48 Hours: Betting her Life, Susan Wright

There is no evidence more interesting to me than watching a person talk about their experiences. Through close attention to detail, we can spot the nuances that give away a lie. They may be subtle, but after 5 years of doing this, they definitely exist and the stories that our bodies and words tell endlessly fascinate me.

The case of Susan Wright is no exception. Susan’s muted emotions were startling to me. To endure the nightmare of desecrating a body by stabbing it 193 times would be something most people could not shake and would be haunted by for a lifetime, even if they killed a violent abusive man. Yet when we watch the soft-spoken Susan, we don’t see any signs of this.

Read moreI expect to see agony, horror and fear as she was forced to relived this horrible night repeatedly, but it is eerily missing. Instead to 48 Hours, Susan whines to us that she misses her children and it is so hard for her to be locked up and she doesn’t want to recount that night again as if she were talking about a bad day. Give me a break. What happened that night is the stuff of nightmares regardless of the reasons, and Susan seems to have no emotional connection. It’s highly notable for me.

Susan recounts,”He would throw me against walls, hit me in the face, the stomach, the back, and he would kick until he wasn’t angry anymore.”

When Susan says that, if it were true, she would have had bruises and other injuries that people would have noticed–especially if he hit her face! Even if people didn’t see her bruises, such injuries would cause limping, difficultly breathing from the potential pain of broken ribs, etc which people should have noticed.

If you have known or been in an abusive relationship, you know that victims aren’t able to hide the violence. More so, when people find out about the violence, they will often recall oddities that raised their suspicions, even if it was never discussed. So when Susan can’t find anyone to corroborate her story outside of her sister, it raises my eyebrows in doubt. It is very notable for me.

I am really disturbed by how Susan smiles when she talks about telling Jeff that he needed help. If you are married to an abuser, you don’t tell them what to do. You fear them. You walk gingerly in their presence never knowing what will set off the rage. Yet when Susan talks about confronting him, she smiles as she says she told him to get help. “That wasn’t my place to tell him that he needed any sort of help.” Her statement is and emotions are flat out contradictory to how a battered woman would feel. When you’ve been in an abusive relationship, the pain and torment doesn’t give way to smiles, like this, when you recall it. You still feel the agony and pain. Why doesn’t Susan? It glares at me over and over again.

On the stand, 48 Hours shows clips of Susan talking about being abused. She has absolutely no pain on her face, no anguish–nothing to support an emotional memory for what she is saying. We all have emotional memories that stay with us as long as we remember things and the fact that Susan is so void and muted here is a huge red flag for me. She puts on a pout face, and has stress in her forehead, but that could be because she is afraid she isn’t being believed. Her crying does not hit me as genuine pain. It hits me as a pout or a whine. She also doesn’t shed tears when she appears to be crying at times, did you notice?

Susan says in a montage created by 48 Hours of her statements, “He put his hands around my neck and he choked me…. He began to punch me in the chest over and over again….He shook me over and over again….over and over again until he wasn’t angry anymore…until he wasn’t angry anymore.” If this is true, she would have sustained notably injuries, wouldn’t you think?

I also noticed in the few stories of abuse that I saw Susan tell, she gives us very few details. They are always general and vague descriptions. Where are the details, the scenarios, the he said/she said aspects? Most people who were abused have searing memories of words exchanged and the events because they were so hurtful.

I also found it odd each time as Susan recalled the abuse, she seems to scan for people’s responses immediately after she made her statement. I get the distinct feeling she is looking up like, “Did they buy it?” It’s a notable trait that is seen in liars. They look to see if there is buy-in to their story. Honest people are usually consumed in the story they are telling and don’t look for this approval each and every time they tell their version of events. It’s another hot spot for me.

Watch when Susan says “I honestly expected them to come back and say not guilty.” Did you see that she smiles! Why does she smile here? When the reporter ask her why she thought they would come back with a not guilty verdict, she says, “Well, because I had gotten up on the stand and told them what happened (smile) and that’s just the way life was. I expected them to believe it.”

That’s just the way life was? La de dah? Ridiculous. How about because I was a battered woman, because I was abused and I killed in self-defense, because I was scared for my life!! Why doesn’t she remind you that she is a victim? Does it not come natural for her?

