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Hi, it's Katie. I'm excited to let you know that you can watch video episodes of Crime House Daily Night Watch on Spotify. It's the same gripping true crime stories you've been getting here now with added videos and photos that give you even more depth and detail into each case. Search Night Watch on Spotify and hit follow so you never miss an episode.
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This is Crime House.
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Tonight's case has people on the edge of their seats waiting for what's coming next. It involves a decade old murder case that's back in the spotlight after one of the accused came forward with a shocking new version of events. Even more shocking is the evidence he has to back up his claims. Let's get into it. On June 28, 2015, Dr. Seavers returned home early from a family trip. Within hours she was dead, attacked with a hammer, struck 17 times.
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Now her husband, Mark Seavers is back in court in Lee county trying to get off death row. A jury found him guilty of hiring two men, including his best friend, to kill her Wright.
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Store story has changed every time and.
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It doesn't make sense.
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He also claims Wright may have been wanting more than just a friendship with Sievers. Hi, I'm Katie Ring, a true crime analyst, self defense instructor and fierce advocate for victims. And this is Crime House Daily, your essential true crime companion. Every weekday morning and night here at Crime House Daily, we dig into the true crime stories making headlines right now, where justice is unfolding, arrests are happening, and new evidence is emerging. Every morning, First Watch gets you up to speed on the biggest cases. Every night, Night Watch takes you deeper. If you want to follow a case from the first 911 call to the final verdict, this is the place for you. Follow Crime House Daily. Wherever you get your podcasts, leave a Review and for ad free listening, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. For video, check out our YouTube channel Rimehouse Daily or on Spotify by searching Night Watch True Crime Cases Daily in the Search tab. This episode discusses active criminal cases and breaking news. The information we share is based on what's publicly available at the time of recording and may change as new evidence comes to light. We aim to inform, not to decide guilt or innocence, so everyone mentioned is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. On June 28, 2015, a 46 year old doctor named Teresa Sievers was brutally bludgeoned to death with a hammer at her own home in Bonita Springs, Florida. After a frantic investigation, authorities traced the crime back to two hitmen who were hired by Teresa's husband, Mark. All three men ended up on trial, and Mark received the death penalty for his role in the gruesome crime. Now, as Mark's life hangs in the balance, one of his co conspirators has dropped a bombshell. And authorities are now deciding whether or not they will give Mark a second chance in the courtroom. But regardless of what happens in Mark's case, the sad reality is that nothing can bring Teresa back. And her two daughters will never be able to see or hug their mother again. So who was Teresa, and why was her life taken in such a violent way? Teresa Sievers was born on November 19, 1968, at the Griffin Hospital in Derby, Connecticut. From a young age, Teresa knew exactly what she wanted. Her dream was to become a doctor, and she worked incredibly hard to make that dream come true. She was valedictorian at her high school and went on to study at Ross University School of Medicine in Dominica. After graduating, Teresa moved to Florida and completed her residency at the University of Florida. She is just under 5ft tall, but is described as a spit buyer who was willing to do anything she could to help others. While researching this case, there were a ton of interviews of people in Teresa's life, from family to co workers to patients, and everyone had amazing things to say about her. She was an incredibly good mom, a great friend, and an amazing doctor who cared deeply about her patients. She dedicated her life to helping others. And although she has a background in Western medicine, she is passionate about holistic treatments. And Teresa wants to spread her knowledge to as many people as possible because she believes that everyone should have the ability to take control of their own health. So she starts a YouTube channel, but her ultimate goal is to get her own TV show. Although she is focused on her career, Teresa makes some time for her personal life as well. And she ends up meeting a man named Mark Sievers. Mark is a registered nurse from Missouri who is vacationing in Florida. And he and Teresa hit it off instantly and bond over their shared passion for caring for others. And after just a few months of dating, they end up getting married in 2005, when Teresa is 37 and Marcus 36. They build a house in Bonita Springs, Florida, and they also open a holistic medical practice together. Teresa runs things while Mark works as the office manager. They have two daughters together, and on the surface, they seem like a happy, successful family. But beneath this facade, trouble is brewing in the Sievers household. The rift starts when Mark and