Virginia Hyatt

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She was the queen of the Tex Arcana dance circuit.

Her husband, he was the caller.

She was like the bell of the ball.

All of the men just were head over heels in love with her.

I loved her today.

She was fun to be around.

But was someone in Texarkana looking for a new partner?

We're in the Bible Belt.

It's not looked kindly upon people having extramarital affairs.

We see that he's getting divorce papers.

He's getting them served to his wife.

When her body is discovered in a pool of blood, rumors spread through this tight-knit community.

This person wanted her dead and they wanted her dead bad.

It was a terrible save.

You know, who would do this?

She wanted to leave $10,000 to each of them.

It was pretty suspicious circumstances.

Something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.

December 3rd, 2013, 5.30 p.m.

The sun has already set in Texarkana, Arkansas, when Barbara Ricketts and Phyllis Neighbors arrive at the home of their friend, 59-year-old 59-year-old widow Patty Wheelington.

At three o'clock, she was supposed to be taking her friend to the doctor and she did not show up.

Nobody could find Patty.

We kept calling, leaving messages.

She never returned anybody's call.

So around 5 o'clock, we get concerned about her.

And we're going to get to the bottom of it.

I told Barbara to come and get me.

I thought it'd be better if we go out there together.

So she came and picked me up.

So we went out to the house.

All the lights were on.

Eventually, we got out of the car and went up to the porcelain.

It just looked like a rug at the front door.

It was kind of dark until we really realized that that was her.

Patty was dead.

She was laying right at the front door.

She was so cold and swollen.

I knew she had been there for a while and there was not going to be any reviving her.

The only thing I needed to do is call 911.

I was in a state of shock.

There's nothing we can do for her.

She's passed away.

Patty Ann Phillips was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on November 2nd, 1954.

Beautiful and charismatic, Patty always had a way with people.

Oh, she was fabulous.

She had shorter hair and it was silky.

It was shiny.

And she had these happy eyes and always smiling.

Patty was just a beautiful, giving person

with a personality.

She could do anything.

She never met a stranger.

After studying at the University of Delaware and then Texas A A ⁇ M University, Patty took a job at the Department of Human Services in the city of Texarkana, Arkansas.

It does have that small town feel and you pretty much, you don't know everybody, but you know somebody who knows somebody and you know each other that way.

Patty worked with senior citizens in the community where the vivacious 35-year-old woman caught the eye of 59-year-old Korean War veteran and successful sales manager Ray Wheelington.

I think that Ray did very well for himself in business.

He had a very nice house.

Patty was attractive.

And a lot of times, as men grow older, they kind of like the attention of younger women.

And Patty, she was really sweet.

She was extremely flirty.

After a brief courtship, the couple married on December 29th, 1989.

Although a northerner by birth, Patty embraced life as a southern lady, even taking on one of Ray's more unusual hobbies, square dancing.

Everybody's like a family, doesn't cost much, and you get a free meal.

And I just loved it.

If you love it, you love it, and you will be there every week.

It's what they identify with is they are square dancers.

That's what they do.

That's what they are.

I just remember that it was a lifestyle.

Patty and Ray joined a hundred-person strong square dancing club known as the Guys and Dolls, and the weekly dance quickly became the very center of the couple's social calendar.

Ray, he was the caller.

He got up there so she was like the belle of the ball.

She would walk around and visit and talk and make sure everyone was comfortable.

Ray and Patty was so friendly and their house was like open to just everybody.

We would have big cookouts at their house.

Ray and Patty's house was the club's de facto headquarters until tragedy struck in 2009.

There was a fire, and that fire, you know, ravaged that home.

When Ray and Patty decided to rebuild, they turned to one of their closest square dancing friends to oversee the project, James Hyatt.

Ray and Patty knew James from the Guys and Dolls Club, and they hired him to rebuild their house.

They rebuilt the home.

It was nice and pretty extravagant home.

James's friendship with the Wheelingtons just really blossomed.

