Murder of Heather Rich


The murder of Heather Rich is an American child murder case dating from October 1996 in which a 16-year-old high school student from Waurika, Oklahoma, was sexually assaulted, raped, then shot to death before her body was thrown into a creek in Montague County, Texas.
Three teenagers were arrested two weeks after the discovery of her body; each of the three would later be tried and subsequently convicted of Heather's murder. One of the perpetrators would be sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment with no possibility of parole; a second individual would be sentenced to a term of life imprisonment plus 99 years for conspiracy to commit murder, while the third individual was sentenced to life imprisonment with possibility of parole after 40 years.
Conflicting testimony delivered at two of the perpetrators' separate trials leads to ongoing speculation as to which of the trio actually shot and killed Heather.

Early life

Heather Rose Rich was the third of four children and only daughter born to Gail and Duane Rich.
Heather was an avid horse rider and a talented musician, and has been described by her family as "a naive girl with a big heart." An academically successful sophomore who was popular with her peers at Waurika High School, she had a notably excitable personality.
According to one of her friends, despite her façade of ebullience, Heather was a "very troubled" teenager, and she began to exhibit troublesome behavior both at home and at school in the late summer and early fall of 1996. Her classmate and former boyfriend, 17-year-old Randy Wood, would state this emotional behavior largely stemmed from Heather's restlessness at the fact Waurika held few amenities to entertain the town's youth. On September 27, she and another girl had been temporarily suspended from Waurika High School and the Waurika Eagles cheerleading team for their being noticeably drunk upon the sidelines of a school cheerleading performance. The duration of this suspension was just three days, and she was expecting to be a potential candidate to be the sophomore class homecoming queen of Waurika High School on October 11.

October 2, 1996

At approximately 11 p.m. on the evening of October 2, 1996, Heather left her home without her parents' knowledge to meet a 17-year-old Waurika High School senior named Joshua Bagwell in a trailer parked at the rear of the home of Bagwell's grandfather. Bagwell had already been drinking heavily with his friends, 19-year-old Curtis Gambill and Heather's former boyfriend, Randy Wood. One of the trio had earlier telephoned Heather to suggest she join them at Bagwell's trailer that evening. Shortly after Heather arrived at the trailer, both Wood and Gambill left Heather and Bagwell alone for approximately one hour, believing that as this was their first date, the two wished to be left alone. When Wood and Gambill returned to the trailer approximately one hour later, both Bagwell and Heather were naked, and a bottle of gin had been half consumed. Heather was extremely drunk, later being described as largely insensible; Bagwell would later claim the two had engaged in consensual sex. According to Wood's later trial testimony, the three youths, themselves intoxicated, began goading each other to sexually assault Heather while she was naked and largely insensible.
Wood then proceeded to sexually assault Heather before Gambill himself engaged in unconsensual sex with the semi-conscious girl. Shortly after Gambill had engaged in sex with Heather, she partially roused out of her semi-conscious state and began moaning, screaming and crying.