Teresa run into some money problems. They can't keep up with their taxes, and eventually the IRS puts a $33,000 lien on their house. But finances weren't the only thing causing friction. Mark has claimed that he and Teresa were swingers. And while there aren't a lot of specific details about their arrangement, Teresa apparently begins eyeing someone new as a potential partner. But for Mark, her new prospect hits a little too close to home, because it's his childhood best friend, Curtis Wainwright. Mark and Curtis not only grew up together, they even lived together for a while after college and also look a lot alike. Mark is not okay with the idea of Teresa sleeping with Curtis, and he starts becoming insecure when he thinks that Curtis is Teresa's sexual fantasy. So tensions quickly escalate between the couple. Mark starts to become worried that Teresa will take their daughters and leave him. But for the time being, they agree to put their marital issues on the back burner as they focus on other things. In early 2015, Teresa is profiled in a local women's magazine because of her work in the community. Around the same time, Mark travels to Missouri to attend Curtis's wedding. At the wedding, Mark opens up to his best friend about his marriage. He fears that if Theresa does take the kids, he won't have enough money to fight her for custody. Then he mentions something else about their finances. Apparently, he and Teresa recently took out a $4.4 million life insurance policy on her. Mark says the life insurance policy could be his saving grace because if Theresa dies, he will get it all. And apparently Mark needs that money now. When Curtis hears this evil plan, he is totally on board, and he's actually more than just okay with it. He wants in. Together, the two hatch a plan. Mark and Teresa are going on a family vacation to New York soon, and Teresa is planning on leaving early so she can be back and ready for her clients on Monday. Mark stays behind with the girls to create a rock solid alibi While Curtis drives 1100 miles from Missouri to southern Florida to murder Teresa. And Curtis thinks no one will have any reason to suspect him since he lives so far away. In exchange, Mark will pay Curtis $100,000 once he cashes out Teresa's policy. Curtis agrees, and they shake hands. When Mark returns home to Florida, he shows no signs of what he's just set in motion. He continues to play the role of the perfect family man, so when the family travels to upstate New York for their trip, nobody suspects anything. While they're away, Mark's mom, Bonnie, is looking after their pets, and she would typically set their house alarm when she would leave. But Mark tells her that it's been on the fritz and that she shouldn't bother with it. But in reality, he disables the alarm before the family heads out for the weekend. And as Curtis is preparing for his side of the plot, there's something he's keeping from Mark. In June 2015, Curtis Wright is preparing to kill his best friend Mark Seaver's wife, Teresa. Mark has taken out a $4.4 million life insurance policy on his wife and has offered Curtis $100,000 to help with his plan to kill his wife. But Curtis hasn't told Mark that he not only told another person about the plan, but he actually hired him to help. It's a guy Curtis met in prison named Jimmy Ray Rogers. Jimmy isn't new to violent crimes and he has even given himself the nickname the hammer. On June 27, 2015, Curtis and Jimmy begin their drive from Missouri to Florida and arrive in Bonita Springs around 6am the next day. Once there, they stop at Walmart where they purchase garbage bags, wet wipes, black towels, black shoes, and a lock picking kit. Then after a quick stop at a local beach, Curtis and Jimmy make their way to the Seavers household. Since the alarm is disabled, they are able to open the side door without a problem. They enter the house through a small entryway and then they wait in the kitchen for Teresa to return home. Unfortunately, Teresa is about to head right into their trap. On Sunday, June 28, Mark drives Teresa to the airport and she flies home. But when she gets home that evening, Curtis Wright and Jimmy Rogers are silently waiting for her and Curtis is holding a hammer. As they approach her, Teresa asks her husband's best friend one simple question. Why? Curtis doesn't reply. Instead, he hits Teresa in the head three times. And then Jimmy steps in to finish the brutal attack. In total, Teresa is bludgeoned 17 times and her skull is completely destroyed. When they're done, they get into the car, drive back to Missouri, and believe they've gotten away with murder. The next day, when Teresa doesn't show up to work, a nurse from her practice named Sandra Hoskins calls her to check in. But Teresa doesn't answer her phone. So Sandra texts Mark to tell him what's going on. Teresa never misses work and Sandra knows Mark is out of town. So she offers to go swing by their house, but Mark says no. Instead, he contacts another employee, a doctor named Mark Petrites, and asks him to go inside. Petrites agrees and when he gets there, he's met with A gruesome scene. Teresa is lying in a pool of blood on the floor, and as a doctor, Petrites can already tell she's dead. Not only that, but there's a bloody hammer lying next to her. Petrites thinks Teresa was not only attacked, but that her killer could be inside the house. So he rushes outside and dials 911. The police arrive quickly, perform a sweep of the house, and determine that no one else is inside. But they also notice something extremely