At about 3:30 p.m. on May 14, 1984, police in Springfield, Massachusetts, discovered the body of 24-year-old Penny Anderson on the living-room floor of her apartment. Her wrists were bound, and an autopsy would later state that she had been stabbed more than 60 times. Anderson’s infant son was in another room, unharmed.
Anderson worked as a dancer at Club 418 in downtown Springfield, and witnesses told the police that she left the club around midnight with an unidentified Black man. On May 15, several witnesses identified the man as 22-year-old Edward Wright.
On May 16, Arthur Turner gave a statement to the police claiming that Wright had told him in a telephone call that he was responsible for the murder. Turner was a year older than Wright, but Wright had occasionally dated Turner’s mother, and she had recently obtained a restraining order against him. (A federal judge would later refer to the relationship between Wright and Arthur Turner as “complicated.”)
Turner said in his statement that his mother had asked him to give Wright some money so Wright could return to his home in Delaware. Turner said Wright agreed to have Turner drive him there on Friday, May 11, but then Wright postponed his departure for a few days because he was waiting on a check. Turner made the trip without him and returned home to Massachusetts around noon on May 14. Wright ended up driving to Wilmington on the morning of May 14.
In the statement, Turner said he received a call from “Ed” at 4:30 p.m. on May 14.
“He told me he had done something wrong. I asked him ‘What?’ He said, ‘I killed someone … because she’s on TIC,’” a slang term for methamphetamines.
According to Turner’s statement, “[Ed] said that he had made love to her and he was lying on the bed with a knife strapped to his leg. She told him she had a gun and pulled it out and fired at him. He jumped up and grabbed her wrist and stabbed her and because she didn’t turn the gun loose, he had to do what he had to do. He said he never thought he would have to kill the bitch. He went on to say he knew she was dead because he had a knife with a 14” blade.”
Police in Wilmington, Delaware, arrested Wright on an unrelated weapons charge on May 16, 1984. According to a statement written by Detective Dennis Williams with the Wilmington Police Department, Wright was questioned about the Anderson murder and said that he met up with Anderson at the club, and they left at about 10 p.m. to go to the house of Anderson’s mother and get Anderson’s young son. Wright said they drove back to Anderson’s apartment, where they drank and had sex. According to the statement, Wright said he left around 1 a.m., after Anderson went to sleep. An addendum to the statement said: “This investigator sensed that Mr. Wright did not care for the victim because he referred to her as a whore and she was on tic.”
Police charged Wright with first-degree murder on May 17, 1984, and he was extradited to Springfield.
On the night of the murder, Wright had been driving a Pontiac Grand Prix that belonged to a friend named Vernal Archie, and the next day, Wright, Archie, and Archie’s girlfriend had driven to Delaware to see Wright’s sister. The Springfield police later seized the Pontiac and later found, based on presumptive serological testing, what they considered to be traces of blood on the steering wheel, headlight switch, inside door handle, turn signal and gas pedal.
On the day investigators found Anderson’s body, the Springfield police had dusted her apartment for fingerprints and removed cushions and other household items from the apartment. Contrary to Turner’s statement, they found no evidence of a gun being fired. Technicians returned to the apartment on May 18 to remove two linoleum tiles that contained blood and footwear impressions.
Nine days later, Mark Grant, a chemist for the Massachusetts Department of Public Safety, compared the impression from the tiles to impressions made by a pair of Nike sneakers seized from Wright after his arrest. In a report dated June 12, 1984, Grant wrote: “Faint indications of a checkerboard (grid) pattern on tile #2 were detected. This pattern was similar in appearance to the suspect’s shoes.” The report also said that blood was detected in the checkerboard pattern on tile #2 and in a circular impression that spanned tiles #1 and #2.
Wright’s trial in Hampden County Superior Court began on April 2, 1985. John Donahue represented Wright. Hampden County District Attorney Matthew Ryan was the prosecutor, and Judge William Simons presided over the trial.
Anderson was white. During jury selection, Ryan successfully challenged the seating of any Black male juror. The final pool of 12 jurors had at least 11 white members. (A Black woman was also selected, but court records are unclear whether she was part of the deliberations or served as an alternate.)
