A woman from Texas who was found guilty of stabbing her husband 193 times in 2003 has been released on parole.
Susan Lucille Wright, 44, from Houston, Texas was released on Wednesday morning having served 16 years of her 25-year sentence for killing husband Jeff Wright, 34.
After the brutal stabbing she buried him in a hole in the backyard of the home the couple shared.
Susan Lucille Wright, 44, has been let out of prison after being granted parole
Susan Wright was convicted of first-degree murder of her husband Jeffrey Wright, 34 in 2003
Wright was dubbed the ‘Blue-eyed Butcher’ because of the brutality of her crime.
She would not comment when approached by a local television news crew from WPXI.
‘I would just like privacy. Please respect that,’ Wright said. ‘I’m sure that y’all can understand, but don’t do this to my family. Even if you do it to me, don’t do this to them, please.’
Wright was convicted in 2004 and sentenced to 25 years in prison but in 2009 a judge ruled that she had not been assisted properly by legal counsel and a new sentencing hearing was ordered which knocked off five years of her penalty.
Susan Wright is pictured in an undated booking photo. Wright, 44, of Houston, was paroled Wednesday after serving more than 16 years for the 2003 murder of her husband, Jeff Wright
She will now remain on parole until 2024, will have to wear a GPS ankle monitor, must attend anger management classes and is barred from leaving the state of Texas.
On the night of Jeff Wright’s murder, Susan used neckties and a bathrobe to tie him to the bed.
‘According to the state, on the night Jeff was killed, Susan undertook an elaborate plan to seduce him so that, in anticipation of lovemaking, he would allow her to tie him to their bed,’ court records state.
‘Once Jeff was tied up and defenseless, she emerged with a knife and, with unfathomable anger, brutally stabbed him over and over again.’
Prosecutors say the motive was Jeff Wright’s $200,000 life insurance policy.
During the 2004 trial, the couple’s bloodstained bed was brought into the courtroom as the jury was shown how Wright’s husband was murdered.
Evidence photos from the murder trial of Susan Wright. Pictured: The prosecution hauled the blood-soaked mattress into the courtroom for a vivid murder reenactment for the jury
Susan’s husband, Jeff Wright, had started a home improvement project for the family’s patio. Instead, he unknowingly dug his own grave
Susan Wright reacts to the verdict of the jury in Houston as her defense Attorney Neal Davis holds her arm in 2004
Susan Wright stabbed her 34-year-old husband, Jeff, 193 times in 2003. Detectives found this broken knife at the crime scene
The shocking reenactment saw prosecutor Kelly Siegler straddling a male colleague as she demonstrated how the killing occurred during which she called called Wright a ‘card-carrying, obvious, no-doubt-about-it, caught-red-handed, confirmed, documented liar.’
The scene was ultimately recreated for a Lifetime television movie in 2012 entitled Blue-Eyed Butcher.
Wright’s lawyer described her as having been her husband’s ‘physical and mental punching bag.’ The couple were married for five years before the killing took place.
‘193 stab wounds shows how much Susan feared her husband,’ trial attorney, Neal Davis said in court.
‘Jeff Wright had emotionally and physically abused his wife throughout their marriage, and the reason she did not leave him was that she was afraid he would kill her,’ the defense argued. ‘On the night of his death, Jeff had come home under the influence of cocaine and hit their son in the face.’
Susan Wright and husband Jeffrey with Kaily (left) and Bradly in an undated family photo
Defendant Susan Wright reacts as the prosecution gives their closing argument during her murder trial in Houston. On trial for stabbing her husband 193 times, Wright testified she killed her husband only after he raped her and threatened her with a butcher knife
Susan Wright testified in her own defense at the trial saying that she confronted her husband who had come home from a boxing lesson and asked about his getting help for a drug problem.
‘He ‘threw Susan on their bed, forcibly raped her and threatened to kill her with a knife,’ the court heard.
Wright claimed that she and her husband were engaged in a struggle for the knife and when she finally got it proceeded to stab him with abandon.
‘I couldn’t stop stabbing him; I couldn’t stop,’ Susan Wright testified. ‘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.’
