Jury gets case of Woodbury man charged with fatally stabbing wife, leaving body in house full of children

Mary Divine, Pioneer Press
·3 min read

About a week before he allegedly killed his wife by stabbing her 27 times with two different folding knives, McKinley Phillips used his cell phone to conduct a number of internet searches related to divorce.

Among the questions he had for Google: “How much does it cost to get a divorce?” “What to do if your wife wants a divorce and you don’t?” “What if my wife wants me to sign divorce papers, but I don’t?” “Do both parties have to sign a divorce decree?” and “Hennepin County divorce filing fee?”

During closing statements in Phillips’ murder trial on Thursday, prosecutors said his searches on June 24, 2021, the day before Sha-Von Phillips’ death, showed more signs of marital discord. They were married five years.

Phillips’ searches, according to Assistant Washington County Attorney Tom Frenette, included: “How do you know if your wife is talking to another man?” “Physical signs your wife is cheating?” and “How do you know if you have a good woman?”

“He knows a divorce is likely,” Frenette told the jury of eight women and four men. “This is not a shock. He said he thought she was having an affair. He believes she’s cheating. … This was not a rash decision, ladies and gentleman. The evidence shows that there were breaking points in all of this.”

Phillips, 40, faces a mandatory life sentence if convicted of first-degree murder. He is accused of stabbing Sha-Von Phillips, 42, in the basement of their Woodbury home near Royal Oaks Elementary School while six children, ages 5 to 15, were upstairs watching TV.

On the morning she was killed, Sha-Von Phillips picked up her husband from his overnight job at Mystic Lake Casino and drove them home. At the house, McKinley Phillips found a letter to his wife from an old boyfriend in Michigan.

The couple argued, and at one point, Sha-Von Phillips “challenged his manhood,” Frenette said.

McKinley Phillips went up to check on the children and then returned to his wife, where he punched her in the face three times, dazing her. He then attacked her with a folding knife, got a second folding knife and continued stabbing her, according to Frenette.

“He acted with the intent to kill,” he told the jury. “He chose to pick up that knife. … Use your common sense. He acted with clear premeditation.”

Defense attorney Mac Guptil argued Thursday that Phillips did not plan to kill his wife, so a lesser charge of second-degree murder is more appropriate.

“None of those (internet) searches showed that there was a plan to kill someone,” Guptil said. “Were any of the searches: ‘How do you get away with murder?’ ‘How do you get rid of evidence?’ No.”

The couple’s marital discord and McKinley Phillips’ subsequent internet searches “sure as heck didn’t establish a plan,” Guptil told the jury. “At some point, it went overboard, but … (the state) can’t prove that he was operating on a scheme to kill. I am not condoning a lot of things Mr. Phillips did, but based on the circumstantial evidence, the state overreached the charges.”

After the killing, Phillips took a bus to St. Paul, the light rail train to Minneapolis and then got on a Greyhound bus headed to Chicago, officials said. Authorities found him on the bus near Tomah, Wis.

Phillips, wearing a gray suit, testified on Thursday morning that he made additional internet searches after the killing, including “Definitions of “murder” and “I just killed my wife.”

When Guptil asked his client about the searches, Phillips said he was “curious.”

“I had just done this horrible thing, and I wanted to know what I was going to face,” he said.

Sha-Von Phillips’ sister, Corina Shanice McClure, traveled from Atlanta for the trial. She became so upset during Frenette’s closing statements that she left the courtroom in tears.

The trial, which started Monday, is being heard by Washington County District Court Judge Juanita Freeman. The jury deliberated Thursday and went home at 7 p.m. They are to resume deliberations Friday.

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