Woman who stabbed husband 193 times faces new jury

Produced by Clare Friedland and Jenna Jackson

HOUSTON, Texas - Susan Wright has had years in a Texas penitentiary to reflect on the bloody end to her troubled marriage - while longing for the children she's now legally prohibited from seeing.

"My heart hurts for everything that happened. We had two beautiful children. He had a full life ahead of him and so did I," she told "48 Hours Mystery" correspondent Richard Schlesinger in an exclusive interview. "Holidays are very hard, birthdays are hard," she said tearing up, "sometimes just waking up and missing everyone, it's very hard."

In March 2004, a Houston jury convicted Susan Wright of murder and sentenced her to 25 years for stabbing her husband, Jeff, almost 200 times.

"I'd honestly expected them to come back and say, 'not guilty'" Susan told Schlesinger.

"Because I had gotten up on the stand and I had told them what happened. And that's just the way that life was. I expected them to believe it."

Cindy Stewart saw her sister taken away after her conviction and has never stopped fighting to prove that Susan's story is true.

"I lost my sister that day," Stewart explained. "She was a stay-at-home mom. She's not a tough girl. She baked cookies everyday... she was going to be thrown into prison. I didn't know if she would survive."

While Susan remained locked up waiting for someone to hear her appeal, the key piece of evidence - Jeff and Susan's bed - remained locked up in storage. It caused quite a stir when Prosecutor Kelly Siegler reenacted her theory of the murder by bringing the bed into the courtroom.

"Right, so if the defendant were tied to get up on top of Jeffrey Wright, something like this, and straddle him, and she's right handed, and how do you think she held the knife? Put it in my hand," Siegler said while sitting over a male prosecutor on top of the bed in front of the court.

At the original trial, Siegler was playing the part of Susan Wright and leaving nothing to the imagination.

Of the demonstration, Susan said, "I was just horrified that anyone thought that that was what happened."

"I felt sick," Stewart said. "I had no idea that law was more of a theatrical presentation than it was about justice."

Susan believes her young attorneys were no match for the toughest little prosecutor in Texas, and they never put on proof of her claim that she was a battered wife.

"The original trial just didn't explain everything," she told Schlesinger.

According to Susan, to understand what happened the night she killed Jeff, you first need to know what happened in the years leading up to it.

"I just thought that we were going to have that fairytale marriage with the kids and the house, you know, the same thing that every other girl dreams about," she explained.

When they married, Susan was 22 and Jeff was 30 and a successful carpet salesman. Susan says Jeff changed shortly after the birth of their first child, Bradley.

Susan testified at her trial that Jeff started doing drugs and became abusive. "He told me what a fat ass that I was; he told me that I was stupid and that I was worthless," she said on the stand.

And then, she says, the abuse became physical. "He threw me up against the wall, and he shook me by my arms as hard as he could, until he wasn't angry, and he began to punch me in the chest over and over again."

"Susan began to complain about his marijuana use, which escalated into complaints about cocaine use," said Stewart, who was worried for her sister's safety and, at one point, helped her leave Jeff. "He had thrown Susan through a wall, and we witnessed this hole in the sheetrock that was the size of her back."

But the very next day, Jeff showed up where Susan and Bradley were staying with a moving van and took them back home.

"There's not a doubt in my mind that she made up the whole story," Jeff's father, Ron Wright told Schlesinger. "She actually tortured him to death. He bled to death. She stabbed him in his eye while he was still alive."

Jeff's father says in the four years Susan and his son were married, he never saw any sign of abuse. And in fact, Susan never filed a single police report before exploding in violence on the night of Jan. 13, 2003.

Susan testified that Jeff had come home high and agitated.

"He had just gotten done with a boxing lesson and he wanted to box with Bradley... Jeff got his hands up in a boxing motion and started making jabs at Bradley's head," she said demonstrating with her hands.

But, she said, the 4-year-old didn't want to play.

"That just kept frustrating Jeff. The more that he didn't want to do it, he kept calling Bradley a 'sissy', and a 'little girl,'" Susan testified.

"Did Jeff end up hitting Bradley in the cheek?" her lawyer asked. "Yes, he did," she replied.

