In January of two thousand and three, a Houston mother named Susan Wright walked into a police station to file a domestic violence complaint, and she did so two days after she viciously stabbed her husband and buried him in the backyard. What unfolded next was a case that gripped the nation, blending claims of long term abuse with one of the most brutal homicides in Texas history. Was Susan a battered wife pushed to the edge, or a cold
calculated killer hiding behind a carefully crafted tail. This is the story of the Blue Eyed Butcher.
My name's Ben, I'm Nicole, and you're listening to Wicked Ingram, a true crime podcast.
The following material intended venture audience. Happy, Oh, I think we were both about to stay at the same time. Happy Canada Day. Yes, July first, it's Canada Day.
It's Canada Day.
And then of course you know we got July fourth coming up for those who are in the US and everything. So yeah, it's just good times all around. Yeah, it's quite a week, and you're annual reminder of be careful with fireworks. In all honesty, we I just don't use fireworks.
Yeah, well, I mean I get they are pretty. They're pretty purpose and stuff. But yeah, some people are against fireworks, and I guess our hosthold is a.
Little They're bad for the environments, you know. They terrify animals, birds die, and dogs run away off leash out of yard. They're scared.
It does a lot of damage, but it brings up PTSD for some people.
It does. So I mean, enjoy what you need to enjoy. We totally get it. Don't let you, don't let us stop you. However, if you can make the choice, you know, just just think of those around you.
Yeah. Ben's tip of the Day, Yeah, tip of the day. I get those all the time, little like do you know this? Do you know this?
Like, I don't know, You're just bends facts the day.
Okay, yeah, that's what I called it. I'm always like, oh is that a fat Ben's fact of the day?
Yeap, Just little facts that pop up my head all the time. I do a lot of cruising on the internet since I'm like researching true crimes, so I learned a lot of little facts, and yeah, I like to share them.
We had to re record our intro because we had a chicken doing an egg song. Our chickens, I feel like, are so loud. I don't know if I need to spend maybe some time with other people's chickens, but I think ours are freaking loud chickens.
I think you're just loud in general.
I don't the perception of them is they're not. And like when we first got our and they were doing this egg song, I was like, holy shit, what is that.
Yeah, people are like, oh, I'm just gonna get hens and not a rooster, because roosters are loud. No, hens are fucking loud.
They're loud. Yeah.
Yeah. They lay an egg and then they sing what they call the egg song. It's basically like, oh my god, I just laid an egg and they're like searching for like a rooster to like come over and you know, like protect it and well, you know.
And maybe they don't do that so much if there is a rooster, because we don't have a rooster so and we may end up getting one this year, so maybe we'll see.
I think they do still sing the egg song, it's just maybe they won't carry on quite as much as ours do. Yeah, they have the rooster. I don't know, huh, Anyways, we got quite the story today. The blue eyed Butcher.
Yeah, that is okay. When you gave me the title the other day, I for some reason didn't think it was a woman.
I don't know.
I mean because generally, you know, nine times out of ten, I feel like the case is the bad person is the male.
Yeah, I mean, perpetrators generally are our men. I'm not going to say it's not true, because it is true. So hey, if you went in the direction of thinking it was a dude at first, I can understand.
Yea whoever, but there are bad women out there too, so I don't if you're a male, I'm not saying you know, it's always you.
But and here's the thing though, too, the dude might still be the bad guy in this case.
Well, yeah, that's true. Actually just throw Yeah.
So there is a heated topic about whether Susan is the bad person or not.
Okay, well, I'm very intrigued to hear. But we do got some patrons to thank for.
We do, We certainly do. So shout out to j m Ashley, Lynn, Megan Nak Caprice, and Marie Pierre at Cornew. Hopefully I pronounce your name right.
Haunded like you did.
I think I think they might be French.
And yeah, they just got an episode yesterday exclusive, so that's pretty cool.
Yeah, a good mystery one too. And there's gonna be a little bit of changes happening over on Patreons soon. We're thinking of we've had a lot of troubles with getting the ad free episodes out to our patrons. It was never really something that we like, oh, you know, it's definitely part of Patreon. It was just always just thrown in there because it was it was a good
thing to throw in there, you know. But it's just been this mess of trying to get the ad freeze to them in accordance to working with Patreon, and accordance to working with different platforms. Everyone works differently, so it's just been this haywire mess. And I think we're going to just say, you know what, screw it and just upload the ad freeze directly to Patreon.
Here soon, yeah, which will be easy peasy.
So yeah, it will. So it'll make life a lot easier for us and for our patrons. They'll get the ad free all that extra bonus content. So if you're interested in that, go ahead and sign up over in Patreon, you can be that little you know, that community that supports us over there.
Yeah, we love our patrons for sure.
Yeah and if not, hey, we still appreciate you. You can listen to episodes like this the Blue ad Butcher right now.