Jeff Wright suffered 41 stab wounds to his face, 23 wounds to his neck and 46 cuts to his chest. There were a further 22 wounds to his abdomen, 19 to his legs, 23 to his arms, one to his back and seven wounds to his pubic area ‘for all the times that he made her have sex and she didn’t want to.’
The stabbing was so forceful that the tip of a knife broke off in the top of Wright’s skull.
Susan Wright then moved her husband’s body into a hole near the patio of their home where a home improvement project was taking place, and buried him.
A scene from the Lifetime TV show Blue-Eyed Butcher which told the shocking true story
Drawings from the autopsy report show numerous stab wounds on the body
Susan Wright bought cleaning supplies to cover up the crime scene, including several large jugs of bleach
Her lawyers said that she then spent several days in a fog where she still believed her husband was still alive and that he would climb out of his makeshift grave to kill her.
Prosecutors argued that Wright was fully aware of what she was doing and even told family and friends in the days after the murder that was was a victim of abuse by her husband.
‘As part of her plan, Susan Wright also reported physical abuse to her doctor and filed criminal charges against Jeff, resulting in a warrant being issued for his arrest,’ court records state.
‘It was only after the family dog dug up Jeff’s body, the state concluded, that her plan fell apart.’
Jeff Wright’s remains were found five days after the murder.
‘The officers also found a mattress, box springs, comforter and headboard in the backyard,’ court records state. ‘The mattress was soaked with blood.
The young mother of two dumped this bloody mattress in her family’s backyard. In 2004, Susan Wright testified that her husband, Jeff, abused her
This is the dolly prosecutors say Susan Wright used to drag her husband’s body out of the bedroom. The thin 5’5′, blonde used it to get Jeff Wright’s 6’2′ 220-pound lifeless frame to the patio
Susan Wright emptied several drawers of her children’s clothing and placed the clothes in the family car shortly after she stabbed Jeff. A few days later, she filed for an order of protection
‘Inside the home, one wall of the master bedroom had been freshly painted and a piece of the carpet had been cut out. Painting supplies, a box cutter and scissors were found in the room.’
Wright had attempted to clear the scene with bleach, but police found blood spatter on the walls, ceiling and furniture of the bedroom.
She ended up confessing to her mother that she’d had killed her husband.
‘Momma, it wasn’t me. I snapped,’ she said, according to the criminal complaint in the case. ‘I was up there and I saw somebody do it, but it wasn’t me.’
During the trial, Wright clashed with prosecutor Siegler several times who accused Wright of rehearsing her testimony beforehand and crying on cue.
‘She cries when you’re in the room and she stops when you leave,’ the prosecutor told jurors.
‘I haven’t cried on cue once,’ Wright protested. ‘I don’t see how someone could not cry during this.’
Police found blood spatter in multiple locations inside the Wright home despite Susan Wright’s efforts to clean the crime scene after the murder. Susan would tell the court that the week of the murder she was in a ‘fog.’
The ties Susan Wright used to bind Jeff to their bed were still wound around his wrists and ankle when police uncovered his body
Murder defendant Susan Wright pictured during her murder trial for stabbing her husband 193 times
Jurors took just five hours to find Wright guilty of first-degree murder.
‘Just about everyone in Houston believed Susan Wright was a monster,’ Wright’s appellate attorney, Brian Wice, told Texas Monthly.
‘Everyone believed that she was some real-life reincarnation of Sharon Stone from the first reel of Basic Instinct. There was just one problem. Everyone had gotten it wrong.’
Wice, who represented Wright during her appeal said that Davis as part of her defense counsel failed her for not calling witnesses who could corroborate her claims of domestic abuse.
He also suggested that they had failed to bring in experts who could testify that Wright suffered from battered woman syndrome as a result of the abuse.
Nor was a psychologist called who saw Wright after her arrest and found her to be convinced her dead husband was still alive and would kill her.
During her resentencing, she was diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder and although the judge, Jim Wallace, who had presided over Wright’s original trial, he felt that there was a ‘wealth of mitigating evidence not presented at the punishment stage that painted a dramatically different picture of her and her moral blameworthiness.’