EXCLUSIVE - An 'affair' with white sheriff's daughter, drugs and claims of a race crime cover-up: Disturbing death of American Idol star's brother who was found naked, with his tongue missing and throat slit on Texas ranch
Alfred Wright's body was found half naked and mutilated in woodland 18 days after witnesses claim the 28-year-old 'ran off' from a store after his truck broke down in Hemphill, Texas.
Police called off search after four days and claimed his death was 'classic' behavior of a meth addict. Alfred's family claim the Sheriff said the search was getting in the way of his hunting.
The state autopsy found 'no sign of trauma' on his body from which his tongue, left ear and eyes were missing and his throat cut.
But his devastated family believe the married father-of-three and brother of Savion Wright, American Idol finalist, was victim of a 'hate crime' and are claiming a cover-up.
A second pathologist found 'high index of suspicion of homicide'.
Alfred has been romantically linked daughter of sheriff investigating death. She denies it.
Such is the frenzied climate of suspicion and rumor that even a silver dime found close to Alfred's body has led some, including his family, to believe it was placed there deliberately.
Here, MailOnline investigates this very disturbing death
When he saw the angel wings tattoo inked across his son’s lifeless back, Douglas Wright felt a twist of bitter relief. He had found him.
He turned to see a Sabine County Sheriff’s officer pushing through the small search party to take control of the scene. Rage rising up in him Mr Wright stood in the misting drizzle and blocked the officer’s path.
‘You don’t get to touch him now,’ he said. ‘You don’t get to have him. Y’all gave up on him.’
Today, giving up remains one thing that the Wright family refuse to do as they fight for answers in 28-year-old Alfred Wright’s mysterious disappearance and death.
The older brother of Season 13 American Idol finalist Savion Wright, 21, Alfred was found dead on 25 November 2013 - face down in the Texas mud on the outskirts of the small town of Hemphill.
He had been missing for 18 days.
His clothes and possessions were scattered in nearby brush and snagged on barbed wire fencing.
His left ear was missing, his tongue cut or torn out, his eyes gouged out and his throat slit.
Since then, his family have driven the case beyond their hometown of Jasper where he lived with wife Lauren and their two sons, to national attention.
Amid explosive allegations of racism, hate crime, murder, and cover-up the case has been taken from local law enforcement, Sabine County Sheriff Tom Maddox - who found ‘no foul play’ and branded Alfred a drug casualty - and handed to the Texas Rangers who have called the death ‘questionable.’
The US Department of Justice is keeping a ‘keen eye’ on proceedings and the FBI remains on ‘stand-by’ to assist.
In desperation the family have called in their own private investigator, Chuck Foreman, and without his efforts Alfred would never have been found.
From the very start, Mr Foreman said, ‘This case has been just downright weird. Law enforcement here have lied, they have disregarded code and they have never once expressed condolences to this family.’
Three months after Alfred’s mutilated body was found the case remains riddled with inconsistencies and muddled with wild and competing theories.
Was Alfred’s death foul play? Did this young black married father-of-two get too close to the white Sheriff’s daughter as private investigator Chuck Foreman has been told? Was he the victim of a racially motivated hate crime as his mother asserts?
Was he tortured then dumped in the brush? Or did animals and insects mutilate him, as he lay undiscovered for 18 days?
Was the fitness fanatic with no history of drug abuse gripped by drug-induced psychosis that drove him to his own death as local law enforcement claim? Did the outgoing physical therapist have a secret life – secret relationships and habits – that he kept secret from even his wife?
In an emotional interview with MailOnline, Alfred’s parents and widow told of their anger and pain in their fight for the truth that began with a phone call from Alfred on Thursday 7 November.
'I think this is a hate crime. What they did to my boy, it hurts me so much to think of it'
According to his mother, Rosalind, 54: ‘There are some days I feel I might lose my mind, thinking what was done to him. But the fight keeps me going.
'I think this is a hate crime. What they did to my boy, it hurts me so much to think of it.'
Alfred, who provided homecare, had only recently started seeing patients in Hemphill, which is an hour's drive from Jasper.
Widow Lauren, 28, recalled: ‘He’d been having trouble with his truck that week. It broke down on Tuesday and he’d changed the alternator.’
The next evening, Lauren recalled, her husband wasn’t quite himself. She said: ‘It was almost like he was paranoid or something. I told him he needed to eat something and go to bed but it was like he couldn’t turn his mind off. He couldn’t settle.’
She put it from her mind, assuming that he was stressed about his truck given that he was making the trip to Hemphill the following day.
