Deadly Vows

by Leif M. Wright

  Sean, the angelic minister who could justify all his actions (including polygamy) using the Bible, had been the innocent victim only trying to look out for the best interests of his family. Joy hadn’t been able to play along, so she had forced his hand. She had, essentially, killed herself. He had even turned himself in because that was the right thing to do. If he was guilty of anything, it was only that he had wrongfully covered up her death, and hadn’t he already been in jail for three years? Certainly that was long enough to pay for that crime.

  But there are two sides in court and Matthew Greco then stepped up to cross-examine Sean.

  His first order of business: putting to rest the notion that Sean had turned himself in because he was such a good Christian.

  Sean’s co-worker, Victoria Mack, had testified that she had given Sean an ultimatum in October. Sean had been telling their boss that he had to work fewer hours because his wife had left and he was now a single father struggling to raise his children while still working. Mack, who knew that wasn’t true, that Sean had another wife still at home, had told him that when she returned from vacation on October 20, he had better confess to their mutual boss that he still had a wife at home, or she would. But Sean denied that the conversation ever took place.

  “She told you that you had to come clean with your employer, right?” Greco asked.

  “No, she did not,” Sean replied.

  “She told you that you had been misleading [their boss] into believing you were a single father, correct?”

  “That’s not how the conversation went, no,” Sean replied. Not a strict denial from the man who was an expert at mincing words to tell the technical truth while still conveying a lie, a trick he had bragged to me about when we were both working at the ministry together.

  “She told you that you had to fix it with [your boss] or she was going to tell your boss?” Greco asked.

  “She never made an ultimatum,” Sean said. “She said she was very concerned.”

  Greco tried to introduce evidence from Sean’s first wife’s testimony that she had come home from work on October 21 after police had showed up there and started questioning her. When she had gotten home, Sean told her that he had killed Joy and his first wife, literally holding her hands to her ears so that she couldn’t hear Sean’s attempts at explanation, had screamed at him to turn himself in at the police station.

  Arena, however, objected that this was irrelevant.

  “I am questioning him on his assertion that no one forced him to go to the police,” Greco said to the judge.

  The judge, however, sustained Arena’s objection, so the prosecutor moved on.

  “On October the 21st, 2003, you went to the police department,” Greco said. “And at this time, you want this jury to believe that you did this because it was the right thing to do?”

  “I’m not thinking about what I want the jury to believe,” Sean said. “I’m just telling the jury what happened.”

  Greco, however, wanted to know why, when Sean confessed to police, he didn’t tell them that Joy had attacked him with a knife, a statement that could have changed the way detectives were handling his case.

  “Mr. Goff, Detective Tefft asked you ‘How did you end up hurting her?’” Greco said. “At that time, you didn’t tell him that she attacked you with a knife?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “You never told Detective Tefft anything about a photograph, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “Detective Tefft asked you—there is a location, evidently, where her body is. And your response was ‘I’m not sure if I should answer that question at this time. When you said that at the police station, you knew Joy Risker was underneath a pile of stones in the middle of the desert, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “When you were speaking to the police, when you ‘knew what the right thing to do was,’ your response was...” I think I would rather talk to an attorney about this,’ correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “You made a choice to leave Joy Risker in the desert, under the rocks, correct?”

  “No,” Sean said. “I made a decision to speak to an attorney first.”

  “You made a decision, in your words, to do the right thing, correct?”

  “That’s true.”

  “And the right thing in your mind was leaving Joy Risker out there in the desert, correct?”

  “The right thing in my mind was to speak to an attorney before I spoke about that.”

  After establishing that “the right thing to do,” for Sean didn’t include telling where Joy’s body was, Greco brought up me.

  “You met Leif Wright when?”

  “I believe in 1987,” Sean said.

  “You were in college together?”

  “Yes.”

  “You became close friends?”

  “Yes, we did.”

  “In 2002, you had a conversation, or actually a series of conversations with him on how to commit a perfect murder, didn’t you?”

  “No,” Sean replied. “I did not. I never said anything like that.”

  Greco then asked if Sean remembered a conversation with me about how Joy was lazy and he was going to have to get rid of her. No, he replied. He didn’t recall that conversation. Then he asked if Sean recalled in September speaking to a friend of Joy’s and saying, “Don’t be surprised if Joy packs up and never comes back.”

  “No, I don’t recall that,” Sean said.

  “She testified to that,” Greco looked straight at Sean. “Was she wrong?”

  “Yes.”

  “On September 6, 2003, you told Victoria Mack that Joy had two weeks from when you got home to shape up or ship out,” Greco said. “You said that to her, correct?”

  “I recall telling her the ‘shape up or ship out’ part, but I don’t recall the two weeks.”

  Victoria Mack had also testified that Sean had told her from watching Forensics Files and other similar TV shows, that it was nearly impossible to get away with anything, but Sean denied that.

  Greco then brought up a party where an argument between Sean and Joy had broken out in the presence of Joy’s friend, where Sean had gotten into the car and demanded that Joy get in if she ever wanted to see her kids again.

