and the only way that she could take care of it was to eliminate her from the picture. but investigators still had a problem. they didn t have darlene s body. a jury like as body. a jury likes a murder weapon, and you just never know. you get that one skeptical juror who doesn t see the body and there s enough doubt to say not guilty in case like that. in the search police checked the dumpster where daphne and her neighbors disposed of the trash. by the time the officers got there, the dumpsters had been dumped into the garbage truck and taken out to the city landfill. the police went out to the sioux falls landfill, a 470-acre property that serves five counties and almost a quarter of a million people. it was estimated that there was probably two to three dozen
evidence with paint. but it wasn t nearly enough. there was this virtual mountain of evidence of the defendant s guilt. those e-mails and what the e-mails showed us pointed us right to daphne wright. daphne s motivation was one that has been throughout the ages in a homicide, jealousy. the tragedy is, that darlene had no romantic interest in daphne s ex-girlfriend, sally ford. darlene was not interested in that. darlene was not a lesbian person. darlene and sally did not have that kind of relationship. daphne wright was charged with first-degree murder and become the first woman in south dakota history to face a possible death sentence. i would have to describe daphne wright as just a cold-blooded murder. to be able to do dismember a
this is a time of year in south dakota where chainsaws are not in huge demand. but there was no chainsaw in daphne s house or on her property. downstairs the basement had been painted with blue paint. there would be a spot painted here and a spot painted there and different sizes, parts of the wall, not a whole wall, a three or four foot section of the wall but not all the wall, parts of the steps but not all the steps. a few feet away was a small room that once had been used to store coal. the floor had been painted with this blue paint that was still tacky and soft to the touch indicating that it was recently painted. police also noticed several
human body with a chainsaw takes a lot of gall. takes a lot of spite. in my opinion you really have to dislike somebody to do that to them. daphne wright was convicted, but the jury spared her life. instead, she ll spend the rest of her life in prison with no possibility of parole. one thing that kept coming back was what do we get out of sentencing her to the death penalty. what does she get out of it, what does society get out of it, what do we get out of it? really, we didn t see anything good that came from it. this is a completely senseless murder. it did not have to happen. darlene was never a threat to the relationship between sally and daphne. it taught me a lesson not to assume anything when you re talking to somebody. that the person you re sitting across from in the interview room is probably capable of doing pretty much anything even though the evidence might not
steal her ex-girlfriend and wanted to prevent it. she asked darlene to meet her at the pizza restaurant. but once there, she changed her mind and asked darlene to come to her house instead. once there, daphne hit darlene with a heavy object. pushed her down the stairs. then tied a thick plastic bag around her head with cord from her home. she later bought a chainsaw to dismember darlene s body. she left behind the sales receipt, store witnesses, and plenty of forensic evidence. daphne disposed of the body parts in nearby dumpsters and in a ditch 25 miles away. later, she tried to hide the