The murders of Spencer & Monique Tepe

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Concern for the well-being of dentist Spencer Tepe began on the morning of Tuesday, December 30, 2025 when he hadn’t come into work as scheduled. He was a very reliable person & although the office opened at 8 am, he hadn’t called & still wasn’t there by nearly 9 am. Staff were highly concerned when they were unable to reach him or his wife, Monique.

Spencer’s boss, who was the owner of the practice, Dr. Mark Valrose, was on vacation in Florida at the time when he contacted authorities at 8:58 am for a welfare check.

37-year-old Spencer Tepe lived in Columbus, Ohio, but he practiced dentistry at Athens Dental Depot in Athens, Ohio where he focused on comprehensive dentistry & implant therapy. The office was 74 miles southeast from his home, a commute that would have taken an hour & ten minutes.

After earning a Bachelor of Science degree in biology while double majoring in Spanish at The Ohio State University, Spencer continued his education with OSU’s College of Dentistry, earning his Doctor of Dental Surgery in 2017.

According to Spencer & Monique’s obituary, Spencer was born on December 9, 1988 in Cincinnati, Ohio to parents Tim & Yvonne Tepe. He was a competitive person who loved soccer & golf, he loved entertaining people, but above all, he focused on taking care of his family.

39-year-old Monique Tepe was born on October 14, 1986 in Chicago to parents Ignatius & Nereida Sabaturski. The family relocated to Worthington, Ohio when Monique was one & she grew up playing soccer, running, horseback riding & reading books. While she earned her master’s degree in early childhood education at OSU, she worked at a daycare center. At the time of her death, Monique was a stay-at-home mom who had a bright smile, an infectious laugh, a caring spirit & a bubbly personality.

The couple met online, quickly fell in love & established a solid relationship that was based on love & respect with a side of goofiness. They were married in a private ceremony on December 13, 2020 & in 2025, after five years of marriage, they lived in a 4 bedroom, 4 bathroom, 2,500 square foot home at 1411 N. 4th Street in the Weinland Park neighborhood of Columbus with their beloved Goldendoodle & their two children, a 1-year-old boy & a 4-year-old girl. The home, which they purchased in May 2020, had a detached garage that was situated at the back of the house along an alleyway.

The couple was the life of any party & they adored entertaining their loved ones at their home. According to a friend, despite celebrating their fifth anniversary a couple of weeks earlier, Monique & Spencer were madly & love & acted like newlyweds.

The call from Mark Valrose hadn’t been the first 911 call placed from Spencer & Monique’s home as eight months earlier a call came through at 2:45 am on Tuesday, April 15, 2025. The female caller was distraught, but quickly hung up. Following protocol, the dispatcher called the number back & the woman tearfully apologized as she explained that she was okay. When the dispatcher asked if she needed police, paramedics or help of any kind, she admitted that she was just feeling emotional. When asked what prompted her to call in the first place, she went to say, Because me & my man got into it, but I’m okay, I promise. The call ended after she assured the dispatcher that she was okay & nothing had gotten physical.

The Columbus Emergency Communications Center coded the call as a domestic dispute & wrote that assistance was no longer needed.

The unidentified woman didn’t call 911 back, but according to Spencer’s brother-in-law, Rob Misleh, the caller was not Monique. According to reports, it was made by a guest of a party that Spencer & Monique were hosting. Rob indicated that the woman in question had too much to drink, may have been dealing with some mental health issues at the time & called 911 with her cell phone. On January 8, 2026, Columbus Dispatch confirmed that the caller was not Monique & police have no record of any other calls from Spencer or Monique from their home or related to them.

In response to Mark Valrose’s call at 8:58 am, an officer came by the couple’s home at about 9:22 am, but there was no answer to the multiple knocks to both the front & back doors. However, according to Columbus Police Chief Elaine Bryant, the officer had been at the wrong address.

35 minutes later at 9:57 am, Spencer’s colleague called while they were enroute to his house to make sure that police were being sent to his home. Spencer’s friend, Alex Ditty, went to the house & called the police again to let them know that they could hear children from inside the home & believed he heard one of them yell. He contemplated breaking in since he had no way of otherwise getting into the house.

