Dephne Wright

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Speaker 4 When an endearing elderly couple is found brutally murdered, even a veteran police force is left rattled by the crime.

Speaker 8 I was in shock. I walked out of the bedroom, not able to speak, not able to get on the radio for help.

Speaker 5 I just stood there.

Speaker 14 I've been in homicide 21 years. This was one of the worst I've seen.

Speaker 8 They were hogtied with duct tape. Their head and mouth were were duct tape.

Speaker 4 When their American dream turned into a nightmare, they looked to their beliefs for a way out.

Speaker 15 They never really got out of the hole that they were in.

Speaker 5 The couple were firm believers in an old-style mysticism from their homeland, and they thought there were actually people out there that could lift curses when they needed good fortune.

Speaker 15 That's what she advertised, that she could take bad curses off.

Speaker 4 Could their spiritual savior be responsible for such an unspeakable crime?

Speaker 5 They just continued to pour their money into the rituals.

Speaker 13 They owed somewhere between $250,000 and $280,000.

Speaker 16 And then she told my uncle, if they don't pay up, I want them dead.

Speaker 17 None of this would have happened if she wouldn't have been so selfish and greedy.

Speaker 7 Was she under the impression that you were going to kill the couple?

Speaker 3 She was.

Speaker 4 June 10th, 2012, Arlington, Texas. At 7:29 a.m., emergency dispatchers receive a call from 38-year-old Vietnamese immigrant Chow Tran asking for a welfare check on his elderly in-laws.

Speaker 4 Can you give me their name?

Speaker 18 My dad, name L-O-N-G. Last name we endu.

Speaker 18 He is getting these dumped right now. Okay.
Oh my God. You know what, ma'am? My son and my wife, if they've been looking there, they say that they saw everything fall down.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 5 I've let our officers know.

Speaker 5 Worried, Chow sent his teenage son to go knock on the door, which he did, but there was no answer. And the family began to gather and they became increasingly worried.

Speaker 19 Chow's family thought that something was wrong. They noticed that the window at their residence was open.
Things just didn't look right.

Speaker 4 Too terrified to go in the house and check on their own family members, they wait outside for police to arrive.

Speaker 8 I very quickly got dispatched and when I got there, right away I knew it didn't look like your typical welfare check.

Speaker 8 This appeared to be an entire family that was standing outside of an apartment and that seemed a little off at first.

Speaker 8 Also, it being that early in the morning, we don't normally get welfare checks that early.

Speaker 4 Upon entering the residence, there are all the telltale signs of a burglary.

Speaker 19 The responding officers noted that the apartment appeared to be in disarray.

Speaker 8 I'm calling out. There's no answer.
I know there's no one in the living room, the kitchen, or the bathroom. The only room that I haven't checked is the bedroom.

Speaker 4 After a quick check of the bedroom, Officer Weller doesn't see anyone and is convinced the home is empty.

Speaker 8 When I got there, I wasn't focused on the state of the room. I did not notice anything that stuck out to me.
I was solely focused at that point, finding the family, making sure everybody was okay.

Speaker 8 So I'm thinking, great, everybody's fine, everybody's healthy. They went out for a walk.

Speaker 8 Still with my flashlight in hand, I go to turn around to leave the bedroom. And at that time,

Speaker 8 I see hand smudges on the wall next to a very small closet.

Speaker 8 So I hesitated for a moment. Everything inside of me told me not to open that door.

Speaker 8 But I would not be doing my job if I did not check that closet.

Speaker 8 I opened that closet door.

Speaker 8 I saw two people inside that closet.

Speaker 8 I knew it was the mom and the dad that I was looking for.

Speaker 8 They were hogtied with duct tape. Their head and mouth were duct tape.

Speaker 8 There was blood everywhere. In that split second, I knew they were dead.

Speaker 8 With my 14 years of experience, this is definitely the most gruesome, brutal scene I have ever seen. I was in shock.

Speaker 8 I walked out of the bedroom to the living room and I stood in the middle of the living room. Finally, I was able to get on my radio and I requested a supervisor and a crime scene unit.

Speaker 4 When Arlington homicide investigators arrive, they too are stunned by the heinous crime.

