Crime Stories with Nancy Grace
HELLFIRE: MONQUE TEPPE, HUSBAND, SHOT 16 TIMES, HIT FACE, CHEEK, THROAT
05 Feb 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is an iHeart Podcast.
Guaranteed human. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Hellfire. Monique Tepe and husband shot 16 times. Monique hit in the face, the cheek, the throat, and more. Apparently, according to police, vascular surgeon Dr. Michael McKee, her ex-husband from almost 10 years ago, unloads a magazine on Monique and Spencer as they lay in their bed.
When I look at her beautiful face and think of him standing over the bed in the middle of the night, the wee morning hours, unloading a magazine into the face of Monique Tepe, hell hath no fury. like what victims' rights and families are feeling all across our country tonight. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. I want to thank you for being with us.
Chapter 2: What are the details of the tragic shooting of Monique and Spencer Tepe?
Monique Tepe was shot multiple times, not just Spencer, Monique as well, for children in the next room.
We begin to think about what kind of injuries they have.
We need to know what the range of fire is. If you have multiple gunshot wounds, this is gonna be a bloody mess. Monique is shot more times than Spencer. Nine gunshot wounds to the upper body, including a bullet to the head hitting Monique in the right cheek and three shots to her right chest, all clustered together.
Monique also suffers bullet wounds to the right side of her torso, right forearm, right hand, and two shots to her left upper arm.
This is a lot to take in. Yes, I know it's bad enough that they're both shot as they lay in their beds, their children on the other side of the wall. But now to know that he allegedly disfigured her face in this way. Yelena Mandenberg joining us, investigative reporter for The Mirror, the Irish Star, the Express. Yelena, what do we know? And we're learning this from the autopsy.
It's called the coroner report there. And it's very disturbing from the Franklin County Forensic Science Center. What have we learned tonight, Yelena?
Well, I said before, Monique Tepe shot nine times while Spencer Tepe was shot seven times, 16 bullets between them. The Franklin County Office of the Coroner determined that Monique Tepe was shot once in the face, three times in the chest, twice in the upper left arm, and once on the right side of her torso. once in her right forearm and once in the hand.
Gunshot wounds of head, trunk, and extremities with visceral, skeletal, and soft tissue injuries, says the report. The report also added that in the autopsy, they were able to recover two bullets and bullet fragments left in the humerus fracture site. which means soft organ damage. It hit the lungs, it hit the liver, skeletal damage when the bones broke, when the bullets hit them.
Spencer Tepping's autopsy says he suffered seven gunshot wounds, also to the head, neck, trunk, and extremities with visceral, skeletal, and soft tissue injuries. once in the head, once in the neck, three times in the torso, twice in the upper extremities, and the bullet was also recovered from Spencer Tepe's body. Both list the same manner of death, homicide, death by gunshot wounds.
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Chapter 3: How many gunshot wounds did Monique and Spencer sustain?
How many bullets are in a magazine? How fast can you unload a magazine? How do you replace a magazine? Break it down for me, Dan Murphy, for everyone that is not in the criminal world.
Certainly. Magazines are what semi-automatic weapons or fully automatic weapons hold the rounds in, as opposed to a revolver, which is in a cylinder and the bullets are easily slid into the cylinder. The magazine contains, it depends upon the size, the caliber of the weapon, the make. It can be six or eight rounds. It can be up to 17 rounds.
There are even larger mags that hold up to 30 that are used with handguns sometimes. But a magazine is a very simple device, spring-loaded. You put the rounds in. It tightens up as you increase the number of rounds in the magazine until it's filled. And it can be refilled.
Okay, hold on, hold on. Dan Murphy, I don't want to interrupt your float, but could you slow down a little bit? for everyone out there that doesn't practice at the range. And by the way, this guy, doctor, the vascular surgeon for Pete's sake, with all that education, all that money, all of those privileges and opportunities, he had to do this? Really?
