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The Blue Eyed Butcher - The Murder of Jeff Wright

February 24, 2025

On this episode, Payton and Garrett dive into the case of Susan Wright, a woman who stabbed her husband and buried him in the backyard.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

Hey, everyone, and welcome back to Murder With My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland.

And I'm Garrett Moreland.

And he's the husband.

And I'm the husband.

If you're on YouTube right now, you’ll notice that we’re definitely in a different set. If you’re on audio, maybe we sound different—maybe not. There’s no pop filter on this one, so I hope I’m not popping P’s the whole time.

No, I’m sure you’re good.

But Garrett's probably going to use his 10 seconds to explain why we’re in a different set. Before we jump into that, I actually dropped new Into the Dark merch, which is my solo show—if you didn’t know. I’m pretty sure there are a few pieces left, so if you’re listening and missed it, go over to Into the Dark. The links are everywhere—snag the last bit of that merch!

I don’t want to bore everyone with it, so let’s jump into your 10 seconds.

That’s kind of all we’ve got going on here. We’re not home, as you can tell. We’ve been swimming with Daisy, so she’s been living it up the last couple of days.

Yeah, best day of her life. She’s been crying 24/7 because all she wants to do is swim.

Seriously, 24/7. The second she wakes up, she runs to the door. It’s getting out of hand.

Yeah, I don’t know what we’re going to do.

We have a monster on our hands.

For my 10 seconds, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about my hair transplant.

Oh yeah, because Payton posted some stories.

Yeah, I actually posted a picture of his eyes super swollen—like swollen shut.

It’s a process. A lot of people have been messaging me about it. Right now, I’m in the shedding phase, so for the next month and a half, my hair will just kind of shed. It doesn’t look great—it’s called the "ugly duckling" phase. But then it’ll all grow back, and everything will be good. The first two to three months are just… I keep a hat on and suck it up for the most part.

I will say, I followed a lot of hair transplant journeys while Garrett was prepping for his, and yours is looking good.

Yeah, no, it’s looking good!

I’d say yours is above average.

I think so too, because I already had a lot of hair. It was just the front that I got touched up and thickened.

Anyway, that’s my 10 seconds! If you have any more questions, feel free to message me. A lot of people asked about it. And no, I didn’t go out of the country—I had it done in Salt Lake City.

That’s all I’ve got. Also, we’ll tag below where we’re recording. If you’re ever in St. George, Utah, and need somewhere to record, go check it out!

On that note, let’s hop into today’s podcast.

Our sources for this episode are:

ABC13.com, Oxygen.com, CaseLaw.com, Yahoo.com, Click2Houston.com, KIRO7.com, ABC7News.com, TexasMonthly.com, ABCNews.go.com, and HubPages.com.

A lot of sources!

No matter how big or small a case is—how violent or discreet it may have been—in the end, the entire investigation typically amounts to one big finale. And that is the courtroom hearing.

A trial is supposed to be the most critical part of the justice system machine. But at the same time it’s theater, right?

You hear Garrett talk about this all the time—how annoying it is. A good performance by the accused, a witness, an expert, or, more importantly, the counsel can make or break a juror's opinion of the case.

Was their lawyer convincing? Whose story was stronger—the prosecution's or the defense's? These are all things the jury has to keep in mind when they choose the fate, sometimes, of someone's life.

But the problem with courtroom theatrics is that they aren't always an accurate interpretation of the truth. They're a best guess. And sometimes, all it takes is an Oscar-worthy reenactment to convince a jury of guilt—wrongfully or otherwise.

It’s actually funny because just the other day, I asked you why sometimes there’s a judge and sometimes there’s a jury. You were saying, if you were going to trial, would you pick a judge-only trial or let it go to a jury?

And I said 100% I would pick a jury.

And I said it would depend on the crime.

Yes, because—literally—the reason I say that is exactly what I’m talking about. You can manipulate a jury way easier than you can manipulate a judge, especially someone who’s a prominent figure and does this every day.

So, you’ve got to rely on stupid peers.

Uh-huh. Not your very smart judge, who does this all day, every day.

Today, we are headed to Houston, Texas, where Susan W. was born on April 24, 1976.

Susan and her two siblings were brought up in an upper-middle-class household. Their mother was the textbook definition of a homemaker—she watched the kids every day, made everyone freshly cooked meals, and tended to the home while Susan's father headed off to work each morning.

Susan's father was a mechanical engineer by day and a husband with a temper by night.

When he wasn’t laying a hand on Susan's mother, he was taking his rage out on his three children. As you can imagine, Susan and her siblings had to learn how to walk on eggshells around him. As they put it, when he got mad, they learned to scatter and hide.