Yeah, okay, I mean I'm going in this in this case for some reason with a judgment just from your intro. So I need to probably like wipe my little.
On what's your judgment. I'm curious. I don't know.
I think that she was probably provoked.
You think she was provoked over I just.
Have this feeling, but I have literally no facts about it. So let's hear okay and see.
Well, let me tell you the story and you can form your opinions with the actual facts.
Yeah sounds good.
So Susan Wright was just like any young girl growing up in the Houston suburbs. She was born in April twenty fourth of nineteen seventy six, and she was the middle child in a household that, at least from the outside, seemed solid and stable. Her father was a mechanical engineer. Her mother stayed home raising the children, cooking the meals and tending the house. The classic image of a middle class American family sort of thing.
I love it now.
Susan's father, by her account, was not just a disciplinarian. He was, in fact violent. His temper loomed over the family like a storm cloud, ready to break at any moment. When he wasn't directing his rage at his wife, It's spilled over under the children. Susan and her siblings learned early to read the room, to stay quiet and disappear when things turn dark.
I don't love that, and I think that's sometimes kind of common, too common in which regard well maybe that era, I don't know, but yeah, kids having to like read the room and stuff, you know, like that that goes with you as you get older.
What do you mean common though? Common amongst who.
Like that generation where like kids, you know, the dad has a temper or whatever, and then kids are kind of having to be like, Okay, well I have to act this way if my dad's like in this mood.
I'm not I understand what you're saying. I'm not sure. If i'd say it's common in that generation, I would say it's it was more prevalent, get more the farther back you go. But like in the nineteen seventies, you still had a lot of happy, good families and stuff like that.
Yeah, I mean, I think it can still be a little bit prominent to this day. Like lots of times kids have to be like weary of their parents' mood. Yeah.
I think what you trying to say is it's unfortunately more common than we think. Yeah, probably something like that.
There you go. I'm not saying all that. Okay, people are gonna be like, holy shit, Nicole's just like, you know, not all dads are like that, but even moms can and like kids have to read rooms and I think that sucks definitely.
Now, they didn't talk about these sort of things. They didn't, you know, always ask for help or anything. They smiled in public and walked on eggshells at home. Sort of situation. For Susan that childhood it shaped everything. Abuse wasn't something to be escaped from or anything. It was something to be endured, hidden and just absorbed, live with it sort of thing. It was what marriage looked like to her,
what love looked like to her. In high school, Susan's sense of self worth was already tangled up in approval, especially from men. She craved attention, validation and clung to it whenever she got it. One boyfriend that she eventually had in high school, in fact, even made a cruel remark about her appearance, specifically her weight, and instead of walking away from the situation, she dropped nearly twenty pounds in response.
Oh shit, yeah, oh man, probably twenty pounds She didn't even need to drop probably.
Yeah. Now, when she was a senior, Susan took a job as an exotic dancer. Not out of rebellion, she would later explain, anyways, but more out of necessity. The work was temporary, just long enough to make enough money to enroll in nursing school. So for eight weeks she danced, saved her tips and her money, and then left that world behind.
Oh wow, that's actually surprising. She could just do that for eight.
Weeks, say, yeah, didn't get entrapped in that.
Or anything when the money is like real good?
Yeah, or you know, potentially people who who lure in and trap her in other ways. But I digress. Now, she enrolled in school and started and she took a job at a hair salon to continue to pay bills. However, the demands of education, work and financial pressure eventually became too much for her, and nursing school kind of faded into the background, and this lawn job is kind of
all that really remained. That Then, in April of nineteen ninety, at just twenty years old, Susan went on a trip to Galveston, Texas with a friend, and that's where she met Jeff. Right. She was just twenty and he was twenty nine, nearly a decade older. He was confident and charismatic. Jeff swept her off her feet almost immediately, the kind of man who brought flowers without reason, opened car doors
and said all the right things. To Susan, whose past relationships had been marked by insecurity, self doubt, Jeff felt like safety. He told her he loved her. Within weeks, he talked about building a future together, starting his own business, raising a family, providing everything they'd ever needed. He made her feel chosen, protected and adored. And when Susan brought Jeff home to meet her parents, they loved him too. There were no red flags then, just plans and promises.
When she found out she was pregnant a few months into the relationship, Susan didn't panic. To her, It's just the next step in the family life that finally seemed to be falling into place for her. Jeff's reaction, however, was a little bit more detached. He didn't get angry or anything. He didn't celebrate really either, but he did offer that if she's open for termination, he would be fine.
With that, because he was feeling like it was a bit early or something.
Maybe potentially he wasn't opposed to a child. He just made sure that, you know, if you want to terminate it, I'll be okay with that. Oh, you know. So it wasn't exactly the reaction she's looking for, but it wasn't the worst reaction in the world either. He wasn't asking her to terminate, just stating he'd be fine with the option.