Speaker 5 It appeared that the couple had been beaten with some kind of blunt force object.

Speaker 8 It was a very violent and bloody scene.

Speaker 14 They were grabbing walls as they've been taken to the back room. There's evidence of thrown about furniture in the living room, too, as well.

Speaker 14 Ransacking of compact discs would cross my initial mind. Was a robbery gone bad?

Speaker 4 But even for a robbery, the crime is exceedingly violent.

Speaker 14 I've been in homicide 21 years. This was one of the worst I've seen due to the nature of how the victims were found.
I can see blunt force trauma to the forehead.

Speaker 14 I can see markings that looked to be possible hammer, but I wasn't sure. Then the amount of duct tape that was used on the victim's face all the way up to their forehead.

Speaker 14 The crime in and of itself is a heinous, horrific crime.

Speaker 7 Who would do this?

Speaker 19 You have to say to yourself, who would be so cold that they would,

Speaker 19 you know, brutally murder an elderly couple?

Speaker 21 They're very nice couple. They never bothered nobody.
Everybody loved them. I don't think they have any enemy.

Speaker 4 When Long Win and Hong Lee immigrated to the United States from Vietnam in 2000, they brought with them their time-honored traditions and their beloved family.

Speaker 5 They decided to pick up their stakes and move to Arlington, Texas with their three children to pursue the American dream.

Speaker 8 They were a prominent Asian family. They had lots of ties to the community.

Speaker 15 Arlington is one of those big cities in Tarran County that you really do have a good mixture of different cultures. You've got a large Vietnamese community there.

Speaker 21 The first wave of the immigrant

Speaker 21 come after 1975, after the fall of Saigon. Some of them adopted society very well.

Speaker 21 The parents try to carry their heritage from Vietnam to America.

Speaker 21 This area during the 80s and the late 90s,

Speaker 21 there is a lot of Vietnamese people decide to live there.

Speaker 21 They study the area very well. That's why they chew Arnton to be a good place for them to do business and raise a family.

Speaker 4 Long and Hong saw an opportunity to create a legacy for their three children and grandchildren.

Speaker 5 When Long and Wong arrived to Texas, they started a commercial sewing business, and they enlisted the help of their son-in-law, Chow, to help run it.

Speaker 15 Chow was the one who spoke the best English, so he was kind of a face of the business and he dealt with a lot of the contractors and a lot of the different people.

Speaker 4 After nearly a decade of rebuilding their lives in the U.S., their American dream came true when they secured a lucrative contract to make garments for a commercial giant.

Speaker 15 They actually had contracts with places like Disney.

Speaker 4 But by 2011, the family's good fortune had all but run out.

Speaker 15 They had lost the contract with Disney and the business started going down.

Speaker 4 The family believed that the string of bad luck required a traditional Vietnamese solution.

Speaker 21 For a couple thousand years,

Speaker 21 the Asian people believed the lucky God

Speaker 21 and the money protection God.

Speaker 21 If you pray them, you will have more customer.

Speaker 21 Most of the time, they invite the spiritual advisor.

Speaker 6 Spiritual advisor.

Speaker 21 Only need them when their family has something major, major issue like

Speaker 21 going to divorce,

Speaker 21 might be going to bankruptcy, or might be

Speaker 22 getting trouble with the law.

Speaker 21 They need protection and healing.

Speaker 5 The couple were firm believers in an old style spiritualism, mysticism from their homeland.

Speaker 5 And they thought there were actually people out there that could lift those curses when they needed good fortune.

Speaker 4 Searching through a local Vietnamese newspaper, Chow Tran and his mother-in-law found an ad for a spiritual advisor 250 miles away in Houston.

Speaker 15 She advertised that she could take bad curses off, she could put curses on, she could do all of that.

Speaker 21 They believe that she

Speaker 21 is the right one to protect them or help them to recover from the bad business.

Speaker 4 Encouraged by his mother-in-law, Hong Li, Chow contacted the spiritual advisor and asked for her help. She agreed to meet Chow at her Houston home for a consultation.

Speaker 5 She performed a ritual and they were incredibly hopeful that she could turn the business around and they thought that things were going to be looking up.

Speaker 4 But one year later, instead of conjuring good luck, a dark tragedy has befallen the family.

