MURDER: Jeff Wright

A woman stabbed her husband 193 times, but was it cold-blooded murder or a battered wife finally defending herself and her children?

Susan, Jeff and their children. (children’s faces blocked for privacy.)

On January 18th 2003, Susan Wright called her attorney Neal Davis requesting that he come to her home as she urgently needed to talk with him. When he arrived, Susan confessed that on the 13th, she had killed her husband in self-defence and buried his body in the backyard.

The events of that night are unclear; most “facts” online are alleged, but the widely shared timeline is as follows.

Jeff Wright returned home from boxing class in a cocaine-induced rage. Susan was used to the substance-fueled anger, taking the fury and violence so that it wasn’t focused on the couple’s two young children. That night, however, she could not keep the children safe; 4-year-old Bradley got hit in the face by his father.
He then moved his anger back onto his wife, beating and raping Susan while threatening to kill her with a knife. It was there that she managed to get ahold of the weapon he had and began stabbing Jeff.

“I couldn’t stop stabbing him; I couldn’t stop, — I knew as soon as I stopped, he was going to get the knife back and he was going to kill me. I didn’t want to die.” Susan testified in court.

She also said in court that she was up all night, expecting Jeff to wake up and kill her. Susan tied Jeff to a dolly and buried him in a hole in the backyard; Jeff had dug it a few days before to fit a fountain in the yard. Susan buried him with potting soil and returned to the home. She tried cleaning the blood from the bedroom walls with bleach, but there was so much splattered everywhere that Susan painted over it instead of cleaning it up.

The next day, Susan filed a domestic abuse report so that she could get a restraining order against Jeff. This was her way of explaining his absence when someone noticed he was gone.

This leads us to January 18th; Susan cannot keep her secret any longer, especially after the family dog starts digging at the spot where she had buried Jeff. So, she calls her lawyer and confesses everything to him.

January 24th, Susan turns herself in to the authorities at Harris County Courthouse, where she is arraigned on murder charges on the 27th. She pleaded not guilty by reasons of self-defence.

The trial began on February 24th 2004.

Prosecutors portrayed Susan as a scheming wife who seduced her husband to bed, tying him to the four-bed posts before attacking him with knives. She did all of this in an attempt to get Jeff’s $200,000 life insurance policy.

The defence portrayed her as a woman who had suffered years of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her husband and killed him in order to protect herself and her young children.

The prosecution’s leading lawyer Kelly Siegler didn’t believe the tears that Susan cried during her testimony, claiming that she had faked them for the jury’s benefit. While presenting their case, Siegler brought in the Wrights’ bed, having her co-counsel lay on it. Siegler then straddled him and re-enacted how she believed the attack took place.

In closing arguments, Siegler cited the two months when Susan was 18 when she worked as a topless dancer to show that she was faking her emotions and a money-hungry wife. She also described her as the “card-carrying, obvious, no-doubt-about-it, caught-redhanded, confirmed, documented liar”.

Neal Davis, Susan’s defence, continued to argue that Susan was acting in self-defence.

March 5th, after five and a half hours, it was determined by a jury that Susan was guilty of murder. She was sentenced to 25 years, an in-between what both lawyers wanted.

That wouldn’t be the end of the Wright story, as Susan re-appealed her case in 2008. The case was finally back in court by 2010, with more evidence coming out and a new witness coming forward to testify.

Misty McMichael, Jeff’s ex-fiancee, told the court her story of abuse at the hands of Jeff during their four-year relationship. She told the court about Jeff throwing her down a flight of stairs.

A medical examiner had Jeff’s body exhumed and re-examined him. They would testify that out of the 193 stab wounds, 41 were to his face, 46 to his chest, and 7 to his pubic region. The rest were covering the rest of his body. The ME found wounds on Jeff’s hands, forearms, back, and the back of his legs, matching the signs of defensive wounds. A knife tip was found in his skull; Susan took a second knife and continued the attack.
He would also find zero evidence that supports the theory that Jeff was tied to the bed posts.

His findings massively go against the 2004 prosecutions story that Susan had tied Jeff to their bed.

After all, this came forward, Susan was re-sentenced on November 20th to 20 years in prison.
Ten years later, Susan was released on parole on December 30th 2020, at age 44. She has requested that media and news outlets leave her and her family alone and let them live their lives.