There was that option there available to them if they wanted it exactly.
It wasn't exactly what she expected to hear, but Susan did already decide that she wanted to keep the baby, and so the two were married in a small ceremony just outside Houston in October of nineteen ninety eight, just a month before their son, Bradley was born. That should have been a new beginning, but Susan would later say that it was the beginning of something else. Entirely, Jeff changed. The man who once brought her roses now brought insults.
When Susan gained weight after the pregnancy, Jeff ridiculed her, and when she struggled with postpartum depression he dismissed it. He even refused to let her take her medication that a doctor prescribed her, saying just suck it up and go do your job. Control crept into their relationship like water through a crack, slow and very steady. Susan said that she only was allowed to leave the house for
short errands or to visit her mother. If she stayed out too long, she'd come home to shouting in accusations. When she tried to take college classes again, though Jeff said no, however, she went anyways quietly, just once, just to talk about potential online courses. And Jeff found out about this, and the accusation started more. He called her names and accused her of cheating. See, Jeff had a history, one that he never told her about. A year before
they met, he pleaded guilty to felony drug possessions. Susan didn't know what the time, but Jeff had been struggling with drugs and alcohol since high school, and now those habits were creeping back into his life. No, according to Susan, he smoked marijuana daily, he drank heavily, and some nights he used harder drugs, and when he did he came
home angry, and that anger turned violent. Susan said he began hitting her, slamming her against walls, throwing her to the floor, kicking her when she curled up in fear. On one road trip to visit her parents, she said that he slammed her head into the dashboard of the vehicle while her young son sat in the back seat. Susan didn't tell anyone, not her family, not her friends. She did what she always did. She stayed quiet, made excuses, and kept the abuse behind closed doors. From the outside
the rights, they still looked normal. Their new home that they purchased in nineteen ninety nine sat in a quiet neighborhood. They had a son and a steady income from Jeff's flooring business, and another child now on the way. But Susan would later describe this move not as a fresh start, but as a turning point. Inside the walls of that
new home, the abuse worsened. Jeff's temper had become volatile, and the smallest things a late bill, an overcook dinner, or even just a stressful day at work could set him off. She claimed that he would throw her into the walls, punch or kick her, even beat her while she was pregnant, and when she was pregnant. This second time, she said, Jeff assaulted her during an argument, hitting her in the stomach, and not long after she miscarried.
Oh no, oh no, oh no okay.
There were no police reports, there were no hospital records tying injuries to abuse, no cries for help, But according to Susan, the silence was part of survival. She had grown up in a home where hiding violence was second nature, and now, as a wife and a mother, she was repeating the same pattern, and she stayed. In the summer of nineteen ninety nine, Susan finally broke after another alleged beating. She picked up the phone and called her sister, Cindy,
asking for help. For the first time, she admitted that things were bad, worse than anyone knew. Cindy was blindsided by the confession came immediately, bringing her husband and a moving vehicle as well. Together, they helped Susan and little Bradley pack their things and left Jeff behind. It could have been the start of a new chapter, but by the next morning, Jeff was on the phone. His voice, though, wasn't apologetic like what many would think. Instead, it was threatening.
He told Susan to come home, and he told her to load her things into the van that he was sending and to bring their son to and if she didn't, he threatened he would kill them both.
Oh okay, this is like messy hay very, and so Susan went back.
That return marked another shift, but not in Jeff's behavior, but in Susan's perception of it. She no longer believed that he would stop. She no longer thought that she could wait it out, and when she got pregnant again, she feared it was another reason Jeff would just never let her go. It was December of two thousand and one when Susan was pregnant again, and this time she did carry to term and they had a daughter they named Kayleie. She was born into a household that, according
to Susan, was already suffocated with fear, control and violence. Jeff, she claimed was still using drugs, including cocaine, which for my research seems to be as drug a choice, and still coming home angry, still accusing her of cheating, still monitoring every move that she made, and through it all, Susan didn't really tell anyone. There was no police reports,
friends didn't know, no official files or anything. Just trying to maintain the happy wife, happy home sort of lifestyle and picture that you know, people see from the outside. If she didn't have to leave the house, you know, people didn't see her bruises, they wouldn't ask questions to
the outside world. Jeff and Susan were just another young couple raising two kids in a modest Texas home, but behind closed doors, Susan said she was waiting for the inevitable, a moment when Jeff's anger would boil over and she wouldn't survive. That moment she believed was coming fast. And it was Monday, January thirteenth, two thousand and three, and Jeff had just returned home from his weekly boxing class.