For Susan, she grew up thinking this was what a normal marriage looked like—that everyone fell in love, got married, had kids, and then started hitting each other. It was just another step on the path of life.

Still, every day when Susan and her siblings left the house, they put on their smiles and went about their business, pretending that nothing was abnormal at home. And, of course, the weight of it all took a toll on Susan's grades. But, as you probably know where this is going, her relationship with her father and how he acted at home most affected the way she sought attention from other men.

Susan said she craved male attention and was willing to do whatever it took to get and maintain it.

So, when a boyfriend of hers made some snide remarks about her looks, instead of breaking up with him, Susan dropped 19 pounds to try and please him. Then, during her senior year of high school, she realized she could actually make money this way—by seeking the attention of men, especially since she liked it.

And this is when she got a job as a dancer.

What year are we in again?

She was born in 1976, and now we're around the time she’s just graduating high school.

I figured you said that. I just wasn’t sure if this was going the OnlyFans route or the—

No, dancer route.

This is going dancer route—not the type of dancers we were talking about at UDA college competitions.

Yeah, different type.

This was temporary for Susan, just a quick means to an end.

Also, I didn’t mean to make that sound like I don’t support dancing. I support everything.

For the eight weeks she worked as an exotic dancer, she stashed away her cash because she wanted to go to nursing school.

Eventually, Susan had saved enough to begin her education and juggled that with her new job working in a hair salon.

So she danced just enough to rake in some dough, and then she was like, "I'll get a job at a hair salon and start going to school."

She was just doing it to save up money.

Yeah, she stashed the cash away and tried to—

Okay, but those dreams of becoming a nurse were too time-consuming and expensive for Susan to stay committed to.

So she ended up just quitting and working at the salon full-time.

And then, in April of 1997, the 20-year-old Susan went on a trip with one of her girlfriends to Galveston, Texas.

It was during that little vacation that Susan locked eyes with a 29-year-old man named Jeff Wright.

Now, remember, Susan is 20. She’s still very young.

And he’s 29.

And he’s 29.

Okay, look, I don’t know—it doesn’t bother me.

Okay, I’m just saying, maybe when you’re the type of girl who’s trying to please a guy—

We’ve had stories where it’s like 19 and 50.

I know, I know. If we’re going to compare, this isn’t as bad.

Correct. And I’m not even saying it’s always bad, but with the wrong personalities, this could be harmful.

Right away, the two became inseparable. Jeff appeared to be everything Susan wanted in a partner—he was kind, he was caring, he bought her flowers, took her to expensive restaurants. And only a few weeks in, he was already telling Susan he loved her.

I know love can move fast, but sometimes, again, with the wrong personalities, this could be called love bombing.

What I did to Payton.

Yeah, no. I had to pull it out of him.

Kind of true.

When she took him home to meet her parents, they loved him too. He talked about his dreams for the future—how he hoped to start his own carpeting and flooring business, how he would provide for their daughter, how he would care for her. And Susan was smitten.

So when Susan found out, just a few months into their relationship, that she was already pregnant, she wasn’t panicking. She honestly thought, "I love him. He’s great. He treats me well. The pieces are kind of falling into place."

But when she told Jeff, "Hey, I’m pregnant," he honestly seemed indifferent about the matter.

He told her, "I’ll be fine if you want to terminate the pregnancy. I don’t care."

Now, this wasn’t an option for Susan. She told Jeff she was keeping the baby.

And in October of 1998, when Susan was just a month shy of delivering, the two were married in a tiny little ceremony right outside of Houston.

After their son Bradley was born, Susan says she saw something change in Jeff. Keep in mind, the two had only been together for about a year by the time they got married, so they were still learning things about each other. And now, they had a baby, they were married—but they were still going to learn things.

What she was uncovering now, post-marriage and baby, wasn’t just little quirks like, “Oh, I learned that he leaves the sink on while he brushes his teeth.” It wasn’t good.

Suddenly, Jeff began getting nasty with Susan. He often called her names and criticized her weight after she gained a few pounds from her pregnancy. And when she was suffering from postpartum depression, Jeff refused to let Susan take the medication her doctor had prescribed. He said, “Suck it up and do your job.”

From there, he supposedly only got more and more controlling. It was a downward spiral. Susan said she could only leave the house to make quick trips to the grocery store, the drugstore, or to visit her mother. But if she was ever gone for more than two hours, she would not hear the end of it.

When she told Jeff she wanted to start taking college courses again, he was completely against it. So, Susan snuck away one night to the college campus to see if there was an online course she could take from home. But when Jeff found out, he began accusing her of cheating on him, calling her horrible names.

