Crime Stories with Nancy Grace
MONSTER MARRIAGE: ICY THREATS SURGEON MADE YEARS BEFORE KILLING EX-WIFE & NEW HUBBY , COPS
15 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Guaranteed human. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Monster marriage. The icy threats. We are learning a vascular surgeon husband made years before, years before, nearly 10 years before, he allegedly shoots his ex-wife and new dentist husband dead in their own beds, their children wailing in the background. Now think about it.
How long did those bodies lie there going cold in pools of blood with their children sitting there with mommy and daddy dead? I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories.
Chapter 2: What led to the tragic murder of Monique and Spencer Tepe?
I want to thank you for being with us. Stone-faced and cold-blooded, a surgeon in court after his ex-wife and her dentist husband both shot dead. And he knows exactly what's happening and not a flicker of emotion on his face, not one ounce, not one drop, one scintilla of remorse. How long did he stalk her?
As he gets kicked from one jurisdiction to the next, multiple malpractice and claims against him. He looks at her online. She moved on in a big way. She found true love, gets married to an awesome guy. They have two children. They get married in their home. They post a video of it. And there he is alone, alone and miserable.
Now we are learning that she, quote, just had to get out of that starter marriage. It was just for seven months. It was nearly 10 years ago. And he brewed and bubbled and simmered and stewed for nearly 10 years till he makes an over 300 mile trek to shoot her dead in bed with her husband, her children in the room next door. This is what we've learned, listen.
She was terrified because he had threatened her life on multiple occasions when they were married. She wasn't shy about talking to people about traumatic experiences that she had with her ex and just how emotionally abusive he was to her.
That's for our friends at NBC. I'm going to analyze what we are hearing straight out to investigative reporter Susan Hendricks, also an author of Down the Hill, My Dissent to the Double Murder and Delphi. Susan, on this case from the very beginning. Susan, that is the brother-in-law speaking out.
Quote, she was terrified because he had threatened her life on multiple occasions when they were married. That's nearly 10 years ago. She would talk openly to family members. What do you make of it?
I believe, as he said, that she was terrified.
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Chapter 3: What threats did Michael McKee make against Monique Tepe?
And how do I know? Because her social media was private. She was very much kind of on the down low on social media, if you will. I don't think she wanted to make her ex angry. I think because the brother-in-law also said it changed her as a person. He was that emotionally abusive. I think it went on beyond the marriage. I think she was fearful of him clearly.
And I think that's why Spencer's dental office knew that something was off that day.
If any of us had known that these threats were actually grounded in possibility, we all would have acted differently. Myself and many others were well aware of kind of the negative impact that he had on her.
Chapter 4: What were the circumstances surrounding Michael McKee's arrest?
She was willing to do anything to get out of there.
From our friends at NBC and GMA, that is the brother-in-law, Rob Missel, speaking out. Woulda, coulda, shoulda. You know what? All survivors do that. Isn't that true, Dr. Bethany Marshall? If only we had known. If actually we had known they were grounded in reality, we would have done things differently.
But people don't live their lives thinking, oh, he's going to drive six hours and shoot them in their beds. There was no reason they should have known that he was secretly stalking his ex-wife all these years, Bethany.
The family perhaps shouldn't have known, but I believe Monique knew. If her social media was private, if she talked about the abuse. And Nancy, this escalated in just seven months of marriage. You know, stalking behavior can start just after one date. The guy falls in love with you and then believes there's a special relationship when there's none.
The girl doesn't return the text or the phone call, and now he's enraged. And so when women leave a relationship, they're at the highest risk for domestic homicide. As you pointed out, she left, she had moved on, and that very act enraged him. And he punished her for this perceived rejection. That's what he did. He mowed her down, but I think she knew.
Deep down inside, or do you think she saw him or she got a weird text or an email and she goes, oh, my stars, that's McKee. Or do you think it was just a gut feeling in her bones she knew?
I think it was a gut feeling. I treat women who are stalking victims and often they fall into a depression. They're in a dysphoric state. And they become preoccupied with the offender. They think about them all the time. They look out their car windows. They're sitting in a restaurant with a new partner, and they see, like, say, Nicole Brown.
They see a car drive by, like a white Tahoe, and they think, oh, my God, is that my ex-husband? So they live in fear. Nancy, it gets into their brains. I bet it was in her brain, in her thought process, that she was at risk. It was always there, and that's why she was talking about it.
As we go to air tonight, extradition delayed. What's going on?
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Chapter 5: How did Monique Tepe's new life impact Michael McKee?
Is he some sort of a security threat? Why can't we get him to home turf to get this trial ball rolling, get the show on the road? At this time, we know the state is building its case against vascular surgeon Dr. McKee. Just think about this guy. He excelled in everything he did. That's his mugshot. He excelled in everything. He played football on a very high level in college. He
was Dean's List honor student in undergrad. He was a star student in medical school. He went on to become a vascular surgeon, certified to practice in multiple jurisdictions. Just before the two, Monique and her husband, are shot dead, He gets sacked with a malpractice suit, a pretty serious one, and another claim that one patient actually lost his testicle because of McKee.