The kids were getting ready for bed when the house was quiet, but Susan said she knew something was wrong the moment Jeff walked through that door. His eyes were wide and his movements were erratic, and she recognized the signs he was high and from accounts, he was especially wired this time. Jeff called over their four year old son, Bradley, and tried to get him into a little friendly father son sparring match together. It was playfleft first, with little
light jabs, teasing, that sort of thing. But then Susan said, Jeff hit their son across the face a little bit too hard, hard enough to leave a mark. When Bradley turned and tried to run, Jeff mocked him and called him names, cruel ones. Susan stepped in, pulled the kids out of the room and got them settled into bed, But inside her something had shifted. She said she was done being afraid at this point, done staying quiet, and that night she walked into the bedroom and confronted Jeff.
She told him that he needed help, that his rage, his addiction, the violence, it had to stop. She told him that he needed to go to therapy or do something before he destroyed their family. Now Jeff, of course, didn't take it.
Well, well, yeah, I'm like this, this is not going to go well.
According to Susan, Jeff exploded. He shoved her hard against the wall, and then she said he threw her down on the bed and began to sexually assault her. She closed her eyes and braced herself for it, and then when she opened her eyes she saw he had a knife, and in that inn instant she knew he's going to kill me. It was either kill or be killed. For Susan, instincts took over and she kicked him off of her
and fought back, and she reached for that knife. She took control and raised the blade over her head and then stabbed Jeff again and again and again. In the moments that followed, Susan said she completely lost control. She didn't count the wounds. She just continued to thrust the knife into the flesh across Jeff's body, into his chest, neck, stomach, legs, and groin. It was rage, terror, and something entirely primal. When it was over, she said she wasn't even sure
it was over. In the next room, she heard a small knock at the door. It was her son, Bradley. He said, Mommy, are you okay. Jeff wasn't moving, but Susan said that she couldn't be sure he was dead. She wiped the blood from her skin, tucked Bradley back into bed, told him everything was fine, and went back into the kitchen, grabbed a second knife, and returned to the bedroom, where she stabbed him several more times.
Oh wow, okay.
That part the second knife would later become a critical detail in the prosecution's argument. But that night, in Susan's mind, she said she wasn't trying to hide a murder. She was trying to make sure he couldn't get back up. Afterwards, she sat down on the couch, knife in hand, staring at that bedroom door, certain Jeff would come through and finish her off, and finish whatever he started at any minute.
But Jeff didn't come through that door. He was already dead, and Susan had just crossed the point of no return. When morning came on January fourteenth, two thousand and three, Jeff was lifeless, long lifeless. But the rest of the world didn't know that, and Susan wasn't ready to tell
them either. She later claimed that she had been in a emotionally shut down, functioning on instinct, and she did What she did next wasn't planned on in advance or anything, she said, but what followed looked, at least on paper, like a cover up. The bedroom was saturated in blood. Carpets, the curtain, furniture, all of it. There was blood everywhere. She cleaned what she could with bleach, cut out sections
of the bedroom, carpet, painted over stains, scrub surfaces. She brought bought more cleaning supplies and tried to make it look like nothing had happened in that room. But the mess was just way too big to get under control. She hadn't called police over the incident. Instead, she turned to the backyard. See a few months earlier, Jeff had dug a hole outside planning to install a fountain, but
he hadn't finished the project yet. The hole was still there and it was deep enough, Susan thought to serve a new purpose. She used a dolly from the garage to move Jeff's body, and then she wheeled him through the house, out the back door, and into the new makeshift grave. He was buried naked in a shallow hole beneath the swing set their kids played on. When Jeff's parents called later that day, she answered the phone and told them that he had gotten angry and left after
a fight. Even added that he poured bleach on the bedroom carpet before storming out to almost seemingly cover up the chemical scent in their home. She told the same story to a neighbor and Jeff's boss. When he called she was laying groundwork. Jeff was angry, unpredictable, maybe dangerous, but no one knew the truth just yet. Then on January fifteenth, Susan did something no one expected. She walked into the Harris County Constable's office and filed a domestic
violence report against her husband. She told police that Jeff had been physically abusive, that he hit her, he'd struck their son, and she showed officers photos of bruises and injuries on her body, and she asked for a restraining order to protect her and her kids. But she still didn't tell them really happened, that Jeff was dead, that she was the one who killed him, that his body was in the backyard buried. In the days that followed,
friends and family kept calling, but Susan avoided them. She stayed in the house. She tried to act normal, but the guilt, she would later say, was starting to surface, and so was the fear. Then came the night of January eighteenth. That was the night that the family dog was digging in the yard and began pulling something out of the dirt. Oh Man, Susan walked outside and found the dog chewing on what looked like a piece of
meat on the patio shit. It was Jeff's hand. Part of his head and shoulders had been exposed from the dirt too. Susan panicked and she packed the kids in the car and drove to her mother's house. There, she broke down and told her mother everything that had happened, that Jeff was dead, that she killed them. Her mother sent the children to stay with her aunt, and together they found a lawyer, Neil Davis, before they went to the police. But it wasn't them who went to the
police though. Hours later, the lawyer Davis walked into the Harris County District Attorney's office with a message, if you go to this address, you'll find a body buried in the yard. He offered no explanations, no names, just the facts. By the time detectives arrived at the right residence on January eighteenth, two thousand and three, and stepped into the backyard, it didn't take long. Under the swing set buried in a shallow grave was a partially uncovered body of Jeff Wright.
