Sally McNeil: Wrestling ‘Wall Street Guys to Garbage Workers’ Earned Her $300 an Hour
Sally McNeil is the subject of the Netflix true crime documentary Killer Sally. Before she shot and killed her husband Ray McNeil on Valentine’s Day 1995, McNeil had a lucrative wrestling career in which men paid her to dominate them. Find out how much the former bodybuilder earned wrestling men.
Sally McNeil’s wrestling career took off in the early 1990s
McNeil met her second husband after she became interested in bodybuilding. The couple’s hobby quickly became a career for Ray, who went pro. After being demoted and leaving the Marines, McNeil remained an amateur bodybuilder, so she had to find other ways to make money to support Ray’s career and her two children, Shantina and John.
Eventually, McNeil began a career making wrestling videos. Otherwise known as “muscle worship,” men would pay the female bodybuilder to wrestle them while being recorded on tape.
‘Killer Sally’ McNeil could earn thousands of dollars wrestling men
McNeil’s clients, who her daughter described as “creepy and embarrassing,” would pay her $300 an hour for her services. “If I wrestled 10 of them, that’s $3000,” McNeil explains in the Netflix docuseries. The amateur bodybuilder, who adopted the persona “Killer Sally” in her wrestling videos, denies any of her clients ever demanded or expected sex when they hired her.
“There were Wall Street guys to garbage workers,” McNeil says in Killer Sally. “Actually the garbage truck guys smelled better than Wall Street guys. They stank like they had just gone to the bathroom and then came to wrestle me.”
Like her daughter, McNeil’s work “disgusted” her. “It was bizarre, but I was making so much money that it compensated for the bad feelings,” she elaborates in the series. “The money — $300 an hour — outweighed the dark side of it.”
Most of McNeil’s earnings went toward her husband’s bodybuilding career. McNeil estimated spending $20,000 on steroids for her former husband.
‘Killer Sally’s wrestling clients supported her after her arrest
McNeil shot her husband twice on Feb. 15, 1995 — once in the abdomen and once in the face. Her two children were present in the Oceanside, California apartment when the shooting took place.
As McNeil points out in the Netflix docuseries, her former wrestling clients were some of the only people to rally around her in support when she was arrested. Many of them sent letters and funds so McNeil could be released on her $100,000 bail.
Sally McNeil was released from prison in 2020
McNeil was convicted of second-degree murder on Mar. 19, 1996. She was sentenced to 19 years to life in prison, but she ended up serving 25 years in the Central California Women’s Facility. According to Killer Sally, she was released in the summer of 2020.
McNeil’s freedom came after her “Subsequent Suitability Hearing” on May 29, 2020 (via the California Department of Corrections). Upon her release, the former Marine began living at the Veterans Transition Center (VTC), a community that provides housing for displaced veterans. She has since remarried and remains a free woman.
Watch Killer Sally exclusively on Netflix.