bizarre. None of their valuables were stolen. There is $40,000 in cash and a large gun collection that are both untouched. Makes you wonder if their financial problems were actually as bad as Mark said. Crime scene analysts comb through the kitchen, and they find a few blue fibers on Teresa's dress that come from a different piece of clothing. When authorities contact Mark and share the tragic news, he rushes home and goes into the station for questioning. Mark is not only sobbing uncontrollably, but he's crying out for Teresa and hitting himself in the face. To the detectives, it all seems a little overdramatic. It's giving bad acting. Investigators become suspicious of Mark, but they need more evidence. They speak with Mark's mother, who was pet sitting for the Seavers while they were out of town. And she says that Mark told her that the alarm system was glitching and to not worry about turning it on before she left the house on the evening of the 27th, which would have been just hours before Curtis and Jimmy arrived. Investigators are beginning to think that Mark was somehow behind his own wife's brutal murder. For now, though, Mark wasn't even in the same state when this happened. So he's got a solid alibi. Which also means authorities don't have enough concrete evidence to hold him. So they let him go and begin looking into other leads, including employees at their medical practice, their groundskeeping team, and even their AC repairman. But everything's a dead end. Days go by, and investigators are starting to worry that Teresa's case is going cold. But on July 9, over a week since Teresa's death, they receive a chilling tip from an anonymous caller. The caller says that they live in the Midwest and that the day before Teresa Seaver's murder, they overheard a conversation involving a woman named Angela Wright. They overheard her ranting about how her husband, Curtis Wright, had gone on an unplanned last minute trip to Florida that weekend and that his excuse was that he was going to fix a computer at Mark and Teresa's house. And what made her even more mad was that she had Asked Curtis if she could come along, but he said no. Not only that, but apparently he forgot to bring his cell phone with him. So Angela couldn't even get in touch with him while he was gone. Investigators quickly realize that the evidence they need to solve Teresa's murder Might be located at Curtis's home in Missouri. As soon as they arrive at Curtis's house, they find a silver Hyundai rental car parked out front. There's a separate GPS device inside the car, and when they check that car's GPS history, they see Mark and Teresa's address. And curiously, the GPS device isn't registered under Curtis's name. It's registered to a man named Jimmy Rogers. Investigators start looking into Jimmy, and they question his girlfriend, Taylor Shoemaker. And when they find her, she reveals a treasure trove of damning information. In the summer of 2015, a few weeks after Teresa Seaver's murder, Investigators speak with Jimmie Rogers girlfriend, Taylor Showmaker. Taylor says that shortly after the murder, Jimmy returned home and smashed up his cell phone. Then he grabbed all of the pieces and asked Taylor to get in the car with him. As Jimmy drove along the highway, he told Taylor to throw the pieces out the window, Making sure to scatter them all over a large distance. Jimmy also tossed a blue jumpsuit out of the window. Taylor says she became suspicious of him after that and tells police that she confronted Jimmy directly and asked him if he had gone out of state to murder someone. According to Taylor, Jimmy proudly admitted to the crime. He even laughed when he told Taylor that the murder weapon was a hammer to match the nickname he had given himself. After speaking with Taylor, investigators trace the same path along the highway that she'd described. Along the road, they find the blue jumpsuit and bag it for analysis for when they return to Florida. But they still need more evidence to build a solid case. So they collect security footage from around Bonita Springs and end up finding videos of the two men at a local gas station. From there, they trace the men's path to a nearby Walmart, where footage from inside the store shows them purchasing the supplies they used to carry out Teresa's murder. Now that they're certain these two men are their culprits, they just need to get them into custody. Jimmy was on probation at the time and wasn't allowed to leave the state. So this security footage showing him in Florida is enough to bring him in. So on August 25, 2, 2015, Jimmy is arrested in Missouri for violating the terms of his probation. Let's just say very few people in his Neighborhood are surprised to see him in handcuffs. People say he was even bragging about the murder for hire ever since he got back. Once Jimmy is behind bars, police begin building their murder case against Curtis Wright. In Taylor's interview, she had told police that Curtis Curtis was involved in Teresa's murder as well. And two days later, on August 27, Curtis Wright is taken into custody, but immediately denies any involvement. This doesn't stall the investigation, though, because outside the interrogation room, evidence is piling up. Forensic analysts realize the blue jumpsuit that Jimmy allegedly discarded on the highway is a match to for the fibers found on the dress Teresa was wearing when she died. From there, investigators obtain Mark's cell phone records and find a ton of messages between him and Curtis. They'd been in touch almost