Speaker 4 On June 10th, Arlington police have just found Long and Hong murdered in their apartment.

Speaker 19 It appeared that an attack happened as soon as they walked into their apartment. Something did happen at the front door because there's blood there.

Speaker 8 There was blood on the carpet. There was blood on the couch.
There was blood on the table. There was blood on the walls.
There was blood everywhere.

Speaker 4 While Arlington homicide detectives see evidence of a burglary gone wrong, there are other clues as to who might have committed the brutal attack.

Speaker 5 There was a plate of crushed prescription pills on the coffee table as if to snort.

Speaker 5 There was a marijuana cigarette.

Speaker 4 But to detectives, it's a blue bandana wrapped around a beer bottle that seems almost like a calling card.

Speaker 13 Arlington did have some very active Vietnamese gangs. They, you know, they were known to extort money.

Speaker 14 This was a light blue bandana. So I had to consult with the gang unit to see if they had some knowledge of it.
And they did have some knowledge of the color of the bandana.

Speaker 14 I had everything to believe that it was gang activity.

Speaker 4 Coming up, detectives believe the evidence is too good to be true.

Speaker 21 Most gang members, they don't do violent crime.

Speaker 14 Sometimes things seem too perfect. It was just not a robbery gone bad.
We theorized that it was staged.

Speaker 4 Could a financial windfall point closer to home?

Speaker 14 I did question who were the beneficiaries. One was Chow Tran himself.

Speaker 4 On June 10th, 2012, in Arlington, Texas, police discover husband and wife Long Win and Hong Li brutally murdered in their bedroom closet.

Speaker 4 After finding evidence of gang activity left at the scene, detectives remain skeptical given the severity of the crime.

Speaker 21 Majority of my job work with Mexican, Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, all gangs you can name. Most gang members, they don't do violent crime.

Speaker 22 I have never seen

Speaker 21 the way they kill the victim lie on this case.

Speaker 8 There was a beer bottle with a bandana around it, giving the impression that it was a gang-related incident,

Speaker 8 that they were leaving their colors to kind of take

Speaker 8 responsibility for it.

Speaker 14 It was too perfect of a crime scene. It was too

Speaker 14 set up to the point where I had everything to believe that it was gang activity. So we theorized that it was staged.

Speaker 14 Other initial items that we found that we thought we can send off to get immediate tests were taken, such as the marijuana cigarettes for DNA purposes.

Speaker 8 They took hair fibers, DNA. They took swabs of the blood to see if there were any dual samples.
They processed the duct tape to see if there's fingerprints or evidence.

Speaker 4 Investigators next speak with the family to try and learn more about the victims.

Speaker 4 Clearly rattled by the discovery of their loved ones, there is only one family member able to speak with detectives, 38-year-old Chow Tran.

Speaker 14 I initially interviewed Chow Tran, who's a son-in-law, Chow being a primary spokesperson for the family because he speaks English.

Speaker 19 Chow informed Detective Stewart that the night of this offense, they were all at a birthday party and they were celebrating his father-in-law's birthday.

Speaker 4 According to Chow, his in-laws seemed to have a good time and stayed until 10.30.

Speaker 4 They received a ride home from another family member, and that was the last time they were seen alive.

Speaker 14 I asked, did they have a lot of money around the house and things of that nature?

Speaker 21 Vietnamese tend to carry money at home. They don't trust American banks.

Speaker 4 Chow says that if they did have money at home, it wasn't much.

Speaker 5 Chow said, The sewing business was never great. It was never thriving.
And they thought that perhaps perhaps it was cursed.

Speaker 4 Despite their financial stress, Chow has no idea how that could have led to their horrific deaths.

Speaker 14 I asked him every possible question as far as possible enemies, enemies as far as the business is concerned,

Speaker 14 family members, anybody who would want to harm this couple.

Speaker 5 No one could think of any reason to want this couple dead. They were sweet and they were generous and they were hardworking and they had great ties to the community.

Speaker 4 On June 11th, 2012, detectives attend the couple's autopsy at the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's office.

Speaker 19 It appeared that there was blood force trauma to the victim's head, struck with some sort of object at the time.

