All language subtitles for A.U.S01E09.1080p.WEB.h264-CASUALTY_track3_[eng]

- [Narrator] Lifelong bachelor
and classic car collector,

Byron Wright looks like he
has finally meant the woman

of his dreams.

(camera shuttering)

A jailhouse informant has
a story for two detectives

about a murder that neither
has ever heard a whisper about.

- All the little details, it
was really an unusual one.

(camera shuttering)

- [Narrator] It is confirmed

that human remains
have been found beneath

the concrete floor of garage.

Detective Jim Scharf

of the Snohomish County
Sheriff's Department

has just received the news
he has been waiting weeks

to hear.

- The unsolved ones
we have to stand up.

- And approach these cases
in a way outside the box.

- Let the world know
that those out there

that did commit a
murder there are people

that are coming after you.

- There's just a lot of
good people trying to do

the right thing.

- Because it's something

that you have to be
passionate about.

- Solve this, bring some
peace to the family at least,

just doing my job.

(intense music)

- [Narrator] Michelle Donohue
has the unfortunate job

of telling her sister-in-law
that her husband, Byron Wright

has decided to run off
with another woman.

Sharon Diehl, the sister of
Byron Wright has just received

a disturbing phone call from
his wife, Michelle Donohue.

Growing up close as children,
Sharon and Byron have always

looked out for each other,
but since Byron's marriage

to Michelle, they seldom talk

and no longer see
each other as often.

Byron always seems to
be far too busy to call,

or attend family
gatherings like he used to.

(intense music)

Sharon has decided to file
a missing person's report

with a Snohomish County
Sheriff's Department.

It is unlike her brother

to leave everything he's
worked so hard for behind.

Arlington is that
perfect mixture of rural

and big city.

In the northern part
of Snohomish County

in Washington state, the
city of Arlington is part

of the Seattle
metropolitan area.

- The city lies at the base
of the western foothills

of the Cascade
Mountains alongside the
Stillaguamish River.

It's a place attractive
to both city dwellers

and lovers of the outdoors.

One of the biggest
employers in that area

of the state is Boeing.

The Boeing site is so big it
has its own security team,

fire department, several
cafes and coffee shops,

even a daycare center.

- [Narrator] Boeing
has over 30,000 workers

at its Everett facility,

one of these workers
is Byron Wright,

a longtime employee and
a very well liked one.

Byron was born in 1951 and
grew up in a broken home.

In the late 1950's his father
walked out on the family,

leaving his mother to
raise four young children

as a single parent on
government assistance.

Growing up poor Byron
had a strong work ethic

and after working at Boeing
for a number of years,

was able to buy a beautiful
piece of rural property

with a large garage
and mobile home.

At the same time, he also
bought a second empty piece

of property beside the first.

Byron is also a huge
fan of restoring

and racing classic cars.

He has worked hard since
his his teenage years

to build a considerable
collection reportedly

worth almost half
a million dollars.

Some of his vehicles include
a Rare Corvette Stingray,

a 65 Chevy Malibu, a couple
of Chevelles at a race car.

- One of Byron's best friends
described him as a homebody

who had no children of his
own but doted on his nieces.

He would spend every
holiday with his siblings,

and their children and he
loved to hand out silly gifts.

- [Narrator] Though
Byron has always seemed

to prefer spending time
working on his classic cars,

or with a small group of
friends, he's not opposed

to going out for a drink
or two to the local bar

to unwind after a day at work.

21 year old Michelle
Donohue is a wild child

who left home at an early age

'cause of conflicts against
her strict upbringing.

Popular and known as
a social butterfly,

she's already been
married, divorced,

and has a young
daughter named Heather.

Michelle decides she needs
to start getting out more.

She's lonely and bored and
soon meets Byron Wright

at her neighborhood tavern.

Though shy and not usually one
to socialize, Byron is drawn

to the charismatic Michelle.

Even though Byron is 14
years Michelle's senior,

they quickly fall
in love and decide

to share a life together.

Michelle and her daughter
Heather soon move

into Byron's house on Wade Road
and they're married in 2000.

By all accounts,

Michelle and Byron were
very happy together.

Michelle also had an
interest in classic cars

and could hold her
own in a conversation

when talking about them.