His head, arm, and shoulders had been exposed. His hand had been gnawed off by the family dog, and pieces of it were scattered across the patio.
Oh my gosh, that is just like like quite a scene.
It is the scene.
Literally.
The next words I have is the scene was grim.
Well, yeah, and plus still there would be like some evidence and shit in the bedroom and I guess feeling like this might not have been handled the best of ways.
Yeah, so the scene was grim, but inside the house was just as telling. You're nailing what I'm talking about here. Investigators found a master bedroom in disarray, furniture move bleach stains, and a large section of carpet cut out. There was still blood in the curtains, the walls, the mattress, the nightstand. There was also a seat for two gallons of bleach found in the trash out in the flower pot on the patio, police discovered a hunting knife that had been tucked away poorly concealed.
Huh.
There was no question of violent confrontation had taken place here, The only question was what kind. Within hours, detectives confirmed the identity of the body. It was, in fact Jeff Wright, age thirty four, and house clearly belonged to Susan Wright, but she was nowhere to be found. But they didn't have to search long. Susan had already confessed to her attorney and her mother, and according to Davis, her lawyer,
Susan was not hiding. She was being held at a psychiatric facility, still experiencing what he called a mental break that began the night of the killing and had not ended yet.
I could say one quick thing, so I don't forget, but like the fact that a hunting knife was concealed is kind of that kind of shows that maybe he did actually start it, because I don't feel like that would have necessarily been her weapon of choice initially. So that story of him, like her opening her eyes and him having a knife, it kind of makes sense that it would be like a hunting knife.
H I disagree, do you? I do disagree. I mean, maybe he's more likely to have a hunting knife than her. You can argue that, sure, But maybe if she's angry at him and she attacks him, she finds the knife, she grabs one of his knives closed by in the bedroom. Maybe in fact, she wants to use that knife because she wants to use his own knife against him. There's reason for her to use it.
Yeah, just so far, I'm like this, I mean, we very much so are only getting one side one hundred percent.
But like everything I've talked about so far is what Susan reported exactly.
Yeah, but it also doesn't seem like she really went about planning this per se, because like she's done some shit wrong from my perception.
Well, possibly there are some details that might might make you think a little bit differently, but we'll talk about it, don't you worry. Okay, So she was having her her mental break still and was in a psychiatric facility. She reportedly refused to sleep, was staying up all night, sat on the couch with a knife in her hand, convinced Jeff would come back for it any moment, even after
she buried him. But when law enforcement called her attorney for details, Davis refused to share more, citing attorney client privileges. But the one thing he did confirm was yes, Susan did kill her husband. The autopsy soon confirmed the brutality of the attack too. Jeff had been stabbed a staggering one hundred and ninety three times.
Holy shit, that is.
The wounds were all over his body, chest, neck, abdomen, groin, thighs, back, face, you name it. Some cuts were shallow, others were deep enough to sever arteries. The tip of the knife, in fact, had even been broken off inside his skull.
Oh my gosh.
But one discovery stood out amongst the chaos. Red candlewax was found on Jeff's inner thigh and around his genitals. That detail did not match any of Susan's story.
Huh yeah, that's a bit odd, hey.
And neither did the bindings they found around his wrist and ankles when they removed him from the dirt.
Uh oh.
He was bound using neckties and bathrobe sashes, tightly secured. If Jeff had been the one to attack Susan and Susan was doing it in self defense, as she claimed, why was he tied up?
So it almost seems like they were maybe doing some sort of other act and she and took advantage of something. Hmmm, okay, okay.
So to police and prosecutors, this looked less like a spontaneous act of fear and more like something else. By the time Susan turned herself in on January twenty fourth, two thousand and three, eleven days after killing her husband. Her defense team had a clear message, this wasn't murder. This was a battered woman pushed beyond her limit, a wife who had tried everything, who was convinced that she
and her children wouldn't survive unless she acted first. But the Harris County District Attorney's office didn't see it that way. The prosecutor, Kelly Siegler. The scene told a different story to Kelly, and it didn't match Susan's version. Yes, Susan admitted to stabbing Jeff, but she also claimed she did it in the middle of an assault, that he was on top of her, armed with a knife and she grabbed it to defend herself, that she snapped, that she
acted out of terror. The physical evidence painted a far more calculated image. Jeff was tied up brist's ankles, bound before or during the attack. Medical examiners said that he was alive during the first wave of stabbing, that the number and location of wounds suggested not a frantic act of self defense, but a prolonged assault. So, as far as I'm aware, there were no defense wounds on Jeff. Oh boy, And I'm saying that with a caveat as far as I'm aware, far as what I could find,
there were no defense wounds. And then there's a candle wax found near Jeff's groin. It suggested something ritualistic, maybe sexual, or even staged, and Susan had no explanation for it. Later she claimed that the candle maybe fought, fell over during the fight and the wax spilt accidentally, but prosecutors found that hard to believe, especially when paired with the bindings, not to mention that he was found buried nude.
