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Perhaps no one alive, except for Sally McNeil, knows the truth about what happened on Valentine's Day, 1995: That night, McNeil, a bodybuilder and former Marine, used a shotgun to kill her husband Ray McNeil, a fellow bodybuilder and ex-Marine.
A new Netflix documentary delves beneath the surface of the salacious murder that gripped the bodybuilding world and beyond, and sent Sally — whose stage name before the murder was "Killer McNeil" — to prison until her 2020 release.
Director and Oscar nominee Nanette Burstein's three-part documentary examines the history of domestic violence Sally endured at Ray's hands, and how her physique influenced the way she was perceived.
Burstsein told The Guardian she wanted to "[point] out how inane some of the [prosecution's] argument was, that she couldn't have possibly been a victim because she was too strong. Which is absurd."
The story behind the crime was years in the making. Sally met Ray at a gym in the 1980s, and the two were married just two months later.
"He looked like the statue of David. He was beautiful," Sally McNeil says in the documentary, summing up their attraction as "lust at first sight."
But the relationship was fraught with violence from early on. Sally said Ray punched her in the face and split her lip after they'd been married for three days. Ray also repeatedly choked her and once broke her nose in front of the couple's young children, Shantina and John.
The series also documents Sally's affiliation with what was colloquially known as "muscle prostitution," in which she wrestled with men for money — which in turn helped to pay for Ray's addiction to anabolic steroids.
After years of abuse at Ray's hands, which Sally says was spurred by his "roid rage," Sally shot Ray with a sawed-off shotgun and then called 911.
A gripping moment in the documentary shows an exchange between Sally and her children, 9 and 11, in a police interrogation room.
"If you thought [he] was gonna kill you then that's self-defense," John, a fourth-grader, said at the time.
Yet prosecutors alleged that Sally's crime was premeditated. Sally's defense could not prove Ray's abuse with DNA, and prosecutors claimed a shell found in the couple's bedroom meant she might have tried to reload the gun, which would have undermined her self-defense claim, according to Esquire.
Sally's own history of violence, as well as the notion that because she was physically strong, she couldn't have been a domestic violence victim, influenced the perception of the case and contributed to Sally's conviction for second-degree murder.
In addition to Sally, who was paroled from prison in 2020, the documentary also features interviews with Shantina and John as well as friends and others who knew the couple.
Burstein said that the story's central theme is one of domestic violence.
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"I have no interest in gratuitous true crime," the director, who also helmed the ESPN 30 for 30 film The Price of Gold, about ice skater Tonya Harding, told The Guardian. "That is what really attracted me to the story — it was really about domestic violence, and it's about gender roles," she said.
She added, "It's really about other women, because this is still happening today."
If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.
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