I guarantee you, with all the guns, he had an arsenal in his penthouse at Lincoln Park. I guarantee you he's out somewhere practicing. Do you really need to practice to get close range on your ex-wife asleep in bed and shoot her in the face? But I guarantee you, he's so anal compulsive that he was practicing at some gunshot range somewhere. That said, Slow down for me.
If you don't mind, just start at the top very slowly about a magazine. I heard you say some magazines hold 16 bullets, as much as up in the 30s. But 16 bullets were fired here, 16 bullets unloaded on the tepees in their sleep. I think he shot the whole round. I think he, you know, used up the magazine. Explain.
Certainly, magazines are to weapons what a loaf of bread unbaked into an oven is. You put it in to the bottom of the weapon, the magazine itself holds the rounds inside of it. It is spring-loaded device whereby the person who's loading it places the rounds into it and they each become tighter as the magazine becomes more filled. You can fill magazines up as much as 30, 35 some.
Traditional handguns, typically, if it's a 9mm, you're looking at a 15 or 17 round capacity. And so the person who's shooting the weapon has 15 rounds. In my service weapon with the NYPD, I had a 15 round magazine. And then I had another round in the chamber ready to go, which meant my weapon was capable of firing 16 rounds before having to eject the empty magazine and reload it.
In this case, he fired 16 rounds. In my opinion, he had a 15 round magazine, one live in the chamber, and he squeezed the trigger until he was finished and the clicking happened.
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Chapter 4: What insights do the autopsy reports provide about the victims' injuries?
You have to push it down in there, and then the next one, and it gets harder each time as the mag is filling up. The reason I'm bringing this up, Dan Murphy, is because more intent. You have to load that thing bullet by bullet, one at a time.
That's correct. In order to load this, as you mentioned, when you first beginning to load it, it's somewhat easy. There's a spring inside. The spring enables each next round to be pushed up into the chamber to be used. So that spring gets much more taught as you fill this up. It's an intentional act.
And for someone who is not very experienced, and even for those of us who are, there can be some difficulty putting the last couple of rounds in. It really takes some oomph.
so this is a very intentional act to fill this up and that's an even more intentional act to then take the slide chamber a live round eject this magazine top it off with the 15th round so it's full again giving you a handgun with 16 round capacity so currently this has 12 rounds in it i'm going to top it off with some more rounds and i have to push down on the round that's in there already
and squeeze the next one in. And as you can see, they don't always go easy. There, that next round was just placed in with some effort. And this is what happens as you approach the top of the magazine. Each round becomes more difficult, more intentional to load.
Have fun with that, defense team, for Dr. Michael McKee. I want you to get that mag out of the murder weapon, and I want you to load it in front of the jury with 16 nines. and let the jury see the intentionality that was used to murder Monique and Spencer, to load that mag and then unload it on them as they slept.
Joining me, in addition to Dan Murphy, former NYPD Detective Sergeant, Dr. Bethany Marshall, Yelena Mandenberg, and Dr. Kendall Crowns, now a veteran trial lawyer out of the Warner Robins jurisdiction, Try a lawyer with Butler Snow legal. Jim Elliott, thank you for being with us. You know why I led Dan Murphy step by step as I would if he were my witness on direct exam through the possibility.
Did he just pull the trigger once? Oh, no, he didn't. He had to pull the trigger 16 times. You know why, Jim Elliott? And I think you do know why. Because the law is intent can be formed in the twinkling of a moment, the blink of an eye, the time it takes you to raise a gun and pull the trigger. But he did it, Elliott, 16 times. That's time to form intent. Not a blind rage.
He did not know what he was doing. He had time. The law does not specify time to form intent, such as a plan, as I always use this example, to poison someone over a period of weeks and months until they kill over dead. It can be formed in a moment. Jim Elliott, do you see the implications that Dan Murphy has raised? Sixteen times he had to pull the trigger on two sleeping people.
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Chapter 5: What role does the medical examiner play in such cases?
