wright after this incident. she said, oh, mom, we re friends now, we re all made up, and we re comfortable with each other, it s all okay now. but when daphne wright was questioned about darlene s disappearance, the jealousy was still apparent. we ve had a lot of problems, sally and i. did you think sally was cheating on you with darlene? yes. i thought so. and sometimes she lied. who lied? sally. okay. was darlene the victim of a love triangle gone wrong? daphne s whereabouts on the night darlene disappeared could provide the answer. q.
it was a sweatshirt that had graphics on it of sign language. we knew right there there was a tie to the deaf community. testing proved it was darlene s blood on the sweatshirt, but someone else s dna was found inside the sweatshirt. i took cuttings from the inside of the sweatshirt hoping that one of them had transferred enough dna or skin cells inside. to get a full profile. i was fortunate and did get a profile and that matched daphne wright. by being able to put daphne wright inside a sweatshirt that had car len s blood and tissue on the front of it was extremely important. the sweatshirt was critically important in this case but it was one of the few pieces that tied both victim and suspect together.
yeah, yeah, i did that. did you create the name wendy smith? yeah, i did. a background check revealed daphne wright has been involved in a public altercation with darlene vandergiesen just five days before she disappeared. darlene was having dinner with sally forward who was daphne wright s former lover. they had had an argument that the police had to be called to and she had be the escorted off the property. daphne wright told the police that she was jealous. she told police that she thought darlene was destroying her relationship with her lover. but by all accounts darlene and sally ford were nothing more than casual friends. darlene and this woman did not have a lesbian relationship. and, in fact, darlene was not a lesbian. darlene told friends she had patched things up with daphne
cuts in the concrete floor. detectives also made the comment it looks like chainsaw marks. law enforcement began the investigation by going to the ace hardware stores in town. once there the investigators showed the store owner the lineup including daphne s picture. one of the clerks was able to say, yes, i sold the chainsaw to a woman and she was deaf. that matches the description of daphne wright to a tee. she came in a note that said tree-cutting machine and he took her to the wrong section at first because he misunderstood, and then he took her to the chainsaw section. she was very worried about the price and she picked out the cheapest chain saul available at the store.
when we did receive the e-mails that darlene had received from wendy smith, that gave us the ability to send a subpoena to yahoo! to find out who may have created that yahoo! account. the e-mails came from this home in downtown sioux falls. the occupant was a deaf woman named daphne wright. daphne said that she had met darlene several times at the deaf apartments, met her at the deaf club. 42-year-old daphne wright hat no criminal record. during police questions, wright denied any involvement. i didn t send any e-mails. it could have been a hacker. i don t believe the hacker story. i believe you sent the e-mails to her. you created an account with a different name and september her the e-mails telling her to stay away from the apartments.