Lauren said: ‘He left for work at around 7.45am that morning and he called around 5.15pm to say the truck was running hot and he’d pulled up at CL&M Grocery.’
Both the couple’s sons Kingston, 4, and Kason, 2, were sick at home so instead of driving out to get Alfred, she called his mother. Rosalind and Douglas set out to meet their son.
<iframe frameborder="0" width="698" height="503" scrolling="no" id="molvideoplayer" title="MailOnline Embed Player" src="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/embed/video/1083999.html" ></iframe>
As Rosalind and her husband Douglas, 60, drove to meet their son, Lauren recalled: ‘At around 6.05pm I called Alfred to let him know his parents were on the way.
‘But all I could hear was heavy breathing, real heavy and I knew right then the urgency, that something was wrong.
‘I was asking him, are you mad? Are you trying to fix your truck? Can you hear me? But there was nothing only the breathing.’
According to the clerk serving at CL&M that day Alfred stayed outside talking on his cell, leaning against a wrought iron post out front and drinking from a bottle.
There is a clear view from the register at CL&M out to the large forecourt where there were once gas pumps.
The clerk estimated that Alfred was there for almost an hour, before suddenly taking off about 20 minutes before his parents arrived.
Rosalind said: ‘She said she saw Alfie put his phone in his sock, back away and then run down the road like his truck was about to explode. She said she’d never seen anything like it.’
It made no sense. They drove down the road towards town thinking they might catch him up en route.
They drove back to the CL&M store with increasingly anxious hearts thinking he might return.
Rosalind recalled: ‘We sat there a few minutes and I said, “We need to get the Sheriff.”’
All the while Alfred’s truck was where he had left it, barely pulled off the road as though it had limped into over the lip of the forecourt before giving out.
'All I could hear was heavy breathing, real heavy and I knew right then the urgency, that something was wrong'
- Lauren Wright
Rosalind said: ‘It was just like my baby just disappeared off the face of the earth.’
The nightmare was set in motion.
The family said they asked the Deputy who came out to the store to ‘ping’ Alfred’s phone – a way of tracing its location. But they were told that was not possible without probable cause of foul play.
They suggested footage from the security camera trained on the store’s forecourt would clarify what had happened but were initially told there was no film in the camera and subsequently that the camera was broken. It has since been removed.
There seemed nothing they could do that night but wait.
The following day Sheriff Tom Maddox’s men searched the area and found pieces of the surgical scrubs Alfred had been wearing, his ID pack and wallet, a shoe, a sock and his watch.
Lauren recalled how she and her mother-in-law were waiting at the store when Mr Christian, the rancher on whose land Alfred’s body was ultimately found, approached the Sheriff carrying a watch
She said: ‘He said he had found it on his cattle grid. It was Alfred’s watch. Alfred had a fetish for watches; if he had money he’d buy a watch. He’d never have just taken it off.’
According to Rosalind: ‘That’s when the Sheriff started saying this was “a classic drugs case.” He suggested that scenario from the first day – just out of nowhere but that’s what he stuck with.’
Alfred’s father, Douglas said: ‘The Sheriff took me aside one day we were searching and said “This is what meth does. It’s classic. It makes your body temperature rise so you just want to rip off all your clothes and run.”’
Today the family is quite clear that, with no cause, no history of drug taking, no paraphernalia or anything to suggest Alfred had taken anything the assumption that this was ‘a drugs case’ was drawn from prejudice.
Alfred was an ambitious young man. He had graduated magna cum laude from the University of Mary Harden Baylor, in 2012. He was a loving husband and responsible father who also cared for Kamryn, 8, his son from a previous relationship. He wasn’t a drug abuser, the family claims.
That very evening he had shown his usual conscientious nature as, Lauren revealed, ‘Some time between his parents setting out and him taking off Alfred called the patient he was going to see and told them he was having trouble with his truck and would be late but that he would be there.
‘He had every intention of carrying on and keeping that appointment.’
On Friday 8 November a warrant was issued allowing officers to search Alfred’s truck but they never did. Lauren had opened the door, an act that, the family were told had ‘contaminated’ it. Instead she was told to move it out of the way of customers.
To this day the truck, which now sits in his parents’ garage, has not been searched, fingerprinted or examined in any way.
That afternoon cadaver dogs were called in to search the area. Douglas recalled: ‘They didn’t start the dogs from where Alfred was last seen. They started them from where they had found a scrap of scrub on barbed wire. That made no sense to me.’
It is clear as the family talk with increased agitation and frustration that tensions between them and Sheriff Maddox were high from the outset.
