Suzy and Rick Wamsley were a well-liked couple in their mid-40s. They lived a comfortable, upper-middle-class life, and didn’t seem to have any enemies. But in the wee hours of December 11, 2003, just days after they’d hung holiday decorations around the home they’d lived in for 10 years, the unthinkable happened. Police, responding to a hang-up 911 call, found the home’s garage door, and the door leading from garage into the house, standing wide open. The scene inside was awful, writes the Dallas Observer in a detailed piece published in July 2004:
Suzy was lying on the living-room couch. The attackers had shot her in the left ear with a large-caliber weapon, according to an autopsy report, and then stabbed her at least 18 times in the chest and neck.
Rick 6-foot-1 and 240 pounds, wearing only boxer shorts had been shot in the face and back and stabbed numerous times. Police found two sets of bloody shoeprints throughout the living room, dining room and entryway. There was no sign of forced entry, and nothing appeared to be missing.
In April 2004, law enforcement arrested a 19-year-old high school student named Susana Toledano after DNA tests determined Rick Wamsley held a clump of her hair in his lifeless hand. Once they had Toledano, the cops nabbed her best friend Chelsea Richardson, 20, and Richardson’s boyfriend, Andrew Wamsley, 19 Rick and Suzy’s youngest child. Also arrested was 24-year-old Hilario Cardenas, who was the night manager of a nearby IHOP that served as an after-hours hangout for the group.
But the stakes were higher than that, owing to the $1.56 million Andrew stood to inherit from his parents’ untimely demise.
Of course, he’d only get the money if he could get away with murder, and that didn’t happen. As Mansfield Detective Ralph Standefer told the Dallas Observer before the 2005 trial, the motive was crystal clear:
The twist in the case, though, was that the jury decided Chelsea Richardson not the son of the victims was the “murder mastermind.”
Cardenas, whose connection to the crime (other than facilitating the venue to plan it) was that he’d supplied the gun that became the murder weapon, was conviced of conspiracy to commit capital murder, and given a 50-year sentance.
Andrew Wamsley refused a plea deal, was convicted of murder, and got a life sentence. Richardson also refused a plea deal and was convicted of murder but despite her age, and the fact she’d never been arrested before, she received the death penalty.
She became one of 10 women on Texas’ death row.
Actual Mugshot of Susana Toledano
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