William Wright was sentenced to death by the State of Pennsylvania for the murder of his neighbor. According to court documents the victim and his wife had briefly separated and during that time the wife would date William Wright however the relationship was short lived as the married couple reconciled. William Wright would break into the home and hunt down the victim where he was shot multiple times while hiding in a closet. William Wright would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
William Wright 2022 Information
Parole Number: 6152R
Age: 62
Date of Birth: 08/25/1959
Race/Ethnicity: BLACK
Height: 6′ 02″
Gender: MALE
Citizenship: USA
Complexion: DARK
Current Location: PHOENIX
William Wright More News
Blair County Judge Hiram Carpenter III had just sentenced 37-year-old William Wright to death, the first time a Blair County court has sent a person to death row in 19 years.
Then, the judge leaned forward, looked across at the two dozen people who filled his little courtroom and wished them as much closure as they could get.
But, as court adjourned yesterday, it was clear that, for now, there is almost no closure.
Wright has insisted that he is an innocent man.
His detractors insisted that they wouldn’t rest until he was executed.
This was, after all, a twisted and brutal case. Police say Wright burst into next-door neighbor James Mowrey’s Altoona home before sunup on Thanksgiving 1998, hunted him down to a bedroom closet and killed him — five shots, fired as Mowrey, 35, screamed and his wife and 6-year-old son watched.
The tangle was Mowrey’s wife, Tammy Mowrey. Seven months before the killing, she left her 12-year marriage, became pregnant during a fling with Wright, then returned home three months later.
The sentencing was a formality. The death penalty was decided in April, when jurors convicted Wright of first-degree murder, then deliberated another hour and 40 minutes before deciding he should die by lethal injection.
Instead, the proceedings yesterday were a forum where bile could flow. And it did, freely at times.
“I can only hope that each day William Wright spends in prison will be worse than the day before,” John Mowrey, the victim’s younger brother, said as he turned from the courtroom podium to stare at Wright. “When they strap him on that table, I will be there to look him in the eyes and wish him a direct trip to hell.”
Wright — a pale, broad-shouldered 6 feet 3 inches with neatly-trimmed hair that dissolved into a wisp on his shoulders — was having none of that. When he took the podium, he promised strong talk, suggested that anybody who didn’t like it should leave, told Carpenter that he was innocent and called his five-day trial “a farce.”
“I’m incapable of murder,” said Wright, a former pizza delivery driver with a ninth-grade education and, by his account, a childhood filled with abuse. “I’ve never even killed an animal, not a deer, not a rabbit.”
Wright’s mother, Altoona resident Sharon Cashman, took it farther. In closing arguments at the murder trial in April, defense lawyer Steven Passarello suggested that Tammy Mowrey killed her husband. Cashman drew on that theme yesterday, never mentioning Tammy Mowrey’s name but telling Carpenter that James Mowrey’s killer ” … has not spent one minute in prison and … is still out there among Jim’s friends.”
“He lied. He completely lied,” Tammy Mowrey said outside the courtroom of Wright’s version of the killing. ” … I can’t believe he’s still not convinced that he did this.”
“I wanted to get up there and grab hold of that man with my bare hands,” said Sharon Goodman, James Mowrey’s older sister.
Wright portrayed himself as a man anxious to get on with the execution if he can’t win a new trial. “I’m not afraid to die,” he told Carpenter.
http://old.post-gazette.com/regionstate/20000906turkey8.asp