In his opening statement, Ryan did not provide a motive for the murder. Donahue declined to give an opening statement.
Brenda Fisher, a neighbor, testified that she saw Anderson and Wright return to Anderson’s apartment at around 12:45 a.m. on May 14. Another neighbor, Al Liquori, testified that he was awakened at around 4 a.m. by a woman screaming “Please, don’t do it.” He said he looked out his window and noticed Anderson’s light was on and her window open. He also said he heard a car drive away after the screaming stopped.
Turner had recanted his statement to the police on December 12, 1984. In a statement given to Donahue, Turner said: “I have never spoken with Edward Wright on the telephone. I cannot say that the person who called me on May 14, 1984, at about 4:30 p.m. was Edward Wright.”
At the trial, Ryan threatened to charge Turner with perjury. Judge Simons advised Turner of his right to an attorney. After Turner said he couldn’t afford one, Judge Simons didn’t appoint an attorney or find one that Turner could afford. Donahue didn’t object to Turner being forced to waive his right to counsel.
Turner testified that he received two phone calls on May 14. One was from Wright’s sister, Mary Wright. The other was from “Ed,” but Turner did not testify that Wright was that person.
Still, Turner did not recant the content of that conversation with “Ed,” and he testified that he had told the police and the grand jury that Wright was that person. Turner also said that his mother and Wright had since reconciled and that he had been in a serious automobile accident several hours before the phone call.
The state introduced long-distance phone records from Mary Wright’s house in Delaware that showed several calls to Springfield-area numbers on May 14. The first call, placed at 4:16 p.m., was to Turner’s aunt, Esther Slater, who testified that she had a brief conversation with Wright that afternoon. She said that Wright told her he had made it safely to Delaware and that he needed the numbers for Arthur Turner and Turner’s mother. During cross-examination, Slater said she had not mentioned this call to police when she first spoke with them.
According to the phone records, a second call lasting 36 minutes was placed to Turner’s number at 4:41 p.m. (Mary Wright would later testify that she placed both calls and that her brother never used the phone.)
Archie testified that he had allowed Wright to borrow his car on the night of May 13. He said that Wright was wearing the same shirt but different pants when he returned to Archie’s house on the morning of May 14.
The medical examiner who performed the autopsy testified about the extent of Anderson’s injuries. He also testified that traces of valium were found in her blood and that her time of death was between 12:15 a.m. and 6:15 a.m.
Grant, the state chemist, first testified about the footwear impressions left on the linoleum tiles in Anderson’s apartment.
Grant said: “I noted the presence of a checkerboard or grid pattern that I believe to be an impression from a sole of a shoe and [on] that impression, I noted the presence of blood and [in] one other area I noticed the presence of blood on these two tiles where they joined together. There was a circular striation; there was a presence of blood in there.”
Ryan asked Grant if the imprint was in blood. Grant said, “It was not a bloody imprint per se, but there was blood on the imprint.”
Ryan then asked Grant whether he could make a comparison between the imprint and Wright’s sneaker. Grant answered “Yes, in my opinion, the mark on the tile was similar in nature to the sole of the sneaker.”
Grant said he did not find any blood on Wright’s sneaker.
Ryan then asked Grant whether he could testify “within a reasonable degree of forensic chemistry” whether the time lapse between May 14 and May 23 would be a sufficient period of time for any blood collected on the bottom of Wright’s sneaker to have disappeared. “My opinion is that over a 10-day period of time there’s a strong possibility that the blood would wear away,” Grant said.
Grant later testified about the blood found in Pontiac, which he referred to as “occult blood,” or blood that couldn’t be detected with the naked eye. He said that occult blood was found on the steering wheel, turn signal, headlight switch, door handle, gas pedal and underside of the dashboard.
Ryan asked Grant why he was unable to determine the type of blood or source of the blood.
“Generally, it’s because the sample is too small or it’s because the sample is too old, the dried sample of blood is decomposed,” Grant testified.
During his cross-examination, Donahue asked Grant, “Could you, by taking one of the sneakers, are you able to take one of the sneakers and place it on the tile and show us how the imprint occurred?”
