Millionaire’s husband claims self-defense after wife’s body found in Texas field – blames infidelity, while trial testimony tells a darker story

Andreen McDonald’s dreams of success began to come back true until five years ago when her stays were found scattered amongst cow bones in a farmer’s field in San Antonio, Texas.

The enterprising mother and wife had vanished into thin air, and her husband, Air Force Major Andre McDonald, refused to talk to police. With no official reason for death or known enemies, the case hinged on a yellow carpenter’s hammer found hidden in a trash can in her garage.

Who was Andrea McDonald?

At 29, Andreen’s labor and dedication have led her to the life she at all times imagined. Originally from Jamaica, she fell in love with a handsome U.S. Air Force major, 10 years her senior, when he visited the island for a funeral. They began a whirlwind romance, married, moved to the United States and welcomed a daughter, Elena, into their family, reports “48 hours” in “Andreen McDonald: The Millionaire Vanishes.”

While Andre was working as a cyberwarfare analyst at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, McDonald began an assisted-care company that quickly grew into a multimillion-dollar enterprise.

The businesswoman prided herself on her punctuality and exercised frequently, so when she failed to indicate up on the gym or at work on the morning of March 1, 2019, her co-employees knew something was mistaken.

In the times after her disappearance, police uncovered tiny clues that pointed to something terrifyingly near home. Her blood was found on the lavatory light switch, and a strange pile of charred stays was found in the sprawling backyard. Within a day, her husband, Andre, had turn out to be the prime suspect, however it would take 4 long years to bring him to justice.

Accusations of infidelity

To outsiders, the couple was the epitome of happiness, but detectives say their life went into crisis when Andre discovered that his wife had renewed her affair along with her old flame in Jamaica.

In 2018, Andreen got tattoos of the person’s initial and date of birth. The couple narrowly avoided divorce, but after Andreen covered up her tattoos and ended the affair, family and friends believed they’d already come to terms with the event.

But text messages from the night before she disappeared, obtained by police, painted a different picture, as Andre furiously accused her of cheating on him. He told police he went to a gas station to get gas and funky down, then went home and slept in one other bedroom, and that was the last time he saw her.

The day after she disappeared, undercover officers followed him to a gun shop, where he bought a handgun and ammunition. Thinking he intended to commit suicide, authorities detained him for a psychiatric evaluation and issued a search warrant for the couple’s home, where they found a smoking gun.

Evidence results in arrest

They found a yellow carpenter’s hammer in the corner of the garage and Andre’s bloody clothes in a garbage can.

A shovel, axe, hatchet, gas cans and gloves were found in her automotive, and a torn up Lowe’s receipt for those items was thrown in the trash. When DNA evaluation confirmed Andreen’s blood was on the hammer, police moved in and arrested Andre on charges of tampering with evidence for tearing up the receipt.

At that time, her body had not yet been found and the case was still not officially ruled a murder.

Detectives turned to the general public for help, spreading the story to the media and asking for support from the Air Force, which sent a special team to look a whole lot of miles for clues to her whereabouts.

The breakthrough in the case finally got here on July 11, 2019, when a farmer discovered a human skeleton covered in cow bones in his field. Although Andreen had injuries consistent with blunt force trauma, pathologists were unable to find out a reason for death resulting from the degraded state of her stays.

Despite this, McDonald was charged and pleaded not guilty to murder. Days before his trial in April 2021 began, he made a shocking confession that will change his fate endlessly.

Some imagine it was a clever tactical move to avoid being charged with murder. He shared details of Andreen’s death along with her family, claiming he killed her in self-defense.

He stuck to that story throughout the trial, recounting details from the stand in regards to the horrific fight they’d the night she died. He claimed she had began a second business and kept it a secret from him for greater than a 12 months, prompting further divorce threats and a brutal fight.

“She got extremely angry at the thought of us dividing up and she ran into the room to confront me … she got right in my face, at this point she spits in my face. That’s when I grabbed her and I think our heads collided and I think she got a cut somewhere on her face,” he said in video testimony obtained by “48 Hours.”

Andre noted that she was extremely “strong” and will bench press as much as 300 kilos. When she became enraged and started hitting him, he threw her to the bottom, fearing for her safety, he said.

“Then I kicked her twice and on the second kick, I think I heard some kind of wheezing sound,” he testified.

After putting his daughter to bed, he returned to the lavatory and found Andreen dead.

“I never thought about calling someone to resuscitate a dead person,” he said. Instead of calling 911, he dumped his wife’s lifeless body in a field, stripped her naked and burned her clothes.

What about Hammer?

Armed with that information, the jury had to make your mind up whether the person had deliberately murdered her, it was manslaughter or self-defense — but they still couldn’t find an evidence for using the hammer.

Andre explained on the stand that after investigators searched his home, he returned to the field and set her body on fire. After the flames subsided, he attacked her burned stays with a hammer.

Although he was charged with murder, which carried a life sentence, a jury in February 2023 delivered a lighter sentence of manslaughter after an almost 11-hour stalemate. He is currently serving 20 years in prison, and his appeal of the conviction was rejected in August 2024. Andreen’s mother and sister have custody of their young daughter, Elena.