Murder

Reportedly fearing the girl would later accuse the trio of rape, Gambill then decided to kill Heather and, with a measure of force, successfully persuaded Bagwell and Wood to assist him in the commission of this act. According to Wood, Gambill pointed his shotgun at him and ordered him to dress Heather before he and Bagwell carried her into Bagwell's grandfather's pickup truck. Bagwell then began to drive in a seemingly aimless manner around southern Oklahoma for in excess of an hour as Gambill repeatedly exclaimed they would have to kill her before driving to desolate property his grandparents owned as a potential murder location. Gambill vetoed Bagwell's choice of a murder location, stating this location could easily be traced to the trio. Gambill then chose to drive the truck; driving towards a cement bridge upon a rural road in Belknap Creek, Texas.
At this location, Gambill retrieved his shotgun from the vehicle as he ordered Bagwell and Wood to "get her out and put her on the side." Bagwell and Wood then carried Heather towards the bridge, where Gambill proceeded to shoot her several times in the head and torso with the shotgun as she lay upon the ground. Wood would later claim that he had sat inside the pickup truck as Gambill approached Heather with the shotgun in his hand; he had then covered his face with his hands before hearing "the first shot... then I heard a bunch more." He then climbed from the truck to observe Gambill appearing "dazed at what he'd done." Joshua Bagwell then took one of Heather's shoelaces and used this item to secure a rock to weight her body.
Heather's body was then thrown over the guard rail into the creek below before the trio attempted to conceal the extensive bloodstains at the precise murder scene by kicking and throwing soil across the ground.
Discovering that their daughter's bed had not been slept in and that all her possessions were untouched, yet that her bedroom window was open, Gail and Duane Rich reported Heather missing to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department the following day. Despite the fact Heather had not taken any of her personal possessions with her, when police learned from Gail that Heather had recently argued with her mother over a $300 phone bill for which she had largely been responsible for the accrual, investigators initially assumed Heather had likely temporarily ran away from her household to stay with friends, and would likely return home within hours. Aghast, Gail responded: "When your daughter is missing, you can stay at home!" She and her family then began making their own inquiries around Waurika for information as to Heather's whereabouts. They would subsequently hire a private investigator to assist in the search for their daughter.

Autopsy

Heather's body was discovered partially submerged in the Red River by a rancher and his daughter on October 10. Due to a combination of decomposition and the sheer number of shotgun wounds she had received, including the fact she had been shot once in the back of the head, her face and body were largely unrecognizable. Thus initially, her body was tentatively identified by her father via his recognizing a gold signet ring Heather had received as a present for her 16th birthday. Her body would later be officially identified via dental records.
The autopsy of Heather's body revealed she had been shot nine times with an M-9 Winchester shotgun, with pellets from the buckshot rounds fired also hitting her body in several locations. One of these shots had been fired into the back of her head, with the remaining eight rounds being fired into her lower back, waist, pelvis and buttocks. In conjunction with the pattern of the bloodstains discovered at the preliminary crime scene, the trajectory of the shotgun wounds indicated Heather had most likely been shot as she lay face down, with her death being almost instantaneous.

Funeral

The funeral of Heather Rich was conducted on Monday, October 14, 1996 at the Praise Assembly of God Church in Comanche County. She was laid to rest in Fletcher Cemetery. As her murderer or murderers had neither been apprehended or convicted at the time of the service and with her family strongly suspecting her murderer had not been strangers to her, Heather's family forbade any individual outside her immediate family from touching her coffin throughout the service, with her mother stating that prior to the service, she had promised her only daughter that "whoever did this to her would never touch her again."

Perpetrators

Curtis Allen Gambill

Curtis Gambill was a high-school dropout. He was born on February 24, 1977, and at the time of Heather's murder, he was living with his 64-year-old grandmother in Terral, Oklahoma. Gambill was known to possess a short temper, and to exhibit sadistic features, being known to have regularly forced boys to fight each other in his presence upon the threat that if they did not do so, they would otherwise have to fight him. He had previously escaped from every youth detention center in which he had been incarcerated, and had been briefly committed to a psychiatric hospital at age 17. In addition, he had been convicted of feloniously carrying a firearm in February 1996; receiving a five-year suspended sentence.
In the week prior to Heather's disappearance, Gambill was notably depressed due to his best friend, 20-year-old Dennis Goss, having committed suicide on 25 September. Just days prior to October 2, he and his close friend Joshua Bagwell had attended Goss's funeral.

Joshua Luke Bagwell

Joshua Bagwell was born on December 21, 1978. His parents were among the wealthiest landowners in southern Oklahoma, although as his parents' employment led them to be largely absent from home, he had lived with his grandparents since the age of 16. Bagwell was a senior at Waurika High School, and by October 1996, had been the recipient of six new cars. He was variously described as being a snobbish and pampered youth, although he was considered somewhat of an outcast among his peers. He and Gambill had formed a mutual friendship, in part due to their shared interests in firearms, drinking, camping, and fishing. Occasionally, the pair traveled to the environs of Belknap Creek for camping and fishing trips.
Undisciplined at home, Bagwell had once been arrested for driving while intoxicated, and had demanded a lawyer while resisting arrest. Both Randy Wood and Heather Rich had been impressed by Bagwell's affluent means; the latter commenting on more than one occasion that she had flirted with Bagwell until she had secured a seat in his white Dodge Stealth for the forthcoming Waurika homecoming parade. On the night of October 2, Heather had sneaked from her parents' home to meet Bagwell for what was supposed to be their first date.