Grant answered: “Not specifically … It was a sliding motion in that one.”
He later said he could tell the shoe had slid across the linoleum because of the warped pattern in the small squares left on the tile. “A couple of the squares are slightly elongated, but this one right here is perfectly square. You assume this area right here was sliding, but other than that I can’t say anything further about them.”
Later, Grant said none of the blood found in the Pontiac was in amounts large enough to determine the blood type or source. He testified that blood doesn’t deteriorate to the point that it can’t be tested. Donahue asked whether the occult blood could be four or five years old. Grant said it was possible, but not on the steering wheel. “With that small amount of blood, if you were holding onto it constantly, your hand on it, you would probably wipe it away with your hand.”
Detective Alfred Ingham testified about the crime-scene investigation. He said officers drew a preliminary sketch of the apartment on May 14 and began collecting evidence. While much of the evidence was collected on May 14, police returned to the apartment on May 18 to remove the linoleum tiles and again on May 28 to collect some scrapings.
Ryan asked Ingham: “You don’t know of your own knowledge what activity if any there was in the apartment between the 14th and the 28th when you went back?
Ingham: “To the best of my knowledge, we were the only ones in there.”
“You mean the police?
“That’s correct.”
During the trial, Wright became increasingly displeased with Donahue’s efforts. A flashpoint came during the testimony of Laurie Sullivan, a records clerk with the Wilmington Police Department who had processed some of Wright’s paperwork. In a statement dated February 20, 1985, Sullivan said that she heard Wright offhandedly mention that “I stabbed a girl in Springfield 65 times.”
Prior to Sullivan’s testimony, Judge Simons quizzed her about the statement, which had been written by a Wilmington detective. Sullivan said she had only heard the number “65” and hadn’t actually heard Wright say he stabbed anybody. She said she signed the statement because the detective told her it would preclude her from having to travel to Springfield for the trial.
Judge Simons limited her testimony, and Sullivan testified that “At some point during the conversation when Mr. Wright was speaking to me or to himself, the number 65 was mentioned.”
Donahue’s cross-examination was brief. After a recess, Wright asked that Judge Simons appoint a new attorney to represent him.
“My attorney is not showing them the police had went out of their way to set me up to take statements, not take them, to write them, to have people sign these statements which are not true,” Wright said.
“I feel I’m being railroaded,” Wright said. “There’s evidence being presented to you and not to the jurors of witnesses testifying that cops have made statements up. None of this is being taken forward to the jurors only to you. You are the balance of justice, you know what I’m saying. But you do not decide whether I’m guilty or innocent, the jurors do.
Judge Simons: “That’s right.”
Wright continued, “If they don’t hear this testimony as to what these witnesses are saying, what’s being said only in front of you, they’re deciding this case only one way.”
Later, Wright said that Donahue had urged him to take a plea deal to second-degree murder. “You tell me that’s a lawyer I need,” Wright said.
Judge Simons declined Wright’s request for a new attorney. He said Donahue was “highly regarded and experienced” and thought that his work at trial had been “masterful.”
Wright took the stand and testified about his relationship with Anderson. He said they met up at the club on May 13 and were planning to leave when Anderson ran into Andrew Jefferson, who lived with her and was the father of their young son. Anderson and Jefferson talked briefly, Wright said. A few minutes later, he testified, Anderson ran into Allen Smalls, an old boyfriend. Anderson and Smalls went back into the club, Wright said, and he left to get some gas. He said he returned to the club and witnessed an argument between Smalls and Anderson. “We were going out the door and Allen Smalls grabbed her,” Wright said. Donahue cautioned him against repeating the content of that conversation, and Wright continued, “I’m not saying what was said, but her pocketbook fell, things were scattered across the floor. Allen Smalls reached down, picked up something. What he picked up, he put in his pocket.”
The Springfield police had interviewed Jefferson and Smalls on May 14.
Jefferson, who did not testify at the trial, had said in a statement that he had seen Anderson talking with a Black man at the club, but she left while he was in the men’s room. He said he later went to their apartment but couldn’t get in because he didn’t have a key and had never had one. He said he spent the night at his sister’s, then returned to his apartment on the morning of May 14. He said he could hear the baby crying, and he pounded on the door. No one answered, so he left.
