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
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.
later, she tried to hide the 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
the wooden walls of the coal storage room. we were able to see small pieces of bone and tissue. they compared those samples to the dna they obtained from darlene s tooth and hair brushes. that that day we were met by a couple of detectives and we were escorted upstairs, and when we opened the room when they introduce you to the chaplain and the chief of police and all the detectives are in the room and ask you to sit down, you know the news you re going to receive is not good, and it wasn t. darlene s dna matched the blood and tissue found in daphne s basement. she felt that darlene was coming in between her and sally
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. once scientists got into daphne wright s basement, they had no difficulty finding even more incriminating evidence from