There were also things about Jeff’s past that were now coming to the surface in their marriage—like the fact that just a year before Susan met him, Jeff had pleaded guilty to felony drug possession. According to some sources, this wasn’t a one-time thing. Apparently, he didn’t tell her, but Jeff had a pretty rocky past when it came to drugs and alcohol, particularly in his high school years.

And apparently, Jeff’s past was back to haunt them both, because not only was he smoking marijuana almost every single day, but on top of that, Susan said that as she was trying to raise a baby while suffering from postpartum depression—and with Jeff being super controlling—he would go out drinking and using harder drugs.

All of this made him angry. And then he would come home angry.

Susan didn’t really have any family she could escape to. It was like living with her father all over again. This was what her home life looked like.

Susan also claimed that when Jeff was in this state, he began physically abusing her. This got even worse when they moved into a new home in 1999. That’s when Susan said every little thing began to set Jeff off. If there was a problem with a client, if the utility bills were too high, or if dinner wasn’t cooked exactly how he liked it, he would fly off the handle.

And the abuse never let up. He was kicking, punching, and throwing her up against walls and windows.

On one road trip to see his parents, Susan said Jeff slammed her head into the dashboard while they were driving—with their child in the back seat.

And Susan kept all of this to herself.

This is what she had always done.

I mean, you have to realize she grew up in this environment and kept it a secret as well.

We talk about domestic violence a lot. I feel like so many of our cases involve it. I mean, we kind of say it every time—it’s such a hard pipeline to get out of.

Yes, like, you obviously want to tell the person to just get out of it, and they know it. They know. But the trauma, the manipulation—it’s wild.

Garrett and I were just talking about this last night. Domestic violence is one of those things that you really shouldn’t judge unless you’ve lived it, because the truth is, we can’t fully put ourselves in that mindset.

Before we started this podcast, I would probably just look at—well, usually, I mean, males experience DV too, but most often, it’s women in these situations. And I would just think, Why don’t they just leave? Like, Go somewhere. Get out. But now, I realize just how much more complex it is. There are so many layers to it.

(P.S. If you're watching on YouTube and see me itching my head, it's been a very common occurrence the last few weeks. I told him today in public, Stop itching your head—people are going to think you have lice! And I said, I don’t even care!)

Anyway, I think domestic violence is just such a complicated and complex thing that you truly can’t wrap your head around until you’ve been through it.

And now, as an adult, Susan still kept this abuse from her friends and family. She painted the picture of a happy wife in a happy marriage. If things weren’t good, she just didn’t leave the house—which may be why so many people thought Jeff and Susan had a perfect little life.

But in the summer of 1999, Susan had reached a breaking point.

After another beating from her husband, she called her sister, Cindy, for help while Jeff was at work one afternoon. You have to imagine how shocking this was for Cindy, who had no idea anything was going on in this marriage.

Susan told Cindy about the abuse, and hours later, Cindy and her husband arrived with a U-Haul. They helped Susan pack up all of her and Bradley’s things, and she got out of there.

But the following morning, Jeff called her, threatening her.

He said he was sending a moving van back over, and if she didn’t pack up everything and come home, he was going to kill her and Bradley.

So, what happens? She feels like she has no choice.

And things only get more complicated because Susan got pregnant again. But then she had a miscarriage—after Jeff beat her in the stomach. She lost the baby.

It was just this toxic cycle of fear.

Then, in December of 2001, she got pregnant again—this time with a little girl they named Kaylee. Now, Susan had three lives to protect—hers and her two kids.

Meanwhile, Jeff lived his life however he wanted, including openly cheating. He would sleep around constantly. At one point, he gave Susan an STI that he had contracted from one of the women he was seeing.

It's really too much for Susan—or anyone—to bear. And with Jeff literally threatening to kill her if she tried to leave again, that's when Susan realized something.

Garrett literally just said this on last week's episode, but Susan came to the realization: He'll never let me leave peacefully. I will die.

Yep.

So it's either kill or be killed.

On the night of January 13, 2003, that decision would be made.

That evening, Jeff came home from his weekly boxing lesson with a look in his eye. Susan knew it all too well. He was high on cocaine.

That's when he started taunting four-year-old Bradley, trying to get him to box with him. Jeff began taking jabs at the little boy’s face, eventually hitting him pretty hard on the cheek. The more Bradley tried to run away and resist, the more Jeff badgered him, calling him a [expletive].

He was four.

Susan removed the children from the situation, putting them on the bed. But at this point, she was done.

She couldn't do this anymore.

At her breaking point, she went to the bedroom and confronted Jeff.

She told him, It is time for you to find other ways to deal with your rage. You need to get help for your addiction. You need to go to therapy.

