The man prosecutors say fled the state on a Greyhound bus after he allegedly fatally stabbed his wife in Woodbury and left her dead body in a house full of children has been charged in Washington County District Court.
39-year-old McKinley Phillips was charged Saturday with one count of second-degree murder with a dangerous weapon.
According to the criminal complaint, officers from the Woodbury Public Safety Department were called to a house in the 7500 block of Steepleview Road for a welfare check around 3:40 p.m. Friday.
A woman who said she was Phillips’ mother called 911 to report that her son had called her to confess he had killed his wife and that her body was in the basement of their home. She also said there were “six or seven children” in the house, ranging in ages from 5 to 15, according to the criminal complaint.
The woman later told an officer that Phillips “told her he had beaten and stabbed his wife,” the complaint states.
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According to police records, Woodbury police had been called to the house three times in the past two months on domestic-related incidents. “During these previous contacts, the responding officers noted that Phillips appeared to be intoxicated and was hostile to the officers,” the complaint states.
After police responded on Friday and set up a perimeter and assembled a tactical team, they ordered all of the occupants to come outside. A short time later, six children exited the home, according to the complaint.
“Officers interviewed the children who stated that their mother and stepfather, who they identified as Phillips, were not home,” the complaint states. “Tactical officers made entry to the home and located an obviously deceased female in the basement.”
The 42-year-old woman was later identified as the children’s mother and Phillips’ wife; she had what appeared to the officers to be multiple stab wounds, according to the complaint.
At about 3 a.m. Saturday, Phillips was located on an eastbound Greyhound bus traveling near Tomah, Wis.
Phillips was arrested and was being held at the Monroe County, Wisconsin, Jail on Monday.
In an interview, Phillips told police that he had gotten into an argument with his wife Friday morning after “he found a letter to her from an old boyfriend who was currently in jail,” the complaint states. “Phillips believed (she) was cheating on him.”
Phillips told police he punched her multiple times in the face while she was sitting in a chair, then took out his folding pocket knife and stabbed her in the arm. When she “fell over forward out of the chair, he stood over her by her head and stabbed her a lot of times in the back,” the complaint states.
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According to the Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office, the preliminary cause of death is multiple sharp-force injuries to her chest, back and neck and blunt-force trauma to her brain.
The stabbing occurred between 9 and 10 a.m., Phillips told officers. Afterward, he said, he “paced around the basement and checked on the kids, who were all upstairs watching television and didn’t know what had happened,” the complaint states. “Phillips said he told his son ‘goodbye’ and that he wouldn’t see him again.”
He said he left the house in his vehicle around 11 or 11:30 a.m., drove to the Sun Ray Shopping Center in St. Paul and took a bus to Minneapolis. He boarded a bus to Chicago and told police his plan was to go to New York City after that.
When he was arrested in Tomah, Phillips was “wearing the same clothing he was wearing at the time of the murder … covered in what appeared to be blood splatter,” the complaint states.
A warrant has been requested to extradite Phillips from Wisconsin.
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