Free Republic

After nearly two years of turmoil, Eric McLean finally found peace, but he insists it came days before a jury on Thursday snatched him from a potential prison cell and planted him at the door to probation. "I've never been to court to know what to expect," the 33-year-old North Knoxville man said. "I was physically ill when this trial started (nine days ago). But once I got to tell my story, once I got to get this off my chest, I felt like a weight had been lifted off my chest." It was that day when McLean took the...

A judge this morning granted a divorce to a Knox County man accused of killing his student-teacher wife's teenage lover. Fourth Circuit Court Judge Bill Swann actually spent little time deciding that Eric McLean was entitled to a divorce. Estranged wife Erin McLean didn't show up for court. Her whereabouts are unknown. However, Swann said he was "greatly concerned" about the welfare of the McLeans' two boys, ages 11 and 8. Eric McLean hasn't seen the boys since the day before he was accused of fatally shooting 18-year-old Sean Powell outside the McLeans' Coker Avenue home in March. Testimony showed...

Teacher-Student Love Turns Deadly A Tennessee Man Has Been Charged With Murder for Killing His Wife's 18-Year-Old Lover Erin McLean's husband, Eric, allegedly killed her student and apparent lover, Sean Powell. (ABC News) March 18, 2007 — The latest student-teacher sex scandal wasn't just about lust — it had deadly consequences. Eric McLean is accused of killing Sean Powell, an 18-year-old high school student who was allegedly having an affair with his wife, Erin, who worked as a counselor at Powell's Tennessee high school. /snip "She's started an affair with him," said Norman McLean, Eric's father. "There was alcohol involved...

The estranged wife of a North Knoxville man who shot her alleged teen lover has reportedly lost a teaching job in Middle Tennessee after claims of “inappropriate contact” with another teenage boy. The CBS television affiliates in Nashville and Knoxville are reporting that Erin McLean got a job teaching English at Pioneer Christian Academy. She used her maiden name, WTVF-TV in Nashville reported this evening. WVLT-TV in Knoxville picked up its sister station’s story on its Web site. The stations reported that McLean started about a month ago but that students went to the headmaster recently, complaining she made several...

A former West High School student teacher whose affair with a student led to murder snatched her children from her mother’s Nashville home last week and hasn’t been seen or heard from since, her estranged husband’s attorney confirmed today. Erin McLean climbed through a window of her mother’s home on Gale Lane in Nashville last Saturday, grabbed her two sons, ages 11 and 8, and left, defense attorney Bruce Poston said, citing information from Erin McLean’s grandmother and younger sister. “She told an uncle she was going to California to meet a man she met over the Internet,” Poston said....