I'm sure that went over amazing.

No, Jeff did not appreciate it.

He threw her against their bedroom wall and told her not to give him ultimatums. Then, he pushed Susan onto the bed and began sexually assaulting her.

Susan closed her eyes.

She was terrified of what was coming next because this was a really bad fight.

When she opened her eyes, Jeff was holding a knife above her.

It had escalated to that point.

So Susan did the only thing she could think to do—the thing she had never really done before.

She fought back.

She kicked Jeff. She managed to grab the knife from his hands. And then, she began stabbing him.

In the bedroom? While her kids—

I didn't see this going this way.

As soon as she got the knife, she stabbed him over and over again. His chest, his neck, his stomach, his legs, his genitals—

Holy crap.

Everywhere.

How many times?

Well, there were 193 wounds on his body. So, 193 cuts and stabs altogether.

Okay, so even if we take 50% of that—let's just say around 90 stabs.

I mean, we talk about this a lot on the podcast. I'm trying to figure out how to say it. She was obviously angry. And we always say, when someone kills with a knife, it's intimate. It's personal. It’s rage.

Right.

According to Susan, she fully admits now: Something came over me, and I couldn’t stop. Once I started, I did not stop.

I mean, I don’t blame her.

I don’t know.

And you have to—like, this story is just—wait, was their kid in the room?

In the next room.

The reason Susan finally stopped stabbing?

She heard a little knock on the door.

Bradley was asking, Are you okay?

Jeff was already dead. But Susan wasn't convinced.

So she hid the knife, wiped the blood off herself, walked Bradley back to bed, tucked him in, and told him everything was fine.

But in the back of her mind, she was thinking:

What if he's alive? What if he gets up?

You know, like in the movies.

So, as soon as the kids are back tucked in, she goes back to the kitchen, grabs a brand new knife, goes back to the bedroom, and stabs him several more times. That part's kind of wild. So, this comes to a grand total of 193 wounds, and this is why I opened this. I didn't expect this part, because this case is complicated, and you now understand why

The trial is going to be probably the biggest part of this case because you do have a woman who was threatened, who was beaten, who probably did feel like she was—well, she was fighting for her life, I mean, for sure.

But is this self-defense? Is 193 wounds something you can argue as self-defense? Does it matter? Like, does it matter if it's self-defense, I mean—well, that's why you're not on the jury. I mean, does it matter if it's a mix between self-defense and also being angry? Like, you know what I'm saying? I just think that's up to the jury.

I know it's up to the jury. Okay, let's hear what they say.

So, after this—sorry, we talked about it, I think, a couple of weeks ago—put me on the jury. No, they never will. I'll never be on a jury because of the podcast. You know, I might squeak through when you say "kill or be killed."

You will never be a part of a— as soon as they look into what we do for a living, they'll be like, nope, not happening, 'cause I will leak. No, I'm just kidding.

So, Susan is done now, and she's like, "Oh, what do I do now?" What? Yeah, how is she going to clean up this mess, get her husband out of the house without anyone knowing? The only thing she could think of was a dolly they had outside.

So, she goes out—she didn’t call the police.

I told you this case is going to be complicated. Okay, I’m trying to just give you the facts as is. I’m trying to give you Susan’s history and background and the reality of her life, but also give you how horrific this murder was.

Okay, how she had thought about killing him before—does that make it premeditated, even though it was self-defense? It is so complicated.

So, she brings the dolly into the bedroom, pushes Jeff off the bed and onto the cart, and she wheels him into the backyard. Conveniently, Jeff had dug his own grave just a few months earlier. There was a hole in the backyard that he had dug because he was planning to install a fountain, but he hadn't done it yet. Okay, so Susan dragged him off the dolly, put him in the hole, and then covered it with dirt. But even as the 26-year-old Susan—so young—caught her breath, the reality of the situation hadn’t sunk in yet. She said even at this point she was worried that Jeff wasn’t dead, and I think that this is coming from her lawyer trying to argue the amount of fear, the psychology behind it.

Yeah, like the amount of fear she had and how that proves that this is self-defense. I understand it to an extent, right?

She starts having all this PTSD. And I’m not saying I don’t believe her, like I totally— it totally makes sense that that can happen. I mean, she’s not sitting here panicking going, "Oh, shoot, how do I get out of this?" She’s sitting here panicking going, "Oh, shoot, what if he’s alive and gets out of this?"

Think about last week’s case—he had to, remember, he had to pretend he was dead. Yeah, like the cops set up a whole stunt. He had to pretend that he was dead.

