The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear the appeal of a Houston woman who was found guilty in the 2012 murder of an Arlington couple in a case laced with witchcraft and spells.
Authorities said the case ultimately came down to an insurance fraud scheme.
Long Nguyen, 73, and his wife Huong Ly, 63, owned an Arlington sewing business that was not doing well. The Vietnamese natives believed a curse had been cast on their company. At the urging of a relative, the couple hired Dephne Wright, a Houston-area self-proclaimed witch who said she could remove the spell.
“There was possibly a curse on the business. It wasn’t doing well, it wasn’t pulling a profit that they thought that it should," former Tarrant County prosecutor Sam Williams said shortly after the trial. “He saw it in a magazine and convinced his in-laws that they should hire this spiritual counselor or soothsayer or whatever you want to call her, to try and take the spell off.”
But it cost far more than the Nguyens could afford. And when they racked up debt, Wright hired two people to kill them so she could collect life insurance money.
“They were able to amass a debt of $280,000 and obviously they weren’t able to pay that. And that’s where this insurance scheme came into play.” Williams said.
Wright hired a man and his nephew to murder the couple, so she could collect life insurance money. A jury convicted Wright, whose sentence was an automatic term of life without parole.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the appeal without comment.
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