Susan said she put Bradley and his younger sister, Kaily, to bed and then confronted her husband. She told him she would leave if he didn't get help.

"...he came at me and he swung me around and threw me against the wall. And he told me not to give him any 'f-king ultimatums, bitch,' that I didn't have the right."

Susan told the court, later that night, Jeff raped her.

"My eyes were closed. And I heard his voice. And it was scary, it was calm. And he said 'die bitch.' And I opened my eyes."

She said Jeff was holding a knife. According to Susan, she kicked Jeff in the groin, grabbed the knife and started stabbing.

Asked where she stabbed him, she testified, "In his head, and in his chest, and in his neck, and in his stomach and in his leg, for when he kicked me. I stabbed him in his penis for all the times that he made me have sex and I didn't want to. And I couldn't stop, because he was gonna kill me and I couldn't stop."

Prosecutor Siegler doesn't believe a word of it, telling the court, "See, what you're left with is the word of a card-carrying, obvious, no doubt about it, caught red-handed, confirmed, documented liar."

Prosecutor Kelly Siegler did not mince words back in 2004, at Susan Wright's original murder trial. "All that battered wife abuse bull was just that, it was bull," she told jurors. "This case is not about self defense; it's about a slaughter."

She ridiculed Susan Wright's claim that she killed her husband, Jeff, in self-defense.

"For her to claim self-defense and say she took a knife away from a man who outweighed her by 100 pounds is ridiculous," she said in court.

Siegler still believes that, maintaining Susan wasn't a battered wife because, "We never found any evidence of it."

The evidence, Siegler says, tells a very different story. That's because Jeff's naked body was found with ties around his wrists and ankle. It was, according to Siegler, all part of an elaborate seduction scene.

"She had to play it," Siegler told "48 Hours." "She had to play the game from the minute he got home from work that day, if not sooner, to get him in the right mood, to set the scene... to get him tied up and defenseless; to pull out her knife."

That's why Siegler brought the bed into the courtroom.

Medical Examiner Dwayne Wolf backed up the prosecution's theory that Jeff Wright could not fight back.

"Out of his 193 stab wounds, almost all of them were on the front of the body," he explained. "And if a person is not restrained in some way, they'd be moving. I would be moving. I would have stab wounds predominantly on my back as I'm headed toward the door."

Regardless of what Dr. Wolf said, Susan insisted Jeff was not tied up... at least when she started stabbing him. But something made her stop.

While Susan was slashing at her husband, Bradley, their 4-year-old son, woke up and knocked at the bedroom door. Susan had to stop stabbing his father to put Bradley back to bed. And that's when she says she tied up her husband.

"...and then I tied up his right arm to the bed so that he couldn't get up because I was afraid he was gonna get up and come after me when I was putting Bradley back to sleep," she said, crying on the stand.

After calming Bradley, Susan says she got a fresh knife from the kitchen, came back into the bedroom and started stabbing Jeff again.

When she finally finished stabbing him, Susan dragged his body off the bed and tied him to a dolly and took him to the nearby patio. Jeff Wright ended up in a shallow hole he dug himself as part of a home improvement project.

Crime scene photos

Crime scene video

Susan claimed she was in a fog the next few days.

Defense attorney Todd Ward: Why didn't you call the police?

Susan Wright: Because Jeff was still alive.

Todd Ward: What do you mean he was still alive? This is not rational - you understand that now?

Susan Wright: Now I understand that. Then he was still alive. He wasn't dead.

"She took my son's name off of the answering machine. Which, you know, in a fog, that raises a little question, doesn't it?" said Jeff's father, Ron Wright.

Kelly Siegler eagerly pointed out Susan cleaned up the bloody bedroom and emptied out the joint bank account. And for the first time, Susan filed an abuse complaint against Jeff - after he was already dead.

"She had the presence of mind to do all that," Siegler said. "So how foggy was she really?"

Siegler had a lot of questions about what Susan did and spent months preparing for her cross-examination of Susan Wright.

Prosecutor Kelly Siegler: The week after you killed Jeff - Mrs. Wright, during this fog that you experience in and out that week, you always managed to take care of your children, though, did you not?

