Cold Case Files - Graveyard Shift

Episode Date: September 22, 2020

A gas station attendant is brutally murdered in the middle of the night, and investigators struggle to indict their prime suspect despite eye witness testimony. Over a decade later, a lead surfaces that might finally close the case. Need workout leggings? Use SWEATY BETTY! Now through November 1st get 20% OFF your ENTIRE purchase when you visit www.SWEATYBETTY.COM/COLDCASE  Find online therapy at an affordable price with TALKSPACE. Use promo code "COLDCASE" at www.talkspace.com OR download the app to get $100 off your first month. Meet your financial goals with UPSTART! Go to www.upstart.com/coldcase to find out HOW LOW your Upstart rate can be.

Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production, available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One. On August 17th, 1984, Billy Dilt's gas tank was empty. He'd been called into work. There was an emergency at the oil rig. At around 2 a.m., he pulled into a 24-hour Texaco station called the Star Stop to fill up his gas tank. But something seemed a bit off. Normally you'd pull up and a attendant inside would see you were there and they would turn the pump on. So I pulled up and got out, put the nozzle in my gas tank filler tube,

and turned around and looked and I didn't see anybody in the store. Billy went inside, laid his credit card on the counter, and asked the clerk to turn on the pump. I stood there a minute and turned around and looked at him in the store, and he's standing there like he's messing with the little switches that you use to turn the different pumps on. And all of a sudden, I notice he's coming outside the store, walking towards me across the parking lot there.

And so I start over towards him, and he's got my credit card in his hand. He said, I cannot get the pump to turn on. Annoyed by the situation, he drove off trying to remember another 24-hour gas station, hopefully with more competent workers. What Billy Diltz didn't know was the man that he had handed his credit card to station, hopefully with more competent workers. What Billy Diltz didn't know was the man that he had handed his credit card to wasn't the employee at the Texaco station.

It was her murderer. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. Two hours after Billy Diltz left the station, the newspaper delivery person stopped by to get a cup of coffee. He waited at the cash register to pay, but no one seemed to notice him. He peeked in the back room and found the clerk on duty. She was face down, laying on the floor in a pool of blood. Her hands were crossed under her face. The delivery person immediately called the police. Detective Roger Dickey responded to the call. When he examined the victim, he discovered a very

large hole in the back of her head. Well, initially, because the wound to the back of the head was so large, there was even some thought that it might have been a shotgun blast because it was such a massive wound. The woman was identified as Tracy Sewell. She was 22 years old. Her father, Buddy, described Tracy as having a stubborn streak. He blamed himself.

His wife had died when Tracy was only 10 years old. Buddy said that he had been too easy on Tracy as a child, but when she dropped out of college at the age of 22, he put his foot down. He told her she had to get a job. Tracy moved to Albulene, and the father and daughter hadn't really made up before she was killed. Tracy's autopsy revealed that it hadn't been a shotgun that had caused the large head wound. It was eight blows to the head, with something heavy, like a hammer. The investigators found very little evidence at the scene. There were no fingerprints or footprints.

They believed at first Tracy was likely murdered in a robbery gone wrong, but no money had been taken. We discovered that all the money was in the cash register, all the money was in the floor safe, so it didn't fit a typical robbery homicide. As part of the investigation, officers were sent to talk to the workers at the other local gas stations and convenience stores. Officer Drenda Thomas had just graduated from the academy and was new to the police force. She visited a gas station that was only a couple of miles away from where Tracy was murdered.

There was a Hispanic male and a white male in there. These guys were just acting a little bit too nervous. The white guy kept pacing back and forth, and at one point he did try to run from the store, run through me to get out of the store, and I told him to go back and sit down, that we weren't through with him. The man on the phone was arrested for public intoxication and cleared of any involvement with the murder.

