On the morning of March 1st, 2019, a woman by the name of Carl would drive around in search of her best friend who did not show up for work. Her name was Andreen McDonald, the highly successful wife of a man named Andre McDonald, who together with him owned a business worth over 1 billion US dollars.
She and Carl would go to the gym every morning, but on this day she was nowhere to be found, nor was she answering her phone. So, Carl decided to pay her home a visit, but what she found in there would change her life forever. Upon arrival, there was nobody present, but when she went inside, she saw that there was blood on the walls.
And not only that, but even though Andreen was missing, her keys were still inside, along with her purse and both cars that she regularly drove still being in the driveway. After standing there with all of the worst thoughts running through her mind, Carl remembered something that Andreen had told her, “If I ever go missing, it will be because Andre killed me.
” But little did she know that there was a whole other story that nobody knew about. Because Andre, her husband, was not the only man in Andreen’s life. And 5 months after she was reported missing, a farmer was walking on his property when he made the shocking discovery of human remains that had been set on fire.
He called the police and they identified her as Andreen McDonald. But the person who did it was one of the most complicated mysteries they had ever seen, and that would take years to solve until now. Andre McDonald and Andreen Anderson met in 2009 in Port Antonio, Jamaica. And by the time they got together, he had already made the decision to move over seas to America and enter the United States Air Force.
By the time he was able to move her out of Jamaica, the two were able to get married overseas and then start something that would change their lives. A business called Starlight Homes, a home health care and assisted living operation in San Antonio. Andre funded it using a large sum of the money he had made from living in America all this time, while Andreen was the one who ran the day-to-day operations.
And together, they built it from the ground into something serious. And serious it became because by 2016, business was booming. And not only that, but Andre got promoted to the rank of major in the Air Force. Everything looked like it was coming together perfectly for this couple.
In fact, in a couple years, the value of the business would eventually reach $1 billion. But all the success in the world cannot save a ship from sinking because while this couple looked perfect on the surface, there was a looming monster in the background that had been lurking for quite a while and nobody could have seen it coming. In 2018, as part of his Air Force training, Andre was sent away to Alabama for 6 months.
And during those 6 months away, something changed back home. One random day, his lovely wife Andrene would reach out and tell him that when his training was done, he should not come back home. Of course, this was extremely out of the blue and so he came back anyway. And when he walked through that door, he found something that would make his jaw drop.
His wife had gotten two new tattoos. The first was an infinity symbol with the letter A in the middle. And the second was a date on her wrist. But crazily enough, the letter A tattoo did not stand for Andre. Nor did it even stand for Andrene. And Andre knew exactly what, or shall I say who, that tattoo was for. And to make matters worse, the date was not a random time.
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It was the birthday of a very specific person. And immediately, Andre was furious because he knew that he was not the only man from Port Antonio that Andrene used to deal with. The symbol stood for Andrene’s ex-boyfriend, Obin. A man Andre described as a local gang leader and drug dealer who also, surprise surprise, had a matching tattoo, same as Andrene, placed on his chest.
The anger was immediate and after arguments upon arguments, Andre would file for divorce. And despite the fact that they now had a billion-dollar business to split 50/50, it appeared as if this would be [music] the end of the story. But that could not be further from the truth because everybody was about to learn just how insane this would get.
About a full year had passed and it was just a normal day until the morning of March 1st, where Andreen’s friend Carl would go to their gym waiting for her to show up as she normally did, but she didn’t. They worked out almost every morning together, and on top of that, nobody seemed to know where she was. And so, Carl would decide to pay Andreen’s house a visit.
But it was when she pulled into the driveway that she was given the shock of a lifetime. Around the back of the property, she found ashes on the walkway. A small fire had been lit there, and sitting in the middle of the ashes was what looked like a metal zipper of a burnt piece of clothing. This very strange discovery, plus the fact that she was gone, prompted her to go inside immediately through the back door.
And it was when she looked in the bathroom that she found a smear of blood. She photographed it with her phone and called her detective friend, reaching out to the sheriff’s office. And of course, crazily enough, Andreen’s phone, keys, purse, and her cars were all in the house. And so, when investigators started looking into the disappearance, the first person they focused on was Andre.