Even after James finished the last coat of paint, the Wheelingtons stayed close with James and his wife, Virginia.

They were fairly tight-knit.

They went out to dinner together.

They went to movies, you know, a little couple dates and stuff like that.

We played cards two or three times a week.

Virginia was a very good card partner.

Fun to be around.

They were always together all the time.

In 2010, the Wheelingtons' marriage was thriving in their new home until Ray's health suddenly began to deteriorate.

And in 2011, he was diagnosed with dementia at 81 years old.

His health was declining.

He could no longer be at the club and he could no longer do the calls at the club.

Patty had been working with

senior citizens with the Department of Human Services, but Ray got so bad at home that she worried so much about Ray that she gave that job up to stay home with him.

And he did not last very long after she quit her job.

On November 10th, 2012, Ray passed away, leaving Patty a widow at only 58.

With her husband of 22 years gone, Patty filled her days with square dancing and volunteer work.

They had no kids.

He was her world.

When Ray passed away, Patty got really close to the rest of us dancers because Patty didn't have anyone.

She

took people to their doctor's appointments and she helped people with their medication and helped them get the groceries they needed.

After nearly a year of mourning, Patty was ready to start the next chapter of her life.

She was vivacious and bubbly and maybe a few years younger than some of the other dancers.

All of the men just were head over heels in love with her.

Sadly, Patty would never get the chance to find her late-in-life love.

On December 3rd, 2013, Patty's friends Barbara Ricketts and Phyllis Neighbors, are beside themselves when they discover her lifeless body.

They discovered Patty on the front porch, and then they called us.

When officers arrive on the scene, they are met by Patty's shaken friends, who gesture towards the gruesome scene on her porch.

As officers approach, their flashlights illuminate Patty Wheelington's cause of death.

They went and checked on the body.

Patty Wheelington was shot five times.

She was clearly deceased.

Coming up, investigators pieced together a surprising list of suspects.

She knew this person.

Definitely.

Without a doubt, she knew the person.

And a shocking discovery suggests Patty wasn't the only thing this calculated killer was after.

Patty had a lot of money and no heirs.

When you start looking, there are some huge red flags with several people.

For 59-year-old widow Patty Wheelington, December 2013 was the time for her second act.

She relied heavily on her friends, her close group of friends, and eventually started getting out again.

She was ready to make a change.

But on December 3rd, 2013, investigators are standing on Patty's front porch wondering who shot her five times.

I think we were surprised when we started looking into this case and we started seeing the age of the victim.

It was really kind of eerie because you don't know why this is happening out there.

It's not our typical homicide.

Later in life, you don't, around here, we don't really have those types of crimes or murders.

You know, ours are usually, unfortunately, younger people.

This was an affluent person in a nice neighborhood, and that kind of sent a message out to the community that this could happen to anybody.

As detectives begin their investigation, It's clear the two women who found Patty are in no condition to interview.

Both of them appeared to me to be shocked.

It's like they couldn't believe what had taken place.

While Patty's friends collect themselves before further questioning, a team of investigators turns its attention to the crime scene.

Ms.

Wheelington is laying right there at the entrance to the doorway.

She was in a position where she was clutching her chest with one hand.

and then her right hand was laid out with a cigarette still in her fingers.

She had a bullet wound kind of right of the spleen.

She had one in the top of her right breast.

She had another one towards the bottom of her right breast.

She had a through and through on the right forearm.

Then she had one in the back that came through the back and through the through the side.

So she was hit five times.

I know that it was relatively close range because our victim had stifling on her face.

You're usually not shot that many times.

It seemed at close range.

It was very determined.

There was anger in it.

This person wanted her dead, wanted her dead bad.

Rig Mortis had set in, and you could tell that she'd been there pretty much all day long.

This is not someone who was involved in dangerous illegal activity.

This is someone who was sitting on their front porch drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette, like she did often.

From the table you can see a blood trail.

Along with the blood trail we found bullet strikes.

