Young couple’s slaying prompts arrest of surgeon ex-husband

**Ana Garcia** (0:00)
A word of warning. This podcast explores graphic and disturbing stories and includes some strong language. It therefore may not be suitable for our young listeners or other folks who may find it disturbing. Hello and welcome to True Crime News, the podcast covering high profile and under the radar cases from across the country every week. I'm your host, Ana Garcia. Our case this week, they were murdered in the same place that they were married. Police believe that the couple was killed by an obsessive and abusive ex-husband. So it's likely no coincidence that they were killed days after their fifth wedding anniversary. While this case is making its way through the courts, there is a new debate about the technology used to find the alleged killer, the flock license plate readers.
Now, the very community where this double homicide occurred is now debating whether that system is just too intrusive and should be banned. The father of one of the victims says that that technology helped police find the alleged killer. We are recording this on Monday, August 24th of 2026 I always have to look at the date because I never know what day it is. And our guest today is Judy Rybak, a journalist, a producer, and she's working on an amazing project called Making Amends in which we talk about, can you forgive people who have done horrific things? I can't wait to have that discussion with you, Judy, a little bit later in the podcast. Welcome. It's such a pleasure.

**Judy Rybak** (1:36)
Thank you, and it's so good to be with you. I'm a big fan, big fan. I listen to the podcast all the time.

**Ana Garcia** (1:42)
Oh, you're very kind. You're very kind. And you know, your work at 48 Hours has just been extraordinary and you did an incredible series there, a podcast series on killers. So you are the perfect person for this conversation today.

**Judy Rybak** (1:55)
I think so. This case, when I started reading it, it really took me back to a lot of cases I worked on for 48 Hours. So yeah, so I'm excited to dive in.

**Ana Garcia** (2:06)
So this case is out of Columbus, Ohio. And many of you are going to recall those frightening headlines that we heard around the holidays right before New Year's of 2025 And it's about a husband and a wife who were killed in their home while their two babies slept, the dog was home, and very quickly afterwards, police zeroed in on an abusive ex-husband as the primary suspect. Now, the victims here are 39-year-old Monique Tepe and her husband, 37-year-old Dr. Spencer Tepe, a successful dentist in the area. Now, there are two children who were aged about one and four at the time.
They were in the house when the murders occurred. They were not physically harmed. But I think to this day, Judy, we still don't know what that four-year-old was exposed to.

**Judy Rybak** (2:56)
Right. It's unbelievable what these kids went through, because they were alone for hours and hours, right? And so just the trauma of not knowing where your parents are, of feeling slightly abandoned and then losing your parents, I can't imagine it.

**Ana Garcia** (3:16)
Yeah. The kids are now with extended family. And I do believe that four-year-olds do have recall of things. So that's what worries me. I think maybe the one-year-old still experienced a trauma, but maybe will not have any of these memories and things sensory, you know, that the little four-year-old picked up on. So it's just horrific. Now, the accused killer in this case is a vascular surgeon, Michael McKee. We don't usually hear about like doctors going off the rails like this, but they are human too. He is 40 and he's been charged with four counts of aggravated murder and one count of aggravated burglary. We will get into why there are four counts of two people are dead. We'll get into that a little bit later. So what's interesting here is that Monique and Michael McKee, the ex-husband, they were they were married like seven years earlier and for a brief time, and then they separated after, I don't know, something like several months and it took a while for them to divorce.
And so I think the fact that when you are past a relationship for that many years, you wonder, we see these crimes sometimes when the person first gets married or has a child and the alleged abusive partner comes after them. So I just found that not that there is a time limit on crazy and abusiveness. I am not suggesting that, but I did find that interesting.