In American Rust: Broken Justice, Nell McKenna is the wife of Liam McKenna. She inexplicably kills herself after confessing her crimes.
Nell McKenna’s husband, Liam McKenna, is killed by personal mail delivery. Nell instantly becomes the prime suspect when Del and Angela take over the case.
Nell lies to them, as her alibi sounds suspicious. Del and Angela eventually find out that she is secretly having an affair with Marta Canter, a professor at Roark College.
When Del and Angela revisit Nell, she tries to escape them, appearing more suspicious. Nell admits that her marriage wasn’t perfect, but she didn’t kill her husband.
Nell had plans to leave Liam for her relationship with Marta, who tells the cops the same: Nell would never kill her husband.
Nell is released from prison, but someone keeps threatening her, giving her no option but to surrender herself for killing her husband, a crime she didn’t commit.
Nell gets sick of the pressure once Lee visits her, asking about Landwill Energy, and opts to kill herself.
Who was Nell afraid of?
Later in the series, Del learns from Sue Herlitz’s partner that Nell was manipulating water test results for Landwill Energy, a very powerful company.
Nell used to own a water testing company called Allegheny Water Testing. Before surrendering herself to the cops, she destroyed all the test results she had with her.
Landwill Energy is responsible for the poisonous water that is being reported by some people. Nell got greedy and asked for more upon learning that Landwill is paying a lot to settle cases.
Sue eventually approached Nell, who was going to be Sue’s star witness in the case against Landwill. However, Landwill made their moves by killing Nell’s husband and scaring her off.
So it turns out that when a water test result against Landwill turned up, thanks to Lee’s secret investigation, Landwill began threatening Nell again.
Out of fear for her life, she surrendered to the cops because prison felt a lot safer. She later killed herself when Lee came asking questions about Landwill.
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