Susan Wright: Yes, like I said before -

Kelly Siegler: That was a yes or no answer. Did you not?

Susan Wright: Yes ma'am, I'd always done that.

Kelly Siegler: Thank you.

Siegler wanted to convince the jury that the real Susan is a scheming seductress. She wanted the jury to remember that for two months when she was 18 years old, Susan Wright was a topless dancer.

Kelly Siegler: You're gonna sit up there and tell this jury that y'all never practiced bondage?

Susan Wright: Oh, no.

Kelly Siegler: "Oh, no." That was good. Are you like, appalled at the idea? Is that where you get that "oh, no" from?

Watch excerpts of Siegler's cross examination of Susan Wright

Asked how she would describe Siegler's cross examination of her sister, Cindy Stewart told Richard Schlesinger, "I think that she's brutal."

"And when you stabbed him the 56th time, or the 89th time, or the 158th time, was your arm getting tired?" Siegler continued in court.

"She wanted it to seem like I did something horrible on purpose," Susan told Schlesinger. "And that night I was just fighting for my life."

Kelly Siegler: Did you hear the medical examiner testify that you didn't stab his penis, what you did was nick at it - and take off -

Susan Wright: No. I did not slash at him, no.

Kelly Siegler: You didn't stab his penis? That's not a stab like this, (demonstrating) like you're mad, like you're afraid, like you can't stop. That's not a stab.

Siegler left the jurors with one last powerful image: counting out loud the number of times Susan stabbed her husband, while making a stabbing motion. "Can you imagine 193 times," she said.

The jurors convicted Susan Wright of murdering her own husband. They could have sentenced her to life. Instead, she got a break - 25 years.

Ron Wright thought the sentence was "in bad taste. I thought that she should have gotten a lot more."

But at least one courtroom observer thought Susan got a raw deal.

"You look at it and you think what happened wasn't right, it wasn't fair, and it wasn't just," said Brian Wice, a prominent appellate attorney.

Wice believed Susan Wright deserved another chance - that he could get her sentence reduced or even set her free.

It is now October 2008 - almost five years since Susan Wright's murder conviction. Attorney Brian Wice has been working tirelessly - and for free - to try to get her 25-year prison term reduced.

He's in court asking Judge Jim Wallace to grant Susan a new sentencing hearing before a new jury.

"The old saying goes, be careful what you wish for... and that's certainly true when you're talking about a person's life and liberty," says Judge Wallace.

Judge Wallace, who presided over the original trial, said Susan and her new attorney are taking a big gamble - a new jury could give her more time.

Asked what's at stake for Susan Wright, the judge tells Schlesinger, "She's walking a razor's edge... and she might get life."

"It could go either way, but I'm not worried," Susan said. "I just don't think that God would have brought me this far."

"The evidence is going to show that two well meaning, inexperienced, but ultimately overmatched, lawyers dropped the ball," Wice told the court.

Wice argued that Susan's lawyers at her original trial should have called more witnesses - especially experts on how battered women behave.

"You can't try a case involving a defendant who's battered unless you have a battered women's expert. It is like doing Hamlet without Hamlet," Wice explained. "So many lay jurors fall back on the myths and misconceptions about battered women. Why don't they leave? Why don't they call the cops? Why don't they tell anybody?"

Domestic violence: Insight and resources

Without any expert testimony, Wice said prosecutor Kelly Siegler was able to easily rip apart Susan's claim that she was a battered wife.

"Hello? Where's the doctor? The MD? The Ph.D.?" Siegler asks in her closing argument in 2004. "This is the only case you're ever gonna hear of where the defendant can diagnose herself as a battered wife. Where's their expert?"

Wice thinks the original jury should have heard from psychologist Jerome Brown. He evaluated Susan after her lawyers put her in a psychiatric center the week after Jeff's murder.

"I think that she was emotionally and physically battered by her deceased husband," Brown said.

"Over a period of time?" asked Schlesinger.

"Over years, yes."

Brown said Susan had grown so terrified of Jeff she couldn't take it anymore, explaining," she snapped and she killed him in a frenzy."

Wice said there's another person who could convince a jury of Susan's fear of her husband. Misty McMichael was once engaged to Jeff Wright.