The man who was pacing back and forth was identified as Clifford Scott Wright. He was also cleared and released. Here's Officer Thomas again. There were no warrants on him, and at that point we had no description of any suspects or anything else so we had to let him go. These days my home is my office and my workwear is comfy clothes so I've been living in my Sweaty Betty leggings and they're not just comfy. For over 20 years, Sweaty Betty's five-star power

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He had to have something to do with it. I don't know if he directly did it or not, but I felt like he had to have something to do with it. I remembered his face, the way his hair and the color and the shape of his face. Using the description they got from Billy, the police created a sketch of the man at the gas station. Officer Thomas was talking with the detective soon after the sketch was created. He had a composite sketch in his hand, and I said,

hey, that looks like the guy I ran into the other night. The guy she was referring to was Clifford Wright, the man that had been pacing at the gas station. The detectives decided to put Wright's picture in a photo lineup and show it to Billy Diltz. Just as soon as I saw his picture, I knew that was him. No doubt, you know, that was him. Wright's identification gave the police

enough probable cause to search his house. This is District Attorney James Eadson. The offense itself left a very bloody scene, and presumably whoever did that would have a lot of blood with them initially and we were very much in hopes that the search of his home would disclose bloody evidence or some other evidence connected Scott Wright to the to the star stop. While searching Wright's house the police found a pair of boots that were wet. It seemed like they'd been washed.

On the toe of the Wright boot, there were two small spots that looked like they could have been blood. Wright was arrested and the boots were sent to the crime lab in Dallas. DNA testing wasn't available in 1984, so the lab was only capable of identifying blood types. In this case, though, the sample was so capable of identifying blood types. In this case, though, the sample was so small they couldn't even do that. The only test that was able to be performed on the sample confirmed that the drops were human blood. This is D.A. Eadson again. Of course, anybody could have a pair of boots with blood on them. You could cut yourself with a knife or any number of ways.

And so that did narrow down Clifford Scott Wright as a suspect, really in the least. The lab results were disappointing and not the type of evidence that would be helpful in court. We felt like we had the right person, but we didn't feel like we could convince a jury at that time. There were too many things that were unexplained, the absence of bloody clothes, the murder weapon, things of that nature that we hoped that we could find later on. And so rather than proceed with a tenuous

case, we wanted to wait till we could get a good case. Clifford Scott Wright was released and stayed under the radar for the next 15 years. In the 15 years after Tracy Sewell was murdered, the main suspect, Clifford Wright, had avoided the police. He'd also gotten married to a woman named Kelly, who he abused for the last 14 of those years. After Kelly's daughter told her mom that Wright was also abusing her, Kelly decided to go to the police.

I was mad because it was bad enough him doing things to me, but I couldn't have him doing it to my daughter. Kelly wanted to do anything she could to ensure her family was safe from Wright. She wanted him behind bars. She told the detectives what she knew about the time he had been arrested for Tracy's murder. Of course, I knew about

that he got arrested for it. And at first, you know, he told me he didn't do it. And then he says, I got to tell you, he says, I did kill that girl. According to Kelly, Tracy had lost her life over the price of a pack of cigarettes. He'd went up there earlier that night when it happened and was trying to buy a pack of cigarettes.

And he liked a little bit having enough. And he got mad about it and he went back later that night and killed her because, I mean, he didn't rob the store or anything. He just killed her. Kelly then gave her story even more credibility by describing the murder weapon and how Wright had disposed of it. He'd done it with a hammer and he told me that he had told his dad,

and they had burnt the hammer, the handle, in the fireplace, and his dad took the head of it and threw it in Fort Phantom Lake. DeAidson believed that Kelly's story sounded true and should be looked into. It did seem credible, because obviously we thought all along Clifford Scott Wright had committed this murder. It was just too much of a coincidence that he did come from inside the store and pose as the clerk, which he obviously was not. So her story that she gave us fit exactly with our theory of the case.