Her daughter, Heather says
one of her favorite things

to do together as a
family on a nice day

was to jump into Byron's
classic convertible,

put the top down and the three
of them would cruise down

the highway.

Tension has been steadily rising

the last year or so in the home
between Byron and Michelle.

While Heather adores her
stepfather, Michelle is tired

of being stuck with a homebody
and all she really wants

to do is go out with
her friends and party.

Heather spends more and
more time at her father,

and stepmother's house
and decides to go away

with them on a family
vacation to Ireland.

- It can be very
hard for children

to trust a new stepparent
after witnessing a divorce,

especially a contentious one.

Children can also feel guilt
towards their biological parent

and feel they're being
disloyal if they bond

with the new stepparent.

- [Narrator] To
add to the stress,

Byron is becoming
increasingly isolated

from his own family and friends.

There are complaints that
since he married Michelle

she has stopped him from having
a relationship with anybody

that was part of his life
from before their marriage.

Byron Wright has gone ahead

and done something nobody
could have imagined.

Michelle alleges that tired of
the constant arguing at home,

he's decided to run
off to Wisconsin

with a wealthy
redheaded 20 something

who drives an
expensive sports car.

In doing so, he's left
everything behind,

including his job, his
car collection, his house,

and two properties worst of
all, Michelle and Heather.

(intense music)

Michelle has kept it secret
for almost a month hoping

that Byron would come back
before she has to tell anybody

that he's even left.

Finally, she makes the decision
to call his sister, Sharon

and tell her what has happened.

The Byron who ran off
with another woman

and left everything behind is
not the Byron that his family

and friends know.

He's worked too long and hard

to ever leave his beloved car
collection behind no matter

how wealthy his new
girlfriend might be.

Sharon makes call after
call to other family,

friends and coworkers of Byron.

Except for calling in
sick to his job at Boeing

for a couple of days, nobody
has seen or heard from him

for over a month now, it's
time to make a police report,

but is Byron really
even missing?

This is a question that will
take almost 10 years to answer.

(intense music)

Lifelong bachelor and classic
car collector, Byron Wright

might have finally met
the woman of his dreams.

But tension between
Byron and Michelle

has been steadily rising in
the home over the past year.

Byron Wright has gone ahead

and done something nobody
could have imagined.

Michelle's daughter, Heather
returns from vacation

with her father to Ireland
and immediately goes over

to see her mom and Byron,

she doesn't know yet that
Byron has gone for good

and has left everything behind.

She is shocked and can't
understand what has happened,

especially when even the
closet is still full of Byron's

clothes and his beloved car
collection still sits outside.

Heather is still hurt and
confused that Byron has left her

and her mother for another
woman, even as young as she is,

it doesn't seem like
something he would do.

To cheer her up, Michelle
decides to surprise Heather

with a small sledding
hill in their backyard.

- There wasn't a lot to do

for an only child in
this rural location.

Heather always
loved the outdoors,

Michelle ordered four loads
of fill and 36 yards of dirt,

and as soon as it snowed,
Heather had the perfect hill

to slide on.

- [Narrator] Sharon and
Byron's other siblings

and friends have spent a month
trying to track 'em down.

Nobody seems to know
who this wealthy redhead

with the expensive sports car
is or why he would take off

to Wisconsin with her
and leave everything,

and everyone behind
without a word.

Sharon has decided to file
a missing person's report

with the Snohomish County
Sheriff's Department.

- Unfortunately for Sharon

and the rest of his
family and friends,

the sheriff's department
doesn't think it's necessary

to issue a missing person
report or investigate further.

From their point of
view, he's an adult male

if it's his decision to run off

with a younger woman leaving
behind a job of 23 years

and his prize car collection,
that's his decision to make.

- [Narrator] Michelle almost
immediately files for divorce

and tells everyone
how Byron has run off

with another woman
deserting her and Heather.

He threw it in her face that
his new love is a younger,

wealthier woman and he no
longer needs his job at Boeing,

or anything from his
old life with Michelle.

- Michelle moves on quickly
and soon meets Joel Donohue,

who is also into
cars and partying.

The two hit it off and Joel
soon moves into the Byron home

on Wade Road.

In the meantime, Michelle
files for divorce by absentia,

it's granted when Byron doesn't
show up for proceedings.