Smalls also did not testify but had said in his statement that he ran into Anderson at the club and saw her about to leave with a Black man he didn’t know. He said he asked Anderson where she was going. She said she was going to pick up her son and then go have sex with the man she was with. Smalls said he told her, “Don’t go home because I’ll be there when you get there.” Smalls said that he rode his moped to his house after Anderson left.
In Wright’s purported statement to Detective Williams, he said he and Anderson had sex in her apartment before he left at around 1 a.m. At trial, he testified that he and Anderson had sex in the back seat of the Pontiac, with Anderson’s son in the car, and then went to the apartment.
During cross-examination, Ryan pushed Wright to acknowledge making the statement to Williams. Wright said he never made the statement and didn’t talk to the officer after Williams read him his rights. (Williams had testified that Wright waived those rights and didn’t ask for an attorney.)
Wright also testified that he was beaten and stabbed on May 7, a week before the murder, and that Archie drove him to the hospital in the Pontiac. “I was bleeding pretty bad,” he said. Donahue introduced hospital records confirming the extent of the injuries.
During his closing argument, Donahue said the state’s case hinged on the testimony of Arthur Turner, whom Donahue said had a well-known dislike for Wright and was determined to remove Wright from his life and his mother’s.
Ryan said in his closing argument that Turner had not really recanted and that the forensic evidence analyzed by Grant tied Wright to the murder. He also said that despite Wright’s denials at trial, it was clear that he had given a statement to the Wilmington police, because that statement matched up with much of Turner’s initial statement.
“Did you ever see two statements dovetail?” Ryan said. “One man down in Delaware, Detective Williams, and another man here, Arthur Turner going to the police department and saying this.”
The jury convicted Wright of first-degree murder on April 10, 1985, and Judge Simons sentenced him to life in prison without parole.
For the next 40 years, Wright appealed his conviction in state and federal courts.
After filing a direct appeal, Wright moved for a new trial in 1986 based in part on an affidavit from Lee Britt, the mother of Allen Smalls. Britt said that on the day of Anderson’s murder, her son was trying to sell a hunting knife. She also said that Smalls had returned home several hours later than he told the police. That made her suspicious, and she had her daughter buy the knife for safekeeping.
Britt said that a few days after Anderson’s murder, Smalls came home with some record albums and a small gold purse. She said her son told her that he had broken into Anderson’s apartment through a window and taken the items.
Britt also said that after Wright’s trial, she went to Florida to visit Smalls and his girlfriend. Britt said the girlfriend told her that Smalls had threatened her during a fight and said, “I will kill you just like I did Penny.”
Britt said she turned over the knife to Wright’s appellate attorney. (Subsequent testing proved inconclusive.)
Britt testified at an evidentiary hearing on October 7, 1986, and Judge Simons denied Wright’s motion on October 31, 1986. He said that Britt’s testimony was “without credibility and not worthy of careful consideration.”
Wright appealed, and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court consolidated his direct appeal and first two motions for new trial, affirming the conviction on January 15, 1992.
The ruling did not mention Britt’s affidavit, but it said that Wright’s claims of insufficient evidence, prosecutorial misconduct, and ineffective assistance of counsel were without merit.
In 1994 and 2003, Wright filed two more motions for a new trial. Judges in superior court affirmed his convictions, and the Supreme Judicial Court denied his requests to appeal in 1997 and 2006.
Separately, Wright had filed a motion in 1998 to reopen his federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus, which had been stayed while the state courts considered his new trial motions.
At the heart of the habeas petition was a statement from Maria Rivera Ramos, Smalls’s former girlfriend. An investigator working for Wright had tracked her down, and she had provided an account similar to Britt’s about Smalls and his volatile behavior.
The state opposed the petition. It said Wright had raised this issue in his fourth motion for a new trial, which a judge had rejected without holding an evidentiary hearing.
Judge Patti Saris of U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts held an evidentiary hearing on October 26, 2007.
Ramos testified at the hearing that she dated Smalls in 1981-1982, and then again in 1985, after the trial.