I had a bullet hole that was in the back of the chair and I traced that bullet hole through the back of the chair and into the bedroom window.

I believe it was a 38.

It's clear she was trying to get away.

and was continuously hit with bullets from every direction.

And I could tell that there were six shots fired, a minimum of six shots fired, which is kind of consistent with a revolver, six-shot revolver.

And we have no casings, that's a pretty good indication that it's a revolver.

To detectives, this crime seems personal.

If it was a stranger coming up your driveway and you were sitting on your porch in your bathrobe, you'd probably get up really quickly and run inside and put on something a little more appropriate.

It was not the type thing where it was a spur-of-the-moment thing and someone's emotion just got out of hand.

Somebody went there with the intention to kill her.

As CSI worked to comb Patty's home for clues, detectives canvassed the neighborhood.

Patty Willington lived in a somewhat remote area.

It was still in town, but it was in a neighborhood where the houses sit on large multi-acre lots.

You're thinking there's not going to be anybody that witnessed this more than likely.

So you're trying to run through mine.

I hope we can find somebody, some way to solve this one.

Luckily, a few neighbors claim to have heard a commotion that morning.

We had numerous individuals around the home who heard gunshots around 8 o'clock that morning, and they all described pretty much the same thing.

Four or five gunshots, I believe they're like almost one second apart, just bam, bam, bam.

They thought nothing of it because it wasn't unusual for folks around there to fire a couple of rounds into the air to get the geese out of their garden or the deer off their lawn.

Meanwhile, CSI has begun processing the inside of Patty Wheelington's home for evidence.

The one thing I remember about the house is everything was in place.

It was very clean.

It was nothing was ransacked.

I am totally confident that once the victim was killed, nobody entered that house.

We couldn't see anything that had been taken.

We were able to rule out a robbery very shortly.

The only thing that catches detectives' attention inside the home is a pile of papers on the kitchen counter.

There was a receipt that was laying on the countertop, and this receipt

was from a locksmith company who had just changed her locks locks the day before.

That's something that

of course drew our attention because

most people don't just randomly change their door locks.

You're kind of thinking why is all of a sudden she getting her locks changed on the house?

She could be saying there's someone I'm afraid of.

She was definitely saying there's somebody I don't want in my house.

The other papers on the counter are documents concerning Patty's life insurance policy, which lists a number of beneficiaries.

When Ray Willington passed away, he left Patty a lot of money and no heirs.

So Patty left money in her will, help local organizations.

She also left money in her will to these members of the Guys and Dolls Club.

Two familiar friends appear in the life insurance policy.

Barbara Ricketts and Phyllis Neighbors.

The women who found Patty's body.

The revelation forces police to consider the possibility that Patty's seemingly concerned friends are actually her killers.

They had to, you know, check us all out and make sure we weren't the ones that killed Patty.

Coming up, had money driven a wedge between old friends?

They all got a substantial amount of money after her death.

Or is there a darker motive at play?

They believed that there was an affair going on.

If someone is reluctant to sit down for an interview, it does raise suspicion.

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Detectives in Texarkana, Arkansas, have just discovered the life insurance policy of Patty Wheelington listed two beneficiaries very close to the case: Barbara Ricketts and Phyllis Neighbors, the women who claimed to have discovered Patty's body hours earlier.

They all got a substantial amount of money from her after her death.

She was a wealthy person and the members of the dance community were in her will.

She wanted to leave $10,000 to each of them.

It was pretty suspicious circumstances.

That evening, detectives separately interview both women.

Barbara and Phyllis Phyllis say they were contacted earlier that day by a mutual friend and fellow square dancer, 80-year-old Ken Codwell.

Ken Caldwell called us, told us that he

was not getting picked up by Patty to take him to the doctor, and he got worried and that's how we got out to see about her around five o'clock that afternoon.

Detectives asked the two women if they knew that Patty had left them money in her will.

After Ray had passed away, she had a $100,000 policy and she said, y'all are the only family I have and I'm gonna split this up.