  “Joy’s friend called the house shortly after her party,” Greco said. “And you told her, ‘If you ever call again, I will kill you?’”

  “Unfortunately, I did say that,” Sean said.

  Greco then turned his focus to the plural marriage itself. Sean had testified that his first wife had been for it but her testimony had been that she wasn’t in favor of the marriage.

  “Your first wife did not approve of this arrangement, did she?” Greco asked.

  “Over time, I learned she did it for me.”

  “She did not like this arrangement, correct?”

  “At times.”

  Greco was on a roll. He turned his attention to the financial arrangement, where Sean had taken over the finances because the women weren’t able to handle the family’s money.

  “After you took over the family finances, how many bankruptcies did you have?” Greco asked.

  “Two.”

  Sean testified that he filed for bankruptcy in the early 1990s and again in 2000.

  “In 2000, Joy’s mother, Gwendolyn Risker, died, correct?” Greco asked.

  “Yes, she did.”

  Joy, Sean testified, had inherited $75,000 from one of Gwen’s insurance accounts, but there were two or three more policies, so much that Sean couldn’t remember the total amount Joy inherited. So Joy, Greco asked, had her own money from 2000 on because of the inheritances? Sean said she did not.

  “Why not?” Greco asked.

  “Because when I stayed home to deal with some problems, Joy volunteered to use her inheritance in order to maintain the family.”

  “In fact,” Greco said, “You didn’t work, correct?”

  “For about ten months,” Sean answered. “It may
have been less than that.”

  In 2002, Sean’s lease for the Kensington house listed income as more than $105,000, the source being “inheritance,” referring to Joy’s inheritance from her mother’s death.

  Next, Greco asked about the fight that Sean had said led to Joy’s death. Had he been cut during the fight, or was Joy the only one with wounds?

  “I had some nicks on my hands and there was one cut up here on my arm.”

  Greco then showed Sean a video showing his hands after he turned himself in, less than a month after Joy died.

  “Could you point to where the nicks are on your hands?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  “In these photographs, there are no wounds, no scars, there is nothing, correct?”

  “No.”

  “That day, you did not bleed anywhere, did you?” Greco asked.

  “There was a little of my blood that...not much.”

  None of Sean’s blood had been found when the police investigated the house.

  Greco then attacked Sean’s account of the timing of the events the night Joy died. Specifically, he asked whether Joy had seen or heard about the photograph Sean had supposedly taken of her younger son’s bruises, which he was intending to use to show Joy to be an unfit parent—and the reason he had said Joy grabbed the knife and threatened to kill him.

  With Sean in the bedroom after leaving the kitchen and slamming the door, Greco asked what happened next.

  “I heard footsteps coming up the hall.”

  “At this point, you have never talked about this photograph with Joy, correct?”

  “Not the photograph.”

  “She has never seen this photograph at the time she has the knife, correct?”

  “She has never seen the photograph.”

  Sean may not have realized it, but it was a major discrepancy within his account of what had happened. When he had testified under the friendly questioning of his own attorney, he had said he had threatened Joy with the photo, and that’s when she grabbed the knife and started swinging it at him. But under Greco’s questioning, he had changed the story. Joy, in this story, had the knife having never heard about or seen the photo.

  Driving the point home, Greco continued: “At this point she says what?”

  “She said, ‘Son of a bitch, I will kill you.’”

  “At this point of the evening, without having seen the picture, she has a knife and says, ‘I’m going to kill you,’ correct?”

  “Yes.”

  Greco quickly moved on to the fight itself, but he would recall the discrepancy during his closing arguments.

  After Sean left the stand, Greco subpoenaed me to fly back to San Diego as a rebuttal witness.

  When I arrived in San Diego, Greco still didn’t meet with me. He did, however, send word that I should get something to wear that was more appropriate for court. In my first session on the stand, I had dressed as I do in everyday life: T-shirt with a cartoon on it and jeans. For my second trip to the stand, however, he wanted me to look more professional.

  My initial testimony had been unnerving. Not only had it been my first time in court as a witness, but Sean, knowing I was about to testify against him, had smiled at me and winked as I made my way to the stand.

  This time, there was no smile from Sean, no wink as I approached the stand and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

  “Where do you live?” Greco asked. Strange question, I thought, but okay.

  “Muskogee, Oklahoma,” I replied. Then he asked me how long I had known Sean. I said I had known him since we met in college in 1987. He asked me about the incident in the dorms where Sean had held the guy out the window, demanding that he apologize for using profanity in front of women.

  I told him about Sean’s temper. I told him about holding the kid out the window of the dorms at OU. I told him about the book or movie we had discussed. I told him about how Sean had told me he needed to “get rid” of Joy. I told him how Joy had seemed like leaving Sean was the last thing on her mind when she called me, just before she was killed, to invite me to his birthday party.

  Greco touched on the fact that I was shocked that no one had asked me in court about the conversation Sean and I had had about a book or movie in which the killer learns how to get away with his crimes by watching TV forensics shows.

  “Why hadn’t you ever told anybody about this prior conversation?” he asked.