Speaker 19 Don't know what type of object that was because nothing was found there at the crime scene.

Speaker 5 But that's not what killed him. Her face had been wrapped in 25 feet of duct tape.
His face had been wrapped in 10 feet of duct tape. and they suffocated.

Speaker 4 The cause of death is unsettling, even for the seasoned homicide investigators.

Speaker 14 Just the amount of pain that it took to die in that fashion, that, to me, is like holding your breath until you die. You know, so that I've always thought just how painful it was for both victims.

Speaker 4 Though detectives aren't convinced the incident is gang-related, they can't rule out the possibility and are hopeful the partial forensic evidence they collected leads to a suspect.

Speaker 14 If you look at the extensiveness of the duct tape and how it was applied and to what extent it was applied, one would have to believe that the intent was to kill them.

Speaker 14 It was just not a robbery gone bad. The whole point was to kill the victims.
Gang activity could have been a theory. It just seems very personal to both victims.

Speaker 4 As detectives conclude their briefing with the coroner, they receive a phone call that instantly captures their attention.

Speaker 19 Detective Stewart got a call from the insurance company after the victim's death. And routinely, the insurance companies will call when there is a policy over a certain amount.

Speaker 19 And their insurance policy was at least a million.

Speaker 14 I did question the insurance company as far as who were the beneficiaries. One was Chow Tran himself.

Speaker 4 On June 13th, 2012, detectives meet with Chow at the Arlington police station and ask him about his in-laws' business and sizable insurance policy.

Speaker 14 He told me that because the business was in their name, they wanted to make sure that they had the ability to carry on the business if one of the family members were to pass away.

Speaker 4 When it comes to their whereabouts the night of of the murders, Chow and the rest of his family have airtight alibis.

Speaker 14 No, no, no, no.

Speaker 26 They come directly to my house from 43 around to 5. We eat and you know we sit together and we play card until it's 10 o'clock, 10 over 10 o'clock, you know.

Speaker 7 So they stayed there until about 10?

Speaker 26 10, 10 over 10.

Speaker 14 He cooperated with answering all questions I had as far as timelines of where they were at the time, the party,

Speaker 14 who was there.

Speaker 14 So I didn't have anything definitive to say that he was a suspect at the time.

Speaker 4 Police collect DNA and fingerprint samples from Chow and the other family members and compare it to the evidence found at the scene.

Speaker 14 We were able to gather a DNA profile from the marijuana cigarettes.

Speaker 5 They were hopeful that that would be the link, that would be the linchpin to the killer, that that would lead them to whoever committed these heinous crimes.

Speaker 4 But when the results come back, neither the DNA nor prints match any of Long and Hong's family members or any of the other profiles saved in the FBI's combined DNA index system.

Speaker 14 So it was very disappointing when we got the DNA sample back and they were not in CODIS. So then it could be an adult who just never committed a crime before and therefore not in CODIS as well.

Speaker 4 There is another possibility as CODIS does not account for a certain age group of criminal offenders, minors.

Speaker 8 One of the suspicions from the homicide detective was that it was a juvenile whose DNA is not in the system yet.

Speaker 4 Without a DNA match, police are left to search for any possible lead, but none materialize.

Speaker 14 After interviewing and swabbing probably 50 to 60 people, family members, a lot of neighbors, we still did not get any results as far as a possible lead on a suspect at that time.

Speaker 15 They left no stone unturned, but for at least two years, there was no leads on this case. And the case turns cold.

Speaker 5 There was no movement on it whatsoever. And then, in 2015, it sprang back to life.

Speaker 4 Coming up, a bizarre crime sparks a new lead for detectives.

Speaker 14 Him stealing that horse started this whole process of us finally realizing who actually killed the victims.

Speaker 4 And a jailhouse interview reveals some explosive information.

Speaker 16 The plan was to make it look like thugs or gangmangers end up committing the crime, but it was an inside job.

Speaker 16 It's time.

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Speaker 1 Bravo's 90210 Housewives are back.

Speaker 23 Hello, everyone.

Speaker 9 Bye.

Speaker 5 Bye. This is so Beverly Hills.

Speaker 1 And it's gonna be. When I saw him kissing that other woman, I don't know him.

