James City County, Va. - Dana Mackay's lifeless body was found inside her James City County home. She was stabbed repeatedly in the face and a finger was cut off.
"What we know about was horrible, she didn't deserve that," Dana's friend and co-worker Linda Gavoni said.
Her husband John Mackay in a jailhouse interview with NewsChannel 3, confessed he gave his mistress the green light to kill Dana.
"So after Nicole said it's done, then you responded with...?" John Mackay was asked.
"I was in shock, and I didn't believe her," Mackey said. "Did not believe her at all."
Court documents say Nicole Houchin kicked down Dana's bedroom door before murdering the 42-year-old. Gavoni worked with Dana for three years. She's trying to focus not on the gory details of the murder plot, but the joy Dana brought to her life.
"Dana was just one of those like God-like women that you just felt warm whenever she stepped into a room," Gavoni said.
Gavoni says Dana feared Houchin was stalking her. Police searched Houchin's phone for evidence of threats to Dana's life.
"The ones I saw were more of a just somebody trying to play a mental game on someone else was the way I took it," Gavoni said.
Down in Dana's hometown Wednesday, a 100-car procession took her body from the Atlanta airport an hour north to Calhoun.
Back where Dana worked at Empire Today in Newport News, Gavoni is making a memorial plaque for her hoping the memory of her tragic death fades away and the legacy of her kindness never does.
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