Photo: Cody MacPherson/Facebook
After stabbing a romantic rival, a New Jersey man loaded his victim into the back of a vehicle and then drove to the residence he shared with his cousin before knocking on the window in the early morning hours of Sept. 24, 2017.
“Hey, do you have a shovel?” asked Alan McGinnis, according to prosecutors. “I have a body in the trunk.”
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Under the terms of his plea agreement, McGinnis will be sentenced to 30 years for first-degree murder “and will be required to serve all 30 years of his sentence,” Billhimer said.
MacPherson still was alive when McGinnis placed his bleeding body in the trunk and he might have been alive when he was abandoned in the woods, Weatherstone said during the detention hearing in April,according to thePark Press.
“Cody may still have been alive or not,” he said. “The state does not know the exact time of death.”
Prosecutors said the murder sprang from a love triangle involving the two men and McGinnis’ ex-girlfriend, who is the mother of his two children.
The night before the stabbing, the woman had spent the night with MacPherson at a motel and McGinnis believed she might be pregnant with his child, Superior Court Judge Guy P. Ryan noted during the detention hearing, according to thePark Press.
The woman and the two men then were out together drinking the next day and wound up at her house in Brown Mills, where a group of people heard McGinnis state that he wanted to kill MacPherson, the prosecutor said.
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The ex-girlfriend was passed out from drinking when the altercation occurred. The witness said she later helped the ex-girlfriend’s mother “sop up the blood on the floor,” Weatherstone said.
The attack occurred as MacPherson slept on a couch. Afterward McGinnis took him outside and stabbed him again in the chest before loading him into the trunk and driving to the forest, according to the prosecutor.
Along the way, McGinnis stopped around 3 a.m. at the Jackson residence he shared with his cousin to inquire about the shovel.
He eventually dumped MacPherson’s body about a mile away from the residence under a pile of debris where it was found months later, the prosecutor said.
McGinnis is being held in the Ocean County Jail until he is formally sentenced. His attorney could not immediately be reached for comment on Thursday.
source: people.com
