The Murder of John McGuire
Methamphetamine, incest, and paranoia drove a family to murder
In early 2019, John McGuire and his girlfriend, Amanda McClure, were living in Minnesota and doing drugs — mostly meth — pretty heavily. But the two were without steady jobs, so the money soon ran out, and when the money ran out, so did the drugs.
Dope sick from withdrawal, without any money or anywhere to go, Amanda got the idea that they could drive down to West Virginia and stay with her father, Larry McClure, Sr. Amanda had been estranged from her father most of her life, and was raised by adoptive parents. Why she chose to go to her biological father, rather than her adoptive parents, isn’t known. Maybe she was ashamed of her drug habit, or feared they would force her to quit. Her life had been full of bad decisions — she had a 32-page rap sheet filled with drug-related arrests — but this one would prove to be her worst.
In early February, two started out on the long drive from Minnesota to West Virginia, but in Indiana, their car broke down. So Amanda called her father and asked him to come and pick them up.
So Larry reached out to his other daughter, Anna Choudhary. Anna, too, had been estranged from her father from a young age and had been living in North Carolina. But now all three would be reunited.
Larry and Anna drove to Indiana and picked up the couple. The four then drove back to Larry’s rural trailer near Skygusty, West Virginia.
There, they purchased the ingredients to cook their own meth. But Larry and the others didn’t have the exact formula, so the drug didn’t crystallize. They just declared it a “bad batch” and poured it into some glass jugs.
Then they went out, bought some proper methamphetamine, and got busy consuming it.
Over the next few days, as the four were pretty much staying high on meth, John told Larry that he loved Amanda and wanted to marry her.
Far from being happy for his daughter, Larry seemed angry about John’s confession. Anna said that after that conversation, her father went into a “quiet rage.” She said over the next few days, he would frequently take Amanda off, where the two of them could talk alone. She said she didn’t know what they were discussing, and she didn’t ask.
Then, on Valentine’s Day, the family decided to have a special dinner. John bought a bottle of wine, and the family dined on steaks.
After dinner, and a little methamphetamine aperitif, the family was sitting around the living room when Larry suggested that John play a little “trust game.”
The game involved letting Larry tie John’s legs to a kitchen chair. John agreed. As soon as his legs were tied, the “game” stopped being fun. Anna said Larry’s demeanor completely changed, and a “creepy” smile spread across his face.
John sensed it, too. He leaned down to try and untie his legs, and when he did, Amanda hit him over the head with the empty wine bottle, breaking it.
They tied up John’s arms, and Larry began interrogating him: “Who are you?” John tried to tell him that he was indeed just John McGuire, and even offered to hand over his Social Security card to prove it.
But that wasn’t working. Larry kept insisting that John was a federal agent. When John would not confess to what he was being accused of, one or all three of them would beat him.
At one point, Larry told Anna to inject John with the bad batch of meth, calling it a “truth serum.” Anna filled two syringes and injected them both into John’s carotid artery. She would later say that she was sure that would kill him.
But it didn’t kill him. As Anna said, it only made him stronger. He continued denying that he was a narcotics officer, and the three continued torturing him.
After two or three days of this, the three were ready to get rid of John for good. While Larry stood on his chest, Amanda put a trash bag over John’s head, and Anna strangled him with a rope.
Once he had stopped breathing, they wrapped his body in more trash bags. Larry then had his daughters dig a shallow grave near the trailer, where they buried John.
Immediately afterwards, Larry and Amanda — his daughter — began what Anna described as a “relationship.” According to the criminal complaint filed by West Virginia police, it was a sexual relationship.
Now, Amanda and Anna hadn’t grown up with their biological father, and there is a reason why. Larry had only recently been released after serving more than 17 years for sexually abusing a relative between the ages of 6 and 12 years old. Since the names of minor victims are kept confidential, we don’t know who his victim was. But both Anna and Amanda would have been in that age range at the time of their father’s crimes.
Both Anna and Amanda would later testify that their father was extremely jealous of Amanda. Amanda even said that her father killed John because “My dad didn’t want anyone else near me.”
Larry had likely been planting the idea that John was a police informant into Amanda’s mind in order to get her to go along with his plan. Under the influence of meth, it’s not hard to get someone worked up into a state of near-delusional, violent paranoia.
But their meth-fueled paranoia didn’t stop just because John was dead and buried. Six days after his murder, the trio began believing that he wasn’t really dead. So they dug him up and drove stakes, wooden slats, and other random garbage through his body in order to make sure he was really dead. They then dismembered his remains and reburied them in a side yard.
Less than a month after the murder, Larry and Amanda took their “relationship” to the next level: they drove to Virginia and got married, with Anna serving as a witness. Because incestuous marriage is illegal in Virginia, Amanda wrote a fake name in the line for “father of the bride.”
In June, John’s family reported him missing, and posted messages to Facebook trying to find him. No one seemed to know that he had gone to West Virginia with Amanda before he went missing.
Meanwhile, Amanda — now living as husband and wife with her father — continued cashing John’s Social Security checks.
The McClures moved to Kentucky at some point, where Larry was required by law to register as a sex offender. But he didn’t do that.
When he was arrested in September 2019 for failing to register, he immediately told police about the murder — and threw his own daughters directly under the bus. He claimed Amanda was the “mastermind” of the crime, and that he did not know what her motive was. He gave detailed descriptions of the murder and told police where they would find John’s remains.
On Sept. 24, 2019, they indeed found John’s remains right where Larry said they would be.
Days later, in October, Amanda and Anna were arrested. Larry and Anna were charged with first-degree murder; Amanda was only charged with second-degree murder in exchange for testifying against her sister. All three pled guilty to their charges.
Larry, who had been the first to confess, wrote a short letter stating he did not want the courts “waisting” taxpayer dollars on a trial and apologizing for his part in the murder. He was sentenced to life without parole in August 2020.
It was at Amanda’s sentencing hearing in October 2020 that she testified about her father’s jealousy and her belief that he wanted John dead because John wanted to marry her. She and her adoptive parents also spoke about the amount of control that Larry had over her. The judge in the case acknowledged the history of abuse between Larry and Amanda, but said it was no excuse for what she had done. Amanda was sentenced to 40 years.
At Anna’s sentencing hearing in March 2021, she claimed that she had only gone along with her father’s crimes because he had threatened to kill her and her children. She, too, was sentenced to 40 years.
While we can be thankful these people are off the streets, the case still leaves so many questions unanswered. For example, where was the girls’ biological mother? Was Amanda Larry’s first victim — or, if not, who was? What exactly had Larry been whispering to Amanda during those days leading up to the murder? And was Anna really as innocent as she claims?
Maybe one day the women will speak out and answer these questions.
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