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No fame on my part; I don't think my name was even mentioned apart from the local newspapers, but I was a witness in very high profile murder case in Los Fresnos, Texas.

I was the director of EMS for Los Fresnos on September 16 of 1987, when we received a call for an attempted suicide.

We arrived before the police but one of our EMTs was a constable so he assumed that role. We were the first on the scene.

A prominent Brownsville auto dealer, Bill Mowbray, had been shot in the head. It was called in as an attempted suicide and, even after other law enforcement people arrived later, the assumption seemed to be that it was a suicide.

His wife, Susie Mowbray, let us in. The house was a huge mansion, and she seemed oddly calm, as if we were there simply to pick up the mail or something. She told us where the bedroom was, upstairs, but did not come up with us.

We found her husband basically dead, although there was still some kind of rhythm going on his EKG, so we worked it, although without hope of success.

He had a hole in his head, and had lost a great deal of blood. He was not breathing, and had no pulse. Of course, he was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital.

Someone from the district attorney's office came by the next morning for a copy of our records. As was our policy, I insisted on a subpoena. He wasn't very pleased about that, but came back with a subpoena.

A week or so later, someone from his office called to say that Susie Mowbray's attorney would probably be contacting me and they (the district attorney's office) would prefer if I didn't speak to him. I told them that if there were sides to be had, I wasn't on any one of them, and I would speak to anyone, but that I couldn't answer any confidential questions without an order from the court.

Later, her attorney did come by with the necessary paperwork. Among other things, he asked me about a bullet hole in the patient's hand. I told him that I hadn't seen a hole in his hand but that this didn't necessarily mean that there wasn't one, as I was alone in the back of the ambulance with the patient, busy with IVs, EKGs, CPR, and dealing with the hole in his head. He asked if there was blood on his hands, and I said that there probably was because there seemed to be blood everywhere, but that I had no specific information about his hands.

After a series of depositions, she was charged with his murder on December 6, 1987, although it didn't actually go to trial under late spring or early summer of 1988.

Of course, I was called as a witness, being one of the two people first on the scene.

The prosecution was arguing that she had shot her husband in the head, and that he had sustained a gunshot wound to the hand, as he put it up in a defensive gesture. The defense was arguing that he had propped his head up with his hand, sustaining a gunshot wound to it as the bullet exited his head.

A gun splatter expert took the stand for the prosecution. The assumption was that, if it was a suicide, there would be a great deal of blood on his hand as the bullet exited the head but, if it were a murder, there wouldn't be so much blood on his hand and the bullet would have been traveling at a very high velocity, and wouldn't have resulted in as much blood on the hand.

After getting on the stand, I was instructed to answer only the questions asked, and to give no additional information.

The prosecution asked me if I had seen any blood on the patient's hands. The direct answer to that question was no, but then I hadn't even seen the hole in his hand. But once I replied no, he went on to the next series of questions, one of which was if I had, at any point, cleaned his hands. Of course, I hadn't.

I figured the defense attorney would give me the opportunity to testify to the likelihood that there was blood on his hands because there was blood pretty much everywhere and that, given that I hadn't even seen the hole in his hand, this didn't necessarily mean that there wasn't blood on his hand. After all, I had told him that I hadn't seen the hole in his hand, so it was an obvious follow up.

But he didn't. Instead, he asked a bunch of other stuff that seemed pointless.

She was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Years later, in 1995, the district attorney, who had prosecuted the case, committed suicide, leaving behind a note about being guilty of sending several innocent people to prison.

By then, Susie Mowbray's son, who was a senior in high school or a freshman in college at the time of the murder, had become a lawyer, and he headed up the appeal for his mother.

Another blood spatter expert was found, who reviewed the case, and contradicted the prosecutor's theory and, in 1998, she was acquitted, later winning a settlement from the county. I gave a deposition, but was not called to testify at her retrial.

There was also some scandal involving the blood spatter expert who had testified for the prosecution, but I don't remember what that was about.

 

It is also discussed in this thread, along with the video.