Very serious complaints. And then he ghosts everybody. He leaves that jurisdiction and disappears to where even a PI can't find him and just starts all over again in another jurisdiction. Could he move that surreptitiously? Which leads me to how long had he been surreptitiously stalking Monique?
There she is, Monique, and the first starter husband, Michael McKee, the vascular surgeon, straight out to a real pro. Joining us tonight, Randy Kessler. You know him well. He is a veteran trial lawyer, Emory Law School professor, former chair of the ABA family law section, the American Bar Association, author of Divorced, Protect Yourself, Your Kids, and Your Future.
Randy Kessler, you and I have crossed swords many, many times in court. Kessler, think about it. Now, I know you would never bring this up in court about your own client, right? But this guy's not your client. Tell me the truth. How long do you think he had been stalking her in person? Maybe even watching them put the code into the keypad and goes, oh, that's her father's birthday.
Or online watching that wedding video over and over and over. And there he is sitting alone having his TV dinner, looking at her video and her happy life. How long do you think he's been stalking Monique?
One of two dates. It's either the date that the final divorce was granted or the date that the divorce was filed. This was his first rejection from what we can tell, right? Like you said, he was so successful in everything. I mean, the pinnacle, a vascular surgeon, a football star, Dean's List, married to a beautiful woman, and then she rejects him or doesn't work.
And that's what divorce is about. People feel like Somebody who I thought was the perfect person who I wanted to be with forever tells me I'm not good enough. They're rejecting me. That may not be the truth of the matter, but that could easily be the perception.
That might have started, it might have been when he started stalking her or it might have been when it started the trigger for him thinking, how do I rectify this? He obviously couldn't handle it if this is the guy who did it. And I think that's when it started, if you ask me, which he did.
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Chapter 6: What evidence linked McKee to the murders?
You know, we have our rich clients pay for private judges all the time to do it privately, to expedite it, to do it at their own schedule. But yes, sometimes people just want out. And a lot of people were commenting in the press and in the news that it was an uncontested, it was an amicable divorce. It was amicable just in that it wasn't fought out in court.
And that's because somebody, obviously her now, wanted out. She even agreed to pay her own lawyer fees. When you have a surgeon on one side, usually the person making all the money is required to pay both sides' attorney's fees because it's a marital expense. That's marital income. She obviously clearly wanted out. And when did she ever feel safe? And that's a sad thing to me.
Hey, look at that picture, Kessler. Do you see that picture right there that I'm showing of her pregnant in front of the Christmas tree? How crazy do you think that made that vascular surgeon ex-husband? There she is pregnant by another man, which of course, you know what that means. They had to have sex. I bet that drove him right over the edge, Kessler.
Yeah, but when do you ever feel safe? And that's what tears at me, not just what happened, but all these women out there that have gotten away from somebody like that. She's moved on. She's got children. She's married.
Chapter 7: What psychological factors might have motivated McKee's actions?
She's living in another state. When is enough? When can you look in the rearview mirror and say, there's nothing there. It's just shadows. And you see cases like this. And there are a lot of people having post-traumatic stress disorder just from this story. I'm sure we see women that come back to us and say, I still need a restraining order. I said, but you're divorced.
Yes, but he's still calling. He's still coming by. Just a terrible situation. And unfortunately, I don't think this is the only person out there that's got this concern.
On December 30th, 2025, at approximately 10.04 a.m., Columbus Police Patrol officers were dispatched to the 1400 block of North 4th Street on a well-being check. Officers arrived at scene and located the two adult victims suffering from apparent gunshot wounds. We now know that they were identified as Mr. Spencer Tepe and Mrs. Monique Tepe.
Their two small children were also found in the resident physically unharmed.
Straight out to special guest joining us, Dr. Thomas Coyne, Chief Medical Examiner, District 2 Medical Examiner's Office, State of Florida. He is a forensic pathologist, toxicologist, neuropathologist. Dr. Coyne, thank you for being with us. I want to address what the two children have been through. Guys, I'm going to get to the news.
as quickly as I can about the fact that his extradition has been delayed. What does it mean? Don't worry. He's not burning up the interstate, the Ohio turnpike to get back home because Ohio does have the death penalty. It was hanging. Then it went to old Sparky. the electric chair. Now it's needle death by lethal injection.
There's a moratorium on right now on the death penalty, but it's not official. It's unofficial. They can't get the correct drugs to perform death by needle, but who knows? Maybe they'll go back to death by firing squad like other jurisdictions have done or possibly some sort of nitrous oxide that's on the table as well. That's a whole nother can of worms.
Dr. Thomas Coyne, I want to talk to you about the two children. They're both under four years old. They were heard in the background. If I could get the control room to pull up the 911 call where you can hear the children screaming, wailing in the background. Dr. Coyne, what would the children have seen? Because we know that the husband was shot twice.
Monique was shot once, and they have placed the shootings after 3 a.m., and cops didn't break in. Well, actually, friends had to get in the home until hours and hours later, well after 9 a.m. Would the blood have coagulated? Would the bodies have gotten cold? Because I believe the children were in there with their parents' dead bodies.
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