That means everything
goes to Michelle,

the house, the
cars, his pension.

- [Narrator] The newlyweds are
having a great time spending

the money Michelle received
from her divorce to Byron.

In addition, Michelle also
receives a $124,000 payout

from Byron's Boeing pension.

Vacations, gambling, shopping,

and just plain having
fun top their list

of what to spend the money on.

Byron driving off
into the sunset with
his new love interest

and deserting Michelle
and her daughter Heather

is nothing but a distant memory.

- In December of 2013,
my partner was Joe Dunn

and we were working cold cases
and Joe had a good rapport

with a lot of people
on the street.

He got to know a lot of people

that were involved
in auto thefts and
things of that nature.

So this guy gets booked
into jail on an auto theft

where he is stripping cars
and he tries to contact Joe,

telling him that he needs to
talk to him about a murder.

Well, Joe isn't around
to get the message,

so I think it took a week
and the guy is persistent,

sends another message
to Joe saying,

yeah, I really need
to talk to you.

Well, Joe figures the guy
is just looking for a way

to get out of jail 'cause
he just knows the type

of person this guy is.

He's basically a career criminal
because he's a drug addict

and he's a thief and
he's been in and out,

and in and out of jail and
prison for so many years,

he's just never gonna
be rehabilitated.

- [Narrator] The inmate's
persistence in trying

to contact Donn
finally pays off.

He has a story for the two
detectives about a murder

that neither has ever heard
a whisper about before.

- So he gets us to come
over and talk to him.

I'm hoping that we get a
tip that solves the case

that I know that we already
have is an unsolved murder.

We get over there and we
get all the information out

of this guy and none of it
sounds like any cold case

that I've ever worked
on, and Joe also believes

that this sounds like
a legitimate story too.

So we get this story and
immediately we realized

that a guy by the name of Byron
Wright is probably missing

and could be a victim
of a murder by his wife,

and that she killed him
and put him in the backyard

of her residence.

- [Narrator] According to the
informant, Michelle Donohue

had buried her husband Byron
Wright out beside the garage

and covered it with a amount
of dirt she had brought in.

- So she recruited three
people to move the body,

so that it can never be found.

Three people moved the body
underneath a concrete slab

in a garage that
Byron Wright had built

because he was a car guy.

And as the story went, one
of the guys who helped move

the body and put
it under the floor

of the garage had told
this informant the story,

and now this informant
was bringing it to us,

so they could help him get
out of jail on the charges

that he was on.

But all the information sounded

to me like it was very plausible
and that we really needed

to look into what
happened to Byron Wright.

This informant, he also told
us about what he had been doing

with the husband of the woman
that committed the murder

and another guy that lived in
the garage on the property,

that they were all stealing cars

and stripping them
on the property

and that the husband of the
wife was not living in the house

with the wife, but he was
living in a camp trailer on

the property with a
pregnant girlfriend.

- [Narrator] The
informant is uneasy

with all of the stolen
auto parts around,

and stripping vehicles on the
property when clearly Michelle

is not on board.

- The informant brought
up the question,

hey, we're causing too much
problem here for Michelle

that she's gonna call the cops
on us if we're not careful.

We gotta be worried about
what we're doing here

'cause we're gonna get caught,

and if the cops don't catch us,

Michelle's gonna tip 'em off.

And the friend says, oh no,
no, we don't have to worry

about Michelle because Michelle
killed her previous husband

and recruited Joel, her
current husband and me

and Walter Shoe to move the
body and we buried it under

the slab of the
concrete garage here.

And when the guy
looked at the floor,

he could tell that
there was a nice finish

to the concrete
everywhere in the garage,

except this one corner
where it was large enough

to probably bury five bodies in.

There was that much
concrete torn up

that was repaved
and poorly surfaced.

So everything fit
that he believed

that Michelle's first
husband was murdered,

and put there and he was
telling us that this happened.

My immediate thought was
this all sounds plausible

and what we need to
do is first of all,

we need to find out who
this first husband was,

find out when he
was last seen to see

if he's still alive
somewhere and if he's not,

then this story is probably
true and if it's true,

how can we get it resolved?

