Cold Case Files - REOPENED: The Bad Cop

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

When Kimberly White – the estranged wife of a former state trooper – is found shot to death, her ex-husband swears that she took her own life. But as the investigation unfolds, the trooper's story doesn't quite add up. Check out our great sponsors! KiwiCo: Get your first month of ANY crate line FREE at kiwico.com/coldcase  Progressive: Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 27 million drivers who trust Progressive!

An A&E original podcast. Kimberly Wright and her husband Doug were separated and on their way to divorce. They seemed to fight about everything. The house, alimony, child support, and custody of their son. Doug, a former state trooper, visited Kimberly's home on May 1st, 1993. According to Doug, the two had sex and then got into an argument. Kimberly had been drinking and was becoming violent. She even threw a glass at Doug, causing it to shatter. Doug decided to go outside and play with the dogs and

pick up some of his son's toys. A little under an hour later, when Doug went back into the house, he found his wife bleeding on the basement couch. He immediately called 911. 911? 911? Yes, I need to report a suicide.

A what? I'm waiting to shatter. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. Deputy Sipanek was the first to arrive on the scene. Doug Wright met me at the door. When you're a police officer, there's certain things you'll key in on. They'll throw up little flags of, you know, what to watch out for. When I shook his hand, his hands were all wet still. He told me he just washed his hands. Deputy Sapanik recognized Doug as a former state trooper,

one who had recently been fired for disciplinary problems. Doug led the deputy to the basement. Lying on the couch was Kim. She had a hole in her shirt about the mid-sternum area. Doug told Deputies of Panic that he had tried to save Kimberly using CPR. But the fact that her body was still on the couch made the deputy question his story. One of the first things they teach in CPR is you do it on a hard surface. And the couch is no place to do CPR.

The crime scene didn't make sense to the deputy. So he called the forensic team to process the area as a potential homicide. And he asked Doug Wright to come to the station for an interview. Detective Ives Petrovka conducted the interview. Doug tells the detective that he had gone to Kimberly's house to discuss their divorce. He brought with him

a briefcase with the divorce papers, two bottles of whiskey, and a pistol. This is Deputy Petrovka. You wouldn't think a person, if they were on a serious discuss, would bring a lot of liquor with them. And I would not have thought he would have been bringing a weapon with him in his briefcase. That seems a little unusual.

Doug told the detective about the fight and his time in the yard, and then told him that when he went back into the house, he had panicked. Doug said that he had moved Kimberly to try CPR, wrapped the gun in a towel so their son couldn't get to it, and threw away the whiskey bottles. Basically, a former officer had contaminated the scene.

A law enforcement officer that has been in any kind of crime scene knows you don't move anything. Period. You just move nothing. He should have known better. He just should have known better. It should have been instinct being in law enforcement 20 years. Kimberly's body was sent to the medical examiner the next day for an autopsy, performed by Dr. Kazi Azar, to determine if the death had been suicide or murder. About 80% of the people, if they use a handgun, they shoot to the head. And the rest of the people shoot to the chest, towards the left side, because they know that the heart is on the left side. So in this case, why she selected an area which is difficult to reach and difficult to shoot.

So that created a doubt in me. Though it would have been a strange shot for suicide, it couldn't be ruled out. The doctor then moved on to the toxicology. Kimberly's blood alcohol level was 0.4, which is a huge amount. The doctor questioned if she would have been coherent enough to pull the trigger at all. However, alcohol is also a key ingredient in a lot of suicides.

I will leave this as indeterminate, and maybe in future we will have some more clues and some more information which could lead to the correct manner of death. An indeterminate death wasn't helpful to Detective Petrovka, who strongly believed that Kimberly had been murdered. When you started putting it all together, that's what I believed happened. Not only from the crime scene, but we received numerous calls from people that knew her and said that this lady was devoted to her son. There's no way. Call after call after call. One of those calls came from Kimberly's cousin, Beth, who told the detective that Doug had frequently threatened his wife.

He would tell her, and her pet name for my mother was Aunt Betts and he would say I haven't been a cop for all these years without learning a thing or two I can kill you and make it look like your Aunt Betts did it. Beth's statement helped to strengthen the case but it still wasn't enough to charge Doug Wright with murder. It was a circumstantial case it wasn't like we found his gun and he claimed it wasn't his gun. He said it was his gun. He said he took it there.

He said he moved the body. He admitted to all this stuff. It wasn't like you found this piece of evidence and say, oh, I caught you in a lie. That was Detective Petrovka. The district attorney agreed with him. The case remained open, but no one appeared to be investigating Kimberly's death.

In the year 2000, Genesee County got a new sheriff, Robert Piquel. He hired a new second in command, a former state trooper named James Gage. Sheriff Piquel wanted his department to investigate some of the cold homicide cases, and James Gage mentioned a state trooper he once worked with, Doug Wright. This is James Gage. Even back in 93, we felt there was enough there for a warrant. But the prosecutor's office didn't at that time. Piquel asked his youngest detective to take on the task of talking with Wright and trying to catch him in a lie. He doesn't alarm anyone. He looks like a quiet boy.

