“I just shot my husband because he just beat me up,” Sally said as soon as the emergency switchboard picked up her call. After a few seconds of confusion, the operator asked him: “Are you breathing?” A dry, muffled yes bounced off the other end of the phone. Minutes later, several police patrols showed up at the murderer’s home. It was Valentine’s night.
In the middle of the room they found the body of a Herculean man, covered in blood and shot twice. Next to him, the shooter, his wife and also bodybuilder Sally McNeil. According to her, her victim had tried to strangle her, although it was not the first time. The woman claimed to be a victim of gender violence. However, the scene seemed to indicate that this was not a murder in self-defense.
Born on September 30, 1960 in Allentown (Pennsylvania), Sally Dempsey – her maiden name – grew up without a biological father, but with a stepfather who made her life a living hell. Richard Dale Dempsey, an alcoholic and abuser, married her mother when Sally was three years old and, from then on, harassment and beatings were her usual pattern.
“Every time my sister or I did something wrong, he would call us both into the room and hit one and make the other watch. I remember how torturous it was for me to have to sit there and watch him abuse my sister and know that I was next. She really hated him. He was literally like the devil to me,” Sally explained before the cameras of her own documentary titled Killer Sally.
In her adolescence, our protagonist was a great athlete: she did swimming, athletics and diving. She also tried to pursue a career as a Physical Education teacher, but after almost four years at the university she had to leave due to the impossibility of paying her tuition. It was then that she decided to enlist in the United States Marine Corps, like her brother and her uncle, reaching the rank of sergeant.
At that time, she met her first husband, Anthony Lowden, with whom she had two children, Shantina and John. The marriage did not last much longer due to Anthony’s violent character, who mistreated her. In fact, the judge granted Sally full custody of her children.
At the end of the eighties, the sergeant did a double by winning the Armed Forces Physical Training Championship, but in the early 1990s she was demoted in rank for her bad character. The woman had anger control problems, as well as violent and aggressive behavior with other colleagues. Finally, her superiors removed her from the service.
Shortly before reaching this point, Sally had already met bodybuilder Ray McNeil. It was June 1987. “It looked like the statue of David. He was beautiful. He was polite and kind. “I thought he had found a man who could be a stepfather to my children,” the woman said.
After a few months of dating, the couple decided to get married. However, when everything seemed idyllic, terror came to that house. According to Sally, her husband beat and strangled her just three days after the wedding. And, from that moment, the physical and sexual abuse did not stop. “When she attacked me, she suffocated me instantly,” she said.
“I shouldn’t have let it come to that. She should have left him on the third day of their marriage. The day he punched me in the face, he broke my lip and then he asked for forgiveness and told me: ‘I’m sorry, I won’t do it again,’ and I believed him,” he continued with a completely terrifying story.
Her own daughter, Shantina, witnessed what happened: “It never got better, it just got worse.” And even more so when Ray decided to leave the Marines in 1991 and start his career as a bodybuilder. Here Sally did everything to keep the family finances afloat, including paying for the very expensive steroids he consumed.
What’s more, these anabolics aggravated Ray’s aggressiveness, and he also began to physically abuse his stepchildren. He was “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Shantina claimed. “I remember how torturous it was for me as a child to have to sit and watch my sister being abused and know that I was next,” John said.
Back to Sally… One of the jobs that brought her the most benefits was “private wrestling sessions.” That is, she fought against men who paid up to $300 an hour to fight her hand-to-hand. Her stage name was Killer Sally.
Thanks to this, Ray was able to dedicate himself fully to the world of bodybuilding and win the heavyweight and general titles at both the NPC Championships in California and the IFBB North American Championships, and compete in the 1993 Mr. Olympia, finishing in 15th place.
While the marriage relationship was on the rocks, Ray began to have a double life and lovers, something that drove Sally crazy. The woman’s reaction became so explosive that, on one occasion, she immobilized her husband’s lover by hitting her on the ground. As for him, she Sally pointed a gun at his head.
It was not his only violent behavior. The sergeant was arrested for assaulting the postman, who had allegedly slapped her son John after he argued with the postal worker’s son. Another arrest came when she kicked a bar bouncer three times in the face for scolding her after dancing on the tables. When she arrived the police threatened to kill them all.
With this spiral of violence, came February 14, 1995. Valentine’s Day turned tragic when Sally found out that Ray had gone on a date with another woman, a gymmate. At 9:15 p.m. her husband arrived at her house, and according to her testimony, the man began his usual ritual of violence.
Ray hit her and tried to strangle her, but Sally managed to get away from him and run to her room. Once inside her, she pulled out a shotgun and shot him twice, once in her abdomen and once in her jaw, as he tried to catch her. “It was superhuman,” Sally justified herself after perpetrating the crime, alluding to the amount of steroids he had in her body.
Sally then called the emergency services to report what had happened and the agents proceeded to arrest her. As a result of this event, the press baptized our protagonist as “the inflated princess” or “the muscular bride.” And Sally’s physical condition as a bodybuilder did not go unnoticed by public opinion, nor by the prosecutor.
A year later, also on February 14, the trial against Sally McNeil began for allegedly killing her husband in self-defense. The evidence collected questioned the veracity of her history of abuse. On the one hand, the trajectory of the bullets must have been different, one of them fired from the ground. It was not the case.
On the other hand, the blood splashes must have been on the outside of a lamp and not inside. This could only mean one thing: Ray was shot in the face the second time while he was on the ground because blood was sprayed upwards. Furthermore, Sally’s genetic material, her DNA, was not found in Ray either. Therefore, that could only mean one thing: that there had not been a fight prior to the time of the crime.
Another key point of the accusation was a shotgun shell found in the bedroom. This led to the belief that Sally returned to the room where the ammunition was to reload the gun. Therefore, she wanted to intentionally shoot her husband a second time to finish it off.
Regarding the classification of the crime, prosecutor Daniel Goldstein was clear: Sally was a “jealous woman who lost her temper” when she discovered her husband’s infidelity. “He was going to break up with her and was having an affair with another woman. For me that is premeditated homicide,” revealed the lawyer, who also stressed that “a violent person cannot be an abused woman.”
Sally’s muscular appearance worked against her at trial. That argument, the evidence described above and the violent background of the accused overthrew legitimate defense. Judge Laura Haines was clear: “You will be an old woman when you come out. “Ray didn’t deserve to die like that.”
Sally McNeil was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum of 19 years in prison, for second-degree murder and was sent to the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. On May 29, 2020, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation granted her parole and Sally put her life back together.
Her life takes place in northern California, where she married her third husband, Norfleet Stewart, whom she met in a support group for veterans. In one of her last public appearances, the murderous bodybuilder said: “I didn’t deserve the sentence I received. But I don’t care anymore, I’m free.”