And I said, oh yeah, that's really cool.

Patty, you're younger than all of us.

We're gonna be dead.

So, you know, we're not gonna ever see this money.

But she insisted.

Investigators grill both women to find out how far they would go to receive their cuts of Patty's life insurance payout.

They had to interrogate us like we could have murdered her to get our $20,000.

Well, that was a joke.

Barbara says she was with family all afternoon, and Phyllis claims that she and her friend had spent the day together.

There was no one in this world that would ever hurt Pat.

There's no one in this world that was angry enough to kill Pat.

No one.

Her friends would tell us everyone

that knew Patty

loved Patty.

She just warmed warmed up to anybody.

She talked to anybody, and she usually made good friends.

Phyllis and Barbara tell police that Patty hadn't settled on a new beau yet, but there were ugly rumors circulating around the square dancing club.

There were rumors even before

Ray died that Patty was seeing someone.

Phyllis says that James Hyatt, a contractor who was married to another square dancer, Virginia Hyatt, had been close to Patty and her late husband, Ray.

This life insurance policy.

James and Virginia and me and Harvey and Barbara, there was a lot of trust there, obviously, because both Ray and Patty named James as executor of their wills.

After Ray passed away, James was there to help Patty around the house, fix things that needed to be fixed.

Even if Patty wasn't fair, he had a kid, he could go in, he could fix things.

There's a lot of the women that were jealous because Patty was flirty.

And of course, they believed that there was an affair going on.

The ones that were closest to Patty is the ones that did not believe it.

Although they dismissed the gossip, Phyllis and Barbara admit that Patty and James's behavior had recently added fuel to the rumor mill.

There was a time right before Patty was murdered that her and James went out of town at the same time.

All of a sudden, James goes out of town, Patty's out of town, and

then James sends divorce papers to Virginia.

Phyllis says when Virginia Hyatt received those papers just days before the murder, she immediately called her.

Virginia Hyatt called me on Friday, just in tears and crying and said James had left her.

She was just distraught.

He leaves Virginia and left her high and dry.

41 or 42 years, I think they were married.

No children, no family, nothing.

The women say the square dancing club buzzed with the news that James and Patty had run off together.

But even though James hadn't come back to town, Patty had returned alone on December 2nd.

She had been out of town.

She had gone to Louisiana, but it just so happened that this was at the same time.

From the outside looking in,

that looked extremely suspicious.

When she checked in with Virginia on December 3rd, Phyllis says that her friend had made peace with her divorce.

She went from desperate and angry to calm and relaxed and,

you know, happy outlook on life everything's gonna be good from here on out

I thought all right we're on our way to recovery still James's whereabouts remain a mystery James is gone this is highly suspicious

After striking Phyllis and Barbara from the suspect list, investigators are able to reach James Hyatt on his cell phone.

He tells police that friends have already informed him about Patty's tragic death.

I believe it was Phyllis' neighbors who called and told him Patty had been murdered.

He needed to get back there.

James had gone to Florida where his sister lived and was spending time there.

Detectives questioned James about his relationship with Patty.

They spent time together.

They were close.

They talked to each other every day.

James did admit that.

James basically denied all things about a sexual relationship pattern.

He wasn't very cooperative really.

He didn't want to talk to us.

He wanted to talk to a sergeant.

He didn't care to talk to a lonely detective.

He wanted to talk to somebody of rank.

I don't recall him really offering a whole lot of anything that was other than what we specifically asked.

James agrees to come in for a formal interview when he returns to Texarkana.

While detectives wait for his return, they ping James's cell phone.

We can see where he traveled, the route he took, and what time he was traveling.

So we knew he was well away from the area when Patty was killed.

We thought maybe James was involved in this, and then we find out James was in Florida, and James had left on Friday, right after Thanksgiving.

And so he couldn't be involved in it.

And yet, James's earlier demeanor on the phone doesn't exactly dispel detectives' concerns.

If you're a friend of someone and your friend has been killed, you should be willing to jump through hoops or whatever we ask you to do if it helps us get to the person who killed your friend.