  “I actually had mentioned it in a personal blog that I had, and that’s why I figured, because I did see on my IP logs lots of San Diego County official hits reading those blogs,” I answered. “So I assumed that was information gathered for the district attorney.”

  “So you just assumed that everybody knew about this conversation?”

  “That’s true.”

  And then Arena got up to cross-examine me. Wasn’t it true, he asked, that I was only there to testify again because I wanted to get in front of the TV cameras that were behind me and at the back of the courtroom?

  “I wasn’t aware that those were cameras until you just pointed them out,” I replied. I had had no idea that there were cameras in the courtroom.

  “Have you ever smoked marijuana?” Arena asked. Either the question was relevant to something I wasn’t aware of, or Greco didn’t feel the need to object, because he didn’t say anything.

  “Oh, absolutely,” I replied, probably a bit too vehemently, and the courtroom burst out in laughter, which was probably the worst thing that could have happened to me. I tend to rely on humor when I get nervous, and the last place to be funny is a courtroom where someone is on trial for murdering an innocent woman, the mother of his children. I hadn’t intended my marijuana answer to be funny but it opened the floodgates and even the judge got in on the act.

  “I assume your marijuana use has been far outside my jurisdiction,” said the judge, Robert O’Neill, laughing.

  “As far as you know,” I replied.

  It was getting out of hand but humor was always the safe place I could rely on and falling into it was only spurred on further by the laughter that was erupting in the courtroom.

  “I knew you were testifying,” Sean’s first wife said later. As a future witness, she had been restricted from going into the courtroom but she was sitting just outside. “As soon as I heard everyone laughing, I knew it was Leif up there.”

  I, however, didn’t want everyone laughing. I knew that it would look like I wasn’t taking the case seriously, but either Sean had wisely informed Arena to get me into that spot, or Arena was just good at seizing the moment, because he did, pressing me further and further, until he got to the real point of his inquiry, which I knew had to have been fed to him directly by Sean.

  “Mr. Wright,” Arena said after the laughter had died down. “Did you ever use a weapon on anybody back then?”

  I knew this line of questioning was trouble, because I knew Sean was claiming he had killed Joy in self-defense, that Joy had approached him with the knife and he had been forced to kill her with it. But I had taken an oath to tell the whole truth—an oath I took seriously, even if fulfilling it meant my testimony would be muted by it.

  “Yes,” I replied. Sean knew all about my knife fight, and I knew he had told Arena about it in an attempt to make his own claims seem more reasonable. “A guy pulled a knife on me and I told him I would stick it up his ass if he didn’t put it away. He didn’t, so I did.”

  “You didn’t like people pulling knives on you?” Arena asked.

  “I didn’t take it very well, no,” I answered.

  Sean smiled. It was a brilliant move on Arena’s part, probably prompted by Sean. The guy on the stand testifying that Sean had a temper, that Sean had planned to kill Joy and get away with it, was now the guy who had done the same thing Sean was claiming to have done when he had faced a similar situation. Of course, my knife fight had been in a crowded parking lot against a man, not in a secluded bedroom against a woman, but I couldn�
�t say that; I could only answer the question and Greco hadn’t spoken to me before I testified.

  I hoped the jury had listened to the relevant parts of my testimony, not the comedy the defense attorney had masterfully prodded me into and not the other misdirection he had so deftly managed with the knife fight testimony. I had testified that Sean had been discussing ways to thwart police at identifying a body and solving a crime. I had testified that Sean had said he wanted to “get rid” of Joy shortly before he actually did. I had testified that Joy had called me, happy about throwing a surprise birthday party for Sean, and that she had not seemed in any sort of mood to be leaving Sean or attacking him with a knife. Hopefully, I thought, the jury was listening to that and not to the tangential stuff Sean’s lawyer had steered me into.

  If my testimony had been nullified by the fact that I had once been in a knife fight, so be it. I had sworn to tell the whole truth, I told myself, and with Sean’s brilliant lawyer working against the state’s rookie, it would just have to be up to the jury to figure out what was right and wrong. As I left the stand, I remember wishing they hadn’t called me to testify the second time. I hoped I hadn’t hurt the case against Sean by being funny but it seemed to me distinctly possible that I had, in the final misstep of a long line of them that I had made during my relationship with Sean.

  But the evidence against Sean was stronger than the nervous comedy act of a witness who should have only been called to testify once. Sean’s first wife was called to the stand after I left. And her testimony was only the second-most damning that Sean would face in the trial, next to his own, which would end up sealing his fate.

  Greco’s team had carefully made a case, using receipts, that Sean had assembled what Greco—who, despite his numerous rookie mistakes, seemed to be a pretty good lawyer—called a “murder kit” six days before he killed Joy. The “murder kit?” While Joy was away at a friend’s wedding on September 13, Sean had bought a hand saw, a butcher knife, a butcher block, duct tape, plastic sheeting, a shovel, a big insulated cooler, a sledgehammer, a pickaxe, two padlocks, seventy-five yards of rope, fifty feet of chain and a chisel less than a week before he would find all those items useful in the most grisly of ways.