She said her name was Erin McLean and that she had some terrible news. Debra Flynn: I said, "Who shot him? Debra Flynn: I had absolutely no idea. Immediately after the shooting the story became a media sensation. A husband kills his wife's former student, her lover. Tamara Mulkey: It was the shock of the century, because people like Eric you would never imagine them getting that point, ever.
Eric McLean was finally taken into custody the morning after the shooting. He surrendered to police after dropping the rifle on railroad tracks outside of town. Erin McLean went to Nashville with her two sons. Then, a few days later, there was another call to Erin McLean was apparently so distraught by the killing that a few days later she attempted suicide with non-prescription drugs at her mother's home in Nashville. Then, some of the questions swirling around the case would be answered inside the Knox County Jail.
Eric McLean: Yes. Lauer: You knew that she was having an affair? McLean: I mean, I mean I pretty much knew. I think I was just, like, in denial for a long time, you know?
Lauer: Why not leave? Why not leave her? McLean: I don't know. I just couldn't leave her. Lauer: Explain that. Why not? McLean: Because I love her! But as you'll find out, that interview was just the beginning of what Eric McLean had to say about his marriage, his wife's secret affair, and what led up to that terrible night at Coker Ave.
Now out on bail and working on a farm, Eric McLean's fate will soon be in the hands of a jury. He's charged in the killing of year-old Sean Powell, the boyfriend and former student of McLean's wife, Erin.
He admitted -- on national television, no less -- that he had shot Powell while the teenager sat in a car outside the McLean's home. But he says he's no murderer. When we sat down with Eric McLean again, two months after the killing, he continued to insist that if the whole story was known, he wouldn't be seen as cold-blooded killer.
Natalie Morales: How was your marriage early on? Eric McLean: It was fine. It was great. But -- I mean, we had problems. Mainly just financial problems, but things were great. We spent a lot of time together and we bought a house, actually before we got married we bought a house. And so we started, you know, gardening and raise…Natalie Morales: Raising your family?
Eric McLean: Yes, raising a family and all of that. But in the last few years, facing the pressures of raising two young sons, family finances, and her graduate study, Eric McLean says Erin began to change. Having a child at 18, he says, made her feel she had missed out on the best part of her life.
Eric McLean: She just felt like she had lost her youth. And so she blamed me for that. And blamed little Eric for that. It's like we made these decisions together to start a family. And he says that over the years Erin's frustration would occasionally erupt into outbursts of violence.
Eric McLean: Where I just sometimes would wake up and -- and she was sittin' on top of me just hitting me. I was asleep in bed. She just--Natalie Morales: She physically abused you? And then I remember going to work and they were asking me what happened because I had a black eye. About three months before the shooting, Eric began to suspect there was more going on in his wife's life than he knew.
I know what it is. When we got home from the party she just went off and started yelling at me and, you know, telling me "You haven't been close to me in a while. And she was just yelling at the top of her lungs. She just told me, "I don't care. You can have the kids, the house, the whole estate. I want my freedom. Eric McLean: Like that. Where she said that she didn't want anything.
She didn't want the family or anything anymore. Natalie Morales: Did she ever tell you, 'I don't love you anymore? Natalie Morales: How often would you hear that? Eric McLean: Just when she would have those outbursts and attack me. Natalie Morales: What did she tell you? Eric McLean: She told me that she was thinking about having affairs.
Natalie Morales: And what was your response when she told you that? Eric McLean: I was just in shock. Kind of like, "Why are you saying these things and why are you doing these things?
Around this time Eric noticed that Erin was spending more and more time with a former student named Sean Powell. They spent long hours talking about literature, poetry, music.
Eric McLean had met the year-old a few weeks earlier when he helped find him a place to live. Natalie Morales: When did you realize that she was having an extramarital affair with Sean Powell? Eric McLean: Well, she would tell me things when she was drunk that she wouldn't tell me when she was sober … in a way she admitted it to me at the end of January. But then when she was sober she would deny it.
And I wanted to believe the sober Erin. Natalie Morales: Neighbors of yours have said that you would actually go out to dinner with Sean Powell in tow. You, Erin and Sean. Why would you let that happen? Eric McLean: We went out to eat one day after -- early on. This was probably Jan. I mean, I suspected things but I didn't know. Knowing his marriage was in jeopardy and not wanting a divorce, Eric McLean says he just put up with the unusual friendship.
Eric McLean: I didn't feel like I could do anything anymore. Kind of like I had to force myself to do everything at this point. Before it -- I kind of had like things coordinated where I could work things out and had almost like a schedule I could follow.
But it was just getting -- some days I just couldn't even get out of bed at all. And I'd been -- you know. I don't know. Every week I started going to the psychologist and psychiatrist every single week. But nothing ever got better. Natalie Morales: And she wasn't getting any help as far as you knew? Eric McLean: No, she wasn't getting any help. All the while, he says, he was worrying about the toll the situation was taking on their children.