She said that Smalls took her to some woods near Springfield and forced himself on her. “But I was fighting it. So, he just grabbed my hair like this, got close to my ear, and he just stated, ‘Stay still, bitch, or I’ll kill you just like I killed Penny.’” Later, she said, he choked her and repeated that warning. “I said to him, ‘So you’re the one that killed Penny,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, but nobody’s going to find out.’”
Ramos said she didn’t come forward because she feared retaliation from Smalls. She also said she had recently been treated for mental illness but had not had these symptoms during the time in question. (Ramos died in May 2008.)
On July 17, 2008, Judge Saris ruled that Wright met the gateway showing of actual innocence to proceed on his habeas claim. Her ruling noted “key gaps” in the state’s evidence. No physical evidence conclusively linked Wright to the murder, and Turner’s “flip-flopping” gave her pause. She said that Ramos’s testimony and Britt’s statements were “sufficient to establish a likelihood that reasonable jurors would have a reasonable doubt as to whether Wright or Smalls was the killer.”
Despite that ruling, Judge Saris denied Wright’s habeas petition on November 9, 2009. While the 2008 ruling that allowed the habeas petition to proceed was based on a claim of innocence, the ruling on the petition itself was based on questions of due process, such as whether Wright’s constitutional rights had been violated by allowing the admission at trial of Turner’s testimony before the grand jury.
Wright then filed a fifth motion for a new trial in April 2012, based on the affidavits from Britt and Ramos.
A Superior Court judge denied Wright’s motion, and the state’s Supreme Judicial Court affirmed that ruling on August 20, 2014. Although the appellate court said the affidavits by the two women were compelling, it also said they did not “cast real doubt on the justice of the defendant’s conviction.”
The ruling noted problems with Britt’s statement and testimony about Smalls telling her he broke into Anderson’s apartment. “There was no evidence of any forced entry into the apartment when the victim’s body was discovered, and no corroborating evidence of any subsequent break-in,” the court said.
In 2016, the New England Innocence Project (NEIP) began representing Wright. In 2017, it received approval to conduct DNA testing on Anderson’s clothing and other items found in her apartment. At the time, NEIP lacked the funds to pay for the testing. Wright had received an award in 2017 after winning a jury trial for civil-rights violations by a corrections officer at Old Colony Correctional Center, and he used part of that award to pay Bode Cellmark to conduct the testing.
Bode Cellmark reported in 2018 that DNA analysis on genetic material found on Anderson’s pants, a washcloth, a throw pillow, and the hair found on a T-shirt excluded Wright as a contributor. The analysis also found a consistent partial profile of an unknown male contributor on several items found at the crime scene.
In April 2021, Radha Natarajan, NEIP’s executive director, received the full case file from the Springfield Police Department, which contained two police reports that Donahue had not received prior to trial.
The first was a statement from Linda Lee Grassel, who described a fight between Anderson and Jefferson about two weeks before Anderson’s death. During the fight, according to Grassel, Anderson stabbed Jefferson.
The second was a police report of a break-in at Anderson’s apartment between 3 p.m. on May 16 and 12:30 p.m. on May 17. Ingham wrote the report.
On October 10, 2023. Wright filed his sixth motion for a new trial. Along with Natarajan and Stephanie Hartung of NEIP, Wright was also represented by pro bono attorneys, led by Nigel Tamton from the Skadden Arps law firm and Isaac Saidel-Goley from Quinn Emanuel.
The motion said:
The state had failed to disclose the exculpatory evidence of Grassel’s statement and the break-in at Anderson’s apartment. In addition, the motion said that Ingham had testified falsely about the crime scene remaining undisturbed. As recently as 2014, the state had told the court that there was no evidence of a break-in at the apartment.
The new DNA results were powerful evidence of Wright’s innocence: “Based on the DNA analyses, a jury now could reasonably conclude that the murderer left behind his DNA on Ms. Anderson’s clothes when he struggled with her during the assault,” Wright’s attorneys would later note. “They could also reasonably conclude that, even though the murderer cannot be identified through the consistent partial profile across the items connected to the murder, there is clarity on one thing: Wright cannot be that person.”
