CBS
On September 9, 2016, Chacey Poynter called 911 to report that her husband, fire captain Robert Poynter, had been shot in the head. She was later convicted of capital murder. She tells her story in an interview with Peter Van Sant on 48 Hours.
Police body camera footage was released showing Poynter waving down a police cruiser and yelling about her husband being shot.
“She was just frantic,” Sergeant Shane Meek, who interviewed Poynter as the scene, told CBS News. “She was saying that somebody had come up and shot her husband and she took off running.”
He added that she was his first murder suspect.
Poynter Was Sentenced to Life In Prison & Michael Garza Was Sentenced to 90 Years
#48HOURS IN 48 SECONDS: The sole witness to a murder helps police make sense of a bewildering crime scene. But is it enough to solve the case?
Find out Saturday, 10/9c. t.co/r84uCvnWSO
On the night of her husband’s murder, Poynter told police her side of what had happened that night. She told them she was having an affair and that she’d met up with her boyfriend earlier in the night. When police asked her if it was date night, she said no, but they did have sex.
She said that she had called her husband for help, telling him that her Jeep was stuck in the mud. She said that when he got into the vehicle, he was shot by a man who emerged from the dark but she had no idea who that man was.
Later, she changed her story. According to CBS News, she told police that she knew the identity of the man who killed her husband and that it was her boyfriend, Michael Garza. Garza turned himself in and was held on a murder charge.
According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Garza is currently in prison and will not be eligible for parole until September 10, 2046. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison.
Chacey Poynter Now: She Is Serving Life in Prison
The harrowing night of September 9, 2016 is forever etched in the memory of Chacey Poynter.
She tells her story, Saturday at 10/9c. t.co/hAbokASiZO
The night of the murder, Poynter told police that she was “young and stupid when [they] got married,” and she “didn’t want to be married anymore.”
Hours into their interrogation, Detective Michael Burke said he believed that Poynter knew who shot her husband and was covering it up for some reason. When he told her that, she admitted that it was Garza who pulled the trigger.
Poynter said she didn’t want her husband dead, but she wanted him to know what it was like for her to be bullied all the time. She told police and 48 Hours that she didn’t know that Garza had brought a shotgun.
On September 10, Poynter was arrested for conspiracy to commit murder, and her daughter was sent to stay with Poynter’s mother. Investigators believed that Robert Poynter had plans to put their house up for sale, file for divorce and ultimately get custody of the couple’s daughter, which led Poynter to the plan to murder him.
He also had a $685,000 life insurance policy taken out, and Chacey Poynter was the beneficiary of that policy. That policy was split between his three daughters.
They believed that she manipulated Garza using sex to get him to kill her husband, and they later found text messages between her and a few different men that allegedly seemed to be asking them to kill her husband. She said that she was not asking that.
Her defense attorneys, Scott Cornuaud and Frank Hughes, told 48 Hours that they believe talking about the affairs Chacey Poynter was having tainted the jury and had nothing to do with murder.
According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Poynter is serving a life sentence and will be eligible for parole on September 9, 2046.
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