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I can still go to the dark side. Don't get it twisted.

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Speaker 1 The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, new season, December 4th on bravo and peacock

Speaker 4 on october 12th 2015 over three years after the unsolved murders of hong lee and long win the arlington police department receives new information on the cold case in 2015 police received word that they had a dna match on the blunt that was recovered from the crime scene in 2012.

Speaker 19 Willie Gillery, who stole a horse out of Houston. And of course, that's a felony in the state of Texas.
It turned out at the time of the actual homicide, this kid was 16 years old.

Speaker 4 Being a minor with no prior felonies, Willie's DNA hadn't been in the CODIS system at the time of the murders in 2012.

Speaker 4 But in 2015, he became both an adult and a felon, which added his name to the DNA database.

Speaker 14 You have to have a felony conviction in order for your profile to be even be put into CODIS. And so him stealing that horse started this whole process.

Speaker 4 On October 17th, 2015, Willie Gillory is brought to the Arlington Police Department for questioning, but not for the murders.

Speaker 14 He was in violation, not checking in with his parole officer. We in turn made contact with him, and we made arrests based on the violation of his parole and not the murder at the time.

Speaker 23 I wasn't there.

Speaker 7 Are you saying your DNA was there?

Speaker 23 I don't know. If it was, I wasn't because I wasn't nowhere around Arlington.
I promise you.

Speaker 23 I have, I have

Speaker 14 that's why I'm gonna check your DNA again because maybe we made a mistake.

Speaker 23 It don't be nothing but DNA. People can take your DNA and do shit while you sleep.

Speaker 14 When I explained to him the nature of the DNA, how DNA worked, how and why we believe he was inside that apartment, he immediately broke down, started crying.

Speaker 5 He confessed.

Speaker 5 He said, yes, I was there. Yes, I did it, but I didn't do it alone.

Speaker 4 Willie says that in 2012, he was 16 years old and living with his uncle, 49-year-old Bobby Gillery.

Speaker 6 Bobby said, you're going to go help me do this thing up in Arlington, Texas,

Speaker 20 and then took Willie along.

Speaker 6 Willie's life was such that he didn't feel like he had much choice.

Speaker 4 Willie says that on June 9th, 2012, he and his uncle made the three-hour drive to Arlington. He also claims that his uncle had a key to Hong and Long's apartment in order to stage a burglary.

Speaker 16 This is exactly how it all happened.

Speaker 16 The plan that my uncle ended up coming up with was throw stuff around, help them set up some evidence to make it look like the thugs or gangmangers end up committing the crime.

Speaker 16 We had beer bottles, a blue bandana, pills, marijuana.

Speaker 6 He actually left a marijuana cigarette or the remains of a marijuana cigarette.

Speaker 14 He smoked a little bit of it.

Speaker 6 By leaving the marijuana cigarette to stage this, that was the very evidence that linked up to Willie Gillery.

Speaker 22 Once the couple came home, I ran out,

Speaker 16 end up running towards the door, trying to stop the lady from getting out or making any noise.

Speaker 16 Then my uncle ended up snatching up the man and end up beating the man.

Speaker 14 He said, I know he hit him with something similar to some type of blunt

Speaker 14 bat or something like that, was used to incapacitate the victims.

Speaker 4 Willie then says that after Hong and Long stopped fighting back, he and his uncle used the duct tape to keep them from escaping.

Speaker 16 He end up telling me, hey, help me grab him, put him in the back.

Speaker 16 Once I took him to the bag, he ended up duct taping them.

Speaker 16 He said, help me transfer them from the room to the closet. And that's where we left him and then we left.

Speaker 4 With such a stark admission of guilt, detectives ask why Bobby and Willie had targeted the couple.

Speaker 4 That's when Willie reveals that it was a murder for hire plot orchestrated by a friend of his uncle's named Daphne Wright.

Speaker 16 I met Daphne through my uncle Bobby.

Speaker 16 My uncle went into her office and started talking to her and she said that people owed her money and she wanted them to pay up but in the end she told my uncle if they don't pay up I want them dead.

Speaker 14 At that point Willie says yes I did this. I was used by Daphne.
Daphne was the driving force behind this. She used us all.