Randy Lee Wood

Randy Wood was born on July 7, 1979. He and his single-parent mother had frequently relocated throughout Oklahoma during his childhood—frequently resulting in him having to attend numerous different schools. By 1996, Wood lived with his mother in a largely dilapidated house, and his family was known as one of the poorest in Waurika.
Wood began smoking cannabis in the third grade, often stealing the money or the narcotic itself from his mother. Despite his personal disadvantages, Wood endeavored to better himself among his peers, and by 1996, was the captain of the Waurika High School football team, having earned the respect of the entire team. He and Heather had dated for approximately five months, during which they had regularly attended church together and conversed on the phone, although their relationship, despite being an intimate one, had never resulted in sexual intercourse, and the two were frequently mistaken as simply being friends. Having heard a rumor Heather had skinny-dipped at a party, Wood chose to end their relationship, although the two remained close friends.
One week after Heather's body was found at Belknap Creek, Randy Wood was crowned homecoming king of Waurika High School.

Investigation and arrests

A total of 14 investigators were assigned to investigate Heather's murder. The investigation was assisted by the FBI in the event federal kidnapping charges could be brought against the perpetrator or perpetrators should Heather have been transported across state lines against her will.
Initially encountering a wall of silence from much of Waurika's youth as to Heather's potential whereabouts, by the second week of the inquiry, investigators focused more closely on a potential lead provided by Heather's best friend on the cheerleading squad that Heather may have left her home to attend a party at the home of a classmate of theirs named Joshua Luke Bagwell. Upon informal questioning, Bagwell initially claimed he and a friend of his named Randy Wood had not seen Heather on October 2 as they had been playing dominoes and drinking whisky and beer in his trailer until approximately 6:00 a.m. the following day. Wood would corroborate this statement.
Having discovered that the buckshot rounds fired from the Winchester shotgun which killed Heather were of a distinct brand, investigators soon learned that only one store in Waurika had stocked this brand. Conversing with the owners of the store, these investigators discovered that just days prior to the murder, 20 rounds had been purchased by one Joshua Bagwell. The owner of this store was also able to positively identify Bagwell from an assembled police lineup. Furthermore, an employee of this store was adamant that at the time Bagwell had made this purchase, he had been in the company of another young male.
Further discovering that Bagwell had spent much of his time in recent months in the company of a 19-year-old high school dropout named Curtis Allen Gambill, and had regularly hunted in his company, Curtis Gambill was arrested on October 24. He was questioned for a total of eight hours, and agreed to submit to a polygraph test pertaining to his potential culpability in Heather's murder. Gambill failed this polygraph test, and subsequently agreed to allow investigators to subject the shotgun he owned to ballistic fingerprinting to determine whether this firearm had been used to murder Heather Rich.
Discovering the results of the ballistic analysis of his shotgun indicated the firearm had been the one used to murder Heather Rich, and that the weapon was capable of firing nine rounds before requiring reloading, Gambill confessed to being a participant in Heather's murder, also naming Bagwell and Heather's former boyfriend, Randy Lee Wood, as participants in the murder. According to Gambill, Wood had been the instigator of the crime, and the actual murderer, with himself and Bagwell acting upon his instructions. Wood's actual motive, Gambill claimed, had been sexual jealousy due to the fact Heather had engaged in sex with Bagwell and not himself.
Bagwell and Wood were also arrested on October 24. Bagwell refused to admit any culpability in Heather's murder; invoking his right to silence and refusing to submit to a polygraph test. Shortly thereafter, his family hired a team of high-profile lawyers to defend him. By contrast, Randy Wood willingly agreed to provide a written statement in which he confessed to his being a participant in the murder, although he was adamant Curtis Gambill had been the instigator of the entire crime, and the individual who had shot and killed Heather, adding that Joshua Bagwell had been a knowing and willing participant. Wood further claimed not to have actually believed Gambill was serious in his vocal intentions to murder Heather until Gambill had parked the pickup upon the Belknap Creek bridge. He also agreed to submit to a polygraph test to verify his version of events—the results of which fully corroborated his written statement.
Initially, all three individuals were charged with the kidnapping of Heather and denied bail in Oklahoma. All would subsequently be formally charged with first-degree murder in Montague County, Texas on October 25.
The trials of all three defendants were held in Texas. Owing to the law of Texas, all three individuals were tried as adults.

