Did a Car Dealer’s Wife Get Away with Murder?
(‘Where the Blood Drops,’ Forensic Files)
It’s usually a happy ending when a Forensic Files episode closes with someone exiting prison because of a wrongful conviction.
But “Where the Blood Drops,” the story of car dealer Bill Mowbray’s death, left a lot of observers in a less-than-celebratory mood.
As viewers will remember, Bill conveniently “committed suicide” the day before he was going to remove his wife, Susie, as his insurance beneficiary.
Second go-around. Then, less than a day after witnessing her husband shot through the head in their bedroom, Susie had a painting party there.
A jury found her guilty of murder, and she served nine years in prison.
Then she got a new trial —and won.
Too pert for prison? Susie Mowbray might have convinced a jury of reasonable doubt, but she sure didn’t seem innocent or genuine— even though she looked and sounded like a wholesome mom from an old-time sitcom.
For this week, I delved into whether there were good reasons — other than the fact that the public doesn’t like to see cute women incarcerated for too long — for allowing Susie and her toothy smile to walk free.
So let’s get going on the recap of “Where the Blood Drops,” along with extra information from internet research.
Trailblazer. Jay William “Bill” Mowbray Jr. was born on April 2, 1944 in Washington, D.C. His grandfather and father both worked in the automobile business.
By age 25, Bill was the youngest Cadillac dealer in the world, according to the Brownsville Herald.
In 1974, he debuted a new, five-acre dealership. It nabbed much publicity on the local front.
Spiffy new digs. The Brownsville Herald ran a whole page — which appeared to be a mix of ads, advertorial, and some reporting — about the grand opening of Bill Mowbray Motors.
The paper noted the dealership’s “very fine selection of pre-owned autos” and that its “dust proof booths and drying chambers are your assurance of a perfect auto finish.”
He had 45 employees at the time.
“If you drove a Cadillac, you for sure got your Cadillac at Bill Mowbray Motors,” recalled former news anchor Carey Zayas during her appearance on Accident, Suicide, or Murder, which produced an episode called “Death of a Salesman” about the case.
Miss Popular. At some point, Bill crossed paths with Freda Sue “Susie” Burnett.
Susie came into the world circa 1948 and grew up in Louisiana. An Associated Press story referred to her as a “debutante who was a cheerleader and homecoming queen in Shreveport.”
By the time she met Bill Mowbray, she had been married and divorced and had two children, Cricket and Wade Burnett. Bill was also divorced, with a daughter named Kristin.
Tripping out. After Susie and Bill married, they had some great years as the money rolled in at Mowbray Motors.
Bill starred in local TV commercials for the sprawling business at 2645 Barnard Road. The perky Susie did as well. The two were local celebrities.
They enjoyed overseas travel and bought two beach condos, plus their huge “monstrosity of a house” in Los Fresnos, Texas. He liked to go hunting in Mexico.
In the red. Unfortunately, Bill also enjoyed chasing down extramarital sex. Susie found out he was cheating on her and moved to Austin with her children for a short time, according to Accident, Suicide, or Murder.
But she returned to Bill.
There were other problems in store for the couple. Bill had begun spending more than he earned.
In what sounds like a plotline from Fargo, he took out two loans on the same inventory from the dealership, according to Carey Zayas’ interview on Accident, Suicide, or Murder.
Premium problem. By 1997, the dealership was operating at a loss of $100,000, according to business manager Sergio Hernandez. Bill himself was reportedly $350,000 in debt and sometimes withdrew money from the dealership for personal expenses. (To his credit, though, the business always made payroll.)
Amid this whole mess, Susie discovered that Bill planned to cancel insurance policies that named her as the beneficiary and instead make his daughter the main recipient of new policies worth $1.8 million.
Bill’s insurance agent would later say that Bill was in the process of changing the policies to have the Small Business Administration and the dealership as the beneficiaries, according to a June 1, 1988 story in the McAllen, Texas newspaper the Monitor. It’s not clear whether these were additional policies or the reports that Bill’s daughter was named beneficiary were mistaken — but either way, Susie was on the brink of losing out big.