Lauren said: ‘He was belligerent and rude. He did everything he could to stop us searching.
‘He would shout at us, “I don’t have to be here you know.” “I could be hunting with my family.”’
They claim that family members – Alfred was the fourth of five siblings – and friends came to help the search and were told that the landowner had not given permission and so they could not.
‘He was belligerent and rude. He did everything he could to stop us searching.He would shout at us, “I don’t have to be here you know.” “I could be hunting with my family.”’
- Widow on Sheriff Tom Maddox
In fact, they later learned, the landowner had offered to take people over the worst of the mud leading to the search area in his tractor.
On Monday 11 November, after four days of searching, Maddox called the search off. He told the family his department had ‘exhausted their resources’ and there was ‘no sign of foul play.’
Lauren said: ‘The feeling when I learned they were just stopping was indescribable.’
The family was not the only ones to question the decision to stop looking so soon. Already the case had become the stuff of local gossip and talk – Alfred was a popular, good looking and charismatic young man. His disappearance was never going to go unmarked.
In a breathtaking display of prejudice one of Sheriff Maddox’s own men responded to a Facebook posting questioning, ‘Would you want everyone to give up on you?’
To this day the truck, which now sits in his parents’ garage, has not been searched, fingerprinted or examined in any way.
That afternoon cadaver dogs were called in to search the area. Douglas recalled: ‘They didn’t start the dogs from where Alfred was last seen. They started them from where they had found a scrap of scrub on barbed wire. That made no sense to me.’
It is clear as the family talk with increased agitation and frustration that tensions between them and Sheriff Maddox were high from the outset.
Lauren said: ‘He was belligerent and rude. He did everything he could to stop us searching.
‘He would shout at us, “I don’t have to be here you know.” “I could be hunting with my family.”’
They claim that family members – Alfred was the fourth of five siblings – and friends came to help the search and were told that the landowner had not given permission and so they could not.
‘He was belligerent and rude. He did everything he could to stop us searching.He would shout at us, “I don’t have to be here you know.” “I could be hunting with my family.”’
- Widow on Sheriff Tom Maddox
In fact, they later learned, the landowner had offered to take people over the worst of the mud leading to the search area in his tractor.
On Monday 11 November, after four days of searching, Maddox called the search off. He told the family his department had ‘exhausted their resources’ and there was ‘no sign of foul play.’
Lauren said: ‘The feeling when I learned they were just stopping was indescribable.’
The family was not the only ones to question the decision to stop looking so soon. Already the case had become the stuff of local gossip and talk – Alfred was a popular, good looking and charismatic young man. His disappearance was never going to go unmarked.
In a breathtaking display of prejudice one of Sheriff Maddox’s own men responded to a Facebook posting questioning, ‘Would you want everyone to give up on you?’
Another among them was why Alfred had taken to wearing body armor beneath his scrubs? Was he afraid of something?
On 22 November they met with Foreman – a highly decorated combat veteran who has run a protection and investigation firm in Texas for more than a decade.
He specializes in missing children cases but said there was something about this case ‘that drew him to it.’
Rosalind recalled: ‘He said, “If he is out there we will find him.”’
Foreman began a controlled grid search unlike the effort the family had witnessed under the auspices of Sabine County Sheriff’s Department.
On the third day of searching they found Alfred.
Even in the height of his distress, Douglas recalled, as he watched over his son’s body that night waiting for law enforcement officers from beyond county lines to come and take him, there were oddities that stood out to him.
'We all noticed it. It just stood out. In some circles a dime has symbolic significance. It can mean you’re a snitch'
- Douglas Wright on silver dime near body
He said: ‘Alfred’s skin was smooth. There wasn’t a scratch on it though our slicker coats were torn from searching in the brush and wood. If he’d run through that county he would have been all torn up too.
‘He was wearing one sock, pulled up like he was going to Sunday school, with his phone stuffed in it and his shoes were clean even though it had been muddy and rainy.’
And then there was the solitary silver dime, glinting on the ground about 15 yards from the body.
Douglas said: ‘We all noticed it. It just stood out. Alfred hated pocket change but besides where would he have had that without his wallet or pants?
‘In some circles a dime has symbolic significance. It can mean you’re a snitch.’
In the absence of any clear answers, questions over the significance of that single dime linger. Had it been dropped by somebody placing Alfred’s body there?
Alfred was found in an area Sheriff Maddox claimed had already been searched. It lay just 192 yards from where the highly trained cadaver dogs had apparently lost his scent, the day after he went missing.
