In May 2009, Naposki was arrested in Connecticut and charged with the murder of millionaire investor Bill McLaughlin in December 1994 in Newport Beach, California.
[citation needed] After missing his senior year at Connecticut due to family obligations, he attended the New England Patriots' free agent tryout camp in April, 1988.
[11] At his July 2011 trial, witnesses testified that Johnston, also known in court documents as Nanette Packard McNeal (her married names), was a young woman with two small children who seduced McLaughlin, who was a quarter century her senior, after the wealthy health care entrepreneur had gone through a divorce with his first wife of 24 years.
[13] Johnston began living with McLaughlin in his luxury home in a tight-knit gated community in Newport Beach and managing his personal financial affairs.
[15] On August 10, 2012, Naposki received the maximum sentence of life imprisonment without parole at his hearing before Superior Court Judge William R.
[citation needed] In September 2014, an appellate lawyer working for Naposki told a three-justice appellate panel of Division Three of the California Courts of Appeal that there were four errors in the trial, including: the government's 15-year delay in filing charges; faulty jury instructions; biased jury; and improperly excluded evidence.
The panel noted: authorities charged Naposki and Johnston (Packard McNeal) after an Orange County district attorney's office (OCDA) cold case detective discovered new incriminating evidence; a female juror describing the ex-football player as "creepy" did not merit her removal; that Judge William Froeberg did not err by blocking a police officer from answering a question about Naposki's facial expressions during a post-murder interview; and Froeberg did not err by refusing to give a defense-proposed jury instruction on the elements murder for financial gain.
Naposki's defense contends that the fifteen-year delay in charging resulted in the loss of exculpatory evidence which backed up his alibi (which was found valid by the DA in 1995, before it was discovered that the club where he worked as a bouncer was only a few hundred yards from the murder scene).
The Oxygen TV series Dateline Secrets Uncovered aired an episode titled “Deadly Trust” about the case in 2019.
[citation needed] His Case is also featured on the Season 3, Episode 4, titled "SoCal Killers", from the Show, Deadly Sins.
As of March 11, 2020, the organization "Innocence Rights of Orange County" had begun a review of Naposki's case and conviction with an emphasis on the analysis of circumstantial evidence and the dealings of the Orange County prosecutors who brought the charges to a grand jury almost 15 years after the fact, with special emphasis on lost records from the initial investigation that might have cleared Naposki.