daily since 2011. But the messages stop abruptly on June 27, the day before the murder, and Mark's final text reads, no need to call me. Hope you're having a nice day. Curtis eventually breaks his silence and confesses to killing Teresa. But that's not all. He says Mark put him up to it. He lays out their entire plot, and on February 26, 2016, Mark is arrested. All three men are charged with first degree murder, and prosecutors aim to have Mark sentenced to death for being at the center of it all. As they're staring down the consequences of their actions, the men start turning on each other. Jimmy is the first to face trial, and In October of 2019, he pleads not guilty to first degree murder. Curtis testifies against him, and the jury finds Jimmy guilty on lesser charges of second degree murder and trespassing. But it's still enough for him to be sentenced to life in prison. Curtis is up next, and he's facing the same fate as Jimmy. However, prosecutors soon give him a way out. They offer him a plea deal. If he testifies against Mark and pleads guilty to second degree murder, he'll face a maximum of 25 years. Curtis agrees, and when Mark's trial begins in December 2019, Curtis testifies against him. He once again says the entire plot was Mark's idea and lays out all of the details of the plan. The jury takes Curtis at his word, and they find Mark sievers guilty of first degree murder. At his sentencing hearing in January 2020, Mark claims his innocence and says Teresa was his soulmate and that he's heartbroken over her death. But his words do little to sway judge Bruce Kyle, who hands down the death sentence. Sievers requests a new trial later that year, and in 2022, he seeks to have his sentence and conviction overturned. The appeal makes it all the way to the Florida Supreme Court, but in the end, they uphold both the ruling and sentencing. For a while, this seems like the end of the story. And Teresa's loved ones start trying their best to move on. That is until October 2025, when the entire case is flipped on its head. Mark Seavers returns to the courtroom for a post conviction relief hearing, which is basically a last ditch effort after an appeal is denied. And on October 14th, Jimmy Ray Rogers takes the stand and what he says shocks everyone. Jimmy completely flips the narrative surrounding Teresa's murder. He says there was no premeditated plan to kill her and that Mark is totally innocent. Jimmy claims that back in 2015, Curtis asked him to go to Florida to do some painting and computer work at Mark and Teresa's home. As Jimmy's story goes, he agreed. But when Curtis picked him up, he had a ton of Adderall in his system. They drove through the night and when they got to Florida, they. They realized that they were too early because the Seavers were still out of town. So Jimmy and Curtis visited the beach before returning to the house later that night. When Teresa returned home from the airport, she was angry that they were there on the wrong day. She and Curtis started arguing and as things got more heated, they moved into the garage. But it only kept escalating from there. Eventually, Teresa told Curtis he was fired and and in a fit of rage, Curtis grabbed a hammer and hit Teresa once in the head. She ran into the kitchen to try and escape, but he followed her and continued hitting her. Jimmy watched as the entire attack played out. He says it lasted about 30 seconds total before Teresa was completely unresponsive. Then Curtis turned to Jimmy with tears in his eyes. He became frantic and said that they had to make it look like a robbery gone wrong. So they scattered Teresa's luggage around the living room and wiped their fingerprints off anything they may have touched. Jimmy concludes his testimony by saying that during the car ride back to Missouri, Curtis threatened to kill him and his girlfriend if he ever told anyone what happened. Jimmy also says there's a reason why Curtis wanted Theresa dead. Because he was jealous. He alleges that Mark and Curtis had been having an affair bear for years. Now Mark's lawyers are fighting to use Jimmy's new testimony to have a new trial. Granted, they believe it shows that Mark is innocent after all. Personally, with the timing of this all, it's sounding to me like Mark maybe paid someone off. I wouldn't be surprised if parts of the story are true, but I definitely don't believe they drove all the way from Missouri to fix a computer and that she knew that they had an appointment. But telling his mom not to set the security alarm, telling Curtis about the $4 million life insurance policy and his cryptic text after seems a little sus. Also, I highly doubt Curtis is going to threaten to kill a guy who calls himself the Hammer, and that a guy who calls himself the Hammer would respond well to that or even be intimidated by that threat at all. In the meantime, Teresa's family has been caring for her two daughters. Angela's sister has also aimed to channel her grief into something positive by writing a book in her memory titled what My Sister Told Me After She Was Murdered. Here at Crime House, we'll be tracking all of the breaking updates and we'll bring them to you as they come in. Foreign what did you think of tonight's case? Drop your thoughts and theories in the comments. See you next time. If you haven't already, subscribe to our YouTube channel @Crime House daily and follow us on social media rimehouse24.7 for real time updates. Because the pursuit of justice never stops. Foreign.
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