So I asked the guy directly,
I said, would you be willing

to wear a wire and a
recorder and go back in

and talk to Mike that was living
in the garage, and get him

to tell you this whole story
in as much detail as you can

get out of him while
you're on this recording,

so that we can get a search
warrant based on that story

and search the garage and find
the body and solve the case.

You gotta be careful
when you use informants

because you gotta be
able to verify everything

that they tell you 'cause they
could be telling you lies.

- Using confidential informants

is always risky business
when it comes to prosecutions

and police investigations.

On the the one hand,
if the information

that they provide is reliable,
they can get certain benefits

such as financial compensation,
reduce in their sentence,

or potentially even transferred
to a different facility

if this happened
while in custody.

On the flip side, they do always
run the risk of being found

out by the criminal
organizations that
they've worked with,

but in the end they're always
looking out for themselves.

- Now all we had to do was
arrange with the prosecutor

to get him released from jail
to be able to go up there

and try to get this
recording done.

So Joe and I initially looked
into Byron's missing status,

and we also went back
to verify everything

that he told us about the
trucks that they were stealing,

and the car parts they were
taking and they were being sold

for drugs and all of this stuff.

Well, he told us that two of
the trucks that they stole

and stripped, they dumped
them behind a barn just down

the hill off of Wade Road
from where Michelle lived.

So Joe and I go up there and
sure enough, there's the trucks

that he said would be there
that were stolen and we ran 'em

and they come back stolen.

So everything that he told
us we were able to verify.

(intense music)

So then we ended up being
able to find his sister

and his sister said, yeah, I
tried to report Byron missing.

We contacted the Boeing
company and they said,

yeah, his last day
of work was here.

There was some notes that
they had gotten saying

that he was gonna be
sick for a couple days

and before he had quit
showing up altogether.

So there was documentation
that we were able to find

that he just flat disappeared
right around this day

and I think it was October
or November of 2004.

- [Narrator] Detectives
now know that Byron Wright

is truly missing, but
is it true that his body

is buried under the
floor of his own garage?

(intense music)

Michelle Donohue tells
friends that her husband,

Byron Wright has left
for another woman

and moved to Wisconsin.

Almost a decade later, an
informant offers police

some shocking information.

He claims some guys he knows
at a local chop shop told him

how they buried a body.

- I asked him, are you
willing to be recorded?

And he told us that he was.

- [Narrator] Detectives
have come up with a plan

for the informant to
get the guys talking

about the body they
supposedly buried.

- I heard and knew

that the Major Crimes Unit
had been out in Gold Bar

the previous month
recovering a body

that was buried in a backyard
underneath a pile of wood.

The story on that case
was really bizarre,

they believed that his
wife had helped him escape

from prison in Missouri and
he just flat disappeared,

and this was years ago.

Well, when he got
sick and was terminal,

he told his wife when I die,
you can't call the coroner

and tell him to come
and get my body,

you gotta hide it because
if they figure out who I am,

they're gonna know who you are
and they're gonna arrest you

for helping me
escape from prison

and hide me out all these years.

He died and she had him
buried behind the house

and they covered him
up with a wood pile.

The FBI got involved somehow.

Somebody told them that this
guy might be buried there,

and that he might have
been this fugitive

that they had been looking for.

The Major Crimes Unit
ended up going out there

and digging under the wood
pile and finding a body,

and recovering it, and they
were still in the process

of identifying it as
that fugitive escapee.

So that's why it hadn't been
reported into the news yet,

and they didn't wanna put it
in the news until they got DNA

confirmation that it was him.

I knew the story and I thought
this was a golden opportunity

to put that information in
the Everett Herald newspaper,

so that we could
take him outta jail

and have him take this
newspaper down there

and show it to Mike and say,

hey Mike they found this
body buried up in Gold Bar

just to open up the conversation
and get Mike talking about

the body that he helped bury
under the concrete floor

in the garage.

So people thought
this was a good idea,

and it was really what
we needed to open up

the conversation so that we
didn't make our informant

look like he was tricking
anybody because first of all,

he'd had such criminal history
that it wouldn't be likely

that he would even
be outta jail.

So they were gonna probably
be questioning the fact

that he was even free
when he shouldn't be,

and if he's pumping
'em for information

without having a
good excuse to do it,

they probably would shut down
and not tell him anything.

