CRIME HUNTER: Is bodybuilder Sally McNeil a battered woman or conniving killer?

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How professional bodybuilder Sally McNeil saw things, it was her or him.

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One of them was bound to end up dead.

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She chose herself as the survivor and parked a bullet in her abusive husband, bodybuilding champion Ray McNeil. He got a funeral, she got 19 years in the slammer.

Now, a new three-part Netflix documentary, Killer Sally, asks the question of the high-profile homicide: Was Sally McNeil railroaded and victim shamed?

The couple met while they were both in the U.S. Marines and discovered they shared a passion for bodybuilding and fitness.

“He looked like the Statue of David. He was beautiful,” Sally told the doc’s producers. “Lust at first sight.”

The two behemoths married in 1987 as both their stars were rising in the world of bodybuilding, fake tans and posing for pictures. Things were good — at least on the outside. Behind doors, the couple argued constantly.

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Sally was 27 years old and had divorced after an ill-fated four-year starter marriage.

She pursued a career in professional wrestling and the cash from that endeavour provided enough financial wiggle room to allow Ray to retire from the Marines and pursue his bodybuilding passion full-time.

As a way to make extra cash, Sally became involved in the bizarre world of “muscle worship.” In that endeavour, female bodybuilders are recorded wrestling men into the ground. She was paid per man.

“If I wrestled 10 of them, that’s $3,000,” she said. “Made Ray happy that it was paying for his steroids, then he hit me.”

And there were other problems. Ray McNeil was a serial philanderer and once a year before the murder, Sally was confronted by one of the juiced-up lothario’s playmates.

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On Feb. 14, 1995, at their home in Oceanside, California, an already volatile situation boiled over into bloodshed. On the evening in question, the couple was engaged in a massive domestic donnybrook that kept escalating.

Sally feared her abusive husband was finally going to kill her with his bare fists.

Instead, she grabbed a shotgun and squeezed the trigger twice. Ray McNeil took a blast to his abdomen and another that took his head off.

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The former armed forces bodybuilding champion called 911, claiming she had shot her husband in self-defence after an hours-long beating. She told the operator:  “I just shot my husband because he just beat me up.”

But the Netflix doc comes squarely down on Sally’s side of the tragedy, who claims she was being choked.

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“Sally claimed it was self-defence, a split decision to save her life,” the Netflix promo claims. “The prosecution argued it was premeditated murder, the revenge of a jealous and aggressive wife. They called her a ‘thug,’ a ‘bully,’ and a ‘monster.’”

“The media referred to her as the ‘brawny bride’ and the ‘pumped-up princess.’ Sally says she spent her life doing whatever it took to survive, caught in a cycle of violence that began in childhood and ended with Ray’s death.”

Her children are 100% in the beleaguered bodybuilder’s corner claiming that Ray McNeil was a psycho-abuser.

“I remember how tortuous it used to be to have to sit there and watch him abuse my sister and to know that I was next,” Sally’s son said.

One problem for Sally was that both she and her husband were abusing steroids that have an explosive effect on people, turning the meek and mild into raging maniacs. Soon, the slaying became known as the “Roid Rage Killing.”

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Steroids or not, Sally McNeil was an abused woman terrorized daily by a monster. She insists it was going to be either her or Ray in a coroner’s van to the morgue.

“I have a right to defend myself,” Sally said. “I couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t want to die.”

Prosecutors took another view. Their theory was that Sally wanted Ray off the board and that the killing was planned and premeditated.

The jury agreed and the blond bodybuilder was convicted of second-degree murder in 1996. She was handed 19 years to life at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla.

Killer Sally is currently streaming on Netflix.

COLD CASE — HELEN GILLINGS

WHEN: FEB. 17, 1995

411: Gillings was a 19-year-old sex worker in Hamilton and known to hang around the area of King St. E. and Emerald St. N. She was well-known at a shuttered watering hole named the Straw Hat.

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Around 5 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 17, 1995, her body was discovered in an alley behind 483 King St. E. She was last seen alive on Thursday, Feb. 16, 1995, at around 1 a.m. when she left the Straw Hat Tavern and entered the alley with a male, who has been identified by Hamilton Police detectives.

Cops believe there are people with information in connection to Gillings’ murder and are offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person(s) responsible for her killing. Contact the Homicide Unit at 905-546-3801 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).

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@HunterTOSun