Okay, that's from our friends at WBNS. Now let's look at the bookend and see what we can see. There he goes. There he goes. See it? Let's see that again. That was very, that may be the, I don't know what causes that. He does not have any football injury. He played varsity football at an elite level, I think, in college. There he is in his bookend.
this right here you know he just looks like any other dude walking around his flip-flops at the pharmacy the kind you know just but to think that he could have unloaded a full mag on Monique Dr. Bethany Marshall, I'm going to go back to pulling to the right and other distinguishing characteristics of Dr. Michael McKee, but I want to talk about something you just said.
As it relates to unloading a full mag, 16 bullets, and probably, as Dan Murphy said, continuing to pull the trigger, how many times do you think Dr. Michael McKee watched this?
From day one, I knew you were something special. I had quite a journey to get to you, countless bad bumble dates, wrong relationships, and waterfalls of tears. But it was worth every cringing second because it led me to you. Throughout all of this, I knew that God was guiding me to my person and that when I met him, it would be the most magical thing ever. And boy, Is that an understatement?
I finally found my lobster, and it honestly couldn't be a person with a more beautiful heart. I will love you forever, and I'm so lucky to be Mrs. Tech.
Dr. Bethany Marshall, look at her beautiful face, her delicate jawline, the fragile bones in her neck. And when you look at Spencer, he's so happy. There's video of them walking out of the wedding, the vows, holding their hands up in triumph. Here they go. There's video of them walking along. He's so jubilant. He's got a cigar in one hand celebrating and he's got his arm around her.
It's just this incredible, magical day. There's one moment he's drinking some kind of alcohol. There it was. And he gives her a sip. She wrinkles up her face because it's so strong, whatever it is. And she's like, ew. And he's just so happy. I love that moment where he rears back. He's just laughing in this moment, this happy, incredible moment.
Now, how in the hay does that turn into unloading a full mag on them, Bethany?
Do you know how many times Monster Surgeon must have watched those videos? Those were accessible to him. He watched them online. Again and again and again. And all the beauty that you're talking about, the delicate jaw structure, the rearing back, the fun, the laughter. Every little moment of fun was an insult to Monster Surgeon because stalkers and Monster Surgeon is no different.
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Chapter 6: How does the discussion address the psychological aspects of the crime?
To Dr. Kendall Crowns joining us, Chief Medical Examiner, Tarrant County and star of Mayhem in the Morgue. Dr. Kendall Crowns, we've been talking about how the bullets were found and on day one, we here at Crime Stories knew that there would be bullets lodged in the bodies. How do you go about that sort of autopsy? We're talking about a full mag unloaded into these two victims.
Where do you start? How do you find the bullets? How does it go down?
Okay, usually what you do with these cases of multiple gunshot wounds is you start the same way you do with every autopsy. You do an external examination. You chart all the wounds, try and get an idea of which wound goes to what wound. And then you do x-rays. And the x-rays, you look at the body and you look for retained projectiles or bullets, figure out where they're at.
Side x-rays, front x-rays, kind of get an idea of where they're at in the body. And you start the autopsy, removing the organs. And you look for these bullets. Sometimes they're wedged in bones. Sometimes they're stuck in organs and you find each bullet, you take it out. Sometimes they're really hard to find.
And if they get in the face, the nasal cavity, they're really difficult because you can't mar the face with the autopsy. So you have to go through different ways where you take out the top of the skull and come down through the top or dig your way up to the base of the neck.
Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What? Take off the top of the skull? Is that necessary?
We do that in every autopsy to get the brain out. And once the brain is out, you have the base of the skull, and then you can go through the top of that to get to the nasal cavity to get bullets out. So it can be very difficult to retrieve bullets at the time of autopsy, just kind of depending on where they're at.
Okay. You know what? I guess I knew that after cross-examining and directing so many medical examiners. I guess I didn't want to think about it, Dr. Kendall-Crowns. So did you say you perform an X-ray first to identify the general area of the bullets?
Correct, yeah. You get the x-ray examination of the body so you get an idea of where they're at. And that way you can direct your Easter egg hunt a little bit more quickly.
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