So was his body overlooked or had it just not been there then?
But if the family had hoped for some resolution with the official autopsy carried out on Thursday 28 November they were sorely disappointed.
‘We never spoke about drugs. I never saw him use drugs. But Alfred was a private man in many ways. He kept things to himself'
- Lauren Wright
The medical examiner noted shallow punctures on Alfred’s left side, palm, thigh and abdomen. The young man who worked out three or four times a week had lost 30 per cent of his body weight. His tongue, eyes and an ear were missing.
Two upper front teeth and one lower one was missing, as was the nail on his right index finger. There was a cut across his neck, subsequently attributed to the medical examiner but not noted as a point of entry on the report.
The medical examiner attributed everything to insect and animal activity, stated there were ‘no signs of trauma’ and found the physical exam inconclusive.
That same autopsy also put Alfred’s time of death as three hours after his body was found.
Subsequent toxicology reports found that Alfred’s system was pumped full of cocaine, amphetamines and methamphetamines. Cause of death, ‘Combined Drug Intoxication.’
Foreman has been told that the drug ‘Black Molly’ has been suggested as the cause – a single pill with a powerful cocktail of drugs including heroin.
For Douglas Wright, raised in Mississippi in the sixties, the phrase ‘no sign of trauma’ set in the context of so many other suspicions ‘set off red flags.’
He said: ‘I just thought straight to the three civil rights activists and the State autopsy that said, “no sign of trauma.”
In 1964 activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were murdered by a Klu Klux Klan lynch mob. The murder and the cover up inspired the film Mississippi Burning.
Douglas said: ‘They did a second autopsy and it was in stark contrast with the official one. The pathologist said he had never in all his career seen a body as shattered as Chaney, the black activist, except in a high speed crash.
‘Well we did a second autopsy and that’s what happened with my son.’
That second autopsy, commissioned by the family, was conducted by Dr Leanne Grossberg, a highly respected forensic pathologist based in Houston.
Speaking to MailOnline Dr Grossberg stressed that she cannot make her findings until she has received all the investigative materials she has requested from Sabine and Beaumont District Attorneys – the latter is now overseeing the case.
But even at his stage her assessment is damning of earlier efforts. She said: ‘I have a high index of suspicion for homicide in this case. An autopsy can’t be done in a vacuum and I have to see the photos from the previous autopsy before I can draw my conclusions but I generally know the sort of artifacts and methods employed in an autopsy and there are indications of trauma here.
'Anytime you find a decomposing, partially clothed body, dead in a wood it should be considered a homicide until otherwise proven'
- Pathologist Dr Leanne Grossberg
‘With animal and insect activity often when there is a wound already there it attracts that activity but with missing tissue it can be hard to say.’
She continued: ‘I’m waiting for my own toxicology results and who knows, at this point in my opinion it is a suspicious death and homicide has to be ruled out.’
She added: ‘Anytime you find a decomposing, partially clothed body, dead in a wood it should be considered a homicide until otherwise proven. ‘
But from the very first day of searching Sheriff Maddox repeatedly told family there was no sign of foul play.
Dr Grossberg hopes to receive all the materials she needs to conclude her autopsy within the week.
Alfred’s family hope that it will, once and for all, lay to rest the narrative written by Sheriff Maddox, which has cast Alfred as a drug user who suffered an extreme reaction when using.
But whatever the truth, it will not undo the damage already done. In a town so small that everybody is linked in some way it is easy to see conspiracy and collusion.
The Texan Ranger in charge of the investigation was given his first job in law enforcement by Sheriff Maddox. Does that mean a conflict of interests in a controversial case where the Sheriff’s actions are held up to scrutiny?
The CL&M grocery store is owned by a Sabine County Sheriff Dispatcher. Does that mean she is inherently ‘on the Sheriff’s side’ in a case where only facts not feelings should matter?
And in the town of Jasper the ghosts of hate crimes rise easily. It is a town notorious for the brutal lynching style murder of black man James Byrd in 1998, beaten and dragged three miles behind the truck of his white supremacist killers.
According to Foreman, ‘There’s no good reason for the way this family has been treated.’
As for Alfred’s widow, Lauren, left to raise their two small sons alone what is she to tell them when they ask what happened to ‘Daddy Alfie?’
However awful the reality it is a question she and the rest of this family want, and need, to be answered.
When approached for comment by MailOnline a spokesperson for Sheriff Maddox said: 'he is not at liberty to comment. That is an ongoing investigation that has been turned over to the Attorney General.'
