25 miles away, across the border in minnesota, a highway worker found darlene s torso and her severed head encased in plastic. the medical examiner found darlene suffered blunt force trauma to her head. it had been tied, cinched around her throat with a piece of cord that was matched by one of our forensic people in pier to a spool of cord hanging on the garage wall in the house that was occupied by daphne wright. the medical examiner had two theories as to how darlene was murdered. cause of death was either this blunt force trauma, the 7-inch skull fracture, or suffocation from this bag being placed over her head, or a combination of the two. prosecutors say daphne was convinced darlene was trying to
carpet and a blood-stained sweat shirt. 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. 25 miles away, across the border in minnesota, a highway
convinced darlene was trying to 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.
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.
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.