Monique Tepe Did Everything Right — The System Still Failed Her
Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary
True Crime Today
3.3 • 907 Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2026
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Michael McKee allegedly told Monique Tepe he could kill her at any time. That she would always be his wife. That he would find her wherever she went. According to witnesses cited in an unsealed Franklin County affidavit, those threats were made during and after a marriage that allegedly included strangulation, sexual violence, and sustained emotional abuse. Monique left. She divorced McKee in 2017, married Spencer Tepe in 2020, and built a life with two young children in Columbus, Ohio.
On December 30, 2025, Spencer and Monique were found shot to death inside their Weinland Park home. McKee has been charged with aggravated murder and aggravated burglary. He has pleaded not guilty.
This episode explores the psychology of sustained threat — how chronic fear physically reshapes the brain, why normalization of danger makes escalation harder to detect from the inside, and why telling survivors to "just leave" ignores the most dangerous phase of domestic violence. Court records allege McKee surveilled the Tepe home in the weeks before the killings using a vehicle with stolen license plates. Surveillance video allegedly captured him on the Tepe property during the Big Ten Championship weekend, three weeks before the murders.
We also examine how McKee allegedly moved through four state licensing systems over a decade — Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, Illinois — with expiring credentials, a malpractice lawsuit, and a process server who couldn't locate him, while no institution connected his alleged history of domestic violence threats to the licenses being issued in his name.
Monique Tepe's story challenges everything we think we know about escaping danger.
#MoniqueTepe #MichaelMcKee #SpencerTepe #DomesticViolence #HiddenKillers #NormalizationOfFear #SystemFailure #AggravatedMurder #ColumbusOhio #TrueCrimePodcast
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers with Tony Brewski. |
| 0:03.1 | Here now, Tony Brewski. |
| 0:06.9 | He told her he could kill her at any time. |
| 0:10.5 | He told her he'd find her and buy the house right next to hers. |
| 0:16.1 | He told her she would always be his wife. |
| 0:22.5 | Those aren't lines from a thriller. |
| 0:25.0 | Those are allegations from an unsealed affidavit filed in Franklin County, Ohio, attributed to Michael David McKee. |
| 0:32.7 | A physician trained in vascular surgery, a man with degrees from Ohio State, a man who, according to court record, spent the weeks before Christmas, 2025, allegedly surveilling the home of his ex-wife and her new husband with stolen license plates on his vehicle. |
| 0:49.9 | Monique Teppie heard those words. |
| 0:53.2 | She told friends, she told people close to her. |
| 0:56.5 | What he'd done to her during their marriage. |
| 0:59.6 | Then he'd allegedly, or that he'd allegedly strangled her. |
| 1:05.2 | Forced unwanted S on her and repeatedly threatened her life. |
| 1:09.0 | And then she kept living. |
| 1:13.1 | She remarried. |
| 1:14.0 | She had two kids. |
| 1:14.8 | She built the kind of life that from the outside, it looks exactly like what we tell |
| 1:22.6 | survivors to build. |
| 1:24.9 | And on December 30th of 2025, she and her husband, Spencer, were found shot to death |
| 1:29.4 | inside their home in North Forst Street in Columbus, where their two kids, ages four and one, |
| 1:34.4 | were still in the house. The children were alive. The parents were not. So here's a question the |
| 1:42.6 | story demands, and it's not the one most people ask first. |
... |
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