The murder of 18-year-old Macy McCulla sent shockwaves through the small city of Marshfield, Wisconsin, but the full scope of the horror that preceded her death is only now coming into focus, revealing a family dynamic so dysfunctional that it ultimately paved the way for a brutal and chilling act of violence.
Shelley Campus lived in a state of constant, paralyzing fear for years leading up to the incident. The 19-year medical student was completely unprepared for the abrupt end of her youth, but she decided to keep the baby and face the challenge alone after the child’s biological father vanished. The fragility of the newborn’s life in those first weeks created a psychological break in the mother that would dictate a future of helplessness.
When the 7-week-old was rushed to a Minnesota hospital with a severe respiratory virus and pneumonia, the terror of losing him left a permanent scar on Shelley’s psyche. And it was this fear that planted the seeds of the nightmare that would eventually destroy her family. The mantra the young mother adopted was simple and destructive, “He would get everything he wanted, whenever he wanted it.”
The outward signs of a problem appeared early, although they were framed as quirks by the doting mother. By age seven, frustration manifested not as a tantrum but as volatile rage. When denied a toy truck in a shopping center, the boy shattered it against the floor in a fit of cold fury.
A bystander is reported to have seen the scene, which was a significant turning point where the ten-year-old boy learned a simple rule: if he escalated, he won. The silent moments of strange behavior were ignored, such as when he would line up objects in formation and stare, or when he adamantly refused to touch food without a fork. These were warnings the mother says she could not or refused to see as anything other than eccentricity.
The lack of a strict code of conduct in the home made the introduction of a strict disciplinarian inevitable, and that’s where Robert entered the picture. The boyfriend’s approach was harsh and immediate; the first meeting was marred when the man remarked that he was checking for the mark of the devil. The household dynamic became a toxic seesaw, where one parent was absent of rules, and the other was too violent in enforcing them, which created a deep resentment in the child.
The situation escalated into a Christmas disaster when the boy was denied presents for the day due to suggested breakfast rules. In a symbolic act of rage, tormented by a felt injustice, he reacted not by crying, but by smashing the gift his mother had bought him the exact same day, proving that any attempt at control was futile. The final schism with the stepfather resulted in the man leaving when the boy turned 18, leaving Shelley feeling like “a prisoner” in her own house rather than celebrating her freedom.
A few months later, a 16-year-old girl named Macy, known for her sweet and social nature, broke through Derek’s isolation. Her pregnancy announcement brought a facade of happiness to the house. The boy was ecstatic to become a father, handling the baby care with a patient, caring nature.
But this perfection was just another iteration of control. Derek’s obsessive desire for routine began to twist love into a cage. The young man’s rules became a prison of darkness for his family, requiring all the curtains in the house to remain shut, trapping his mother and teenage lover in a home devoid of sunshine or fresh air.
He controlled Macy’s movements, rendering her a prisoner under the guise of a relationship. He called his mother an alcoholic and demonstrated an uncontrollable rage. Shelley reports coming home to find her son with an AK-47 he had recently purchased.
The sheer wickedness of the threat was delivered in the form of a cold promise that he could “shoot her or slit her throat” if she attempted to sleep. He was a tyrant who used intimidation and insults to control every aspect of the household, destroying any oral persistence. When discipline was intervened, there were consequences; one day, Shelley’s beloved Labrador Lucy disappeared.
Derek’s nonchalant explanation of a sudden road accident and death at the vets was so accusatory and based on fabricated details that Shelley knew her son had killed the dog, but her terror prevented her from acknowledging it.
The psychological entrapment reached a fever pitch two years later, when Macy, now 18 and just out of high school, escaped. She left her son, 2-year-old Gabriel, behind. No one could have guessed that this escape would be the darkest possible twist in the story.
Macy’s final escape was tragically short. After returning home from a support meeting, Shelley saw the front door open and Macy’s car in the driveway. She found that the panic immediately turned to terror as she tracked a red trail leading to the bathroom.
The door was open, unveiling the bathtub nearly overflowing with blood. Macy was now just a deflated corpse, with her throat slit, a testament to his monumental fury.
Shelley ran for the exits, screaming that Dererick had taken the child. Meanwhile, Derek fled with his son and checked into a motel. His demeanor was enough to alarm the staff, sparking a police chase.
When officers arrived, the young man emerged from his room completely calm and gave up without a fight. The boy, Gabriel, was found unharmed. A search of his car and his clothing immediately provided the evidence of guilt: the victim’s blood and the murder weapon, a knife.
The brutal exacts of the crime became clear in the autopsy; the girl had wounds in her throat that severed her jugular vein and other gashes on her back, along with defensive wounds to her hands. He had lured her there and then literally butchered her to the point where even after killing her in the bathtub, he didn’t even bother to step over the blood.
But the horror did not end with the arrest and subsequent life sentence. While awaiting trial, Derek accepted his fate only until a new mad conspiracy took hold; in an attempt to tie her to the net wider, data he deposited more than $4,000 with an inmate to pay for the assassination of a fictitious man he suspected of being involved with Macy. The attempt failed and he was charged with solicitation to commit murder.
The family now had a double count of brutality, and Shelley’s reaction to the whole thing left the nation staring in disbelief. The very mother whose son she was terrified of, did everything in her power to free him, still ignoring the severity of the grave violation he had enacted. The mother captured this medical dismissal at a meeting with his public defender to form a plea, a brutal psychological collapse that recognized that the truth was not what mattered in her own mind.
It was only later, in the exhibit of her son’s final call to her, was Derek’s own statement that he said “I love you” for the first time, a chilling end to his words.
She took custody of her grandson while her son was moved to a Wisconsin facility, where he has now legally changed his name to Gabriel, mirroring the innocence of his arrested child. His behavior here proves that in a matter of a few years, a spoiled child was a man who planned a revenge hit to have his ex-fiancée, and then another man, killed. As her home is now a permanent crime scene, she lives isolated, only able to face the outside world to say that she loved her son for the wrong reasons.
The legalities and the real world have now seen where the true crime lies in this story: a mother’s unwillingness to face a growing monster, who just needed his turf and shoes untied.
