with a warrant, police searched wright s property and found the boat in his barn. you could see, readily see, that repairs had been made to the boat. the bondo and the material on the boat was not flush with the original fiberglass. and it had been spray-painted. areas had been spray-painted white. if there had been blood or any other evidence on the boat s hull, it had already been removed and repainted. the propeller had also been removed, but was still in the barn, broken beyond repair. that propeller, all three tines of it, showed extensive damage, denting and tearing of the metal. there was no blood or human tissue on the propeller, nor did investigators expect to find any since the water would have washed it away. but amazingly, the propeller had a tiny crack, and inside was a
they were indistinguishable, one from the other. so, we could conclude from that that they were made up of the same substance, and therefore, they could have common origin. but this wasn t conclusive. so, stanbro compared the paint chips from harry s body to the paint on floyd s boat. they were heated to 800 degrees centigrade and vaporized so that their chemical components could be measured by a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer. again, the chemical composition of both samples was identical. prosecutors now had enough forensic evidence to link floyd wright s boat to the hit-and-run accident.
wright, he, too, said he didn t know what they hit. it was a head-on collision. it was nose to nose. we don t know because we didn t see it. i know because i ve seen the boat. i m just saying, i was there i m not asking. i m telling you. we heard a thud and we turned around and we looked and we didn t see nothing and we didn t hear nothing. so, we figured we d better get off the water, you know, people were because we didn t know what damage we had. i find it very difficult to believe that wright could not hear the screams of the female passenger in mr. uhl s boat. we have witnesses on shore, you know, several hundred feet away who could hear her screams for help. wright admitted that he was drinking that day, but insisted he wasn t intoxicated. i had about five or six beers for the whole day. we went out on the water that day, had pepsi most of the time.
they knew exactly what they had hit. they absolutely knew. there s no way you could hit a full-sized boat and not know that you have hit something significant or think that you ve hit a log or driftwood. it s ridiculous. if they would have had their lights on on that boat, we would have seen it. i can guarantee it, that we would have seen it. there was no way to know what floyd wright s blood alcohol level was that night. in new york state, this severely limited the prosecutor s case. you have to show that the accident was causally related to the drinking. there has to be that close connection. new york requires it. so, just the fact that he had a few drinks throughout the course of the day doesn t necessarily mean that is the cause of the death. you have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that that s the connection. being intoxicated shouldn t be a way out of being held responsible.
the fact that he was able to run from the scene and he wasn t charged with anything related to intoxication just makes you question whether our laws have a loophole in allowing someone to leave the scene of a crime so that they can t be charged with being drunk at that time. coincidentally, wright s automobile driver s license was suspended at the time due to an arrest for driving while intoxicated. floyd wright was charged with tampering with physical evidence and failing to report an accident. he pled not guilty at the trial, but was convicted and sentenced to the maximum of four years in prison. and that s like the issue with me. you hit me and you didn t help me. you just left me there to bleed to death. that bothers me a lot. and the thing is, physically, yeah, i m hurt, but i hate to, like, live with the fact that i have to, like, hate someone my whole life. that s not a good feeling for