So, she actually goes back inside, sits on the couch, and stays up all night with a knife in her hand, staring at the door—okay, just to make sure that he doesn't get up and come back in again, according to her story and her lawyer. For the next few days, Susan says she remained in a hazy fog, just on autopilot. But Jeff's parents obviously knew something was wrong.

So, on the afternoon of January 14th, Jeff's parents called Susan, worried. They said they were expecting to hear from Jeff the night she killed him, but he never called. "Is everything okay? Did he come home?" Susan was like, "Yeah, uh, but we got into a terrible argument." She said Jeff got so mad at her that he actually poured a bottle of bleach all over their bedroom, which, in her mind, she's trying to now cover up what she's done.

So, she's like, if I tell his parents that there was bleach in the bedroom, then if police find the bleach, they're not going to think it was me.

Why not just call the cops?

She's just too scared. I think she’s just in, I mean, like, is she having a mental breakdown? Like, what's going on? I mean, I don’t know if I’d go that far, but it’s like, what do you do? Okay, so, I mean, 193 wounds—how are you going to explain that to the cops? Yeah, I get that.

So, to the rights, his parents—this just doesn’t make sense. They're like, "Susan’s acting weird. Why would he have poured bleach? This is not right." Yeah, and Susan actually told the same story to Jeff's boss when he called later that day looking for him, and then also to a neighbor who called to check in. After hearing the story, the neighbor told Susan she should file a report with the police because the entire situation sounded like domestic abuse.

She was like, "Well, if Jeff really did that, you should go file a police report," which was actually something Susan took them up on the following afternoon—so January 15th. This is two days after cleaning up the crime scene and emptying the joint bank account she shared with Jeff. Susan walked into the Harris County Constable's office. There, she told them the same story she had shared with the others, including the fact that he had hit their son on the night of the 13th. She also showed them pictures on her phone of cuts and bruises that she had. She told police she wanted a restraining order from her husband for both her and her kids, and she officially filed a domestic violence complaint.

Okay, now, obviously, we know her husband is deceased in the backyard at this point, and she still hasn’t told them that—obviously, no. So, by January—could you imagine calling and filing a DV complaint but then being like, "My husband's dead because I killed him"?

Yeah.

So, by January 18th, the pressure was too much for Susan. Everyone’s calling, everyone’s asking, "Where’s Jeff? Where’s Jeff?" And it was only a matter of time before someone would come to the house and notice things were wrong. That evening presented another huge hiccup for Susan because their dog had been in the backyard digging at the grave, and he had allegedly exposed a part of Jeff's head. He had also chewed off Jeff’s hand, and she found the dog gnawing at it on their patio.

This is wild.

So, that’s when Susan was like, "I’ve got to get out of here." So, she grabbed the kids, threw them in the car, and went to stay with her mother. When she got there, Susan’s mother finally confronted her about it.

She’s like, “Where’s Jeff? Did you do something to him?” And Susan confesses to her mother that she murdered him. Now, I can only imagine what it was like for Susan’s mother. I’m sure she’s in panic. She tells Susan, "Go send the kids to stay with Cindy"—that’s their aunt, her sister—and "we are going to find an attorney." So, she’s like, "You’re turning yourself in?" Well, no, it’s like the first time I’ve heard someone say, "I’m getting an attorney before the cops start questioning me."

Yes, well, I mean, as a mom, you’re like, "Listen, you’re not going to hide. You’re going to admit to the murder, but we’re going to find you an attorney first." So, they lock in on a guy named Neil Davis, and before going to the police, she tells her attorney everything.

Which, we’ve talked about this. Okay, yeah, I know I’ve talked about this with you guys many times. All of you attorneys and lawyers, we don’t want a murderer DMs getting an attorney before—but you also do want a victim getting an attorney before. And so, this weird thing because two statements can be true at once: she can be a murderer and also a victim. That’s true. I guess I was referring to something different when I asked them about attorneys lying, and an attorney is not going to lie.

No, no, but I’m saying, I guess it’s a different situation because it’s who we think is probably the “quote-unquote” good guy in this story, even though she killed someone. She’s technically the twisted story.

Yeah, so Neil Davis, she tells him everything. She’s like, “I don’t know what to tell you. Not only did I kill him, I stabbed him 197 times. I snapped.” She’s like, “I snapped. Enough was enough. I could not take it anymore.” She said, “I thought he was going to kill me and the kids if I didn’t kill him first.”

So, only hours after confessing everything to her mother and attorney, Neil Davis was walking into the Harris County District Attorney’s office, and he said, “If you go to the address, you will find a dead body in the backyard.”