One of the things that we dealt with was trying to establish a motive that he would have to try to cause harm to Patty.

He was in her will as the executor of her estate.

And we learned that, you know, he was mentioned in her life insurance policy.

She has substantial estate, substantial money going to be coming to him when she passes.

We don't believe in coincidence.

You know, things happen for a reason, and we see that he's getting divorce papers.

He's getting them served to his wife the same day that Patty had the locks changed.

With James out of town, investigators shift their focus and decide to sit down with 80-year-old Ken Codwell, the man who first raised the alarm about Patty's disappearance.

Ken Caldwell definitely was sweet on Patty.

He relied on Patty to get him to his doctor's appointments and help getting his medication and groceries and things of that nature.

They had a special relationship.

He liked her and enjoyed talking to her, and talked to her every morning.

Ken tells police that on December 3rd, he and Patty were chatting on the phone around 8 a.m.

just like they always did.

But Ken says that morning, their call was interrupted.

She just said, Virginia's here again.

I'll call you back.

And then hung up and you.

That was the last

anybody ever talked to Patty.

Coming up, a killer's true colors are exposed.

She was presented as this crazy person who was jealous.

She is literally just, you know, weeping, wailing, gnashing teeth.

It's hard for me to imagine a grown man being that scared of his wife.

After dissecting the rumors swirling around the Tex Arcana Square Dance Circuit, investigators have reason to believe there was bad blood between their victim, Patty Wheelington, and her friend, Virginia Hyatt.

Virginia had assumed, and perhaps correctly, that James was leaving her for Patty Wellington and had discovered that her husband was filing for divorce.

According to Patty's friend Ken Codwell, Virginia knew about the rumors surrounding her husband and Patty's relationship.

And when she learned of her husband's intent to divorce her just days before Patty's murder, she did not take it well.

The last time that we were at Patty's, Virginia was mad and upset with her.

She was just rude and ugly.

She made some disparaging comments about Patty

and saying that Patty was flirtatious.

She was always flirting with all of the men.

I think everyone was kind of dismissive of it and rolling their eyes and, you know, kind of, you know, isn't Virginia crazy?

so when patty said on their phone call that morning that virginia had pulled up to visit ken tells police he was immediately wary she'd been talking to ken caldwell and as he was talking to her that morning virginia hyatt came to the house and she told ken i'll call you back later virginia's at my house again and so she hung up with him mr caldwell was concerned the minute he got off the phone with her because He was already concerned about Virginia Hyatt's behavior.

Just further fueled his anxiousness and worry that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.

It was right around 8 o'clock, 8 o'clock in the morning, which is the time that we were able to get from the neighbors that the shots were fired.

So that really led the detectives to suspect that they had a pretty clear, identifiable suspect in Virginia Hyatt.

We secured a warrant for her arrest.

At 2 a.m.

on December 4th, nearly 24 hours after Patty Wheelington was murdered, officers arrive at Virginia's modest Texarkana home.

We take her into custody, put her in handcuffs, put her in a patrol car.

You feel sorry for her.

And you're like, I don't know.

You start maybe guessing yourself going, could she really be the one to do this?

At the station, detectives ask Virginia about her relationship with Patty Wheelington, her husband's alleged mistress.

Virginia knew about the affair.

She described Patty as friends.

Though I believe she tried to conceal it, she held resentment for Patty.

She was upset because James left her and she couldn't believe that he would do that after all those years.

But Virginia says that she's made peace with the end of her marriage.

Virginia gave the appearance that she had accepted things as far as James filing for divorce.

She never gave us the appearance that she was the distraught person

that we believed that she was.

She's telling us that she would never, never do anything to Patty.

Virginia says that 80-year-old Ken Codwell must have made a mistake when he said she was at Patty's home that morning.

I think he was back out there Tuesday morning because you didn't learn that you thought James was still out there.

No, I didn't back today.

