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[Music] up next a woman goes missing an obvious possibility was an abduction police find
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hints of a secret life inside the victim's computer the internet opens up a whole new super highway of suspects
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and disturbing evidence in an unexpected location something that happened in that
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basement they almost look like chainsaw marks scientists provide answers that no
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one wanted to accept when they introduce you to the chaplain you know the news you're going to receive is not good
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[Music] it was a february morning in sioux falls south dakota a routine workday for jds industries a
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company that makes trophies for sports teams routine except one of their most dependable employees darlene van der
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giessen didn't report to work for a second straight day on friday when she did not show up for
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work her boss called her parents dean jean darlene's parents immediately drove to darlene's apartment since they had
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their own key we went to her apartment and we saw our cell phone we knew something was wrong
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because she she never traveled anywhere never did anything without having that cell
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phone so people could get a hold of her if they needed to darlene's cell phone was especially
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important to her since she was deaf deaf people rely heavily on cell phones and text messaging instant messaging
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that's their lifeline with the hearing world darlene's cell phone records indicated
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she hadn't used her phone for the past two days police found nothing inside the apartment to indicate foul play there
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was no sign of a forced entry there was no sign of a struggle there was no overturned furniture or no broken items
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in our apartment later that day a restaurant employee called police reporting an abandoned
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truck in their parking lot the truck was darlene's the police were hoping that that would
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be a clue as to who was with darlene on that night but no one in the pizza store remembered
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seeing darlene darlene's parents told police they were concerned she had been using the
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internet to meet men my reaction to her was i said oh darlene be so careful there are so many
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excuse the expression weirdos out there investigators took darlene's computer to
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the forensic lab where they used a piece of software called n case using n case we can run a
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different type of search we can either run an internet search or an instant messaging search
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email search we can look at internet history to see what what pages were visited and when
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the search revealed several troubling emails darlene had received 10 days before her
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disappearance the emails were threatening but it was almost it was kind of in a childish way
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kind of a very poor english they were from a woman identified online as wendy smith
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hello darling you are troublemaker you are ugly and stupid i hate you according to darlene's friend she didn't
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know anyone by the name of wendy smith we kind of assume that they're possibly written by a deaf person my
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understanding is that deaf people don't necessarily speak conversational english
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like hearing people do they speak more in blocky unstructured sentences just to get
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subject across having a deaf acquaintance wouldn't have been unusual since darlene too was hearing impaired
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we then sent a subpoena to yahoo asking for any and all information regarding that account that was created
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the computer analysis also revealed darlene met a local man online jeff flynn and the two had been dating
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flynn worked as a field hand on a farm about a 90-minute drive away but when police got to his apartment he
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too was missing most recently anyone had seen him was thursday but no one knew where he had
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went his friends down there were saying that that was unusual for him to leave town for an extended period of
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time unusual indeed in the days following darlene van der geesen's disappearance
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her casual boyfriend jeff flynn was nowhere to be found when they suspected that darlene might
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have just taken off uh for a weekend with this gentleman i insisted over and over this is not darlene just didn't
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ring true with her personality four days later jeff returned he said he was visiting friends out of town
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he was nervous most people are nervous when they speak to the police he was nervous and concerned concerned for
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darlene inside the trunk of jeff's car evidence technicians found what looked like
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dried blood law enforcement's antenna really went up when they saw the uh the blood in the
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trunk my presumptive testing showed that it was likely blood and further testing
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confirmed that it was but the detectives were interested if it was in fact human
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when the police had told us they found blood in the car how do you describe your heart sinking
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very very low but forensic testing quickly proved the blood was not darlene's it was deer blood
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when they found out that the blood was deer blood huge relief a huge relief because then the hope came back that
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possibly she was still alive somewhere meanwhile investigators were able to trace the source of the threatening
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emails darlene received shortly before her disappearance when we did receive the emails that
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darlene had received from wendy smith that gave us the ability to send a subpoena to yahoo to find out who may
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have created that yahoo account the emails came from this home in downtown sioux falls
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the occupant was a deaf woman named daphne wright daphne said that she'd met darlene
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several times at the deaf apartments that she'd met her at the deaf club forty-two-year-old daphne wright had no