"He was very charming, considerate, thoughtful, complimentary, everything that you want in a man, you think," Misty told Schlesinger.

But, like Susan, Misty said Jeff Wright had another side.

"He liked to get me on the ground, because once you're on the ground, you can get kicked," she said.

"And did he kick you?" Schlesinger asked.

"Oh, yeah."

Unlike Susan, after one attack, Misty filed a police report.

"We were at a bar in Austin... So I must've looked at someone and he had a fit and threw a glass at me and it shattered and a piece of it went into my chin. And it's still there," she told Schlesinger.

Jeff Wright agreed to a plea deal on the assault charge and avoided jail. Misty left one night when he wasn't home - although Jeff's father says she never lost interest in his son.

"I know that she chased my son up until a week before he died," Ron Wright remarked. "Does that sound like a woman that's getting beat on?"

Misty denies that and said she was already happily married to Steve McMichael, known as Mongo, a former defensive tackle for the Chicago Bears.

"If you had taken the stand, you would've been cross-examined by Kelly Siegler," Schlesinger pointed out.

"Right, and that's fine," Misty said. "Bring it on."

But it could have been difficult, because, like Susan, Misty was once a topless dancer.

"It's true. I was a topless dancer for 10 years. Whoo, whoo! Big wow... Does that mean I'm a crack head whore? No it does not," Misty told Schlesinger. "Does that mean Susan's a liar? No it does not. That just means that was our choice of profession. I enjoyed it. I had a great time."

"Is it just a coincidence that they're both telling similar stories?" Schlesinger asked Ron Wright.

"No," he replied. "For some reason, Misty is trying to save Susan's skin. Sisterhood of the strippers I guess."

After Brian Wice argued his case, it takes Judge Wallace four months to make up his mind.

It was a million-to-one shot and it worked. The judge said Susan should have a new sentencing hearing before a new jury.

Wice called his client in prison to tell her the good news.

"Oh, Brian. You're serious? [I am] Oh, my God, I'm so excited. Thank you so much. You've just given me so much hope," she said over the phone.

It was not the news Jeff Wright's father wanted to hear.

"When you got the word that she had been granted a new sentencing hearing, what did you make of that?" Schlesinger asked Ron Wright.

"I felt like throwing up," he replied.

Asked what he would you like to see happen now, Ron Wright said, "Well, life [in prison] would be nice... don't you think that animals should be locked up and kept behind bars?"

And Susan could well get more time. The great irony of this case is that the one move Susan Wright - who's now 34 - hopes will set her free, could just as easily keep her in prison for the rest of her life.

And that's exactly what the new prosecution team is hoping for. They have their own new witnesses lined up and no shortage of theatrics.

In the fall of 2010 - almost seven years since her conviction for stabbing her husband to death - a more mature Susan Wright shows up in court. Brian Wice has handed off the case to a new defense team led by John Munier.

"...and we're gonna prove that she was in fact abused," said Munier.

The new prosecution team of Connie Spence and John Jordan intend to prove Susan killed Jeff Wright out of anger - not fear - because he cheated on her and abused drugs.

"This was a divorce by homicide," said Jordan.

"Five years is a long time to be unhappy and pissed off at your husband day after day," added Spence.

And the curtain goes up on the latest act of this legal drama.

" ..the wounds to his head, to his face, to his neck, to his chest, to his abdomen, to his sexual organ ... the cuts that Susan Wright had on her hands is extremely consistent with when someone is repeatedly stabbing somebody else and the blood is making her hands slick..." Spence said in her opening.

The bed is back in the courtroom - minus the old blood-soaked mattress. This time, a prosecutor lies down on the floor to demonstrate how Susan was able to stab Jeff on the top of his head while he was tied up.

The defense is ready with a parade of experts on battered women.

Shelby Moore | Expert on battered women : They are ashamed by what's happening to them.

John Munier: The state's...made a great deal of stabbing him 193 times. How do you explain that?

Toby Myers | Expert on battered women: Sheer abject terror.

Their star expert is Psychologist Jerome Brown. He testified that when he first met Susan about a week after she killed Jeff, she was still scared of her husband and believed Jeff was still alive.