Tonight Show prelude. Still, things were normal enough that on Sept. 15, 1987, Susie, 39, and Bill, 43, called her son, Wade Burnett, to wish him a happy 16th birthday — and Wade and Bill chatted pleasantly at length, according to an AP account.
The next night, Susie and Bill watched the Johnny Carson show and Bill hit the hay, Susie would later explain, but he woke up briefly during David Letterman. She fell asleep and awoke around 2:15 a.m. — to see her husband aiming a Ruger .357-caliber magnum at his head and then shooting himself, she said. He fired the gun with his right arm while he was still lying on his side, according to Susie.
Susie called Bill’s assistant at work, Luke Fruia, to tell him Bill had shot himself. Luke told her to dial 911.
Still respiring. Homicide detective George Gavito arrived to find Susie, dressed in a white nightgown, with a cocktail (she later said it was water) and a cigarette in hand. She wasn’t crying.
The EMTs found Bill tucked in bed, with a bullet wound that originated on his right side, went through his head, and pierced his left hand, which apparently was resting underneath a pillow and his head. There was a lot of blood. Some of it even sprayed the ceiling fan.
Forensic Files didn’t mention it, but Bill was still alive when first responders arrived. Susie said that she knelt by his side after the gun fired and saw his head bleeding — so why didn’t she notice he was still breathing and call the paramedics immediately instead of Luke?
Don’t bank on it. She tried to play it as though she was simply resigned to Bill’s dying at his own hand. During her Forensic Files interview in 2001, Susie claimed that Bill threatened suicide all the time, almost on a weekly basis.
He did have a lot of reasons to feel discouraged. In addition to all his other financial woes, the IRS was investigating him for tax fraud.
During his Forensic Files appearance, Susie’s lawyer Jim Shaw said that Bill had recently rested his head on a bank officer’s desk, cried, and threatened to kill himself if he didn’t get a $200,000 loan.
It’s her party. Still, the timing of the alleged suicide was extremely suspect. Why would Bill kill himself before he finalized his change in insurance beneficiaries? His death conveniently took place right before it went through.
And then there was that painting party just 10 hours after Bill died. The widow and her buddies had removed everything from the room including the carpeting. Bill’s daughter and brother Jim were the first to discover the fiesta when they stopped by the house — they heard music playing upstairs. (I’m guessing it wasn’t a Gregorian chant.)
Sarah Bush, a friend of Susie’s who appeared on Accident, Suicide, or Murder, said that Susie merely wanted to remove the bloodstains before her kids came home and saw them.
Liquidating lass. Meanwhile, investigators didn’t see any splatter or brain matter on Bill’s right hand, and wondered how he managed to tuck himself in after shooting himself.
A lab found blood blowback on Susie Mowbray’s nightgown. An autopsy performed by Lawrence Dahm, M.D., determined Bill’s death was not a suicide.
There were theories that Susie shot Bill through a pillow or that she straddled him and fired.
Loyal son. On Jan. 4, 1988, the Shreveport Journal ran a story about Susie headlined “Ex-Shreveporter in real-life soap opera.” It noted that Bill’s first wife and his daughter disputed his will and contended that Susie was quickly “selling off [Bill’s] things left and right”
Susie was charged with murder and her trial kicked off in 1988. Wade Burnett, then 16, canceled his plans for summer camp so he could attend.
The proceedings sounded like quite the spectacle. The Mowbrays’ king-sized bed with its mirrored headboard was brought into the courtroom. It still had Bill’s blood on it, plus a mannequin lying down on the mattress. And there was a second, bald mannequin — dressed in Susie’s white night gown — propped up on the floor.
Witness not called. In June 1988, the jury found Susie guilty after deliberating for just two hours. The decision was unanimous on the first vote, a juror would later tell ABC News.
Susie got life in prison.
But her supporters said they had evidence to prove her innocence. For one, Wade found a blood splatter expert who determined that Susie’s white nightgown had no incriminating evidence, but he hadn’t been given a chance to testify.