Natalie Morales: What was her relationship at that point like with the kids? Eric McLean: She treated little Eric horribly. Just verbally abused him all the time. But she treated Ian better, but still just neglected both of them. She just-- basically when she'd get home from work she'd just sit in the bathtub all day drinking whiskey and talking on the phone.
Natalie Morales: Was she talking on the phone with this year-old? Eric McLean: I guess so. Natalie Morales: So this time in your life … how would you describe the emotions that you were feeling on a daily basis with her?
Eric McLean: I felt like my entire world was falling apart. My family was falling apart. I can't even trust her to be around my kids anymore. In fact, he says his year-old finally confirmed his suspicions about his wife's relationship with Sean Powell.
Eric McLean: That made me feel really, really upset. He says that was a turning point and he began to crack under the pressure. That same day, Erin asked him to scold the child for being disrespectful. Eric McLean: She said, "Well, why is he talking to me like this? I was just so upset. Natalie Morales: But yet you stuck by her for another month or so. You stuck around.
Were you trying to help her? Eric McLean: Uh-huh. Natalie Morales: Did you think she would come around? Eric McLean: I thought she would eventually. But while Eric McLean still finds it too painful to talk about, friends say he told them he actually witnessed his wife's infidelity with Sean Powell.
Brian Mulkey: He just said he walked in, and they were in the bedroom, and he just turned around and walked out. Natalie Morales: How often do you think about Sean Powell? Eric McLean: I think about him a lot. I'm just really sorry about it. All of this. But I never wanted any of this stuff to happen. No one involved in the fatal incident that night has given all the details about what happened -- including Eric McLean, whose attorney would not let him talk about the shooting itself.
Jamie Satterfield covered the case for the Knoxville News Sentinel and has seen key pieces of evidence. In fact, Erin alleges that while she only saw Sean Powell in person fewer than 10 times during those weeks between Powell's release from rehab and the night of the shooting, Eric McLean spent much more time with Powell, frequently taking the couple's children over to the North Knoxville house where Powell was squatting to watch "Star Wars," play a game the two men made up with the McLean children called "pine cone wars," and eat pizza.
She says the relationship between the two men was very "twisted," with Eric McLean seeking out Powell's company, even as Powell began cruelly taunting him that he was involved with his wife. Erin says that after one night when the trio went out drinking together, they returned to the McLean home, where Eric attempted to initiate a menage a trois with Erin and Powell.
Powell rebuffed him and continued his bedroom activities with Erin, with Eric remaining in the house. In fact, Erin says that Sean Powell was never alone with her in the family's home. She says that every time Powell was inside the Coker Avenue house over those weeks, whether for a visit or an overnight stay, Eric McLean was also present. For this reason, she disputes a neighbor's testimony during Eric McLean's trial that she observed the couple's children locked out of the house in the cold while Powell's black Mercedes-Benz was parked nearby.
As the weeks passed, Erin says that Eric McLean's jealousy became more evident but that he continued to "hang out" quite frequently with Powell and to invite him to their home. She says that she repeatedly admonished Powell to cease his taunting of her husband but that he did not.
She thinks the teenager had "a death wish. He was trying to see how far he could transgress, and I really think he was trying to get Eric to kill him. I really believe that.
On March 9, the night before the shooting, the McLean children had gone to stay for the night with Eric's parents. They spent the night of the shooting, March 10, there as well, a development Erin says was unusual, alleging that the extended stay was Eric's idea, and marked the first time the children had ever spent more than one night in succession away from their parents.
She believes that Eric's insistence that the children go to his parents' house the night before is evidence that he was planning to kill. They returned to the McLean home, and she, Powell and Eric McLean talked and listened to music together, before Eric and Erin retired for the night to their bedroom, and Powell fell asleep on their couch.
Erin also recalls that at some point during the evening of March 9, while Powell was in their home as a guest, Eric called her back to their bedroom, telling her he had something important to say to her. When they got there, however, she says he just stood there, with nothing to say, in a manner that seemed odd and frightening.
Erin says she had no idea at that time that her husband had hidden a rifle in their house nearly two weeks previously. In hindsight, however, she suspects he called her to the bedroom because he was considering killing her, perhaps in addition to or instead of Sean Powell. Erin says that on the morning of March 10, Powell remained in their house for a period after waking up on their couch, but he began teasing and taunting Eric McLean about the relationship he had with Erin.
She says both she and Eric told him to knock it off and to leave, which he did. The day continued without incident until evening, when Erin was bathing. She says Eric McLean entered the bathroom and told her he needed to talk to her about something important. He proceeded to inform her that her best friend of more than a decade had made a sexual advance to him, offering to have him come and spend the night with her.