And so the bindings were left on him correct at once she buried him?
Yes, okay. Even more damning, there was a life insurance policy involved. Jeff was insured for two hundred thousand dollars, and just a week before his death, a coworker testified that Susan had called the office, pressuring Jeff to complete the paperwork related to this policy. That same coworker remember Jeff joking on the phone saying, quote, if I die, you'll be a very rich woman.
Oh my goodness, this is not going well.
Yeah, this doesn't sound like a frantic decision of someone in fear. It sounds more like a motive.
Yeah, it's going downhill, that's for sure.
They also presented a character argument, painting Susan not like not just as a manipulator, but as a woman who had been planning this killing.
Mm hmm.
They brought up her past work as a dancer, suggesting she used her sexuality to control the situations. They pointed to the fact that Susan didn't file a police report until after the murder, and only when people started asking questions.
When questioned about the restraints, Susan claimed that she used the necktie and bathrobes bathrobe sash I should say after Jeff was dead to secure his body to the dolly so that she could move him outside and prevent his body from falling off in that process of moving him. She insisted they weren't used to tie him down during
the attack. However, prosecutors weren't buying it. The prosecution's position was clear, Susan lured Jeff into the bedroom, tied him up under the pretense of sex, and executed a calculated, vicious murder on him. They weren't denying the possibility that abuse had occurred in the marriage, whatever the severity, But they argued it didn't justify what happened that night, Not one hundred and ninety three stab wounds, not the cover up, not the lies. This wasn't about escape, they said. It
was about control, anger, and money. The trial of Susan Wright began on February two thousand and four, just over a year after Jeff's death. It was, by all accounts, a courtroom drama unlike the Harris County had seen in so many years.
Oh yeah, this would be like a hot new hot news. Really.
At the center of it all was prosecutor Kelly Siegler, a season's attorney with a reputation for sharp instincts and commanding presents. She wasn't just a wasn't just presenting a case. She was building a whole performance. She knew how to hold the jury's attention. But before she can get to this performance, we'll call it first, the defense had their say. Susan took the stand and told her story with remarkable poise. She described years of a brute abuse, physical, emotional, sexual.
She told about being slammed into walls, beaten in front of the children, controlled, insulted, isolated, told the jury about January thirteenth, two thousand and three, when Jeff came home high and cocaine allegedly hit their son, about how she confronted him, and about the moment that he threw her onto the bed, and about the knife. She said she was terrified, that she believed he was going to kill her,
that she started stabbing and she couldn't stop herself. It was the same story that she told her lawyer, her mother hang even eventually police. She told it calmly, without hesitation, sticking to every detail, but the prosecution still was not convinced. Siegler believed Susan's testimony was practiced a little too practiced. The prosecution, when it was their turn, brought in Jeff and Susan Wright's actual mattress from the murder scene, the blood stained one. It was all caught up the real
bed where the murder had taken place. In front of the jury. Siegler instructed a young male helper to lie down on the mattress. Then she climbed on top of him, tied his wrist to the bed posts with a neck tie.
She's really committing.
And she held the actual murder weapon up in the air, the knife taken from the right home.
Oh my gosh, I didn't realize people did stuff like this in court.
And she began to reenact the murder step by step, mimicking what she said Susan had done to Jeff that night.
Whoa.
The room was silent. Some called this brilliant trial strategy. Others said it was pure theater sensationalism, meant to shock the jury. But whatever you want to call it, it worked. In Siegler's words, you have to make it come alive. She believed the jury needed to see it, to feel the rage, the intent, the brutality, not just hear it. When the dramatization was over, the message was clear. It
wasn't a frantic struggle. This was a deliberate act. And the jury deliberated for just five hours and they found Susan Wright guilty of first degree murder and she was sentenced to twenty five years in prison.
Damn. I'm just sitting here shock too that the lawyer did that. Yeah, I don't know, I haven't heard anything like that before.
That's a picture. Hey, not even just fully re enacting, you're taking in the real mattress, the real murder weapon, damn. And it's not like mannekins. No, She's literally climbing on top of this dude, like full out.
It almost seems like completely like, yeah, it seems completely savage, but also like potentially brilliant.
Yeah, and that's what she was relying on, was basically theater.
It almost seems like that shouldn't be allowed though to I don't.