Now, when the police push for more details, Neil said, “Nope, attorney-client privilege.” But hey, when a lawyer says there’s a dead body somewhere, the police are going to go. So, he’s like, “I’m not telling you any details, but I’m just letting you know this is us officially turning in that a crime has been committed.” So smart, but he doesn’t make her go in. So smart.

The police do—they send a team down to the home, and sure enough, after barely scanning the backyard, they found him partially buried. His head, his arm, and shoulder at this point were exposed. He’s also completely naked, aside from the neckties around his wrists and a sash from a bathrobe that was tied around his ankles. It doesn’t take much for them to realize, "Okay, this is obviously the homeowner."

I mean, they looked up the home before they went—34-year-old Jeff, right?

But, of course, they know that Jeff has a wife and kids, and they’re missing. So, the police let themselves into the home because it’s empty. They let themselves in to investigate, and when they get to the primary bedroom, it looks like a tornado has hit. There’s stuff everywhere—there’s fresh paint, bleach, a giant piece of carpet has been cut out from the floor. Like, it looks like someone was trying to take every piece of evidence they could find but didn’t do a very good job.

There's still blood on the curtains, the nightstand, the walls, and even more damning, detectives locate a receipt for two gallons of bleach, obviously for afterward, and a hunting knife in a pot outside that looked like it had been tried to be hidden, but it was obviously the murder weapon. I'm so curious to see what the jury says, like what conclusion they come to, because I know what conclusion I think I come to, but I could see the jury being swayed both ways, to be honest. So this whole thing is a disaster.

It should be a pretty open and shut case when you consider the evidence; like they have enough evidence, and naturally, for murder, yes. But, I mean, obviously, they're going to claim defense, so it's a completely different case. They have a giant hunch about who’s done it, obviously, so they call the lawyer back and they say, "Any chance your client, Susan W, did it?" And he’s like, "Yep." And he says, "She will not be speaking to police though, because she’s been checked into a psychiatric ward at the hospital." The mental break that she has suffered and originally started on the night of the murder has not subsided. She's still not convinced that he's fully dead and she still believes that he could come for her at any moment.

Holy crap, okay, so this is wild.

The police are like, "Oh gosh, is this a lie?" This is the pros of getting a lawyer before you turn yourself in. Yeah, 'cause whether it's a lie or not, well then also, now the DA has to be like, "Where do I go with this?" Yeah, like where do I go with this case? She's in a mental hospital, yeah, because she still thinks her husband is going to kill her. Yeah, so the police are like, "Okay, we get what you're saying and we get that this is obviously going to... she’s not denying the murder, so this is going to be a self-defense murder case." And also, they discovered the injuries were so violent that the tip of the knife had actually snapped off and was still lodged inside Jeff's head.

So she was stabbing his head? Holy sh... okay.

But they find something else in the autopsy that’s going to throw a wrench into her case. It’s actually going to be a huge part of the debate. They find red candle wax on his thigh and around his genitals, which doesn’t match any part of the story that Susan has told so far. Right? Yeah. So Neil Davis, at this point, released a statement on Susan's behalf, stating that she had been abused by her husband Jeff for upwards of four years leading up to his death.

But murder is murder, and Susan knew there was no getting herself out of this one. So, on January 24th, 11 days after stabbing her husband, Susan Wright turned herself into police with every intention of pleading not guilty, okay, and letting the court know exactly what she went through to be pushed to this point. And she’s going to argue that anyone who went through what she went through would snap. Okay, an opportunity that finally came for Susan a little more than a year later, in February of 2004.

So, during this year, she’s not in prison?

No, she’s prepping for trial. And when Susan took the stand, it was obvious that for a year she had been prepping very hard with her lawyer for this trial. She does not miss a beat. She offers up the same exact story I told you earlier.

That is the story she tells: how Jeff had come home that night from a boxing match high on cocaine, how he was hitting their son, how later that evening in the bedroom, Jeff came at her with a knife in the middle of their attack, and she fought back, thinking, "It's either him or me." And that the reason she didn't go to the police right after was because she was having a mental break and was still literally confused, thinking that her husband was going to be able to get to her and her kids at some point.

The prosecution sees holes in Susan's story, holes that would convince them that Susan wasn't being totally honest with how that night actually went down. There might be pieces of truth, but there were definitely pieces missing, according to the prosecution.

Okay, like this hinged on two giant things found on Jeff after he died. Number one, he had ties on his wrists and feet. If a body is already dead, why would you tie the feet and wrists up? You would tie the feet and wrists up on a person who's alive to keep them from moving.

Was it tied with what they were saying earlier?

Um, the neckties and bathrobe, yes.

Okay. I mean, you're thinking maybe just to move him?

Yeah, just to move the body.

