Former NFL player to be sentenced for murder

A man convicted of murdering a wealthy Newport Beach businessman in 1994 is scheduled to be sentenced Friday in a Santa Ana courtroom.

Eric Naposki was convicted in July of first-degree murder with a sentencing enhancement for committing murder for financial gain in the slaying of Bill McLaughlin.

Prosecutors claimed in court that Naposki plotted the murder with former girlfriend Nanette Packard in order to collect $1 million in life insurance and live for free in his beachfront home in Newport Beach.

McLaughlin had a successful medical technology company when he met and began dating Packard. Packard is accused of making a duplicate house key for Naposki, and telling him of McLaughlin’s schedule so Naposki could kill him. She is set to go to trial Nov. 4 in the same courtroom where Naposki will be sentenced Friday.

McLaughlin lived with a grown son, Kevin, who suffered brain damage as the result of a drunk-driving accident. According to prosecutors, it was Kevin McLaughlin who discovered Bill McLaughlin’s body shot six times laying on the kitchen floor.

Naposki was a former linebacker with the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts but went “beyond broke� before he began dating Packard and was working as a bouncer at the Thunderbird Nightclub — 131 yards away from McLaughlin’s home, prosecutors said in opening statements in June.

Naposki is facing a maximum sentence of life in prison when sentenced in Central Justice Center courtroom C-40 at 9 a.m.

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