So I convinced him that
this newspaper story

was the ideal lead in
to get the guy talking,

so that we could
record the story

about what happened to Byron.

And we got the
prosecutor on board,

we got the Herald on board,

and they printed the
story on the front page

of the Everett Herald on the day

that the prosecutor was willing
to let our informant out

to go and try to
make this contact.

We had to get the courts
to agree to release him,

and we had to have him on
an ankle bracelet monitor

before we could get all this
set up and we got it all set up

and we got him outta jail.

We got the newspaper article
that came out that morning,

and we drove him all the way up

and we dropped him off
just down the street

from Michelle Donohue's house.

He walked down to the
back, went into the garage

with the newspaper and started
a conversation up with Mike.

Our informant shows
Mike the newspaper,

and Mike reads it
and he says, well,

they're not gonna
find this body.

It's buried under six feet of
dirt under a concrete floor,

ground penetrating radar
isn't even gonna find it

because it's too deep,

so they're never
gonna find this body.

- [Narrator] Michelle is deep
in debt so deep she's worried

that she'll lose the
property to foreclosure

and the secret she has kept

for the last seven
years will be found out.

Finally she decides that
she needs to tell Joel

what really happened to
her previous husband.

- Well that opens
up the conversation

to where the
informants now saying,

well, how did the body get here?

Who all put it here?

Well, it was me and
Joel and Walter.

Michelle told us that she
had killed her husband

and buried him in the
backyard and she was worried

that she was gonna
lose this house

'cause she was in debt so
deep that she came to Joel

and said, I killed
my first husband

and buried him back here,
and if we don't get him off

of this property and
get him out of here

to where he's never
gonna be found,

I could end up in prison.

(intense music)

So Joel and Mike, and
Walter Shoe got together,

and started talking
about it and decided,

well, we don't want to take

the chance on transporting
it somewhere else,

why don't we just chop up
the concrete and dig a hole

and bury him right here in
the middle of the night?

Nobody's caught us
stripping cars here,

so they're not gonna
catch us moving a body.

So he's telling him all
this story on a tape.

He said, when we
dug up the body,

it was in three
different plastic bags

and it stunk horribly.

So we had rented this bobcat
and we chopped up the concrete

and we dug a hole
with the bobcat.

They went down and they got
this great big Tupperware tub,

and put the body in
it and then they tried

to pour stuff over to
make it decay better

and put a lid on it, and we
put it in this hole six feet

deep and we threw the bags

with the other body parts in
next to it and we covered it up

and we poured a concrete
floor over it again.

- [Narrator] Mike also tells
the informant that after

the three of them
finally finished
reburying Byron's remains

and pouring the concrete
over the hole they had dug,

they decided they should
also say a few words

as a type of service.

- The informant took a
picture of the concrete floor

that was a really poor
job of finishing cement,

and he texted us the pictures
and we had all the information

that we needed at that point
to get a search warrant

to search the garage.

(intense music)

- [Narrator] An informant
tells Seattle detectives

that he has information
that he heard his partners

at a local chop shop
discussing how they disposed

of a body on the property.

Is this related

to Byron Wright's
disappearance a decade ago?

The detectives formulate a plan

for the informant to learn more

from his partners using a
local newspaper story as cover.

- The Major Crimes Unit had
been out in Gold Bar recovering

a body in a backyard
underneath a pile of wood.

- [Narrator] The
informant is told

that this is a different body
and is then told exactly how

and where they
buried their body.

- After the informant
got the story from Mike,

he was still hanging
out with Mike that day.

Michelle was married to Joel,
but they weren't getting along

and Joel was living
with a pregnant
girlfriend in the camper

on the property.

- [Narrator] Mike
and the informant

who was still wearing his
wire head to the casino

to pick up Michelle and give
her a ride home from work.

- She worked at
the Tulalip Casino

and she needed a
ride home that night.

So the informant, it
took him a while that day

to be able to get
the whole story.

So now they're down at the
casino picking up Michelle

and they're driving
her home and they talk

about her problems that she's
having with her husband.

The informant ends
up contacting us,

and I end up meeting the
informant back near the casino

and I get the recording
from him that night.