That would be my initial thought, 100%.

Number two, the wax near his groin. That does not come up at all in her story.

I don’t even know if I want to know. That's weird.

She thinks this doesn’t look like a situation where someone fought back from self-defense. She thinks Susan decided a couple of days earlier, "It's me or him, he’s going to kill me if I don’t kill him." So she lured Jeff into the bedroom, seduced him with what he thought was going to be maybe... and then started killing him, tied him up, okay, and then started killing him.

I mean, I guess I could see what they're thinking, just because she had tied him up, that she had poured the wax on him, that it was a whole thing, and then got the knife and stabbed him. Also, the chance is—I'm not saying this doesn’t happen—but he’s going to stab her and then she somehow gets the knife from him, you know what I'm saying? Like, he sounds like he was... yes, but it does happen.

I know, but he's high on cocaine, yeah, and apparently over top of her, which is even harder. It’s possible, it’s just unlikely.

In your mind?

In my mind, unlikely. So if you're sitting on this jury, you're thinking that's a little unlikely?

Yeah, I would start to raise some red flags.

Okay, so this is where the prosecution comes in. They said, "Yep, we agree that she murdered him. We're not even really arguing that she wasn’t abused by him. What we're arguing is that this was not self-defense. This was premeditated murder. First degree premeditated murder." They said it had nothing to do with protecting her children. They actually said, and they brought her past of dancing into the trial, like trying to smear her reputation, you know, make the jury think differently of her.

They said also Jeff had a $200,000 life insurance policy, and what was she going to do? How was she going to provide for her kids? Which the prosecution even called a witness to support. Kevin Comboy was a coworker of Jeff’s, and he recounted a time just a week or so before Jeff’s death where Susan called the office. He said he could hear Susan screaming over the phone at Jeff, asking him whether or not he completed the insurance policy paperwork.

So a week before she murders him, damn, a coworker is coming forward saying she called him at work complaining about the insurance policy—that’s a $200,000 payout.

Dude, see, I don’t know, it would be so hard to be on the jury, 'cause this is where the reasonable doubt starts inching away at your mind.

Right? So Kevin says Jeff even ended the call saying, "If I die," like as a joke, "If I die, you'll be a very rich woman." So Jeff's brother-in-law—very rich, I mean, yes—but I mean, how many times do you joke about insurance?

Yeah, I get that. I get that.

So Jeff's brother-in-law, Brian Roberts, also testified against Susan. He said there was one occasion where he was at their house for dinner and Susan and Jeff got into an argument. He then said Susan, who was using a knife, turned and pointed it at Jeff in a threatening manner, which doesn’t really mean Susan’s lying, but also, Brian claimed he never once saw or heard any abuse from Jeff towards his wife or kids.

I would say that the majority of people don’t ever see the DV actually happening in relationships, so I take that with a grain of salt. And the prosecution sort of takes that and runs with it. They say this relationship could have been toxic, okay, but is this domestic abuse or murder? Is this domestic abuse defense exaggerated?

Oh, like was this something that was conjured up after the murder, made to be even worse?

That she created this huge lie about the history of their relationship. And because Susan didn’t file a police report until after Jeff was dead, there’s really no evidence of her going to the police and filing a domestic violence report or cops coming.

You know how sometimes you have that evidence? But again, doesn’t mean it’s not... I take it with a grain of salt, because the amount of DV cases where people are actually filing police reports is a very small percentage.

Well, so people come to Susan’s defense. A neighbor testifies and says, "No, I saw Jeff angrily physically grab Susan a few times." A few friends testified that she had shown up with black eyes to places, claiming, "Oh, it was just a fall," or "The kid accidentally hit me." Others said she was completely terrified of Jeff, like they said, "No, Susan was terrified." Though her best friend claimed there was one instance where she confided in her that Jeff had hit her after an argument on his birthday.

So there are times before this murder happened that she was telling people, so this whole idea that the abuse was something Susan conjured up after the fact doesn’t really land. After the jury hears testimony from other witnesses saying, "No, there were little clues here and there," but it’s all he-said, she-said. Though when it came to the real hard evidence, like the wax and the ties, Susan said there’s not a simple explanation for it. She says the wax from the candle came from when she pulled Jeff off the bed that night after killing him, that his shoulder had hit the nightstand and the candle fell over and poured wax on him. She also said the neckties and bathrobe—she never used them to secure Jeff to the bedpost or tie him up. She said, "Those are what I was using to secure his body to the dolly while moving him."

I mean, they both got good points, man.

Still, the prosecution had one more trick up their sleeve at trial—one more attempt at proving Susan wasn't telling the truth about what went down that night. To pull it off, it required them to bring the Wrights' actual bed to the courtroom. This is where I was saying theatrics and theater. We see this with the O.J. Simpson trial. It's big.