During a fourth call that came through at 10:03 am, Alex called again, this time he was audibly distressed as he told the dispatcher that he was able to see Spencer’s body lying next to his bed in a pool of blood & he appeared to be dead. He said that he couldn’t force himself to get closer, but he didn’t think that Spencer was breathing.

When police responded to the home at 10:04 am, they sadly found both Monique & Spencer in an upstairs bedroom, deceased from obvious gunshot wounds. After medical personnel arrived, they were pronounced dead at 10:11 am.

Their two young children as well as their dog were found unharmed in another room inside the home. There was no sign of forced entry & because no gun was found, it was clear to police that they were not dealing with a murder-suicide. There were three 9 mm casings found inside & records indicate that Spencer was shot multiple times while Monique had suffered at least one gunshot wound to the chest. However, official reports from the Franklin County Coroner’s Office won’t be completed for several weeks.

Therapy dogs were brought in to help with the mental well being of the couple’s children, who, along with their dog, are now being cared for by family members. A cousin of Spencer & Monique established a GoFundMe page to help support the children & as of January 13, 2026, $214,000 of the $250,000 goal had been reached.

By January 2, three days after the murders, police began asking for the public’s help, requesting any video, photo or digital evidence from the area in question which ranged from Summit Street to North Grant Avenue & East 7th Avenue to East 11th Avenue. They were interested in footage from midnight to 9 am on Tuesday, December 30 as detectives believe the couple were murdered sometime between 2 am & 5 am that morning.

Three days later, on January 5, police released video of a person of interest who was seen walking slowly in the snow-lined alley near the Tepe’s home wearing a dark jacket & light pants during the window of time investigators believe the couple was murdered.

Only eleven days before the murders, a woman who lived up the street from the Tepe’s called 911 at 2:31 am on Friday, December 19, to report that someone was aggressively banging on her door, apparently trying to force themselves inside. The woman indicated that she didn’t know the individual, she couldn’t clearly see them & she hadn’t approached her door to ask what they wanted.

Thirteen minutes later dispatchers recorded that the problem left. It’s unclear if this incident had any connection to what happened to Monique & Spencer, who were a three-minute walk from this house. Although the Weinland Park neighborhood has been gentrified, the area’s overall crime rate is 152% higher than the national average.

Since the person seen in the surveillance footage wore a dark jacket with the hood up & their head down, their face was not clearly shown, but detectives hoped that someone might recognize them based on the clothing they wore, their mannerisms or the way that they walked.

Because the community didn’t know who was responsible for the couple’s deaths or what the motive had been, fear spread throughout the Columbus area. On January 8, Columbus Division of Police Chief Elaine Bryant spoke about the murders for the first time & updated the public on the latest details of the investigation. However, because she didn’t want to compromise the investigation, many questions remained unanswered.

It wasn’t until two days later on Saturday morning, January 10 when Monique’s ex-husband, 39-year-old Michael David McKee was arrested in Winnebago County, Illinois in the northern portion of the state, 452 miles away from Columbus (a drive that would have taken nearly 7 hours).

According to the arrest warrant, the offense time was cited at 3:52 am on Tuesday, December 30. It also indicates that McKee lives in Chicago in a condo building called The Pierre at 2100 North Lincoln Park West in unit 12 DS. According to Zillow, his 1765 square foot unit is 2 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms with an estimated value of $400,000.

Investigators now believe that they have recovered the murder weapon, as one of the multiple guns they found in McKee’s condo has preliminarily matched to the scene of the crime.

According to divorce documents, after marrying on August 22, 2015, Monique & McKee separated in March 2016 after only 7 months of marriage because the parties were incompatible. They began dating in 2012 & had no children together. Their divorce hearing was set for June 15, 2017, a time when Monique was living in Ohio & McKee in Virginia. The document indicated that he was working at the Carilion Clinic, a medical center in Roanoke & despite being a doctor, because he was in the process of completing his residency, his annual income was only $51,000.

McKee was raised in Zanesville, a small city just east of Columbus & according to USA Today, he was 5th in his class as a senior at Bishop Rosecrans High School where he played on the varsity football team for three years. Like Monique & Spencer, McKee also attended OSU. He’s listed as a 2014 graduate of OSU’s College of Medicine. That same year, he obtained his medical license in Ohio when he was 28-years-old.

