Mary Orsini
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How was Alice McArthur discovered and what did the crime scene reveal?
An Arkansas housewife brutally murdered. There is a white female in the closet. She was dead. And at her feet was a range of flowers. Police learn this wasn't the first attempt on her life. They had enough explosives to blow her to kingdom come, but it didn't work. It was a miracle the kids weren't in the car. the investigation reveals her husband might have been the real target. He was definitely the top criminal attorney in the state of Arkansas. Doing criminal law work, you anger a lot of people. But when detectives uncover the truth, they find a mastermind who's obsessed. She worshipped him, thinking that he was the greatest attorney ever. She can keep three stories juggling at one time and hardly ever miss a beat.
She belonged to jail, hell yeah. She belonged to jail for the rest of her life, for sure.
July 2nd, 1982. It's late afternoon in Little Rock, Arkansas, when police receive a 911 call from a prominent defense attorney saying he found his wife murdered. The original call came through our communications center, and one of our officers responded to the call, which was the address of Allison Beale MacArthur. As first responders arrive, they are met by the 911 caller, Bill MacArthur. He tells officers he had just returned home from work when he found his wife, Alice, shot to death inside their bedroom closet. I go to my officer to get what he's got. And he kind of walks me back through the hallway toward Alice's and Bill's bedroom. The closet is a walk-in, and it's probably 10 by 10. And there is a white female laying in the bottom of the closet.
You had to move some clothes out of the way to kind of sear up her torso and face. There's blood. Gunshot went to the head. The officer that got there first, he said he had checked her pulse. I went ahead and checked her pulse, too. She was dead. There's little evidence to explain why Alice was shot, but on the floor, police find something bizarre. At her feet was an arrangement or a bouquet of flowers. The flower bouquet had a note basically attached to it that said, have a nice day. Right next to the door facing is a bullet hole in a wall. And down underneath the bullet hole was fire pedals. So it's telling you a story. I think that whoever shot Alex brought the flowers. Investigators waste no time scouring the crime scene for more clues.
We did get a spin around from the wall. It was a .38. As we inventory everything out of the closet, we do find a handgun there, a pistol. And it was from one of the shelves covered up with folded clothes. Bill was there, and he was asked, I mean, whose gun is it? He said it was Alice's. I didn't think it was the murder weapon because of the way it was found. I believe she believes that she could get a hold of that gun and maybe defend herself. With no quick answers from the scene, investigators focus on potential motives. I wonder who in the hell would do this and why? Bill was a high-profile attorney, so he knew this was going to be a high-profile case. Alice had a small circle of friends. She kind of kept to herself, but Bill was kind of in the forefront.
One might suspect that he would be a target because he was the top criminal attorney in the state of Arkansas. So the investigators and people that were trying to determine what took place, it was more circled around, why would anybody be mad at Alice, you know, or want to do something harmful? Why Alice? Alice Miller was born in southern Louisiana in 1941. She was from a small town called Golden Meadow, Louisiana. She had a couple of brothers. The mom and dad were still alive. Alice was a PE or gym teacher for the local high school. So she was very athletic. In the mid-1960s, Alice met the love of her life, a young Arkansas lawyer named Bill MacArthur. They met through mutual friends at a wedding. My brother had got his undergraduate degree, and then he went to the Army and served two or three years.
He had gone to law school, graduated, and was real early on his journey to be a criminal attorney. I thought they fit together pretty well.
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