Okay, so on the most shocking day of the trial, prosecutor Kelly Seagler had the Wrights' blood-stained mattress and bed set rolled into the courtroom. Then, she asked another young male prosecutor from her team to step up and lie down on the mattress. She climbed on top of him to show a reenactment.

What the freak?

She tied both of his hands to the bedpost, took the actual knife from evidence, and began recreating her own version of what happened that night. The prosecution's theory was to give the jury a visual stimulant, like "this could happen, this could be real."

She said afterward that the reason she did this was, "You have to make it come alive." You can't just sit in your chair and talk to the witness on the stand and discuss it theoretically. She said, "I chose to take it to the next level," offering an Oscar-worthy performance—one that seemed convincing enough for the jury.

No way.

Some people called it genius, some people called it completely inappropriate, but the jurors called it the truth. After five hours of deliberation, they came back with a verdict: They found Susan Wright guilty of murder in the first degree. She was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Susan has since said that her defense kind of failed her at trial. They had a lot of regrets about how it was handled. For example, they failed to call to the stand the psychologist who treated Susan after her arrest. Yeah, I mean, that psychologist says she was in a dissociative state, suffering from PTSD. They never had him testify. They also weren't aware of a sworn statement given by one of Jeff's ex-girlfriends, 10 months before the trial. Her name was Misty Michaels. She was working as an exotic dancer when she met Jeff, and she said he was abusive toward her as well—that he hit her across the face and threw her down a flight of stairs. They could have had her testify at trial. She even filed a police report, so there was evidence to back it. Jeff was actually arrested and spent the night in jail for beating up his girlfriend. She said he was controlling. She basically mirrored her story: "He's controlling. He monitored my every move."

The jury never got to hear a word of it. They didn't get to hear from domestic abuse experts. People said she could have had a better defense.

In November of 2004, Susan and her new lawyer, Brian, began filing appeals, stating that her lawyers were inexperienced and ineffective. There was evidence that should have been given at trial. He also argued that Kelly Seagler’s courtroom reenactment should not have been allowed—that that was made-for-TV nonsense, and the whole thing was just confusing. How can you separate acting and dramatizations from what actually happened?

It took nearly five years, but after a judge also heard Misty Michaels’s testimony. This is the ex-girlfriend. They granted a new sentencing hearing for Susan Wright in 2009. A court ruled that Susan's counsel was, in fact, ineffective. They shaved five years off her sentence.

Okay, so in 2020, after being denied parole twice, Susan Wright was released from prison.

And so she's out.

Yes, up until 2024, Susan was on intensive supervision. She was required to wear a GPS monitor and had to attend anger management classes, but now she's a free woman.

We may never know for sure what happened in the Wrights' home behind closed doors on that night, but Susan said even jail was better than the way she was living before. She put it to reporters, saying, "Isn't it strange that I had to come to prison to finally feel safe?" And that is the case of Susan Wright.

I think that, I mean, you're probably not going to express your opinion, but I'll express mine because it's what the listeners want. Oh my... I kind of think Susan's innocent.

You wouldn't have had her serve any time?

Okay, I know this is probably a... I think this is... Don't you think that's blurring the lines a little too much?

It's hard. I'm pretty drastic as far as, like... Here are my thoughts: If you're abusing someone, what would you expect? Man, do not be killed. Shouldn't be abusing someone.

I agree. It's the same reason, like, also you shouldn't steal. You shouldn't abuse someone. Like, there are things we just don't do in life. And guess what? This is if the self-defense thing is taken out... If he was on top of her with a knife, then that's self-defense.

Okay, so you're saying you take that out.

Did he deserve it? I don't know. If you're hitting girls, if you're hitting your wife... And also, I'm not going to say you deserve it. How many times have we seen women in cases who are being abused, who don't kill their husbands, and end up dead? And they get killed. It's like, what do you expect? It's a very complicated topic, and it's a very complicated thing to go to trial for when a woman fights back.

What I think is probable is that he was abusive. People saw it. His ex-girlfriend came forward and basically shadowed her statement. So I think it's pretty safe to say, yeah, no doubt that he was abusive. But you also... I mean, did she plan a murder?

Yeah, I don't know. You can't just plan a murder and get away with it. It's just a complicated case, you guys. Obviously, I don't think that either of us are 100% right or wrong. I think that this is one of those cases that is so far in the gray. It just depended on what jury she had, you know what I mean? But let us know in the comments what you think about it, and we will see you next time with another episode.

I love it.

And I hate it.

Goodbye.

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