He told her he was considering the offer. Erin says that this same friend, in whom Eric had been confiding about his troubled marriage, had also recently sent Eric a text message that Erin had considered inappropriate.
Erin says that while she understood that the pair had an open marriage, she believed close family friends should be "off limits," and she found Eric's revelation that he was considering sleeping with her friend wildly upsetting. She says the couple argued, during which she had Eric call the friend and ask her in Erin's presence whether she had indeed invited Eric to spend the night.
The friend didn't deny it, thus upsetting Erin further. Erin claims that at some point, Sean Powell called and suggested that he would come to pick Erin up. Powell showed up at their door "within 10 or 15 minutes.
She says he had a "wild look in his eye" and seemed angry. Toxicology results later showed that Powell had cocaine in his system and a blood-alcohol level of 0.
Erin McLean says her memories of what transpired over the next hour are fuzzy, and she isn't completely sure of the order of events.
She knows she wasn't ready to leave when Powell arrived, and that she had to go back to her bedroom to finish dressing. She recalls that Eric suddenly calling the police to report an "intruder" in their house who had been "stalking" his wife. While Eric was on the phone, Erin says she asked her husband why in the world he was referring to Powell, someone he frequently welcomed into their house, as an "intruder.
Erin says that in hindsight, she believes her husband was attempting to pre-emptively convince police that Powell was an intruder because Eric held the belief - which he had expressed to her on previous occasions - that Tennessee law gave homeowners the right to kill "intruders" on their property as a matter of self defense.
Erin followed Powell out into the yard, where they sat on a swing and talked. Erin told Powell she thought he should leave, and that she did not intend to end her marriage. She says that at some point, Eric McLean angrily threatened to lock her out of the house and get a restraining order "so that you'll never see your children again. Erin said that between the call and Eric's threats, she then decided she had had it, and would leave with Powell.
Sean Powell went and got in his Mercedes in front of the house, while Erin went into the house to get her cell phone and purse. While she was inside gathering her things, she heard a loud noise. She didn't recognize it as a gunshot. However, when she went out to the car, she found her husband standing next to the car with a gun.
She describes his demeanor as eerily calm. She looked in the window and saw the carnage the gun blast had wrought to Sean Powell's face and head. She began screaming and turned to her husband, whom she reports calmly said to her, "Congratulations. Erin McLean says she left Knoxville as soon as possible after the homicide with her children, believing that Eric McLean would spend the rest of his life in prison and that she would now be percent responsible for their two sons.
She says remaining in Knoxville, where she quickly became the subject of threats and insults, and where she felt she was being stalked and harassed by the news media, simply wasn't an option. She spent some time in Nashville, attempting to live with her mother, despite their troubled family history. During that time, she secured a job at a small Christian school, where she was subsequently accused of making inappropriate advances toward a teenage student.
Erin McLean flatly denies the accusation, saying that she did speak with the boy outside of school about his mental health problems but that she never said or did anything that could be construed as inappropriate.
She also denies sending him text messages. She says the suggestion that she was attempting to seduce the boy came only after the school and his parents learned of the Knoxville killing and her relationship with Sean Powell. However, when asked whether there is anything intrinsically wrong with an adult woman becoming involved with an year-old, she says no, that year-olds are legally adults. She says she has known of some relationships with an age difference as great as the one she shared with Sean Powell that have ended in long-term marriages.
Erin says that during the period immediately following Powell's death, when she was living in Nashville, she received several postcards addressed to "Whore McLean" and delivered to her mother's address.
She says the postcards were clearly written in Eric McLean's handwriting, with one of them reading:. You are a child molester. You are a master manipulator. You beat your son for telling the truth. You will never be a teacher for everyone knows you aren't safe around year old children. Your children know who you are. Your mother knows who you are. Everyone knows you are a cheap, no-account, unfaithful skank. You will never be free of your actions. Erin says that she turned the postcards over to the FBI and alerted the Knox County district attorney general, since Eric McLean was, at that time, legally prohibited from contacting his estranged wife.
Last week, the boys were removed from her custody and brought back to the Knoxville area to live at least for the time with their paternal grandparents. Erin McLean denies having attempted to keep the children from their father since the shooting, saying she now hopes for a custody resolution that recognizes the fact that "it's simply not possible for me to live in Knoxville. I am so hated there. I cannot have a life there, in the community that I loved. Last week, Swann found Erin McLean in contempt of court for violating his order to refrain from contacting the boys after they were moved from Austin.
Erin McLean says that her sons are aware their father killed Sean Powell, whom they knew quite well. Because of the killing, she says they've expressed fear of Eric McLean. She says she hopes to continue living in Austin with her sons, where they have been since March , with "appropriate visitation" for her ex-husband.
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