A new analysis of the footwear evidence concluded that Grant’s report on the footwear impression contained numerous errors. Dr. Alicia Wilcox’s report said Wright’s sneakers could be excluded from at least two of the three impressions on the tiles, and the third impression was too partial to be of use. Her report also said the break-in at the crime scene might have contaminated the evidence.
A separate report also found flaws in Grant’s testimony regarding the blood on the tiles and in the Pontiac. Amy Brodeur, a forensic scientist formerly with the Boston Police Department, said that Grant only performed presumptive blood tests, not confirmatory tests, and therefore could not conclude that the substances were in fact blood. She noted that Grant failed to create or maintain lab notes for his examination of the car, and that his testimony about the age of the occult “blood” he said he found on the steering wheel lacked a scientific basis.
Ryan had engaged in improper jury selection by striking jurors based on their race and had gone out of his way to keep reminding the jury that Anderson was a white woman. The motion noted that state courts had reversed two of Ryan’s earlier convictions based on racially inappropriate comments.
Donahue had provided an ineffective defense. He failed to introduce evidence pointing to Smalls or Jefferson, and he didn’t adequately cross-examine Turner or Williams about their statements inculpating Wright. In addition, Wright attended his trial from the “prisoner’s dock,” rather than a seat next to his attorney. There was nothing in the record suggesting that Donahue tried to change this arrangement.
Post-conviction claims often turn on very narrow issues. But since 2017, the Massachusetts courts had taken a new approach that urged judges to avoid this piecemeal approach and instead use a wider lens—a “confluence of factors”—when considering whether “justice may not have been done.”
“Mr. Wright has spent nearly 40 years in prison for a crime he did not commit,” the motion said. “The newly discovered evidence and confluence of factors explained in this motion show what Mr. Wright has resolutely maintained throughout those four decades: justice was not done in his case, and Mr. Wright should be given a new trial.”
Judge Jeremy Bucci of Hampden Superior Court held an evidentiary hearing on December 18, 2024, and February 26-27, 2025.
Ingham testified at the December hearing. He said he had received a work-related injury in June 1984 and was on medical leave until his retirement in November 1985. He said he didn’t meet with prosecutors prior to testifying at the trial, and he acknowledged that he never mentioned a break-in during his trial testimony. Judge Bucci barred Ingham from answering a question about whether that omission created a false picture for the jury.
Ingham testified that break-ins at a crime scene were very rare and could be important to investigators. Hartung asked him why. Ingham said: “I alluded to [that] earlier in regards to someone going in there to plant evidence or to take something out of there that maybe proves somebody’s guilt or to steal.” He also testified such an event could contaminate the evidence.
On April 11, 2025, Judge Bucci granted Wright’s motion for a new trial. “The prosecution knowingly and intentionally withheld significant exculpatory evidence of a break-in to the crime scene and that a detective gave false testimony at trial concerning evidence central to the prosecution’s case,” he wrote.
“The break-in report establishes that the crime scene was not preserved,” he wrote. “This fact substantially erodes the commonwealth’s heavy reliance on the shoe print as the only forensic link to the defendant at trial.”
Judge Bucci said although the DNA testing of the clothes and household items provided new evidence of Wright’s innocence, it was not a basis for throwing out Wright’s conviction, because the state had not relied on this evidence at trial.
Wright was released from prison on July 31, 2025, greeted by his friends and family, including his wife, Mimi Olivier, whom he had married 16 years prior.
Hampden County District Attorney Anthony Gulluni said in a statement: “We stand by the integrity of the original prosecution and the many judicial reviews that this case has already received over the past four decades.”
The state dismissed the case on August 21, 2025.
“It is unfortunately part of a familiar old playbook that when faced with incontrovertible evidence of its own misconduct, the Commonwealth buries its head in the sand,” said Hartung. “Rather than acknowledging that false testimony and hidden evidence led to the wrongful conviction of an innocent man, the prosecution instead clings to a blind insistence on his guilt. We are thrilled that Eddie is finally free, but we cannot call it justice when it took him 41 years to get here.”
– Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 09-08-2025