According to his educational background, after finishing med school in 2014, he moved onto his general surgery internship at OSU until June 2015. From July 2015 to June 2020, a time in which he both married & got divorced from Monique, he was in the process of completing his general surgery residency at Virginia Tech Carilion Clinic before he moved on to his vascular surgery fellowship at the University of Maryland Medical Center, which he completed in October 2022.

Since 2020, he has lived in various states, including Virginia, Nevada & Illinois. He obtained his medical license in Virginia in 2017, in 2022, he also obtained a license to practice in both California as well as Maryland & then added Nevada in 2023 & Illinois in 2024. Currently, his medical license is active in both Illinois as well as California.

Records indicate that prior to the murders, McKee managed to evade at least nine attempts of being served a malpractice lawsuit for months. The lawsuit, which originates in Nevada & was filed by Las Vegas lawyer, Dan Laird, claims that McKee failed to train a physician’s assistant who injured a patient at Las Vegas Surgical Associates in 2023.

According to Laird, attempts to serve McKee haven’t been successful due to fake addresses & questionable state-issued phone numbers. An address that was given to Laird by the surgery group he worked for ended up being fake as the address didn’t exist while phone numbers belonged to a fax machine. His Nevada medical license expired in June 2025.

McKee only recently moved to Illinois & although he was living in Chicago, he was working 80 miles northwest, an hour & a half away, as a vascular surgeon at OSF Saint Anthony Medical Center in Rockford, Illinois. However, as of Sunday, January 11, one day after his arrest, he has since been removed from the online staff directory.

Neighbors within McKee’s Chicago condo indicated that although he was a little quiet, he presented himself as a very nice man & they were shocked to learn that he was tied to the double-homicide.

Charging documents indicate that police were able to identify McKee based on the car that arrived in the Tepe’s neighborhood shortly before the murders & left just after. Using neighborhood video surveillance, the vehicle was tracked to Rockford, Illinois where he worked.

Since there was no sign of forced-entry into the Tepe’s home, it’s unclear how McKee gained access.

McKee is being charged with two counts of premeditated aggravated murder for Spencer & Monique’s deaths & currently held in Winnebago County, Illinois.

When he appeared in court on Monday, January 12 for a short hearing for his extradition to Ohio, the 6’1”, 200# man sat expressionless, wearing a yellow jumpsuit with handcuffs on his wrists. He arrived in Columbus on Tuesday, January 20 & was booked into the James A. Karnes Corrections Center to await trial. The extradition follows the five-count grand jury indictment that was handed down on January 16. If convicted, he faces life in prison with or without parole or even the death penalty.

According to his public defender, McKee intends to plead not guilty & to remain silent. The trial will take place in Franklin County, Ohio.

In Ohio, aggravated murder is equivalent to first-degree murder, making McKee eligible for the death penalty. The last execution in Ohio took place in 2018 as they are on pause due to issues with lethal injection drug availability.

In a statement, Spencer & Monique’s family said that the arrest was an important step toward justice. They went on to say, Monique & Spencer remain at the center of our hearts & we carry forward their love as we surround & protect the two children they leave behind. We will continue to honor their lives & the light they brought into this world.

Reports indicate that after Spencer & Monique’s family learned the devastating news of their murders, only one name came to mind, that of Michael McKee. According to their brother-in-law, Rob, McKee had threatened Monique’s life on multiple occasions during their short marriage. She wasn’t shy about sharing the emotional abuse experienced. However, the family wasn’t aware of any specific issues with McKee that the couple had been dealing with in the days & weeks before their deaths. It’s unclear what triggered him to kill the couple after nearly a decade since he & Monique separated.

This case is a reminder of just how quickly an ordinary life can be shattered. Spencer & Monique Tepe were a loving young couple who were building a life, raising their kids & doing everything right. In a matter of seconds, their lives were taken from them in their home, a place they should have been the safest. Two children are left without parents while their families lost people they loved dearly.

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The murders of Spencer & Monique Tepe

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