I couldn't see how daddy could make it matter there, but I don't think you're being completely honest with me.

Yeah, I am, because somebody identified you going out there.

And you're saying you didn't go out there, but they're saying you did.

She told us that she'd gotten up

at about eight o'clock, and she went to McDonald's.

Then she went to the nursing home and visited her mother.

And you took her up to your mother at the nursing home?

Well, what time was that?

Let's beat us.

We need to go slow.

What time was it?

It had to be slow for the Penny T.

We need to get 25.

Eight o'clock in the morning.

She had been at McDonald's getting food for her mother and then spending time with her at the nursing home.

If she's there at eight o'clock, it's going to be impossible for her to kill Patty at eight o'clock.

We ended our interview with her.

She was taken up to the jail where she was booked in,

and

we go about starting to try to investigate her story.

Detectives start by subpoenaing Patty, Virginia, and James's phone records.

As we had Patty's phone analyzed,

we were able to discover that there were some voicemails that were left from Virginia to Patty.

Patty,

please, please give me my husband back.

Please give me my husband back.

Please, this is horrible.

I need my husband back.

You can get you any meeting in the street anywhere, please.

No, no, make everybody.

She is literally just, you know, weeping, wailing.

She's just trying to talk and sob at the same time, and it's just unintelligible.

definitely supported the motive that we knew was there for Virginia to have killed Patty.

Virginia's voicemails aren't the only big break that come from the cell phone sweep.

They found out that James had two cell phones.

He's too old to be a drug dealer and he shouldn't have two phones.

I was like, okay, this is highly suspicious.

I was very bothered by it.

When detectives retrieve the calls and messages from the phone, it turns out James had used it to contact just one person, Patty Wheelington.

He didn't want Virginia to be aware that he was making phone calls to and from.

It was obvious by the information in the phone that they were more than just friends.

Virginia was presented by all the members of the Guys and Dolls Club as this crazy person who was jealous for no reason.

But it turns out she was jealous for good reason.

After detectives finish combing through cell phone records, James arrives at the station for his scheduled interview.

We set him down, we said, look,

here's what we have.

You need to be honest.

It's very important for you to be honest.

And so he admitted that, yes, they did have an affair.

He wanted to protect Patty's reputation.

In Texarkana, this is a small town.

We're in the Bible Belt.

It's not looked kindly upon people having extramarital affairs.

According to James, the affair began in 2009, shortly after he finished rebuilding the Wheelingtons home.

She and James struck up a romantic relationship before Ray's death, but during a period of time when Ray didn't really know who

people were,

it's not surprising that she would have sought solace in, you know, somebody really close to her.

I felt dumb that I didn't know, you know, it's right in front of your face and you can't see it.

According to James, his relationship with Virginia had been on the rocks for years.

He said they had separate bedrooms for the past 10 years.

They were not closed.

After I thought about it, I don't think him and Virginia had any kind of a relationship outside of dance partner.

She's not as attractive as Patty.

Her and James don't have any children.

They don't have anything really holding them together anymore.

James says the situation worsened when Virginia learned of the affair.

The older she got, the more possessive she got, the more jealous she got.

James even said he locked his door at night for fear of Virginia.

It's hard for me to imagine

a grown man

being that scared of his wife that he would lock the door.

There was obviously something in Virginia's character that caused the people who knew her best

to think she was capable of anything.

James says his fears were confirmed at Thanksgiving when Virginia pulled James's sisters aside for a private chat.

Virginia told James Hyatt's sisters around Thanksgiving that she felt like James was going to kill himself.

So they got concerned.

The sisters came to James and they said, you know, Virginia's coming to us and she says she's concerned that you're gonna kill yourself.

They all theorize that Virginia's gonna kill you and try to make it look like you did it yourself.

You need to get the hell out of Dodge.

James says he took his sister's advice and went to Florida.

He begged Patty to go with him to Florida and be out of town because he was afraid of what Virginia would do when she received the divorce papers.

Patty said,

I'm not running.