Cindy Maddox was unavailable for comment.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...hroat-slit-Texas-scrubland.html#ixzz2uXFEm01P
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Alfred Wright's body was found half naked and mutilated in woodland 18 days after witnesses claim the 28-year-old 'ran off' from a store after his truck broke down in Hemphill, Texas.
Police called off search after four days and claimed his death was 'classic' behavior of a meth addict. Alfred's family claim the Sheriff said the search was getting in the way of his hunting.
The state autopsy found 'no sign of trauma' on his body from which his tongue, left ear and eyes were missing and his throat cut.
But his devastated family believe the married father-of-three and brother of Savion Wright, American Idol finalist, was victim of a 'hate crime' and are claiming a cover-up.
A second pathologist found 'high index of suspicion of homicide'.
Alfred has been romantically linked daughter of sheriff investigating death. She denies it.
Such is the frenzied climate of suspicion and rumor that even a silver dime found close to Alfred's body has led some, including his family, to believe it was placed there deliberately.
Here, MailOnline investigates this very disturbing death
When he saw the angel wings tattoo inked across his son’s lifeless back, Douglas Wright felt a twist of bitter relief. He had found him.
He turned to see a Sabine County Sheriff’s officer pushing through the small search party to take control of the scene. Rage rising up in him Mr Wright stood in the misting drizzle and blocked the officer’s path.
‘You don’t get to touch him now,’ he said. ‘You don’t get to have him. Y’all gave up on him.’
Today, giving up remains one thing that the Wright family refuse to do as they fight for answers in 28-year-old Alfred Wright’s mysterious disappearance and death.
The older brother of Season 13 American Idol finalist Savion Wright, 21, Alfred was found dead on 25 November 2013 - face down in the Texas mud on the outskirts of the small town of Hemphill.
He had been missing for 18 days.
His clothes and possessions were scattered in nearby brush and snagged on barbed wire fencing.
His left ear was missing, his tongue cut or torn out, his eyes gouged out and his throat slit.
Since then, his family have driven the case beyond their hometown of Jasper where he lived with wife Lauren and their two sons, to national attention.
Amid explosive allegations of racism, hate crime, murder, and cover-up the case has been taken from local law enforcement, Sabine County Sheriff Tom Maddox - who found ‘no foul play’ and branded Alfred a drug casualty - and handed to the Texas Rangers who have called the death ‘questionable.’
The US Department of Justice is keeping a ‘keen eye’ on proceedings and the FBI remains on ‘stand-by’ to assist.
In desperation the family have called in their own private investigator, Chuck Foreman, and without his efforts Alfred would never have been found.
From the very start, Mr Foreman said, ‘This case has been just downright weird. Law enforcement here have lied, they have disregarded code and they have never once expressed condolences to this family.’
Three months after Alfred’s mutilated body was found the case remains riddled with inconsistencies and muddled with wild and competing theories.
Was Alfred’s death foul play? Did this young black married father-of-two get too close to the white Sheriff’s daughter as private investigator Chuck Foreman has been told? Was he the victim of a racially motivated hate crime as his mother asserts?
Was he tortured then dumped in the brush? Or did animals and insects mutilate him, as he lay undiscovered for 18 days?
Was the fitness fanatic with no history of drug abuse gripped by drug-induced psychosis that drove him to his own death as local law enforcement claim? Did the outgoing physical therapist have a secret life – secret relationships and habits – that he kept secret from even his wife?
In an emotional interview with MailOnline, Alfred’s parents and widow told of their anger and pain in their fight for the truth that began with a phone call from Alfred on Thursday 7 November.
'I think this is a hate crime. What they did to my boy, it hurts me so much to think of it'
According to his mother, Rosalind, 54: ‘There are some days I feel I might lose my mind, thinking what was done to him. But the fight keeps me going.
'I think this is a hate crime. What they did to my boy, it hurts me so much to think of it.'
Alfred, who provided homecare, had only recently started seeing patients in Hemphill, which is an hour's drive from Jasper.
Widow Lauren, 28, recalled: ‘He’d been having trouble with his truck that week. It broke down on Tuesday and he’d changed the alternator.’
The next evening, Lauren recalled, her husband wasn’t quite himself. She said: ‘It was almost like he was paranoid or something. I told him he needed to eat something and go to bed but it was like he couldn’t turn his mind off. He couldn’t settle.’
She put it from her mind, assuming that he was stressed about his truck given that he was making the trip to Hemphill the following day.
Lauren said: ‘He left for work at around 7.45am that morning and he called around 5.15pm to say the truck was running hot and he’d pulled up at CL&M Grocery.’
