Ralph Wright Killed His Infant Son & Child's Mother

[Special2bme]

St. Petersburg, Fla. -- Authorities have charged an Orlando man with murdering a St. Petersburg woman and her infant son, more than a year after they were found slain in their home.

Ralph Daniel Wright Jr. was arrested Wednesday morning in Palatka. He was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Paula O'Conner and her son, Alijah.

O'Conner was reported missing in July 2007 after she failed to show up to work. Autopsies determined O'Conner had been strangled and her son,asphyxiated.

Police say O'Conner had filed a paternity suit against Wright, a former sergeant at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, before her death. Investigators say Wright is the child's father and that DNA evidence links him to the crime scene.
http://www.wftv.com/news/18392913/detail.html

[crickett]

I'd like to send this prick a little something for father's day.
http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr147/crickett85/pissedoff.jpg

[Tazzzz]

ST. PETERSBURG - Paula M. O'Conner was worried she was about to lose everything. Her infant son's medical bills had reached tens of thousands of dollars.

The military man she said was his father had disappeared, and she had found out he was married. She was so upset, she had started a Web site called militarydeadbeatdads.com to tell her story.

About 11 a.m. Friday morning, O'Conner, 37, and her 15-month-old son, Alijah, were found dead in her St. Petersburg home in a quiet neighborhood just south of the Mangrove Bay & Cypress Links Golf Course.

Police are investigating the deaths as homicides. Late Friday, they were interviewing Ralph "Ron" Wright Jr., 38, the man O'Conner said was Alijah's father. Wright is a tech sergeant who works at MacDill Air Force Base, where police found him Friday.

Wright could not be reached for this story. He is not charged with any crime and has no criminal record, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

St. Petersburg police Sgt. Mike Kovacsev said it was unclear how the woman and her baby died. Investigators didn't find any signs of trauma on the bodies or forced entry into the home. O'Conner's black 2005 Chevy Trailblazer was missing but later found a few blocks away on 53rd Avenue N.

The boyfriend of O'Conner's 18-year-old daughter and a private investigator found the bodies after breaking into her home at 482 Dawson St. NE. They went to the home after O'Conner failed to show up for work Friday morning at an insurance underwriter, John Handel & Associates.

Lorna Palmer, executive vice president of the insurance company where O'Conner worked for three years, said an employee stopped by the house, didn't see O'Conner's car and assumed she was out. Later, the office told her attorney, John Tuthill. He filed a missing persons report with the police and sent out his private investigator.

"I don't know what it was, " Tuthill said. "I just felt there might be something wrong."

Last year, O'Conner sued Wright for paternity. Court documents show she was struggling financially: Her bills were almost double her gross monthly income of $2, 687 and she had $57, 404 in outstanding bills for her son's medical problems, including open-heart surgery.

The suit is pending, and Tuthill said that just this week, he applied for a default judgment in the case because Wright had failed to respond.

On O'Conner's Web site, her desperation was clear.

"I am about to lose everything I have worked for all my life, and I cannot get any assistance from the state because I have a job!" O'Conner wrote on the site. "Meanwhile a man putting his uniform on his back and defending our Country's freedom is allowed to get a women pregnant and leave her and their son high and dry."

O'Conner's uncle, Henry Hart, said Wright refused to take responsibility for the child and was very secretive about his life. Hart said O'Conner's relationship with Wright deteriorated as soon as she found out she was pregnant.

"It's one of those things that happens in the movies, " Hart said. "It's a nightmare."

On her Web site, O'Conner said she met Wright in January 2004 when they went to dinner. He told her he was from Orlando and had been an Orange County deputy before being called up to active duty after Sept. 11, 2001. He was stationed at MacDill.

She ran a background check on him and said it came back clean.

"So I was thinking what the heck, " O'Conner wrote. "We used to talk for hours on the phone. ... We just seemed to click, the only problem was that he worked nights at the base and I worked days, and he worked A LOT!"