I'm not

running from her.

I'm basically, she felt like that whatever came up, she could talk to Virginia.

Patty did have her locks changed, but refused to leave her home.

When detectives ask if Virginia had access to a weapon, James says Virginia did have one gun, a 38 revolver.

She had a gun just like the one used in this murder.

Coming up, can prosecutors convince a jury that this 67-year-old woman is a cold-blooded killer?

Virginia, she just looked kind of pitiful.

There's no way that this decrepit old lady climbed those steps and fired five shots.

Nearly 36 hours into the investigation of who killed Patty Wheelington, detectives now believe that on the morning of December 3rd, 2013, Virginia Hyatt killed her husband's mistress in a jealous rage.

I believe that she was lying lying about her alibi.

Fortunately for us,

she gave us the part of her alibi that was true as far as her going to McDonald's.

She said she was at McDonald's at 8 o'clock going through the drive-through.

He obtained those videos.

So after reviewing the videos,

he found that she did not go through at 8 o'clock, but she did go through at 9, adjusting her time by an hour.

She had plenty of time and opportunity to drive to Patty's house to kill Patty

and then come back and carry out through her day like she had done nothing.

Later that day, investigators go to Virginia's home with a search warrant.

Although they don't find the suspected murder weapon, they uncover something else.

We go to the video at McDonald's and we're able to see what she's wearing.

We know we need to locate her clothing that she was wearing that day in her home.

In her house, on her bed, were some clothes that she had obviously worn and tossed on the bed.

And one of those items was a shirt that she was seen wearing in the McDonald's video.

Detectives send the shirt to the Arkansas Crime Lab to test for gunpowder residue.

A few days later, the results come back.

Lo and behold, there's gunpowder residue on her clothing.

Details of Virginia's arrest and Patty and James's affair quickly become front page news.

I just had to sit down because I had defended it that they didn't have an affair for so long.

It was just shocking.

Because Patty Willington wasn't very involved member in the community, people took note.

I had several members of the community approach me to be sure that Virginia was prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Virginia's trial gets underway on February 2nd, 2016.

Prosecutors assert that after her husband of 40 years filed for divorce, Virginia turned on her husband's mistress, Patty Wheelington.

She wasn't going to get James back.

Her life was over, but she could kill Patty and then everything would be okay.

She got that.38 caliber pistol.

She went over to Patty's house on the morning of December the 3rd.

She got out of her car and started to walk up.

Everyone who knew Patty said that she always felt like she could talk to anyone.

I believe that that's probably the way she approached Virginia coming up that morning was was that she could talk to her.

Patty probably said, hey, Virginia, you know, James isn't here.

And Virginia just pulled that gun out and started shooting.

Patty panics and tries to make it to the door of the house, but Virginia tracks her across that porch and continues shooting her up until the point that Patty fell dead.

Virginia's attorneys argue that the woman sitting at the defendant's table isn't the cold, calculated killer that prosecutors describe.

Virginia, she just looked

kind of pitiful, just looked so much older.

She hadn't got her hair fixed.

She would limp into the courtroom or at hearings, they'd have her wheel her in in a wheelchair, and she really did her best, I think, to play this little old lady role.

It was a concern that the jury would look at her and say, there's no way that this decrepit old lady climbed those steps and fired five shots.

On February 8th, 2016, after only an hour of deliberations, the jury returns with a verdict.

They found her guilty of capital murder.

It's an automatic life sentence.

I was so proud they found that Virginia guilty and that she will will never get out and hurt anyone else.

For prosecutors, investigators, and the town of Texarkana, it is a bittersweet end to this case of a woman scorned.

Patty was so generous.

It's just unreal.

What a personality that we have lost.

Patty should be remembered how she lived.

She was happy.

She was friendly.

She was kind, and she was giving, and that's how she should be remembered.

Virginia Hyatt is housed at the McPherson Unit for Women in Arkansas.

After Virginia's conviction, James Hyatt began a new relationship with another friend from Texarkana.

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