Ex-spouse on her side. Interestingly, Susie’s side disputed the luminol tests on the nightgown, noting that some types of nonbodily matter — like horseradish — make luminol glow and that the nightgown hadn’t been tested for blood specifically.
In December 1996, Susie’s conviction was overturned thanks in part to her son, by then a law school student at Louisiana State University, and his lawyer father (that’s right, Susie’s ex-husband still cared). They uncovered evidence that the prosecution had suppressed the report from forensic expert Dr. Herbert MacDonell that denied the presence of blood on her nightgown.
The state of Texas released Susie from prison in May 1997 pending the outcome of the new trial.
Enough with the nightgown. “Prosecutors made a career for themselves by taking my mom’s life away,” Wade told ABC News in 1998. “And defense attorneys weren’t any better. I know for certain, without any doubt, she was not in a position to have fired that shot.”
The second trial, in January 1998, was colossal news in Brownsville.
Court TV broadcast it.
“She belongs in jail and she belongs there for the rest of her life,” Kristin Mowbray told the media. Jim Mowbray, Bill’s brother, said that defenders were putting too much emphasis on the nightgown — regardless of MacDonnell’s finding.
Colleague buys story. But the defense found cracks to sow seeds of doubt. The prosecution lost some of the bedding evidence. And the scene allegedly wasn’t preserved well because authorities at first believed the suicide story.
A psychiatrist testified that Bill actually shot himself in the chest in a failed suicide attempt a year before his death. And Bill allegedly told friends he would kill himself rather than spend a day in jail.
Luke Fruia later said Bill was a “very lonely person” and the fact that Luke was planning to leave the dealership made Bill feel lost.
He sided with Susie, and said he believed the suicide story.
Unconvinced either way. Toward the end of the trial, Susie, 49, interrupted the proceedings by crying out, “I didn’t do it” and weeping theatrically.
It worked.
On January 24, 1998, the jury found her not guilty. Upon hearing the verdict, Susie rushed to hug her son and daughter.
Jury foreman Edward Saldivar later said that the not-guilty verdict meant the prosecution was unable to prove its case — not necessarily that the jury thought the accused was innocent.
YouTube gallery. “She got away with murder, literally, and we know the truth and a lot of people know the truth,” said Kristin Mowbray, 27, the AP reported.
Judging by the comments on YouTube, Forensic Files viewers tend to agree: “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!” wrote Frankie Wilhite. “She got away with murder but not the money.” His comment got 111 thumbs-ups. “I think she’s a cold blooded murderess with a dang good attorney,” wrote Panda Bear.
The show ended by noting that Susie didn’t receive any of Bill’s insurance money.
Son rising. But, it turns out, at least for a while, she continued to pursue the money. In April 2002, a Texas Court of Appeals denied Susie’s attempt to access funds in an appeal to a previous decision won by Bill’s daughter, Kristin Mowbray Avery, and his ex-wife, Virginia Hale.
Susie’s son, Wade Burnett, went on to a career in litigation. His work “has been featured in the New York Times, 20/20, Dateline NBC, Good Morning America, The Today Show, People Magazine and many other national media outlets,” according to the profile on his professional website, which has since disappeared.
Next up, Wade became a pastor. Today, he works as a consultant to other pastors for the Church Leadership Group.
More believers. His mother is around 74 today — and has kept a much lower profile. She mentioned plans to write a book back in 2001, but Amazon doesn’t list anything by Susie Mowbray.
Susie didn’t appear in the Accident, Suicide, or Murder episode that the Oxygen Network produced in 2021, but a couple of her supporters did, including Mary Lou Ryan Ray, who had served as Bill’s personal attorney. Mary Lou said that she had always thought Susie was innocent and that it was a tragedy she spent time in prison.
Was it? Maybe Susie thought she could get away with murder in the first place because so many of her friends and Bill’s associates liked her and knew that he had suicidal tendencies.
“The worst thing that could ever happen to anyone happened to me,” Susie said during her interview on Forensic Files.
I’d say that Bill Mowbray, his daughter, and his brother got a much rawer deal.
You can watch the Accident, Suicide, or Murder episode on the Oxygen website if you subscribe to cable.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — R.R.
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