Know, fair, fair, I don't know. So with this verdict, the national media gave her a name that would follow her for the rest of her life, the Blue Eyed Butcher. After the trial, Susan Wright was led away to begin her twenty five year sentence, But even as a public absorbed the drama from the verdict, her legal team was already planning a comeback. By late two thousand and four, Susan had a new attorney, and Weiss. His goal wasn't to argue innocence. That part was over. Everyone knew she
killed her husband. The strategy focused on how the trial unfolded. Weiss believed Susan's original defense failed her, and he had a list of many reasons why first key witnesses were not called to the stand, Among them a psychologist who had treated Susan after the murder. He would have testified that she was suffering from a post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, and that she entered a disassociative state during the stabbing, the kind of psychological break commonly seen in
survivors of long term abuse. Then there was Misty Michaels, a former girlfriend of Jeff Wright. See Misty had filed the police report years before Susan never met Jeff. She said Jeff had beaten her, thrown her down a flight of stairs, and spent a night in jail for it. Even wooh. She also described his controlling, manipulative, and violent traits that mirrored Susan's own claims. None of this was present presented to the jury.
What the like in the first one? You mean?
Correct?
Yeah?
The defense also never brought in a domestic violence expert who explains how cycles of abuse can trap victims in silence and why so few survivors leave and how fear becomes normalized over time. Meanwhile, Siegler's theatrical courtroom reenactment had left an outsized impression towis it blurred the line between evidence and drama. He argued that the mattress scene might have won a conviction, but it clouded the facts with performance and may have unfairly swayed the jury.
Yeah, I agree there.
In two thousand and nine, after years of legal motions, the judge agreed Susan's defense at trial had been ineffective, and the court ruled that she was to have a reopened case for resentencing, not conviction, because that's already done. Yeah, just resentencing. This time. The court for Misty Michaels from mental health professionals, from experts who testified about Susan's mental state and the psychological toll of long term domestic abuse.
The original conviction was upheld. She remained guilty of murder, but the sentence was reduced and Susan's right's time in prison was cut from twenty five years to twenty years. It wasn't freedom, but it was a shift. After the resentencing, Susan Wright served several more years in prison. Her story largely faded from the headlines, but behind the scenes, her attorney continued advocating for parole, and in twenty twenty she
finally was granted it. After nearly sixteen years behind bars, Susan Wright walked out of prison, but her release didn't come out come without restrictions. Let's say, for the next several years, she remained under intensive supervision. She wore GPS ankle monitor, attended anger management classes, and was monitored closely by parole Board. She was free, was able to see her children, who were now grown in live a life that had once seemed impossible. For many. Her release stirred
renewed debate. To some, she had served her time. They saw a woman who had endured abuse, snapped under unbearable pressure, and paid dearly for it. They saw the broken legal defense, the mist evidence, the signs that Jeff had indeed been violent and abusive. They believed prison had done their job, and that Susan, once a victim, deserved a second chance. But to others, the crime still spoke much louder. They saw one hundred and ninety three stab wounds, the bleach,
the lies, the hasty burial. They remembered the bindings, the candlewax, the re enactment in the courtroom, the life insurance policy. To those people, Susan Wright wasn't just a victim. She was also a cold blooded killer who manipulated the system. Susan, for her part, hasn't spoken publicly at length since her release, but one quote made years later still lingers in the air. A bit quote, isn't it strange that I had to
come to prison to finally feel safe? Whether it was a confession of trauma or a line of sympathy, it still says everything. The story of Susan Wright isn't an easy one to categorize or digest. On the surface, it's a case of murder. A man stab one hundred and ninety three times, his body, bound, buried his wife, cleaning a crime scene, told no one, no police reports or anything, and only did talk about it when people grew suspicious,
and for many it's unforgivable. But underneath that there's another story, one filled with trauma, silence, and survival. Susan Wright told a consistent narrative of abuse, years of violence, fear, humiliation. She said she was trapped, isolated, and convinced Jeff was going to kill her if she ever tried to leave again. There's even supporting testimony photos an ex girlfriend and with a nearly identical story, even a psychologist who diagnosed her
with PTSD. So which is it a premeditated killing? Carried out under the guise of victimhood or a victim's last desperate act to survive. The truth may live somewhere in between. Honestly, in that gray space where trauma meets violence, that self defense that bleeds into rage, there's justice that has to navigate what can can't always be proven. The law demands clarity, juries want answers, but real life, especially behind closed doors,
rarely offers either of these. What the Susan Right case exposes was a justice system not only interpreting evidence, but deciding how much abuse is enough to justify a violent act and how to weigh a victim silence, when so often silence is how victims survive. Jeff Right lost his life in a horrific way. We can't deny that his children lost a father, his family lost a son and a brother. It can't be softened, and it shouldn't be.
But Susan Wright lost something too, And to me, the real tragedy began in that long before she ever even picked up that knife. And that's the story of the Blue Eyed Butcher. Susan Wright.
Damn, I was just like very quiet during that episode. I feel like midway through maybe because I was just like actively listening in all the frickin' details.
