Sorry, I tried the audiobook and got bored. Got the book and it was so boring and understanding the someone else finished the book based on her notes, the voice of the author gets lost. The timeline in which the book was written was an issue too. A lot of hype and I have to say it was not worth reading after page 166. I struggled to stay interested and took me over a month to finish it.
Taking the writer's style aside that many readers did not enjoyed, I am going to focus in why this case is interesting and in 2003-2004 people were captivated by this case.
According to the evidence, on Monday, January 13, 2003, Susan Wright, 26, tied her husband Jeff Wright, 34, to their bed and stabbed him at least 193 times with two different knives. Following the incident, she dragged his body to the backyard of their home and buried him. In an attempt to clean up the crime, she tried painting the walls of the bedroom. She also went to the police station the following day to report a domestic abuse incident and obtained a restraining order against Jeff, in order to explain his disappearance.
Just five days later, on January 18, Susan Wright called her attorney, Neal Davis, to come to her home, where she admitted to stabbing her husband and burying him in the backyard. Davis informed the Harris County district attorney's office of the body and that she had confessed to the crime. On January 24, Wright turned herself in at the Harris County Courthouse and was arraigned for murder charges a few days following.
The trial itself was unique. They brought the bed where Jeff died and the assistant district attorney re-enacted in a very visual manner how the prosecution thought the murder happened. The book ends without the reader knowing what happened to Susan.
In 2005, the 14th court of Appeals of Texas upheld Susan's conviction. There was a new appeal in 2008, when a new witness, Jeff's ex-fiancee came forward to tell her story of the four years of abuse and violence she endured with Jeff Wright.
There was a new trial in 2010 that focused on the medical examiner's finding in Jeff's body included the high level so of cocaine and defense wounds.
In 2010, Susan Wright's sentenced was reduced to 20 years in prison which is five years less than her original sentence. Susan was denied parole in 2014 and again in 2019. Finally, Susan was released on December 30, 2020 at the age of 44.
There is footage of her coming home with her mother from prison and she is asking the press for privacy foe her and her family. She is not in contact with her now grown children.
Former FBI agent and criminal profiler wrote this book about how he got involved in profiling from its inception, pursuing serial killers and how it make an impact in his life at a professional and personal level. If you have watch the Netflix series, you might see some of the scenes in the series in this book although of course with some changes.
But we can't forget that Douglas was not alone. Robert Ressler deserves credit as a great profiler as well and a pioneer with Douglas in criminal profiling.
I read this book in Spanish years ago in college. Years later I saw it in the bookstore and decided to read it again in English and read it in two days. I just could not put it down.