I'm listening to the
recording on the weekend,

and I hear a discussion
that happened with Michelle

where she brings up her problems
that she's having with Joel

and she ends up saying she
would like to have some way

of getting rid of him.

Heard her say something
with the word murder.

- [Narrator] Not
only is it likely

that Michelle Donohue's
first husband, Byron Wright

is buried under
the garage floor,

it sounds like she's hoping
that her present husband,

Joel Donohue will
soon be joining him.

- Because of all the information

that we had in the
recording from Mike

and all the investigation
that we had done to show

that Byron went missing in 2004,

and that we verified
everything else

that the informant
told us was true,

we were able to get a search
warrant for the property

to dig up the body.

So we had to contact the
County Public Works Department

to get the equipment
out there to do this.

We had the state anthropologist
there to be able to tell us

that when we dug up some bones
that they were human bones.

We had the medical examiner's
office there to take custody

of the body once we located it.

- [Narrator] The last thing
Michelle thought would happen

that morning is instead
of going to work

that she was going
to be arrested.

- We planned to go out to the
house and serve the warrant.

I was assigned to take
Michelle Donohue into custody,

and that we were going to
interview her while other people

were assigned to interview
Joel and the girlfriend,

and Mike, anybody
else that we found.

- [Narrator] The
forensic anthropologist

from the King County Medical
Examiner's Office confirms

that human remains have
been found buried underneath

the concrete slab.

The arms and legs were
wrapped in bags in a tarp,

buried in the dirt alongside
a large plastic blue bin,

it contained the rest of
the body of Byron Wright.

(intense music)

- I feel it's time to confront
her, so I confront her

that we know that your
husband didn't just disappear,

we know that he's been
buried on your property

because we just dug him up,

so we've recovered his
body on your property.

And she's like, really?

She tried to play dumb
that she had no idea

that there was a
body on her property.

Then we kept telling her
that we've talked to Joel,

Joel's told us everything
you've told him,

so we want to know
what happened.

And she's like, well,
I didn't kill him.

Well, if you didn't
kill him then who did?

And why are you telling other
people that you did do it?

So she finally got to the point

that she didn't want
to talk to us anymore.

Part of the story
that we were getting

from the other people was
that Michelle had told them

the reason that they
needed to move this body

was because she and Byron
got into this big argument

in the kitchen and
he came at her,

and she had to defend herself,
she stabbed him with a knife

to keep him away from her,

and that's how she ended up
maybe accidentally killing him

and that's why they had
to get rid of his body.

So we had that information too.

I ended up getting up
and leaving the room

to go find out what Joel was
telling the other detectives,

and Joel was telling
them the whole story

about how Michelle had
asked him to move the body,

and how he was killed
by this stabbing.

He demonstrated that she was
backing away going like this,

and he came into the knife
and that's what stabbed him.

And he fell on the floor
and she left the house,

and when she came
back, he was dead.

The whole crew was
there to dig up

the body while we were
interviewing Michelle and Joel.

So as soon as we left with
the witnesses and the suspect,

the whole team and crew
went down to the garage

and the person that had the
ground penetrating radar said,

yes, there's definitely
something in this area.

And he spray painted it and
marked it all on the concrete,

and then used jackhammers,
to remove the concrete,

and then to get down
to where they found

the great big Tupperware
tub and they removed it,

they found some bags that
were thrown in around the tub

that had body parts in them,

and the state anthropologist
examined 'em all,

opened the tub and found
that there was plaster,

or something poured
all over the body,

but the head was in there
and it was all taken down

to the medical examiner's
office that day

and we kept her there at the
North Precinct under arrest

until I was able to get
the booking paperwork done,

and got her
transported to the jail

and booked for her second
degree murder that night.

- [Narrator] Michelle
Donohue had no idea

that when she left home
earlier in the day,

it would be the last
time for quite a while.

Fingerprinted, charged and
with bail set at $1 million,

Donohue is about to start a
whole new unexpected chapter

in her life.

(intense music)

Lifelong bachelor and
classic car collector,

Byron Wright thought he
had finally met the woman

of his dreams.

He had no idea that
she would be the one

to destroy them instead.

- And she ends up
saying on the tape,

she would like to have some
way of getting rid of him,

heard her say something
with the word murder.