There's a lot in this one, and it is. It's one of those ones where you can't be sure of either side. Yeah, no matter how strongly you feel on one, there's a bit drawing you to the other side too.
Well. Okay, I do have like a lot to say because I think people can turn into complete assholes under the influence, and he did have a problem, oh yeah. And I do think she could have gotten away with this if she say, you know, stabbed him maybe even outwards of forty times and then but like one hundred and ninety three or whatever the hell it was is unreal. And then say she stabbed him like, let's just say
forty one times and then phoned the police. Yep, then maybe, you know, maybe, But I feel like everything that she did too, it's just it's very questionable, I guess.
Yeah. See, I do think that she I mean, I'm not questioning at all the abuse she went through. Now, I firmly believe that she was significantly abused.
Yeah, and that's what I'm saying, Like, she probably went through some shit, and that's why I'm like, you know, if this was handled maybe a bit differently, she could have, yeah, got away with it. I guess.
So in all that, she's definitely the victim. But I also think that she is a cold blooded killer because I think she planned this. Now, she may have been, like it may have been a revenge because of all this shit he's not saying he didn't kind of fucking deserve it.
Well, like, yeah, she her life was probably at risk.
Yeah, so I do think that this started off under the guise of some sexual act. Him being tied up, As far as I can find, no defensive wounds or minimum defensive wounds, the candle wax on the genitals, him being nude. It leads to the fact of him potentially being on the bed and her taking advantage of the situation.
Yeah, it wasn't what she said where he was about to kind of like assault her.
I don't think she snapped in a moment in defense. She planned an attack. She may have had reasons to plan an attack, very good reason to potentially plan an attack, But I do believe was planned. I do believe was premeditated. I do believe she was searching for a life insurance policy out of him.
Yeah, well, because that was even when you said the original story that she had where he was, you know, about to like assault her and had a weapon. Yeah, it did seem far fetched to me that she would be able to turn this around and go about killing him. Say he would, he would you know, most likely be stronger than her and be able to like defend himself from that exactly.
And anything I can really find, there's not a whole lot of description on like how she overpowered him really.
Yeah, So, I mean he was under the influence most likely, so maybe you know, and he was taken aback that she turned on him, but I feel like he probably would have been able to defend himself from that.
I And honestly, like if someone's hiding cocaine too, it's almost like he kind of like don't get me wrong, this isn't coming from experience, never done it, but for my perception people, it's almost like a superpower. Like you take cocaine, you're like whoa, like you're fucking ready to go sort of thing.
Yeah. So so I yeah, when you were saying that, I did find that a little bit odd that she was able to just easily do that.
Yeah, So, in my opinion, she is a murderer, but also, in my opinion, she served time for the crime. She's out I think completely slight clean now because she deserved to serve the time. But she deserves a life away from him, and she deserves a fresh start, so she did the crime, serve the time. I am one hundred percent being like, you go, girl, go live your life now. You know what. I'm not going to sit here and say you are the blue eyed butcher. This story sure has that title.
But Susan Wright, well, yeah, that's that kind of title. Almost seems like it would be for like a serial killer, which she is not.
Well, I think that comes because of the almost two hundred stab wounds.
Okay, I think that's right, I guess. But yeah, it's pretty terrible too, Like I know, it's it's hard to understand too, because like she was a mom, and she would know that what she did here like would make her kids all of a sudden, you know, not have a mom or dad? Yeah, right, was she not think like did she not think that?
Well at that point though too, like you gotta you don't have a whole lot of options, right.
Well, and I guess if he's you know, was moving to abuse them and stuff, exactly.
So she's protecting them, right, So her and her kids are definitely victims. Like I said, I don't doubt that. But at some point she moved from victim to murderer. Now she took.
Sit in her own hands. Really, at some.
Point she may have had reason to do so, which is why I don't hold anything against her. Yeah, did the crime, she served the time done. We're over, Susan, you go do you no? You know what I mean?
Yeah, I know, and yeah it does. There's a lot leading to that it was probably premeditated, right.
So well, there's a lot of like serial killers and stuff where like I hope they fucking burn, hopefully they rot. They should be locked behind bars forever. That's not the case with Susan in my opinion. No, you killed someone. Yes, you need to be apprehended, and you can't just go about doing that. They really she had reason.
They really weren't together long either, Hey, like no, not really five years or something.
So this is one of those ones where we get pulled in both directions and it's like there's no real definitive answer. But if you guys have a thought on it, make sure you message us, give us an email. We're curious and where your head lays, we'd love to know. All the links are in the description of this podcast. We are an independent podcast produced, researched, host, recorded, audio engineer all the stuff we do on our little lonesome in our little tiny home.
Yeah, our little life, our little life.
But yeah, thank you for being here. Hopefully enjoyed the episode. Like I said, message us if you have thoughts, and until next one, stay wicked.