Their relationship grew. He even asked her to pick out a ring at one point, she said. She eventually realized she hadn't met any of his family and she kept asking him about it.

Soon, she said, he told her he was being deployed for a "secret assignment." At one point, he told her he was going to the Horn of Africa, she wrote.

"He asked me if I would wait for him?" she wrote. "I agreed. After all, I loved him. He said he loved me and that I was the only one for him."

After she told him she was pregnant, she said, Wright disappeared. Alijah, whom they called A.J., was born on April 9, 2006. Almost immediately, doctors told her the baby's heart had small holes in a lower chamber. A month later, he had open-heart surgery.

A month after that, she noticed his head had gotten bigger and something was wrong with his eyes. Alijah was diagnosed with hydrocephalus, or excessive fluid on the brain, and had to have a shunt placed in his brain, she wrote.

O'Conner couldn't find Wright. She eventually hired Tuthill and a private investigator.

Tuthill said they discovered that Wright was married. But what they really wanted was to get Wright to acknowledge Alijah so they could get him to share the baby's medical expenses and get military health coverage for him, court records show.

Wright's mother, Warnell Wright, 59, who lives in Orlando, said she hadn't seen her son in months, and he hadn't lived with her in years. She confirmed he was an Orange County sheriff's deputy and in the Air Force, though she said she couldn't remember when he joined or whether he had been deployed. She said he was married.

"He's a nice person, " Wright said. "That's all I can say."

Family and friends said despite all the problems, O'Conner loved having Alijah in her life. At the age of 15 months, he was just starting to talk and crawl.

"She was a good mom, " said Darrell Goodin, the father of O'Conner's, 18-year-old daughter, "and she didn't deserve this at all."

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/07/07/Southpinellas/Mother_and_baby_found.shtml

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[Tazzzz]

Paula was a bit ticked off at Ron for dumping her so she made a website about it, it goes into pretty good detail abuout there relationship. And about little Alijah's medical problums.

http://www.militarydeadbeatdads.com/

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This page has photos of Ron and ones of Alijah in the hospital.

http://www.militarydeadbeatdads.com/Pics.html
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Paula O'Conner and Alijah
http://tribalmask.net/dreamin-demon/Paula-Alijah02.jpg

Paula O'Conner, left, her daughter Victoria, 18, and son Alijah, 15 months, pose for a 2006 Christmas portrait .
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/07/06/images/tb_spdeath_300.jpg


Alijah O'Conner
http://tribalmask.net/dreamin-demon/Paula-Alijah01.jpg

Ralph "Ron" Wright Jr
http://blogs.tampabay.com/./photos/uncategorized/2009/01/06/wrightarrested.jpeg
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[Tazzzz]

Glove from MacDill AFB pointed police toward double-murder defendant

Police believe former Air Force Sgt. Ralph "Ron" Wright Jr. strangled his former lover barehanded, killed their 15-month-old child and then put on a pair of gloves from MacDill Air Force Base to avoid leaving fingerprints in her St. Petersburg home, according to police records made public today.

One of the black gloves -- the left one -- turned up on the arm of a couch near the front door of the murder scene. It was apparently left behind in the killer's haste, according to the affidavit from St. Petersburg police Detective Karl Sauer and state attorney's investigator Steve Porter.

Forensic tests found DNA samples inside the glove that matched the victims, Paula O'Connor and her son Alijah, the affidavit states. However, the investigators wrote, the DNA tests found nothing in the glove that matched Wright, who was arrested last week after a grand jury indicted him for the two murders

But the glove "is identifical to a small number of gloves issued to the defendant's military police unit," they wrote, and the gloves were kept in a locked storeroom at the base that Wright had access to. Security video showed Wright visited that area of the base about 2 a.m. on July 6, 2007, about three to four hours before the murders, the affidavit states.

http://blogs.tampabay.com/breakingnews/2009/01/glove-from-macd.html
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