He's not threatening, but he has all of the right ingredients. 32-year-old David Dwyer agreed. I had only about a year in as a detective, and it was pretty humbling that the administration had the confidence in me to assign me such an important case. Dwyer prepped for Wright's interrogation by going over the case file and memorizing what Wright had initially told the police. He also tried to get a feel for Wright's personality to anticipate how he might react

to certain lines of questioning. To me, the key that was going to make the case was going to be Doug Wright and his statements. He moved the gun. He cleaned up afterwards. Any one of those things would be a flag that this is problematic. The sheriff had every confidence in his young detective.

I knew Dwyer would get him talking because of the psychology of the suspect. Wright had to know what this disguised Dwyer knew. He would engage him in a conversation to find out what he knew about the murder and what his suspicions were. James Gage wasn't quite as sure. Doug Wright could lie to the devil himself and make it convincing. I've seen it. And I thought, there's no way that he's going to talk to this young detective. On March 19, 2002, Dwyer flew to Florida, where Doug Wright lived at the time.

Accompanied by two local detectives, Dwyer showed up at Wright's house unannounced. He was totally unprepared, and here comes a guy walking up there with two detectives, and then I'm in a suit. Just, boom, I need to speak with you. Wright invited Dwyer in, and everyone took a seat at the kitchen table. Then Dwyer immediately laid out his issues with Wright's original statement to the police. He even claimed he could prove Wright was in the house when the gun went off. He couldn't. Dwyer was bluffing. But he hoped to shake Wright up enough to get his cooperation. Wright remained silent. I know what an innocent

person should have said. Your investigation is junk. I was outside. But when he says and just stares at me, all right, he was there. This is what I have to work on. Wright asked the detectives to leave and said he would think about what Dwyer had said and get back to him. Wright called Dwyer the very next morning and asked to meet again. The local police hooked Dwyer up with a recording device that simply looked like a cell phone. He had plans to meet Wright at a local hotel. Dwyer pretended to be Wright's friend as they sat at a picnic table outside the hotel. Dwyer told Wright that it was possible Kimberly shot herself, but it was Wright's

insistence that he was outside when the gun went off that was making him look guilty. Here's some audio from the recording device. After a few minutes, But if you tell me that you weren't down there, okay, if you stick with that, the picture that's painted of you is that you did something bad. After a few minutes, Doug Wright opened up to Dwyer and shared a different version of events on the day Kimberly was shot. Did you hold a gun at all? Did you try grabbing the gun from her as she shot herself? How far away were you when she shot herself? That was a tough step. That was a couple steps. A couple steps.

Wright had admitted to being inside when Kimberly was shot. Here's Detective Dwyer again. He says, I get into the stairwell, and I hear a gunshot. I'm like, were you afraid that she was coming after you to shoot you? No, that never thought, never entered into my head. I said, what'd you do? Well, I went outside and I played. Played was the exact word he said.

I went outside and played. Dwyer felt like Wright's statement was enough evidence for a jury to convict him. How does a jury look at that story? I hear a gunshot, and then I go outside. And then I come back and do all this stuff to the scene. A jury can read through that, and I realize that while I'm interviewing him that this is good enough. Sheriff Backell was thrilled with his young detective's work.

Up until the time Dwyer talked to him, he always had himself outside or away. We had to put right at that crime scene. Once we could put him there, then we could start going after him. Doug Wright was arrested, and ten years after Kimberly was murdered, the trial began. It was a strong circumstantial case. Plus, Wright's own inconsistent statements worked against him.

Wright decided to testify on his own behalf. I gave him a statement going down to the jail. I got down to the jail. He read the Miranda warnings. I answered his questions. It's your testimony that Sergeant Dwyer so flummoxed you, so rattled you, that you admitted that you were at the top of the steps. Is that your testimony? If I said I was at the top of the steps, I didn't mean that. That's correct. Wright then told a third story about what happened at the time of his wife's death. He heard a noise, but didn't realize it was a gunshot. It sounded more like something breaking.

Mr. Wright, you've been a police officer for a long time. And you carried that sick officer for a long time, and you carried that Sig Sauer for a long time. Four or five years. Four or five years. And you are intimately familiar with the sound of that gun, correct? I guess so. And a gunshot doesn't sound like a lamp breaking, does it? Generally not, no.

And a gunshot doesn't sound like a TV breaking either, does it? I guess so. So you'd like to change your answer then? Doug Wright's testimony was enough to convince the jury that he was guilty. He was sentenced to a minimum of 27 years in prison. The hard work of the detectives on the case was appreciated by Kimberly's family. This is her cousin Beth again. We are so grateful to them. And it tickles me to think that David slew Goliath and we were sent to David's. Doug Wright is now 68 years old and serving his sentence in a Michigan prison. His earliest possible release date is in 2024. Cold Case Files, the podcast is hosted by Brooke Giddings, produced by McKamey Lynn and Steve

Delamater. 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.