Both the couple’s sons Kingston, 4, and Kason, 2, were sick at home so instead of driving out to get Alfred, she called his mother. Rosalind and Douglas set out to meet their son.
<iframe frameborder="0" width="698" height="503" scrolling="no" id="molvideoplayer" title="MailOnline Embed Player" src="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/embed/video/1083999.html" ></iframe>
As Rosalind and her husband Douglas, 60, drove to meet their son, Lauren recalled: ‘At around 6.05pm I called Alfred to let him know his parents were on the way.
‘But all I could hear was heavy breathing, real heavy and I knew right then the urgency, that something was wrong.
‘I was asking him, are you mad? Are you trying to fix your truck? Can you hear me? But there was nothing only the breathing.’
According to the clerk serving at CL&M that day Alfred stayed outside talking on his cell, leaning against a wrought iron post out front and drinking from a bottle.
There is a clear view from the register at CL&M out to the large forecourt where there were once gas pumps.
The clerk estimated that Alfred was there for almost an hour, before suddenly taking off about 20 minutes before his parents arrived.
Rosalind said: ‘She said she saw Alfie put his phone in his sock, back away and then run down the road like his truck was about to explode. She said she’d never seen anything like it.’
It made no sense. They drove down the road towards town thinking they might catch him up en route.
They drove back to the CL&M store with increasingly anxious hearts thinking he might return.
Rosalind recalled: ‘We sat there a few minutes and I said, “We need to get the Sheriff.”’
All the while Alfred’s truck was where he had left it, barely pulled off the road as though it had limped into over the lip of the forecourt before giving out.
'All I could hear was heavy breathing, real heavy and I knew right then the urgency, that something was wrong'
- Lauren Wright
Rosalind said: ‘It was just like my baby just disappeared off the face of the earth.’
The nightmare was set in motion.
The family said they asked the Deputy who came out to the store to ‘ping’ Alfred’s phone – a way of tracing its location. But they were told that was not possible without probable cause of foul play.
They suggested footage from the security camera trained on the store’s forecourt would clarify what had happened but were initially told there was no film in the camera and subsequently that the camera was broken. It has since been removed.
There seemed nothing they could do that night but wait.
The following day Sheriff Tom Maddox’s men searched the area and found pieces of the surgical scrubs Alfred had been wearing, his ID pack and wallet, a shoe, a sock and his watch.
Lauren recalled how she and her mother-in-law were waiting at the store when Mr Christian, the rancher on whose land Alfred’s body was ultimately found, approached the Sheriff carrying a watch
She said: ‘He said he had found it on his cattle grid. It was Alfred’s watch. Alfred had a fetish for watches; if he had money he’d buy a watch. He’d never have just taken it off.’
According to Rosalind: ‘That’s when the Sheriff started saying this was “a classic drugs case.” He suggested that scenario from the first day – just out of nowhere but that’s what he stuck with.’
Alfred’s father, Douglas said: ‘The Sheriff took me aside one day we were searching and said “This is what meth does. It’s classic. It makes your body temperature rise so you just want to rip off all your clothes and run.”’
Today the family is quite clear that, with no cause, no history of drug taking, no paraphernalia or anything to suggest Alfred had taken anything the assumption that this was ‘a drugs case’ was drawn from prejudice.
Alfred was an ambitious young man. He had graduated magna cum laude from the University of Mary Harden Baylor, in 2012. He was a loving husband and responsible father who also cared for Kamryn, 8, his son from a previous relationship. He wasn’t a drug abuser, the family claims.
That very evening he had shown his usual conscientious nature as, Lauren revealed, ‘Some time between his parents setting out and him taking off Alfred called the patient he was going to see and told them he was having trouble with his truck and would be late but that he would be there.
‘He had every intention of carrying on and keeping that appointment.’
On Friday 8 November a warrant was issued allowing officers to search Alfred’s truck but they never did. Lauren had opened the door, an act that, the family were told had ‘contaminated’ it. Instead she was told to move it out of the way of customers.
To this day the truck, which now sits in his parents’ garage, has not been searched, fingerprinted or examined in any way.
That afternoon cadaver dogs were called in to search the area. Douglas recalled: ‘They didn’t start the dogs from where Alfred was last seen. They started them from where they had found a scrap of scrub on barbed wire. That made no sense to me.’
It is clear as the family talk with increased agitation and frustration that tensions between them and Sheriff Maddox were high from the outset.
Lauren said: ‘He was belligerent and rude. He did everything he could to stop us searching.
