{"id":602283,"date":"2026-04-23T20:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T20:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/602283\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T20:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T20:52:09","slug":"woman-murdered-inside-umass-amherst-campus-center-hotel-husband-charged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/602283\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman murdered inside UMass Amherst Campus Center Hotel; husband charged"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A University of Massachusetts employee is accused of brutally murdering his wife and assaulting a police officer at the UMass Campus Center hotel in Amherst Wednesday night.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Jeffrey MacDonald, a 36-year-old from Wilbraham, pleaded not guilty to one charge of murder and one charge of assault and battery on a police officer at his arraignment in Eastern Hampshire District Court Thursday morning.<\/p>\n<p>The name of the victim has not been released yet. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/boston\/news\/washington-dc-intern-murder-arrest-eric-tarpinian-jachym\/\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">UMass Amherst<\/a> Chancellor Javier Reyes said the victim was also a staff member at the college. The Medical Examiner will determine her official cause of death.<\/p>\n<p>Jeffrey MacDonald charged with murder at UMass Hotel<\/p>\n<p>A police report says officers responded to the hotel at 7:42 p.m. for a reported emergency. Police said MacDonald threw objects in the direction of officers and hit one UMass police officer in the face.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Police said they found the woman dead in the hotel room with injuries that were consistent with &#8220;a violent assault.&#8221; MacDonald told investigators that he had &#8220;intentionally beaten&#8221; her with his hands, feet and other blunt objects, &#8220;and that it was his intent to kill her in doing so,&#8221; the police report said.<\/p>\n<p>MacDonald was held without bail and is due back in court on May 12.<\/p>\n<p>      <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/jeffrey-macdonald.jpg#.jpeg\" alt=\"jeffrey-macdonald.jpg \" height=\"349\" width=\"620\" class=\" lazyload\"  loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                  Jeffrey MacDonald in court<\/p>\n<p>                CBS Boston<\/p>\n<p>  &#8220;Deeply unsettling news for our campus&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Reyes said there is no ongoing threat to the campus.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I want to acknowledge that this is heartbreaking and deeply unsettling news for our campus. Our thoughts are with those affected, including the families, friends, and colleagues of the individuals involved,&#8221; he said in a message to the UMass Amherst community. &#8220;I also recognize that the lack of complete information may add to the distress many are feeling, but this is necessary to protect the integrity of the ongoing investigation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Support resources are available for those on campus, Reyes said.<\/p>\n<p>Hotel UMass<\/p>\n<p>According to AAA, the campus hotel has 113 rooms. The hotel&#8217;s website explains that it is not affiliated with any hotel chains.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are run by the University of Massachusetts,&#8221; the website states. &#8220;The UMass Hotel is a teaching hotel and the majority of our employees are UMass students in the Hospitality and Tourism Management major.&#8221; \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In November, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/boston\/news\/lamar-cook-arrest-springfield-massachusetts-governor\/\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Gov. Maura Healey fired a staffer<\/a> who previously served as director of Hotel UMass between 2016 and 2023. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/boston\/news\/lamar-cook-massachusetts-governor-healey\/\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Lamar Cook<\/a> was charged with drug trafficking and accused of having cocaine delivered to the hotel.<\/p>\n<p>The UMass Amherst campus is about 90 miles west of Boston.<\/p>\n<p>\n          More from CBS News\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A University of Massachusetts employee is accused of brutally murdering his wife and assaulting a police officer at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":602284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,262033,3,262032,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-602283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-amherst-news","tag-news","tag-umass-amherst","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}