And honestly, the way he behaved in the days after she went missing made it very difficult to look anywhere else. Because you see, while everybody else was at the house looking around the scene and searching for clues, Andre would pull up to the house, and when they asked him questions, he would say, “Hey, Andreen is at Baptist Emergency Hospital being treated.
” But there was just one problem. One phone call to the hospital by the police would confirm that that was not true. And when the police confronted him with that, he admitted that he and Andreen had argued the night before, and he did not know where she was. Of course, that made him sound guilty as hell, and he was instantly detained on the spot.
In true movie fashion, he asked for a lawyer and said nothing else, not helping how guilty he looked. Of course, though, they couldn’t hold him forever without evidence, and so they had to release him eventually. But his next movements would make this case even more mind-boggling. Because security cameras at Lowe’s hardware store caught him filling a cart with a shovel, axe, work gloves, and two 5-gallon gas containers.
From there, he drove to a Shell gas station, pulled up to pump number 20, which is the one just outside of the security camera, by the way, and filled both containers with 9.7 gallons of gas. An undercover policeman was even watching Andre’s house when he left. [music] Where they followed him for some reason going to a gun store.
In the shop, he picked out a Smith & Wesson pistol, bought it with a significant amount of ammunition, but then for some reason, without picking up any of the items he had just purchased, he just turned around and walked straight out the door for no reason. It was just plain weird. Nobody knew what was going on, and he just looked more and more guilty by the second.
But once again, the question was guilty of what? Because not that long had passed. There was no confirmation that she was even dead. Nobody, and quite frankly, nothing could happen until they got some answers. But that was when investigators started digging into the state of the marriage, and what they found would change the case entirely.
A massive search got underway in the days that followed with the literal FBI, military, and law enforcement on horseback covering the countryside looking for Andreen. And while this was going on, and the investigation would reach new levels, that was when they uncovered a new layer of the story and the marriage itself. And what they found brought them right back to the Jamaican gangster from Port Antonio.
Because here is what really happened after Andre found those tattoos in 2016 and filed for divorce. After they had been going at it for a while, Andreen would eventually convince him to stop with the divorce proceedings. There was too much on the table. They had a daughter and a business. And so, even if they weren’t going to reconcile, it would be easier to just keep living together and keep things running as they are.
And during this time, the man whose inquest tattooed on her body was supposedly out of the picture. However, we would soon find that that was not the case. By early 2019, Andreen had returned from a trip to Jamaica, where she had been seeing him again. That’s right. Years had passed, and she had still been seeing him in the background. But Andre did not know about this until one day she got in a fight with him about her wanting to go back to Jamaica.
At this point, he had a very specific idea of what or who she wanted to go back to see. And it was during these multiple days of arguments that one day Andre would discover some paperwork that Andreen had set up an entirely new company called Elena Property Management using their joint assets registered only in her name without telling him anything about it.
He said and I quote, “I knew nothing about it and immediately I just knew she was stealing from me.” Andre now believed that the Jamaican gangster was not just somebody Andreen had feelings for, but instead that the two of them had a plan to move the assets, cut him out of the business, and then make sure that he was not around to contest it.
He believed that they were planning to have him killed when he went to Jamaica. And so, of course, they would argue about this furiously. Andre would eventually leave the house to cool down and park at a gas station. Even though they kept arguing over text, he would eventually turn on some music to change his mood and told himself that she would be asleep by the time he got back. And then Andre would return home.
By the next morning, March 1st, Andreen McDonald was gone. Nobody knew if she had run off to Jamaica, run away because she didn’t want to deal with Andre anymore, or if somebody did something to her. And the search would go on for 5 months. If somebody did do something to her, was it really Andre or the mysterious criminal who had been lurking in the shadows of their entire relationship? But it was duly noted by some people that during this entire time, Andre did not join a single of the search efforts to find his own wife. And
then on the evening of July 11th, a farmer would discover burnt human remains on his property less than 10 miles from the house where Andreen lived. The remains were mixed in with coal bones, burnt, and since they were on the farmer’s privately owned field, nobody had been able to search there all this time.
This was the final piece they needed, and without hesitation, Andre was arrested outside his home and indicted for first-degree murder. And while it looked like the case was now going to be open and shut, they would have another thing coming. Because after years of delays, pre-trial motions, and the pandemic shutting things down, best believe Andre still stayed silent this entire time.