Cold case detective John Reed looked through the original evidence in the case and found the boot with the drops of blood. He believed that new technology might provide a new lead in the case. And I felt that there might be a possibility that the technology had progressed to the point that something could be done with

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and get back to using your money your way with Upstart. See why Upstart has a 4.9 out of 5 rating on Trustpilot and hurry to use upstart.com slash coldcase to find out how low your Upstart rate can be. Checking your rate only takes a few minutes. That's upstart.com slash coldcase. Your loan amount will be determined based on your credit, income, and certain other information provided in your loan application. Not all applicants will qualify for the full amount. The boot was sent to a crime lab in Dallas where it was examined by Judy Floyd, a forensic DNA analyst with cold case experience. She'd examined the boots originally as well. That particular method required a fairly large amount of sample compared to what we can use now. The technology that we use now, PCR testing, specifically STR analysis, is very important to the forensic community because we can use very small quantities of DNA.

The PCR method of testing helps scientists to make thousands of copies of each strand of DNA, giving them a much larger sample to work with. Using PCR, Floyd was able to extract a DNA profile. I found a very nice profile. Then I knew I needed to work with the victim sample because we could tell that the profile from the boot came from a female. The finding indicated that the blood had come from a woman, not Clifford Wright. In order to determine if the blood belonged to Tracy Sewell, the lab needed a sample of her DNA to compare to the profile.

Detective Reed went back to the evidence box. So I went to evidence and found her clothing that she was wearing at the time of the murder and cut a patch out of her blood-soaked shirt. The lab used Tracy's shirt to extract a sample of her DNA to compare to the sample found on Wright's boot. Here's analyst Floyd again. Comparison showed that it was an exact match. The bloodstain on the boot and her profile were identical. According to Floyd, the chance that the blood on the boot belonged to someone other than Tracy was one chance out of $60 billion. This is D.A. Eadson again.

My reaction was, we have the case now that we've been looking for for 16 years. We have a case we can present in court, and we have a case we can win. Eadson assembled a grand jury, which voted to indict Wright for first-degree murder. He was arrested shortly after the indictment at a candy factory where he worked. Here's Detective Reed again. And we each placed one side of a handcuff on him, told him he was under arrest for the murder of Tracy Sewell.

I had expected that we would have a chance to talk with him after the arrest. As I began to talk with him, he immediately stated that he wanted to end the interview and wanted to talk with his attorney. So we ended the interview and transported him to the jail. Wright chose not to testify in his own defense and remained silent throughout the trial. The evidence, though, appeared to speak for him. First, the physical evidence. The DNA match of the blood on his boot to Tracy was extremely compelling.

Second, he was connected to the crime scene by a witness, Billy Diltz. His defense couldn't explain away either one of those things or provide an alibi. It's the prosecution's job to prove the case, but not offering a defense makes the prosecution's job pretty easy. Here's Jay Eadson again. In spite of someone's right to remain silent, this set of circumstances begs for an explanation. And in the absence of an explanation, juries are going to find this evidence very, very persuasive. The jury only deliberated for 90 minutes

before returning their verdict. Guilty in the first degree. He was sentenced 25 years to life in a Texas prison. Tracy's father, Buddy, knows that despite the conviction, he will always miss his daughter. Well, it was tough in a way, and rewarding in a way. Tough to hear it, but rewarding when they come back with the conviction. Clifford Scott Wright is currently incarcerated in a Texas prison. He was denied parole in 2019, and at the time of this podcast recording, he doesn't have another hearing scheduled.

He's 57 years old. Cold Case Files, the podcast, is hosted by Brooke Giddings, produced by McKamey Lynn and Steve Delamater. Our associate producer is Julie Magruder. Our executive producer is Ted Butler. Our music was created by Blake Maples. This podcast is distributed by Podcast One. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and is hosted by Bill Curtis. You can find me at Brooke Giddings on Twitter and at Brooke the Podcaster on Instagram. I'm also active in the Facebook group Podcast for Justice. Check out more cold case files at AETV.com or learn more about cases like this one by visiting the A&E Real Crime blog at AETV.com slash real crime.