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A woman who cruelly poisoned her long-term boyfriend using eye drops will likely die behind bars as her sick web of lies have finally been exposed. Marcy L. Oglesby, 53, has been locked up after slowly murdering her partner and "watching him suffer" before dumping his body in a storage unit. The twisted killer has been sentenced to 50 years in prison after a judge found her guilty of murder and aggravated battery, with credit for 326 days served in pretrial detention. The sentence brings an end to a tumultuous legal process that began after Oglesby killed her boyfriend, Richard "Rick" Young, a former police chief, in the autumn 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 & Crime . "She poisoned him and watched him suffer." On October 7, 2022, Young's remains were discovered inside a storage unit rented by Oglesby in the village of Maquon, Illinois. Despite the horrendous discovery, a conviction was far from guaranteed, as several legal hurdles initially threatened to derail the case. At the time of Oglesby's arrest, prosecutors only charged her with concealment of a non-homicidal death. The charges were upgraded in February 2023, but the defence later filed a motion to dismiss the more serious counts 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." Oglesby sickeningly claimed that Young had died after contracting Covid. She admitted to storing his body in the unit because, according to her, his final wish was to be buried in an "Indian burial mound," and she did not know how to honour that request, Detective Jeremy Moore testified. Moore said a December 2022 toxicology report found tetrahydrozoline - an ingredient in most over-the-counter eye drops - in Young's body. He later interviewed Doubet again, who admitted to purchasing multiple bottles of eye drops that Oglesby used in the poisoning. Doubet told investigators that she and Oglesby wanted Young out of the house, but he refused to leave. In exchange for her testimony against Oglesby, murder charges against Doubet were dropped. A January 2023 search of the couple's home uncovered "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." Taking this evidence into account, Judge Doyle initially dismissed the later charges, ruling that they should have been filed together under Illinois's compulsory joinder rule. He also determined that Oglesby was effectively in custody on Oct. 7, 2022, when police took her to the hospital before her formal arrest - meaning the 120-day speedy trial window had expired. On appeal, however, the higher court disagreed, concluding that the murder and concealment of the body were distinct 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's order stated. "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 ultimately opted for a bench trial, perhaps hoping Judge Doyle would again view her case sympathetically. Whatever the reasoning, the gamble failed. After a four-day trial, Judge Doyle found Oglesby guilty following just five minutes of deliberation, according to CBS affiliate WMBD in Peoria. Prosecutors said the poisoning began in the summer of 2021 and ended around early November of that year. During sentencing, Oglesby maintained 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," Oglesby said. "He didn't go into that box immediately. I put him back to bed and continued to talk to him for three days."
