Woman sentenced to 50 years after she slowly poisoned boyfriend with eye drops and 'watched him suffer'
Marcy Oglesby poisoned her boyfriend, a former police chief, over the course of a year and then stored his body in a storage unit.
A woman who murdered her longtime partner using eye drops will most likely spend the rest of her life imprisoned after her alleged scheme was uncovered.
Marcy L. Oglesby, 53, has been incarcerated following the slow killing of her boyfriend while "watching him suffer" before disposing of his remains in a storage facility.
She received a 50-year prison sentence after a judge convicted her of murder and aggravated battery, with credit for 326 days served during pretrial detention. It comes as Netflix's The Perfect Neighbor creator revealed why Susan Lorincz killed Ajike Owens.
The ruling concludes a chaotic legal battle that started when Oglesby murdered her boyfriend, Richard "Rick" Young, a former police chief, during the fall of 2021.
"She killed a man who loved her and who cared for her for nearly 30 years, and she didn't just kill him," the prosecution said during the sentencing hearing, according to Law and Crime. "She poisoned him and watched him suffer."
On Oct. 7, 2022, Young's body was found inside a storage unit leased by Oglesby in the village of Maquon, Illinois.
When Oglesby was first arrested, authorities only filed charges for concealment of a non-homicidal death.
The accusations were enhanced in February 2023, but defense attorneys subsequently submitted a request to drop the more severe charges under Illinois's trial law. In April 2023, those upgraded charges were dropped — only to be reinstated in November 2023, after prosecutors said they initially lacked sufficient evidence to secure a conviction.
According to Knox County Sheriff's Office Detective Gregory Jennings, a woman named Karen Doubet, who lived with the couple, was initially "deceptive" when questioned about the body.
Eventually, Doubet confessed that Oglesby had poisoned Young's food and coffee "with eye drops and some crushed medication" over the course of a year.
"Prior to interviewing Doubet, Jennings was unaware someone could be poisoned by eye drops," the Fourth District Appellate Court noted, according to local reports.
"Jennings testified he attended the preliminary autopsy on October 10, 2022, which provided no conclusions as to the cause of death and found no antemortem fractures."
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Oglesby claimed that Young had died after contracting COVID-19. She confessed to storing his body in the unit because, she alleged, his dying wish was to be buried in an "Indian burial mound," and she didn't know how to fulfill that request, Detective Jeremy Moore testified.
Moore said a December 2022 toxicology report discovered tetrahydrozoline — a component in most over-the-counter eye drops — in Young's body. He subsequently interviewed Doubet again, who revealed she had purchased multiple bottles of eye drops that Oglesby used in the poisoning.
Doubet informed investigators that she and Oglesby wanted Young to leave their home, but he refused. In return for her testimony against Oglesby, the murder charges against Doubet were dropped.
A search of the couple's residence in January 2023 revealed "a copious amount" of discarded eye drop bottles, a pill crusher, its packaging and "a receipt that showed the purchase of some eye drops from a Dollar General."
Judge Doyle initially dismissed the later charges, ruling they should have been filed together under Illinois's compulsory joinder rule.
He also concluded that Oglesby was effectively in custody on Oct. 7, 2022, when police escorted her to the hospital before her official arrest, indicating the 120-day speedy trial window had elapsed.
However, upon appeal, the higher court disagreed, determining that the murder and concealment of the body were separate crimes.
"Prosecution for concealing a death is restricted to situations where the body itself is hidden, such as performing some act other than merely withholding knowledge or failing to disclose information in order to prevent or delay the discovery of a death by nonhomicidal means," the court order read.
"This is substantively different from the crimes... charged here, which require the administration of a poisonous or controlled substance, physical harm, death, and a substantial step toward the commission of the offense."
Oglesby decided to go for a bench trial, possibly hoping that Judge Doyle would once again view her case with sympathy.
However, the risk didn't pay off. After a four-day trial, Judge Doyle declared Oglesby guilty after just five minutes of deliberation, CBS affiliate WMBD reported.
According to prosecutors, the poisoning started in the summer of 2021 and concluded around early November of the same year.
During her sentencing, Oglesby continued to assert her innocence. "My allocution today will have to take a slightly different path because I respectfully disagree with the court's findings, and I will not be referencing a murder that did not happen," she said.
"He didn't go into that box immediately. I put him back to bed and continued to talk to him for three days."