"Well, she kept looking at the door and looking at the vent, into the air conditioning vent, and saying things like, 'Is that him out there?' Or 'I have a feeling he may be out there. Are the doors locked?'" Dr. Brown testified.

Prosecutors are ready for Dr. Brown.

Prosecutor Connie Spence: Are you aware that she told her mom that his body is in the backyard?

Dr. Jerome Brown: Yes.

Connie Spence: That's a pretty firm affirmation that she knows her husband is not coming back. Would you agree with that?

Dr. Brown: Yes.

"I definitely think she played Dr. Brown," Spence said. "And that's just kind of part of Susan. She's very good at playing people, particularly men, I think."

But Cindy Stewart said her sister couldn't manipulate anyone. "I saw over the course of years her become just a shell of a person."

In fact, she says, Susan could barely manage her own life. "She was so broken at the end, and it was because of him," she said.

For the first time since this case began, Stewart is taking the oath and taking the stand.

"I saw my sister, who had bruises on her forearms, on her upper arms, and on her neck," Stewart tells the court.

But nothing frightened her more than what she said she saw a few days after Jeff was killed.

"...handprints, fingers, on the inside of her thighs," Stewart testified. "I stood shocked. And I asked her if she had been raped. And she said, 'yes.'"

Susan's mother, who's now 77, testified she also knew her daughter was being abused.

"She would be in pain. She would come over, and while I played with Bradley, she would just sit and cry," she said. "And when I would ask her about it, she would say, 'I can't tell you. He'll kill me. I can't tell you what's happening.'"

Prosecutors believe Susan made up the stories of being beaten. They say she learned all about domestic violence growing up, watching her own parents.

"When she said Jeff did different things, Jeff didn't do those things. We believe Susan witnessed her own father doing that to her mother," said Prosecutor John Jordan.

But at the original trial, Susan's mother denied she was ever a victim, while her husband looked on.

"I don't look at my husband as an abusive person," Sue Wyche had testified.

This time around, she's a widow. Prosecutors pushed harder to try to get her to admit that she lied at the first trial, and that Susan did witness abuse at home.

Prosecutor John Jordan: And you were asked at that time, under oath, were you ever abused or assaulted by your husband, right?

Sue Wyche: Yes.

Prosecutor: And you said "no."

They could not have expected her reaction - she exploded in anger:

"[Prosecutor Kelly Siegler] knew if I told her 'yes,' I go home and get the hell beaten out of me. I might not be back the next day. And I might not ever get off the floor again the next day," Wyche cries on the stand. "You think I'm gonna sit here and say 'yes'? That guy kicks the s--t outta me. I'm not gonna do that. I'm sorry. But abuse is a secret. And it's a secret abused women die to keep; they don't tell! You get kicked, you get hit. You don't tell. And I can't help it if it's the prosecutor. You don't tell 'cause you gotta go home with that guy."

"I was really proud of her for being honest," Cindy Stewart said of her mother's testimony. "I knew how hard that was for her to say about my father. It had only been a few months after his death."

It's an emotional moment that stuns the courtroom. But the fireworks aren't over.

Misty McMichael is about to take the stand... and nobody can predict how that will go.

Misty McMichael said she doesn't condone the murder of Jeff Wright - but as a mother, she understands why Susan did it.

"Any mother is going to protect her children," she told Richard Schlesinger. "I knew it was gonna happen to him sooner or later."

And now she's ready to take the stand at Susan Wright's new sentencing hearing. She'll testify that Jeff Wright abused her.

Asked what kind of names Jeff would call her, she replied, "...whore, cheater, you know, bitch."

Misty testified that Jeff Wright didn't just curse at her, but that he often beat her and pushed her down a staircase.

Defense Attorney John Munier: What would provoke him throwing you down the stairs?

Misty McMichael: Who knows?

John Munier: I mean, did you ever do anything intentional to him?

Misty McMichael: I didn't do anything! I did not cheat on him. I didn't do anything.

It is memorable testimony - especially when Misty describes the night she had Jeff Wright arrested.