Susan conveniently forgets, as well, that she lied on the stand. According to her testimony on the stand, she says she stabbed her husband’s penis, yet the medical examiner testifies otherwise, that she likely taunted him with nicks (superficial cuts and slicing) wounds on his penis — that it wasn’t stabbed. Susan said, “I stabbed him in the penis for all the times he made me have sex with him and I couldn’t stop…” You can’t expect to lie on the stand and be believed. She seems to forget this… She also told two different stories of what happened that night.

When the prosecutor, Kelly Ziegler, is on the bed re-enacting the crime, watch Susan’s reaction. She acts like she is crying, but do you see any tears? You would think it would be horrifying to relive that moment. It was grotesque! I’d expect to see her trembling in fear–something, anything signifying how emotionally jarring recalling that night would be. Instead she covers her mouth and shakes her head, as if in disbelief. That’s not anguish, if you ask me, which it should be after mutilating and desecrating a human body! To even think about what she did in a sane mind should be haunting to her, but I don’t see it. She does have red eyes so I suspect she cried, but they were awfully gentle tears for reliving what she endured. I just can’t get over it.

Some people may question if she is just repressing her emotions, but that is hard to do when she talks of the night and tells us exactly where she stabbed him. At that moment, regardless of her ability to suppress her emotions, they should leak out. They don’t.

Watch Susan when she says, “He told me what a fat ass that I was, um…” Look at her emotions. Do you see pain? I actually see a glimmer of positive emotions. Why?

Susan’s sister talks about how Susan complained her husband was doing drugs. The only incident of abuse that she recollects is Susan being supposedly thrown through a wall–and the hole was the size of her back. 48 Hours shows a picture of the hole and if you look at it, she didn’t go through that wall, if that picture is of the actual repaired hole. Nor is that hole the size of her back. The hole is way too small. It points to exaggeration, if you ask me. Every part of Susan’s story has holes.

I totally concur with Ziegler’s thoughts on this case. The fact that melted wax was found on Jeff tells a fascinating story as do the neck ties which were used to tie him up. It doesn’t require creativity to put the pieces together of what likely happened that night…

All the evidence clearly points to a seduction with an intent, because if Susan Wright attacked/killed him in self-defense, she had the opportunity to run and get help when her child knocked on the door and she put her child back to bed. You would think if she cared for her child, she would make sure to rescue him at the very minimum. That wasn’t her concern at all.

I mean, if she truly feared Jeff as she said, is she going to get up and respond to her child? Is she going to turn her back on him if she is afraid, as she says, that he could still kill her? Heck no!!

Is she going to take the time to search for ties and tie him up, if she is afraid for her life? Give me a break!!

Is she going to go back into that room where he is tied up and continue?

Her story is over-the-top, ridiculous.

What battered woman is going to put herself in harms way again and again if she feels her dangerous husband is still alive and could kill her as she said when she has managed to get away? Its pure nonsense!!

If you are afraid, you run.

You don’t go back and face your accuser, dead, disable or whatever once you got away!! You have a natural fear instinct that kicks in– a self-preservation instinct, which Susan apparently did not have and for good reason. Everything in my opinion points to the fact she premeditated this.

I am most disturbed by the fact that after tending to her child whom she has no worries about, she went back to inflict more injury to her husband. And more horrifying is that she got a “fresh knife” to start stabbing again! Why on earth would she do that? It’s grotesque and speaks volumes about her behavior. I have to wonder if some part of her enjoyed mutilating him.

She was obviously sane enough to bury her husband to cover up her acts because she knew what she did was wrong.

What are the odds that Jeff would have a hole that he dug himself already in place that night–that was big enough for him to be buried in? What are the odds that she would overcome a man 100 pounds more heavy than her and successfully get the knife? What are the odds that he would succumb to her and not escape or overpower her? What are the odds that he wouldn’t get any injuries in his back? What are the odds that she would escape with only superficial wounds? Give me a break! These are too many one-in-a-million odds, on top of everything else.

If she was truly a victim, why didn’t she turn herself in immediately, call for help, even if it was hours later? Why did she bury him, remove his name from the answering machine and clear out their account if she was the victim, a victim in a supposed haze? Was she trying to get away with murder? Her actions sure suggest so…

If you want my opinion, Susan Wright is a cold, calculating killer, who is devoid of normal human emotions and empathy. She is selfish and deserves a lot more time than she got the first time around. I think she is an absolute arrogant fool to think she can get less time. If I were part of her second sentencing hearing, I’d go for the maximum. I hope she gets what she deserves. I see no supporting evidence whatsoever to believe that Susan was a battered wife.