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The Case of Teresa Sievers
That Chapter's 27-minute breakdown, the fullest single telling on file.
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Background
Teresa Sievers (born Teresa Ann Grace Tottenham on November 19, 1968) was a physician who ran a holistic medical practice, Restorative Health and Healing Center, in Estero, Florida, with her husband Mark Sievers. The couple married in 2003 and had two children. They had moved to Bonita Springs, Florida in 2006. Shortly before her death, Teresa had been profiled in a local women's magazine.
The Murder
In 2015, Mark Sievers confided to his childhood friend Curtis Wayne Wright Jr. that he was having marital problems with Teresa and feared she would take their children from him. Wright suggested that Teresa's death was the only solution, and Mark agreed to pay him to arrange it. Mark also had a financial motive: investigators later found five life insurance policies on Teresa totaling $4.433 million. Wright, without Mark's knowledge, recruited a third man, Jimmy Ray Rodgers, to help carry out the killing.
On June 27, 2015, Wright and Rodgers drove more than 1,000 miles from Missouri to the Sievers' home in Bonita Springs, a route later confirmed by GPS logs and gas station surveillance footage. They arrived at the home around 6:00 a.m. on June 28, disabled the security alarm, then left to purchase trash bags, wet wipes, black towels, black shoes, and a lock-picking kit at a Walmart, captured on surveillance video. They returned to wait for Teresa, who had cut short a family vacation in Connecticut and flown home alone that night, having been driven to LaGuardia Airport by Mark earlier that day. She was last seen alive on airport surveillance footage. Upon returning home, she was ambushed and killed with seventeen hammer blows. Wright and Rodgers then drove back to Missouri.
Aftermath and Investigation
Teresa's body was discovered on the morning of June 29, 2015, by a family friend whom Mark had asked to check on her. A hammer was found next to her body. No arrests occurred for nearly two months until police arrested Rodgers and Wright in Missouri in August 2015, following a tip. Rodgers' girlfriend told police Rodgers had admitted that Mark hired Wright, who in turn hired Rodgers, to kill Teresa. Mark Sievers, already under suspicion after being observed disposing of computer equipment following Teresa's funeral, was charged with murder in December 2015.
Trials and Sentencing
Wright pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 2016 as part of a plea deal requiring his testimony, and received a 25-year sentence. Rodgers was convicted by a Lee County jury on October 23, 2019, of second-degree murder and trespassing, and was sentenced to life in prison on December 12, 2019. Mark Sievers was convicted of first-degree murder on December 4, 2019; the jury recommended a death sentence, which Judge Bruce Kyle imposed on January 3, 2020. His conviction and death sentence were affirmed by the Florida Supreme Court on November 17, 2022, though he subsequently sought a rehearing.