"There was a bunch of glasses on the table. And, I don't know what I said. But he took the glass and he threw it," she cries on the stand. "And it shattered, shattered on my face. All right. And it cut me. And it bled everywhere... I still have the piece of glass in my chin."

Misty is eager to help Susan, but she is hard to control. She's not just difficult - she's defiant.

Misty McMichael: "What does that have to do ... with anything?

Judge Jim Wallace: She asks the questions.

Misty McMichael: He didn't want to know the truth, kinda like you.

Prosecutor Connie Spence: You had a piece of glass, in your chin?

Misty McMichael: Still do, it's still here, can you see it?

Connie Spence: Absolutely. I...

Misty McMichael: And you still don't believe that he was an abuser?

Judge Jim Wallace has to repeatedly remind Misty of proper courtroom etiquette. "There are certain things you can do, and you can't do as a witness..." he explained.

Prosecutor Connie Spence: And that's why you refused treatment on your chin?

Misty McMichael: Because I heard he was on his way over to me again. And I didn't want to be beat anymore that night.

Extra: Misty Michael testifies about Jeff Wright

Extra: Misty Michael on why she worked at topless bar

Before long, Judge Wallace had had enough. He sends the jury out of the courtroom.

"You are turning your testimony into a circus," he said. "If it continues, I'll strike everything you've had to say. And nothing you've come down here for will mean anything."

Susan's attorney wants a timeout and escorts Misty out of the courtroom. When she returns, she's a little calmer.

"She was a colorful witness," Prosecutor Connie Spence said with a laugh. "But in terms of believability? Uh-uh."

"It's difficult to get up on a stand and tell a story," Susan Wright said. "But no matter how we come across, the story's still the same. What happened did happen."

There apparently is no shortage of Jeff Wright's ex-girlfriends. Prosecutors have found one for their side.

Asked what type of girlfriend she was, Marcy Holloway replied, "Crazy, irrational."

Holloway said Jeff Wright was a great boyfriend. "He was just never mean about anything ever at all," she told the court.

She said she still carried a torch for Jeff after they broke up. Holloway called him at home and Susan answered the phone.

Prosecutor: Tell us exactly what the response was - same tone, what the response was.

Marcy Holloway: I don't know if I have it in me.

Marcy Holloway: (screaming): "DON'T CALL HERE ANYMORE!" Like that. It scared the crap out of me. Then she said that he was married, he had a child, that if I called there again, she would find me and rip my head off."

The testimony is over, but the drama is not. It is time for closing arguments.

"She had black eyes, she had bruises. She had the usual things that come about with the darkest secret of our lives, which is domestic abuse," said Defense Attorney John Munier in his closing.

"As he lay sleeping, she started stabbing. She did it 10, 20, 30, 40..., " said

Prosecutor John Jordan, who appeared to be reenacting former Prosecutor Kelly Siegler's reenactment of counting out loud the number of times Susan stabbed her husband for the jury.

As the hours went by, the jury sent out three notes asking about probation with community supervision. Cindy Stewart and her mother began preparing to bring Susan home.

"There's nobody like her. I wanted my sister back," Stewart cried.

After two days, the new sentence surprised everyone: Twenty years in prison, with credit for time served. It's only five years off her current sentence and a long way from probation, which Susan Wright had hoped for.

And then, one last surprise. In a voice barely above a whisper, she apologized to Jeff Wright's family.

"I want you to know that I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you don't have your son and your brother," Susan says. "And I'm sorry that the kids don't have their father."

"It's a little bit too little, too late," Spence noted.

"They are not tears for remorse, nor are they tears for what you've done to your two beautiful children," said Ron Wright Jr., Jeff's brother, speaking on behalf of his family. "The Wright family has been given a life sentence. And I think you got off too easy."

"She had hope for a period of time. And that's been taken away," Cindy Stewart says of her sister. "She's devastated."

Susan's too devastated to talk to us anymore. But her lawyer has a plea for everyone involved in this case: "Both families have been suffering for years. Let the healing begin."

It's a tall order for two families who lost a son and a daughter and two children who lost both parents in one, bloody night.

Bradley and Kaily, now 12 and 9, have been adopted by Ron Wright Jr.

Susan will be eligible for parole in 2014. She will be 38 years old.