Sean Macklin, 56, disappeared from her Atlanta apartment in early November 2020 after missing work at Piedmont Hospital in LaGrange for three days beginning November 5. Her daughter filed a missing persons report on November 10 and identified Macklin’s live-in boyfriend, Anthony Bernard Stokes, as a person of interest, saying he had threatened to kill her and dispose of her body.

Investigators say surveillance from the apartment complex showed Stokes covering a security camera, positioning his truck with an empty bed, then leaving with a large cardboard box. A recording captured an argument between Stokes and Macklin in their bathroom on the day she was last seen, and significant amounts of Macklin’s blood were found in that bathroom. Surveillance from a Riverdale Walmart reportedly shows Stokes buying new clothes and discarding a bundle prosecutors say were the clothes he wore that day.

Stokes was arrested December 16, 2020 and later tried. The jury convicted Anthony Bernard Stokes of Macklin’s murder and he received life without parole.