually assaulted.
Police learned about John's infidelity from Dana's friends, who also told police that Nicole had been stalking Dana. They even told police about the ultimatum that Dana gave him and her reluctance to get a divorce because she did not want another failed marriage. Police then started to look into Nicole Houchin as a possible suspect.
Nicole claimed she was with a co-worker named Greg Crawford at the time of the murder. When she was confronted about the blond hair found in Dana's hand, she said that it couldn’t be hers because she wasn't even in town. She agreed to go down to the station and give a sample of her own hair to test it.
When the lab results came back in from the latex gloves, they couldn't find any fingerprints, but they did find out that the hair in Dana's hand was actually her own.
On July 29th, 2013, John returned from New York and met with the police. The police were very suspicious of him because of his lack of emotion in the interview. He said he didn’t want to hurt Dana and that Dana was not afraid of Nicole. Despite that, evidence was soon found that made John look very guilty. Looking in his phone, there were several emails and messages between John and Nicole in which they had plotted Dana's murder.
Nicole and John both denied that these messages were serious, saying that they were just fantasizing. Both were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder and first-degree murder.
The Plot Thickens:
The police believed that Nicole was directly involved in the murder since John was out of town and unable to commit it, even if he was involved in plotting it. It was found that Nicole also had help from someone else, but it was from the last person the police would have suspected- her husband.
About two months after Dana's death, someone came forward to say that Nicole’s husband Nace and her coworker Greg Crawford were promised $20,000 to help Nicole and John commit the murder. Nace cooperated with the police and admitted to his involvement in the murder. John helped with planning, Nace was the one who killed Dana, and Nicole and Greg staged a robbery in the house. Nace and Greg, just like Nicole and John, were arrested for conspiracy and murder in the first degree.
Sentencing:
Nicole Houchin was sentenced to 23 years in prison, Nace Houchin was sentenced to 40 years, John Mackay was sentenced to 28 years, and Greg Crawford was sentenced to 17 years.
This was all just a terrible circumstance for Dana Mackay that ended in her death. There was no need for those involved in her murder to have blood on their hands, yet now they have to live with what they did.
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