- [Narrator] After months of
working with an informant,

investigators from the Snohomish
County Sheriff's Department

are finally going to learn
if their source is correct,

is Byron Wright's body buried
under the floor of his garage?

- I went probably the
next day to the autopsy

and they removed the body

and even though this was
in 2014, 10 years later,

she had wrapped him
in plastic and a sheet

to where when they opened
him up, you could still see

that there was a slice mark
all the way around his throat

and there were numerous stab
wounds all over his back.

The medical examiner said

that one of the stab wounds
hit him right in the spine,

in the spinal cord which
could have paralyzed him

at that point from being
able to fight back.

But all of the injuries
were either the upper back,

or neck or the throat, and he
was only wearing underpants

and he was wrapped in a sheet.

Well, when they
searched the house,

we found two pillow cases
with the same pattern on 'em.

- [Narrator] After the
autopsy is concluded,

detective, Jim Scharf now knows
that Michelle's whole story

about accidentally
stabbing Byron while trying

to defend herself is nothing
but a giant pack of lies.

- Some murderers continue
to deny their guilt

because they don't believe
there's enough evidence

to prove they are responsible,

or they believe they're
smarter than law enforcement.

Others continue to
deny their involvement

because they themselves
can't face the truth

of their own actions.

- [Narrator] Michelle Donohue
decides to change her plea

to guilty once she's confronted

with the overwhelming evidence.

She enters her plea
on July 11th, 2014.

- In this case, Snohomish
County District Court Judge,

George Bowden decided
to sentence Donohue

to 16 years instead
of the 15 years

that had been agreed
to in the plea bargain.

He did this so that he
could get the maximum amount

of supervision
while out of custody

which was three
years in this case.

Most states have their
own sentencing guidelines,

so it varies depending
on state to state

unless it's a federal crime.

- [Narrator] Judge Bowden
goes on to tell the court

at the sentencing that
six people have filed

victim impact statements.

They all feel that Donohue
should have been charged

with first degree murder,
however it has felt

that the state could not
have proved premeditation.

The judge explains
to the victims that
he can only sentence

to the agreed upon guilty
plea of second degree murder.

- Victim impact statements
were created to give victims,

friends and family
an opportunity

to be involved in
the proceedings.

They're able to provide insights
into who the victim was,

as well as detail,
the mental, emotional

and sometimes financial effects
that the crime had on them.

Victim impact
statements allows them

to say what kind of
person the victim was

and what they meant to them.

- [Narrator] Michelle
Donohue is allowed

to speak at her sentencing
and in tears apologizes

to Byron's family, saying
she is so very sorry

for taking his life and that
there is nothing she can do

to ease their pain.

- This was a really unusual
case, the way that it happened

and the way that it
all fell together

and all the little details that
we found out about from it.

It was really an unusual
one, but it was nice

that we were able to get
it put together so quickly

and find his body and
that she pled guilty,

and we didn't have to wait for
a year for it to go to trial.

- Of course, there
are always children

that will emulate their
parents' criminality,

whether because they haven't
experienced life any other way,

or they're looking for approval,
it may also be out of fear

of what would happen
to them if they don't.

There are plenty of
children who grow up

to resent their
parents' behavior.

In some cases, they are the ones

that turn their parents
into the authorities.

- It's really sad

because her daughter was
right there in the middle

of all of this and she
didn't have anything

to look up to her mom.

She realized her mom
is this evil person

and it's sad that
you have to grow up,

and realize that
about your own parent.

She was just a
totally good person

that came out of this
horrible situation.

When you put somebody that's
a cold-blooded killer away,

you just got the
satisfaction to know

that they finally got the system
to deal with them properly.

- [Narrator] Michelle Donohue
was sentenced to 16 years

for the murder of Byron Wright.

She was given credit
for pleading guilty,

accepting responsibility,

and not having any
prior criminal record.

Upon her release, Donohue
will be under three years

required supervision and
have to pay restitution.

Joel Donohue and the two
accomplices that helped move

and rebury the body of Byron
Wright were never charged due

to the statute of
limitations expiring.

A few years later, Donohue
died in a car accident.

- The main thing is is
for the family to know

that they're held accountable
and that they have the answers

to what happened.

(intense music)

(intense music continues)

(intense music ends)