Susan Wright and the Brutal Murder of an Abusive Husband

2023-04-29 21:30:42 Written by Alex

In 1997, a 21-year-old woman named Susan Wright worked as a server in Galveston, Texas. She met Jeff, who was eight years her senior, during this period. They fell in love and soon after, Susan found out that she was pregnant. Before the birth of their son, Bradley, the couple got married in 1998.

Afterward, the couple had a baby girl named Kailey and on the surface, they seemed like a perfect, tightly-knit family. However, behind closed doors, the truth was far from ideal.

During their marriage, Susan accused Jeff of regularly using drugs illegally and becoming violent while under their influence. On January 13, 2003, after an incident fueled by cocaine, Jeff returned home in a rage. Susan, who was 26 at the time, decided to put an end to the abuse for good.


Court documents reveal that Susan stated that on that tragic evening, Jeff directed his fury at their children, striking four-year-old Bradley in the face. He then purportedly sexually assaulted Susan and threatened to take her life.

Susan recounted how she was able to seize a knife and stab Jeff, but found herself unable to stop once she had begun.


“I was unable to stop stabbing him; I just couldn’t,” Wright shared in her testimony. “I was aware that if I stopped, he would regain possession of the knife and kill me. I didn’t want my life to end.”


However, prosecutors had a different argument. They claimed that Susan had lured her husband by tying his wrists and ankles to the bedposts under the pretense of an intimate encounter, only to then take a knife and initiate the attack.

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The sequence of events may be unclear, but what is certain is that Jeff sustained a total of 193 stab wounds from two separate knives. These included 41 stab wounds to his face, 46 to his chest, and seven in his groin area. One of the knives was driven with such force that its tip broke off in Jeff's skull.


After the murder, Susan decided to hide Jeff's body. During the trial, she claimed that she stayed awake all night out of fear that Jeff would come back to life and harm her again. She eventually used a dolly to move his body to the backyard and buried him in a hole he had dug for a fountain installation, covering him with potting soil.


Susan tried to clean up their bedroom with bleach, but the bloodstains were too widespread to be completely removed. A few days later, when she found their family dog digging up Jeff's body, Susan realized that she could no longer keep her heinous act hidden.


Susan reached out to her lawyer, Neal Davis, on January 18, 2003, and confessed to him about everything. She pleaded not guilty, stating that she acted in self-defense, but at her trial in February 2004, the prosecution argued that Susan was a money-hungry spouse because of her past as an exotic dancer. They suggested that she was motivated by Jeff's $200,000 life insurance payout.


According to Crime Museum, Kelly Siegler, one of the prosecutors in the case, even brought the actual bed from the crime scene into the courtroom as evidence.
The jury ultimately agreed with Siegler's argument that Susan Wright's testimony was fabricated, and they found her guilty of murder. As a result, Susan received a 25-year prison sentence.

 

Once again, in 2008, Susan appeared in court to appeal her case. This time, she had the support of a new witness, Jeff's former fiancée, Misty McMichael.


During the appeal in 2008, Misty testified and supported Susan's claims of abuse, revealing that she had also experienced violence from Jeff during their relationship. Misty recounted an incident where Jeff had thrown her down a staircase, and another occasion where he faced assault charges for cutting her with broken glass at a bar. However, she dropped the case out of fear.

Susan Wright's sentence was reduced to 20 years after new evidence from Jeff's former fiancée, Misty McMichael, came to light. Susan was granted parole in December 2020 after serving 16 years in prison.