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criminal record during police questioning wright denied any involvement i don't send many emails that could have
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been a hacker that didn't i don't think i don't believe the hacker story i think
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you sent the emails to her you created an account with a different name and sent her the emails on those days
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telling her to stay away from the deaf apartments oh yeah yeah i did that okay you created
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the name wendy smith yes i did that a background check revealed daphne wright had been involved in a
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public altercation with darlene vander giesen just five days before she disappeared
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darlene was having dinner with sally ford who was daphne wright's former lover they had had a kind of an argument that
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the police had to be called to and she had to be escorted off the property daphne wright told the police that she
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was jealous she told the police that she thought that darlene was destroying her relationship
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with her lover but by all accounts darlene and sally ford were nothing more than casual
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friends darlene and this woman did not have a lesbian relationship and in fact darlene
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was not a lesbian darlene told friends she had patched things up with daphne right after this incident
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she said oh mom she says we're friends now we're all made up and we're comfortable with each other
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it's all okay now but when daphne wright was questioned about darlene's disappearance
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the jealousy was still apparent we've had a lot of problems sally and i did you think sally was
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cheating on you with darlene yes i thought so and sometimes she lied who lies that one
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was darlene the victim of a love triangle gone wrong daphne writes whereabouts on the night
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darlene disappeared could provide the answer [Applause] after sending threatening emails to
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darlene van der geesen daphne wright became the prime suspect in her disappearance
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police got a search warrant for daphne's house and what they found inside was troubling
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i remember the smell of paint and the smell of cleaning products especially when we got down towards the basement
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they look in the kitchen garbage and there's a half full bottle of chainsaw oil and they look a little further and
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there's a receipt for ace hardware for a chainsaw purchase just a few days ago this was the time of year in south
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dakota where chainsaws are not in huge demand but there was no chainsaw in daphne's
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house or anywhere on her property downstairs the basement had been painted with blue paint
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there would be a spot painted here and then a spot painted there there'd be different sizes
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and things like that parts of the wall not the whole wall a three or four foot section of the
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floor but not the whole floor parts of the steps but not all the steps a few feet away was a small room
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that had once been used to store coal the floor was completely repainted in this blue
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paint that was still tacky and soft to the touch indicating that it had been freshly painted police also noticed
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seven distinct symmetrical cuts in the concrete floor several of us made a comment that they
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almost look like chainsaw marks so law enforcement began their investigation by going to the ace
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hardware stores in town once there investigators showed store clerks a photo lineup which included daphne's
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picture one of the clerks was able to say yes i sold the chainsaw to a woman and she was deaf
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that matches a description of daphne wright to a t she came in with a note that said tree
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cutting machine and he took her to to the wrong section at first because he misunderstood but
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then he took her to the chainsaw section she was very worried about the price and she picked out the cheapest chainsaw
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available at the store once scientists got into daphne wright's basement they had no difficulty finding even more
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incriminating evidence on the wooden walls of the cold storage room we were able to see on the walls there
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were some very small tiny pieces of bone and what appeared to be tissue investigators collected the tissue and
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bone samples for analysis and compared those samples to the dna they obtained from darlene's tooth and hair brushes
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that day we were met by a couple of detectives and we were escorted upstairs and when we opened the room
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when they introduce you to the chaplain and the chief of police and all the detectives are in the room
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and ask you to sit down you know the news you're going to receive is not good and it wasn't
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darlene's dna matched the blood and tissue found in daphne's basement she felt that
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darlene was coming in between her and sally and the only way that she could take
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care of it was to eliminate her from the picture [Music] but investigators still had a problem
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they didn't have darlene's body a jury likes a body a jury likes a murder weapon and you just never know
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you get that one skeptical juror who doesn't have doesn't see the body and there's maybe enough doubt for someone
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to say not guilty in a case like that in their search police first checked the dumpsters where
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daphne and her neighbors disposed of their trash by the time the officers got there the dumpsters had already been
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dumped into the garbage truck and taken out to the city landfill police went to the sioux falls landfill
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a 470 acre property that serviced five counties and almost a quarter of a million people it was estimated that
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there was probably some two to three hundred tons of garbage had been brought out there in the days that