‘He would shout at us, “I don’t have to be here you know.” “I could be hunting with my family.”’
They claim that family members – Alfred was the fourth of five siblings – and friends came to help the search and were told that the landowner had not given permission and so they could not.
‘He was belligerent and rude. He did everything he could to stop us searching.He would shout at us, “I don’t have to be here you know.” “I could be hunting with my family.”’
- Widow on Sheriff Tom Maddox
In fact, they later learned, the landowner had offered to take people over the worst of the mud leading to the search area in his tractor.
On Monday 11 November, after four days of searching, Maddox called the search off. He told the family his department had ‘exhausted their resources’ and there was ‘no sign of foul play.’
Lauren said: ‘The feeling when I learned they were just stopping was indescribable.’
The family was not the only ones to question the decision to stop looking so soon. Already the case had become the stuff of local gossip and talk – Alfred was a popular, good looking and charismatic young man. His disappearance was never going to go unmarked.
In a breathtaking display of prejudice one of Sheriff Maddox’s own men responded to a Facebook posting questioning, ‘Would you want everyone to give up on you?’
To this day the truck, which now sits in his parents’ garage, has not been searched, fingerprinted or examined in any way.
That afternoon cadaver dogs were called in to search the area. Douglas recalled: ‘They didn’t start the dogs from where Alfred was last seen. They started them from where they had found a scrap of scrub on barbed wire. That made no sense to me.’
It is clear as the family talk with increased agitation and frustration that tensions between them and Sheriff Maddox were high from the outset.
Lauren said: ‘He was belligerent and rude. He did everything he could to stop us searching.
‘He would shout at us, “I don’t have to be here you know.” “I could be hunting with my family.”’
They claim that family members – Alfred was the fourth of five siblings – and friends came to help the search and were told that the landowner had not given permission and so they could not.
‘He was belligerent and rude. He did everything he could to stop us searching.He would shout at us, “I don’t have to be here you know.” “I could be hunting with my family.”’
- Widow on Sheriff Tom Maddox
In fact, they later learned, the landowner had offered to take people over the worst of the mud leading to the search area in his tractor.
On Monday 11 November, after four days of searching, Maddox called the search off. He told the family his department had ‘exhausted their resources’ and there was ‘no sign of foul play.’
Lauren said: ‘The feeling when I learned they were just stopping was indescribable.’
The family was not the only ones to question the decision to stop looking so soon. Already the case had become the stuff of local gossip and talk – Alfred was a popular, good looking and charismatic young man. His disappearance was never going to go unmarked.
In a breathtaking display of prejudice one of Sheriff Maddox’s own men responded to a Facebook posting questioning, ‘Would you want everyone to give up on you?’
Another among them was why Alfred had taken to wearing body armor beneath his scrubs? Was he afraid of something?
On 22 November they met with Foreman – a highly decorated combat veteran who has run a protection and investigation firm in Texas for more than a decade.
He specializes in missing children cases but said there was something about this case ‘that drew him to it.’
Rosalind recalled: ‘He said, “If he is out there we will find him.”’
Foreman began a controlled grid search unlike the effort the family had witnessed under the auspices of Sabine County Sheriff’s Department.
On the third day of searching they found Alfred.
Even in the height of his distress, Douglas recalled, as he watched over his son’s body that night waiting for law enforcement officers from beyond county lines to come and take him, there were oddities that stood out to him.
'We all noticed it. It just stood out. In some circles a dime has symbolic significance. It can mean you’re a snitch'
- Douglas Wright on silver dime near body
He said: ‘Alfred’s skin was smooth. There wasn’t a scratch on it though our slicker coats were torn from searching in the brush and wood. If he’d run through that county he would have been all torn up too.
‘He was wearing one sock, pulled up like he was going to Sunday school, with his phone stuffed in it and his shoes were clean even though it had been muddy and rainy.’
And then there was the solitary silver dime, glinting on the ground about 15 yards from the body.
Douglas said: ‘We all noticed it. It just stood out. Alfred hated pocket change but besides where would he have had that without his wallet or pants?
‘In some circles a dime has symbolic significance. It can mean you’re a snitch.’
In the absence of any clear answers, questions over the significance of that single dime linger. Had it been dropped by somebody placing Alfred’s body there?
Alfred was found in an area Sheriff Maddox claimed had already been searched. It lay just 192 yards from where the highly trained cadaver dogs had apparently lost his scent, the day after he went missing.
So was his body overlooked or had it just not been there then?