But eventually, by 2023, when his trial would come around and his fate would be decided, Andre would actually pull off something that nobody expected. Three days before the testimony was set to start, he would call Andre’s mother, his former mother-in-law, and say this. Telling her he wanted to be honest with the family before the world heard him testify.
He said that Andre attacked him during an argument. He fought back in self-defense. She fell, and he kicked her twice to keep her down. She must have asphyxiated, and he never meant to kill her. And so, he wanted her mom to hear it from him first. Of course, on the morning of the trial, the mother would then testify what Andre said on the phone call.
Saying that she claims that they got in a fight and she fell on the ground when Andre stomped her. But then he heard his daughter on the stairs and left Andre wheezing on the floor to take their child back to bed. By the time he came out, she was dead. At least, that’s what she had been told. However, it was not long before the entire courtroom would be slapped with a response. Because Dr.
James, a forensic pathologist with the medical examiner’s office, testified about the autopsy conducted entirely from skeletal remains that were, like, in his words, “Putting together a jigsaw puzzle.” What he found were fractures on the spine, charring on the finger bones, a fractured jaw, and a general injuries consistent with being struck with a claw hammer.
The same kind of hammer Andre bought. And definitely not consistent with a stomp alone. Cause of death, homicidal violence and blunt force trauma. And it was after this that the prosecution would pull out the receipts, and Andre’s phone history was read aloud in court. Google, and I quote, “Can somebody fall and break their neck? How long do fingerprints last? How long does blood last for testing outdoors?” And many, many more.
And it was at this point that in front of the entire courtroom, Andre finally reached his limit and decided there was no point of holding anything back. All the floodgates immediately burst open and he told the whole story. He talked about the affair, about the man from Port Antonio, the Jamaican gangster who had been sitting in the background of his marriage since before it even began, and how he genuinely believed that he and Andreena had planned to get him killed.
That she wanted to take the business they built from him and share it with her new boyfriend. And that when he found out, he told her the divorce was back on and this time he wasn’t going to stop. He then said that she did attack him and he grabbed her, tripped her, and then he claims that he did genuinely only kick her twice while she was on the ground.
She ended up wheezing and he didn’t expect her to die, but she did. And instead of reporting this, he says that he panicked and drove her body to the road, leaving her near the coal bones and taking her clothes. But the craziest part of all of this is that after he drove home, he would then pull out his phone and begin texting her, pretending that she was still alive, saying things like, “Where are you? Or doctor’s in her room and you’re not here.
” Because according to him, he was panicking and trying to cover it up was the only plan he had. But of course, this still did not explain the hammer. And that’s when he admitted something that nobody was prepared for. He said that he went back to her body the next morning. I get really angry. So at that point, I poured the gas on her and I lit the fire.
I got a hammer and the body’s right there. And at that point, I just got really pissed off and started hitting the body with the hammer. But after doing this despicable action, the entire thing was too much for him. And so he got back in his car, drove to the gun shop, and bought a pistol with the intention of ending it all. But as he bought his gun and ammunition and was about to carry out this plan, he looked outside and noticed the two undercover police vehicles tailing him.
And suddenly, he panicked once again and ran out of the store without any of the items he had just paid for. The jury deliberated and after 14 total hours, they came back unanimous, not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter. Everybody was shocked. After all, this man practically just admitted to planning out the entire disposal of a body.
And that was when the judge did this. He said that what bothered him the most throughout the whole trial was that from the start, as he watched him, Andre showed no emotion, no remorse. And to make matters worse, he literally burned her body and beat it with a hammer. The judge said it almost seems like the emotional profile of a serial killer.
And so, even though it wasn’t a first-degree murder charge, the judge still managed to get him 20 years in prison, the maximum he could possibly give, and also an additional 5 years for tampering with evidence. And what’s even crazier is that years later, it was discovered that Andre’s father was actually on trial in Jamaica for killing two of his own wives, both murders in Port Antonio.
I guess it runs in the family. And to be honest, this is so sick and disturbing, and I hope the family will one day get the peace that they desire. But speaking of high-profile crimes, another Jamaican that met the end of his life was the very first lottery scammer to ever be in the country.