Speaker 16 It was an inside job. daphne and giving the key to bobby to get in the house

Speaker 4 with this new information investigators charge willie guillary with murder but they also need to verify his version of events their next moves are to locate bobby gillary and create a profile of daphne wright

Speaker 14 Now we know that it's not some random gang. It's not some random people.
We then start the the investigation on Daphne, piecing things together.

Speaker 5 Police learned Daphne Wright was a spiritual advisor based in Houston who basically offered to turn businesses around and to bring good fortune to families.

Speaker 14 People would come,

Speaker 6 you know, purchase her services and use her. And apparently she was quite popular and had a lot of business.

Speaker 4 When detectives reach out to Chow to see if he knows Daphne right, they're met with a suspicious response.

Speaker 14 When I do try to talk to Chow, he now directs me to his attorney, whose attorney says that if you need to speak to him, he needs to come through me.

Speaker 14 We believe he has winned that now I'm on to Daphne and he knows Daphne is a connection to him.

Speaker 4 Detectives now have multiple leads, but in order to bridge the connection between Chow and Daphne, they need to talk to Willie's uncle, Bobby Gillary.

Speaker 14 Willie was the catalyst at first. Bobby was the next.
Piece of the puzzle.

Speaker 4 Coming up, detectives move on Bobby Gillory, but what they find is another pawn in a bigger game.

Speaker 27 I was scared.

Speaker 9 I really was.

Speaker 25 Daphne wanted her money.

Speaker 4 But was she truly the mastermind?

Speaker 14 How did Daphne get the keys?

Speaker 28 From young.

Speaker 14 Chow Tran.

Speaker 24 Yeah.

Speaker 4 On December 16, 2015, detectives traveled to Katy, Texas to the address of 52-year-old Bobby Gillery, one of the two men alleged to have participated in the brutal murders of Long Win and Hong Lee.

Speaker 5 Police arrested Bobby on two counts of capital murder, just like his nephew Billy.

Speaker 4 While at first Bobby refuses to talk, it's not long before he changes his tune.

Speaker 14 I went down with a search warrant for his DNA profile.

Speaker 14 This, you know, probably got him thinking maybe they got something on me.

Speaker 14 And then he actually confessed to the offense.

Speaker 9 Didn't really want to hurt no one.

Speaker 28 When I put that tape, I was scared.

Speaker 9 I really was.

Speaker 9 I know what I did.

Speaker 17 I was so scared.

Speaker 27 Still scared.

Speaker 19 Bobby did not have a criminal history at all.

Speaker 19 So before this offense occurred, he's never been in trouble with the law.

Speaker 4 Like Willie, Bobby also puts the blame solely on 44-year-old Daphne Wright, who Bobby claims orchestrated the hit.

Speaker 7 So my question to you is, how much money

Speaker 14 were you promised by Daphne to go down and do this?

Speaker 9 Ten thousand dollars. Ten thousand dollars.
Okay.

Speaker 7 She told you that you would get ten thousand.

Speaker 9 Yes.

Speaker 4 Bobby says he first met Daphne when he was dating her friend in 2011. At the time, he had been laid off work and was struggling to make ends meet.

Speaker 28 I was so desperate, so

Speaker 28 so

Speaker 28 hungry, so didn't want to be on the street, didn't know what to do, didn't know how to do it.

Speaker 4 Bobby says Daphne knew his financial desperation would make him receptive to her plan.

Speaker 28 She did use us.

Speaker 17 None of this would have happened if she wouldn't have been so selfish and greedy.

Speaker 25 Daphne wanted her money.

Speaker 4 Bobby soon learned that Daphne was something akin to a spiritual loan shark.

Speaker 4 The people who owed her the most were Hong Lee and Chow Tran, despite the fact that Daphne had never been able to remove the curse on their business.

Speaker 15 Business didn't really pick up and they never really got out of the hole that they were in

Speaker 3 as far as the business was concerned.

Speaker 5 Instead of changing course, Chow just continued to pour their money into Daphne.

Speaker 13 She started running these guys on credit and it ballooned up to somewhere between $250,000 and $280,000.

Speaker 4 Bobby says that when Daphne called in the bill, Chow and Hong couldn't pay and that Daphne wasn't the type to forgive a debt.