But if the family had hoped for some resolution with the official autopsy carried out on Thursday 28 November they were sorely disappointed.
‘We never spoke about drugs. I never saw him use drugs. But Alfred was a private man in many ways. He kept things to himself'
- Lauren Wright
The medical examiner noted shallow punctures on Alfred’s left side, palm, thigh and abdomen. The young man who worked out three or four times a week had lost 30 per cent of his body weight. His tongue, eyes and an ear were missing.
Two upper front teeth and one lower one was missing, as was the nail on his right index finger. There was a cut across his neck, subsequently attributed to the medical examiner but not noted as a point of entry on the report.
The medical examiner attributed everything to insect and animal activity, stated there were ‘no signs of trauma’ and found the physical exam inconclusive.
That same autopsy also put Alfred’s time of death as three hours after his body was found.
Subsequent toxicology reports found that Alfred’s system was pumped full of cocaine, amphetamines and methamphetamines. Cause of death, ‘Combined Drug Intoxication.’
Foreman has been told that the drug ‘Black Molly’ has been suggested as the cause – a single pill with a powerful cocktail of drugs including heroin.
For Douglas Wright, raised in Mississippi in the sixties, the phrase ‘no sign of trauma’ set in the context of so many other suspicions ‘set off red flags.’
He said: ‘I just thought straight to the three civil rights activists and the State autopsy that said, “no sign of trauma.”
In 1964 activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were murdered by a Klu Klux Klan lynch mob. The murder and the cover up inspired the film Mississippi Burning.
Douglas said: ‘They did a second autopsy and it was in stark contrast with the official one. The pathologist said he had never in all his career seen a body as shattered as Chaney, the black activist, except in a high speed crash.
‘Well we did a second autopsy and that’s what happened with my son.’
That second autopsy, commissioned by the family, was conducted by Dr Leanne Grossberg, a highly respected forensic pathologist based in Houston.
Speaking to MailOnline Dr Grossberg stressed that she cannot make her findings until she has received all the investigative materials she has requested from Sabine and Beaumont District Attorneys – the latter is now overseeing the case.
But even at his stage her assessment is damning of earlier efforts. She said: ‘I have a high index of suspicion for homicide in this case. An autopsy can’t be done in a vacuum and I have to see the photos from the previous autopsy before I can draw my conclusions but I generally know the sort of artifacts and methods employed in an autopsy and there are indications of trauma here.
'Anytime you find a decomposing, partially clothed body, dead in a wood it should be considered a homicide until otherwise proven'
- Pathologist Dr Leanne Grossberg
‘With animal and insect activity often when there is a wound already there it attracts that activity but with missing tissue it can be hard to say.’
She continued: ‘I’m waiting for my own toxicology results and who knows, at this point in my opinion it is a suspicious death and homicide has to be ruled out.’
She added: ‘Anytime you find a decomposing, partially clothed body, dead in a wood it should be considered a homicide until otherwise proven. ‘
But from the very first day of searching Sheriff Maddox repeatedly told family there was no sign of foul play.
Dr Grossberg hopes to receive all the materials she needs to conclude her autopsy within the week.
Alfred’s family hope that it will, once and for all, lay to rest the narrative written by Sheriff Maddox, which has cast Alfred as a drug user who suffered an extreme reaction when using.
But whatever the truth, it will not undo the damage already done. In a town so small that everybody is linked in some way it is easy to see conspiracy and collusion.
The Texan Ranger in charge of the investigation was given his first job in law enforcement by Sheriff Maddox. Does that mean a conflict of interests in a controversial case where the Sheriff’s actions are held up to scrutiny?
The CL&M grocery store is owned by a Sabine County Sheriff Dispatcher. Does that mean she is inherently ‘on the Sheriff’s side’ in a case where only facts not feelings should matter?
And in the town of Jasper the ghosts of hate crimes rise easily. It is a town notorious for the brutal lynching style murder of black man James Byrd in 1998, beaten and dragged three miles behind the truck of his white supremacist killers.
According to Foreman, ‘There’s no good reason for the way this family has been treated.’
As for Alfred’s widow, Lauren, left to raise their two small sons alone what is she to tell them when they ask what happened to ‘Daddy Alfie?’
However awful the reality it is a question she and the rest of this family want, and need, to be answered.
When approached for comment by MailOnline a spokesperson for Sheriff Maddox said: 'he is not at liberty to comment. That is an ongoing investigation that has been turned over to the Attorney General.'
Cindy Maddox was unavailable for comment.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...hroat-slit-Texas-scrubland.html#ixzz2uXFEm01P
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
