Sally and Ray McNeil were champion bodybuilders who used steroids to pump up their muscles. Their volatile relationship came to a head at their apartment in Oceanside, California, on Valentine's Day in 1995.
What may have been the most unusual known “roid rage” murder case there ever was, in which a woman killed her fellow body-builder husband after a tumultuous marriage, is the focus of a new three-part documentary series.
“I killed the man that I loved the most in the world,” Sally McNeil said.
She and her husband Ray McNeil were champion bodybuilders who used steroids to pump up their muscles.
She was known as the "pumped-up princess," the brawny bride and “killer Sally,” her character name when she wrestled. That last moniker is also the title of the new Netflix documentary that examines her story.
Sally says her husband was a steroid-using "monster" who physically abused her.
Their volatile relationship came to a head at their apartment in Oceanside, California, on Valentine's Day in 1995.
“I just shot my husband because he just beat me up,” she told a 911 operator.”
At her trial, Sally claimed she was a battered woman, in fear for her life that fateful night after her husband tried to choke her.
But prosecutors said she had her own history of violence. They said McNeil blasted her husband with a shotgun, went into the bedroom to reload and returned to shoot him again, this time in the face.
She claimed she had stopped taking steroids, but authorities say steroids were found in her blood when she was arrested.
McNeil was convicted and served 25 years in prison. She was released in 2020 and she sat down to be interviewed for the three-part "Killer Sally" documentary.
“I killed him because I was protecting myself. He was trying to kill me,” she said.
Nanette Burstein directed the series.
“Sally is not the perfect victim,” she said. “Sometimes I was swayed to believe in her innocence and other times her guilt, but at the end of the day, I came away believing it was a miscarriage of justice.”
“Killer Sally” is available to be streamed on Netflix.