Trials

Gambill

Curtis Gambill was brought to trial on October 15, 1997. He was tried in Fort Worth. Shortly after his trial had begun, Gambill accepted a plea bargain offered by Montague County district attorney Tim Cole, whereby he agreed to plead guilty to Heather's murder—admitting to being the individual who had physically taken her life—in exchange for the prosecution agreeing not to seek the death penalty. He was found guilty and sentenced to a term of life imprisonment with a potential possibility of parole after 30 years. As part of his plea bargain, Gambill also agreed to testify against Bagwell at his upcoming trial.

Bagwell

Joshua Bagwell was brought to trial in February 1998. Prior to and at his trial, he refused to admit any culpability in her murder; claiming that his intercourse with Heather after Gambill and Wood had initially left the two alone in his trailer had been consensual; that he had later left his trailer prior to Gambill and Wood actually discussing killing Heather; and that he had ultimately believed the trio were simply driving Heather around in an effort to sober her up before returning her home. Furthermore, he stated that he was unaware of any actual plan to murder her.
At Bagwell's trial, Gambill reneged upon his own previous agreement with prosecutors; changing his story and reverting to his initial claims upon arrest. This testimony largely suited the portrayal of Bagwell by the defense; minimizing Bagwell's role in the murder and corroborating his own claims that Wood had committed Heather's murder.
Randy Wood had initially accepted a similar plea bargain to that previously offered to Gambill in exchange for his testimony at Bagwell's then-forthcoming trial. However, the evening before he was due to give evidence, Wood—against the vehement advice of his defense attorney—changed his mind and rejected the plea bargain, insisting he wished to testify against Bagwell without any preconditions despite being informed by his lawyer that he risked either a longer prison sentence or a potential death penalty if convicted.
On the third day of testimony, Wood testified under oath that Gambill had largely orchestrated the murder, had shot and killed Heather, and that Bagwell had been a full, knowing participant in the act.
The day after Wood delivered his testimony, Bagwell testified before the jury. He insisted he had not been present in his trailer when Wood and Gambill had discussed murdering Heather, and blamed Wood for her actual shooting. Bagwell added his conjecture that Wood's motivation for this act had been that he had been angry at Heather for earlier refusing to engage in intercourse with him. Bagwell finally claimed not to have been physically close to the actual crime scene at the time Heather had actually been murdered, but had walked away to urinate. He solely admitted to a limited role in refusing to disclose acknowledgement of the murder after the event. Despite this testimony, when questioned as to his witnessing the actual shooting of Heather Rich, Bagwell contradicted himself in his reply, claiming he had witnessed "Curtis—sorry I mean Randy—lowering the gun."
Joshua Bagwell was convicted of capital murder on February 14, 1998 and sentenced to a term of life imprisonment. He was sentenced to a mandatory life term. He would later be sentenced to an additional sentence of 99 years for conspiracy to commit capital murder on February 17.

Wood

Randy Wood was tried for capital murder later in 1998. Against the advice of his attorney, Pat Morris, Wood declined another plea bargain offered prior to his trial; choosing to plead not guilty to Heather's murder, stating that although he was aware of the law of Texas, he had neither intended for Heather to be killed, and that he had not physically taken her life himself.
Wood was found guilty of capital murder on August 25, 1998. As the State did not seek the death penalty in his trial, he was automatically sentenced to life imprisonment. Wood will first become eligible for parole in 2036.

Aftermath

Literature

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