Speaker 19 She was wanting to recoup the money that she felt like she was owed.

Speaker 5 She learned that Chow and his wife were actually the beneficiaries of two very substantial life insurance policies. Daphne pounced on the idea and they could collect on both insurance policies.

Speaker 14 From Bobby's perspective, Daphne was the mastermind behind this whole entire deal. She dictated everything that was supposed to go down.

Speaker 7 When Daphne gave you a key to that apartment, you drove to Arlington. Was Daphne under the impression that you were going to kill the couple?

Speaker 3 She was.

Speaker 4 But when Bobby tells investigators how Daphne got the key, he makes a startling accusation.

Speaker 14 Caltran?

Speaker 24 Yeah.

Speaker 7 She told you that's what she got the key from?

Speaker 28 From him.

Speaker 4 Detectives are completely blindsided by the allegations of betrayal.

Speaker 14 I develop a relationship with Chow and his family, would go see them periodically through the course of this investigation.

Speaker 14 And then all of a sudden, Bobby himself is saying that Chow was involved in this.

Speaker 4 Before following up on Bobby's accusations against Chow, investigators focus on the woman who allegedly ordered the murders, Daphne Wright. On August 31st, 2016, detectives arrive at her Houston home.

Speaker 14 She was married and she had three daughters. She appeared to be the

Speaker 14 driving force in the family. She's loud, she's direct.
She runs that house. Everything centers around her.
Her husband, Howard, was pretty much subservient to her. We try to talk to her about Chow.

Speaker 14 She confirms that she knows Chow. He's a client of hers.
She knew about the death of the loved ones, the in-laws. She said that he told her about it.

Speaker 14 I asked her about the amount that Chow had to pay her. She would not go into detail.
I asked Daphne, what happens if someone doesn't pay you? And then she looked at me and she says, oh, they will pay.

Speaker 14 She had no doubt that she would be paid.

Speaker 4 When detectives confront Daphne with Bobby's story, she admits to knowing Bobby, but refuses to go into detail.

Speaker 19 She was still very short with us, very cold.

Speaker 19 She wasn't going to help. She wasn't going to help us at all.
Willie knew who Daphne was. Bobby, you know, ID'd her.
Everything pointed to her.

Speaker 19 Yes, she was definitely involved and she needed to be in jail.

Speaker 4 After Daphne declines to share the extent of her business dealings with Chow, detectives are forced to obtain an arrest warrant and return to Daphne's home.

Speaker 14 We go to the Houston area and we make that arrest, but we also do a search warrant on her home as well.

Speaker 4 Inside, police find a ledger which details Daphne's fees for providing her spiritual services, including removing and applying curses.

Speaker 15 There were ledgers that purported to show that she was charging people $10, $20,030, $40,000 for services rendered. That means my eyeballs popped out of my head.

Speaker 4 With Daphne under arrest, detectives first attempt to find out if her husband Howard knows anything about the crime.

Speaker 19 Her husband was very cooperative. He maintained that he didn't know any of this was happening, didn't know why we were there, maintained his wife's innocence.

Speaker 13 Do you have any ideas or anything that I'm talking about right now reference this whole situation? Absolutely not.

Speaker 9 This is your first time hearing any of this information at all? The very first time.

Speaker 4 Detectives move on to Daphne, hoping the gravity of her arrest will encourage her to confess. But Daphne continues to hold her ground.

Speaker 19 If I have to make any statements or anything, I'd like to have my daughter present before before I do anything to her.

Speaker 9 Okay.

Speaker 4 Coming up, Chow reveals how much control Daphne had over their family.

Speaker 15 He tried to say that Daphne was controlling his mind. That Daphne had control over his mind and his body, and she was making him do things.

Speaker 4 But can he be trusted?

Speaker 25 He claimed that his mother-in-law wanted to be killed. It was completely ludicrous.

Speaker 13 To fully explain our case against Daphne, you have to sometimes make a deal with the devil.

Speaker 4 In 2015, detectives subpoena Chow Tran's financial records. They discover that since the deaths of his in-laws, Long Win and Hong Li, he had been busy, but not with the family business.

Speaker 14 We found the new home was purchased. We also know that the business folded.
They didn't open the business again.