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we had been looking for darlene it's below zero with the frigid wind chill and all the police
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were volunteering out there searching they had pitchforks and picks and they were picking through the trash you know
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one foot at a time for the three dozen searchers the job was difficult and frustrating it
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went on for days with no guarantee the body was even in the landfill the conditions couldn't have been more
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hard it was freezing it was windy it was awful and it was a massive effort to go
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through the contents of the landfill looking for [Music] darlene she wanted to bring that little
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that little morsel of joy into your life and every time i saw a photo i saw a smile and a big smile
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three weeks after darlene vandergeesen went missing her friends family and the deaf community gathered for a
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memorial service even though investigators hadn't yet found her body we knew we were going to have a
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challenge ahead of us to locate her body after five days of searching at the landfill
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investigators got a break they found the legs and lower torso of an adult female
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they also found bloody pieces of carpet and a blood-stained sweatshirt it was a sweatshirt that had some
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graphics on it of sign language so we knew right there there was a tie to the deaf community
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testing proved it was darlene's blood on the sweatshirt but someone else's dna was found
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inside the sweatshirt i took cuttings from the inside of the sweatshirt hoping that one of them had
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transferred enough dna or enough skin cells to the inside to get a full profile and i was
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fortunate and did get a profile and that matched daphne wright by being able to put
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daphne right inside a sweatshirt that had darlene's vandergeesen's blood and tissue on the front of it
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was extremely important the sweatshirt was a critical item in this case because it was one of the few pieces that tied
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both victim and suspect together 25 miles away across the border in minnesota a highway worker found
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darlene's torso and her severed head encased in plastic the medical examiner found darlene
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suffered blunt force trauma to her head it had been tied cinched around her throat
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with a piece of cord that was matched by one of our forensic people in pier to a spool of cord
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hanging on the garage wall in the house that was occupied by daphne wright the medical examiner had two theories as
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to how darlene was murdered cause of death was either this blunt force trauma the seven inch
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skull fracture or suffocation from this bag being placed over her head or a combination of the two
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prosecutors say daphne was convinced darlene was trying to steal her ex-girlfriend and wanted to
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prevent it she asked darlene to meet her at the pizza restaurant but once there she changed her mind
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and asked darlene to come to her house instead once there daphne hit darlene with a heavy object
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pushed her down the stairs then tied a thick plastic bag around her head with cord from her home
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she later bought a chainsaw to dismember darlene's body [Music] she left behind the sales receipt store
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witnesses and plenty of forensic evidence daphne disposed of the body parts in nearby dumpsters and in a ditch
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25 miles away later she tried to hide the evidence with paint but it wasn't nearly enough
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there was this virtual mountain of evidence of the defendant's guilt those emails
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and what the emails showed us pointed us right to daphne wright daphne's motivation was one that has
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been throughout the ages in a homicide his jealousy the tragedy is that darlene had no romantic interest in
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daphne's ex-girlfriend sally ford darlene was not interested in that darlene was not a lesbian person darlene
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and sally did not have that kind of relationship daphne wright was charged with first-degree murder and became the first
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woman in south dakota history to face a possible death sentence you want a mother to describe her
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daughter's murderer a very cold-hearted i don't know how to describe her there's
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just no sense to it and so the question why will more than likely never be answered
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unless daphne herself will say why i would have to describe daphne right as just a cold-blooded murderer
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to be able to dismember a human body with a chainsaw takes a lot of gall takes a lot of spite my opinion you
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really have to dislike somebody to do that to them daphne wright was convicted but the jury
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spared her life instead she'll spend the rest of her life in prison with no possibility of parole
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there was maybe one or two jurors that stood their ground very firmly from the beginning that no matter what they would
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not go with the death penalty one thing that just kept coming back was what do we get out of sentencing her to
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the death penalty what does she get out of it what does society get out of it what do we get out of it and and really
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we didn't see anything good that came from it well this is a completely senseless
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murder it didn't have to happen darlene was never a threat to the relationship between sally and daphne
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it taught me a lesson not to assume anything when you're talking to somebody that the person that you're sitting
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across from the interview room is probably capable of doing pretty much anything
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even though the evidence may not show up front this was about as textbook of a forensic case as
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you could think of there was no smoking gun in this case it was all the little bits of forensic evidence that connected
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the dots and it all led detectives in one direction and that was toward daphne wright
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you