Speaker 14 I want to interview him now, but he refuses to talk to me.

Speaker 4 Although authorities believe Chow is involved in the murder plot, Daphne Wright seems to be the puppet master.

Speaker 4 Prosecutors are willing to offer Chow a deal in order to secure their case against the others.

Speaker 4 With his lawyer present, Chow explains that when the family's sewing business started to struggle, he and his mother-in-law, Hong Li, reached out to Daphne.

Speaker 4 According to Chow, they were terrified of being in debt to someone they believed had spiritual powers.

Speaker 14 If they believe in her ability to remove a curse, they know that she can also put a curse on them as well.

Speaker 19 She made it very clear, you know, if someone didn't pay, what would happen?

Speaker 19 And she basically said, I'm getting my money one way or another.

Speaker 4 Chow claims that to save her family from an even more terrible curse at Daphne's hands, Hong was prepared to offer herself as the ultimate sacrifice.

Speaker 5 Chow said she had actually suggested that she sacrifice herself, that they let her die so that they could collect the insurance policy and pay Daphne. Daphne thought it was a great idea.

Speaker 5 In fact, one life insurance policy wasn't enough for Daphne. She wanted both of them dead so that they could collect on both insurance policies and cover their full debt.

Speaker 4 Investigators believe that after Chow and his wife received the insurance money, he paid Daphne in cash. But they have serious doubts about Chow's claim that this was Hong's idea.

Speaker 25 He claimed his mother-in-law wanted to be killed. It was completely ludicrous.

Speaker 4 Still, prosecutors believe they need Chow to put Daphne, the woman who hired and paid the hitmen, behind bars. And they make him an offer he can't refuse.

Speaker 5 After all is said and done, Chow is offered immunity in exchange for his testimony against Bobby, Willie, and Daphne.

Speaker 13 We knew we would need Chow in order to strengthen our case against Daphne. So, I mean, you have to sometimes make a deal with the devil.

Speaker 4 On August 26th, 2019, Daphne's trial begins, and Chow's testimony is undeniably impactful.

Speaker 5 Chow portrayed Daphne as a greedy woman who would do anything to get her money, even if it meant killing two elderly, sweet people.

Speaker 4 Daphne's defense attacks Chow's credibility and the claim that the family was indebted to a mystical mafiosa.

Speaker 15 What Chow testified to was they owed

Speaker 15 Daphne Wright a lot of money and that Daphne was basically blackmailing them.

Speaker 15 He tried to say was that Daphne was controlling his mind, that Daphne had control over his mind and his body and she was making him do things.

Speaker 6 You run up a $280,000 bill and there's not a single documentation of it anywhere.

Speaker 29 Well, I continue to say, provide me with an email, how you owe money.

Speaker 6 Zero, nothing. I believe Chow Tran wanted the $850,000.
The $850,000 went in his pocket nowhere else.

Speaker 4 Chow also testifies he left the key to the apartment under a mat and told Daphne, who in turn told Bobby Gillary.

Speaker 5 The defense said even though Chow received immunity, he was complicit in this scheme.

Speaker 4 In September 2019, the jury returns to announce Daphne's fate.

Speaker 6 Unfortunately, the jury made a call that I simply disagree with.

Speaker 5 She was convicted of capital murder.

Speaker 5 She received the ultimate punishment, which is life in prison without parole.

Speaker 15 My intention was to try Chow Tran.

Speaker 15 And as it stands right now, Chow is not charged. And unless Daphne sits in jail long enough or Bobby sits in jail long enough to bring us some independent evidence, he's not going to get charged.

Speaker 15 It will never sit well for me that, you know, Chow Tran is not in prison.

Speaker 8 I do believe that, you know, what goes around comes around. What's done in the dark will come to light.
And I thoroughly believe that, and they'll have to answer for what they did, all of them.

Speaker 4 Willie Gillory pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery and is currently serving a 20-year sentence. He will be eligible for parole in 2025 at the age of 29.

Speaker 4 On September 13th, 2018, Bobby Gillory was convicted of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Speaker 4 Daphne Wright is serving a life sentence at the Christina Melton Crane Unit in Gatesville, Texas.

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