The Murder of Angela Owens Wooldridge | Part 1 of 3 | Tuesday March 8, 2022
The Murder of Angela Owens Wooldridge | Part 2 of 3 | Tuesday March 15, 2022
The Murder of Angela Owens Wooldridge | Part 3 of 3 | Tuesday March 22, 2022
I part 2 of this 3 part series, Wendy will continue to talk about her close friendship with Angie, but we will begin to hear “warning signs” and “red flags” that are commonly associated with domestic violence.
Show Transcript
Wendy Lyons:
They were. She was getting tired of it. She was getting frustrated, kind of like, “This isn’t what I signed up for.”
Wendy Lyons:
Warning. The podcast you’re about to listen to may contain graphic descriptions of violent assaults, murder, and adult language. Listener discretion is advised.
Wendy Lyons:
Welcome to The Murder Police Podcast, The Murder of Angela Owens Wooldridge: Part Two of Three.
Wendy Lyons:
That next day when we arrived, we all live in this town together, so they were going to bring me home. If you remember, it was very late, so there’s no sense in you coming to get me, so I rode with them. And when they got in the driveway, or when we pulled in, she gets out to let me out of the backseat, and I hug her, and I said, “I’ll talk to you in the morning,” because that was our thing. We always talked in the morning. I looked in, and bent my head down and looked in the car, and I thanked him for driving me. He looked at me, and he said, “I hope you had a good time, because this will be her last girls’ trip with you.” And you know what? He was not lying.
David Lyons:
Exactly, and I think it’s important to wrap it up with something like that, because people listening at first would say, “Well, you care about each other. You’re excited about each other.” Right, and I get that, and you would be contacting each other a lot. That I can see, but again, I think what we’re going to learn all the way through this is that when you start piecing things together, the puzzle gets pretty ugly. None of these things stand on their own. I’ll never forget, for me, when you came home and told me that he had said that, I think that’s when my eyebrow went up the hardest so far. I think even then, I think I might have said, “This is really going to be a problem at some point.”
Wendy Lyons:
Yeah, you did. You said, “This is not going to work.” To answer your question that you asked before I interjected with our trip, other people, her sister was very uneasy about it. I didn’t talk to her youngest of her older two sons, but her oldest son, I did. As you recall, he worked for me at that time. He and I talked about it at length, and he said, “Please try to reason with her. I know if she’s going to listen to anybody, it’s going to be you.” And I said, “I can’t get through to her. I’m telling you, she’s head over heels. I don’t like it anymore than you don’t like it.”
Wendy Lyons:
He and she had a couple of heated conversations over it, and he told her, “Why don’t you just date him? Let him move in if you want, but please do not get married to him.” And she was upset, and she told me, because I was listening to him at nights and her in the day. She was telling me, “I can’t believe he’s not happy for me. As much as I’ve done for these kids, they should just want my happiness.” I told her, “They do want your happiness, just like I want your happiness, but you have to understand, we’re concerned. And you’re his mother. He’s concerned. And he’s not saying don’t date, he’s just saying slow down a little bit.” And she said, “This is my life, and I want to do what makes me happy for a change.” And so we all lost that battle.
David Lyons:
Yeah, and I still remember that going on too. I guess that’s where people are human, and I think we’re all susceptible to that in some way or fashion. A lot of times, we talk about that from moving into what you would call advocacy mode, where logic starts to fail, and you don’t take in information that counters what you want so bad. That’s difficult on people.
David Lyons:
I’ll never forget one of the most important things and truthful things I ever heard, years ago when I was a very young police officer and still a recruit, is I got to ride with a senior officer named Charlie O’Connell, and we just lost Charlie several months ago to a heart attack as a retired officer. But he told me one night, he said, “Davey, you can’t argue with somebody that’s drunk or in love.” And I’ve never forgotten that. It’s been so true in so many cases, and I think that’s what happens, is that when, like you said, Angie just really wanted to be loved.
Wendy Lyons:
She did.
David Lyons:
And she wanted it. I think we all know that we’re human, and when we get to that thing, that sometime we’ll create that and we’ll make that environment when it’s really maybe not even realistic. And then the second thing that happens is you just become an advocate of your own desire and your own want, and it’s hard to take things in that might counter and say, “Hey, maybe you should slow down or consider something else.” So as this moves on, obviously, we had the wedding and we did that. I remember we left that afternoon. Did she start to change, and did your relationship start to change with her?
Wendy Lyons:
It did. My relationship with her didn’t change. We still loved each other and talked, but what did change was the amount of time we talked, and it progressively got less and less and less. It got to where I would text her and she would text back or I’d call. I remember the first time I texted her to say, “Can you…” I think I had called her, I was driving to work and I knew she was driving to work, and she didn’t answer. It went to voicemail, so I instantly texted her and said, “Call when you can for our drive.” And it automatically did the text back that said, however it worded it, that the person you’re calling has the do not disturb feature on their phone for safety, for no texting while they’re driving.
Wendy Lyons:
So when she got to work, she called and I said, “What’s wrong with your phone?” And she told me that he wanted her to put that on her phone because she did not need to be texting and driving or talking and driving, because that was a distraction. I had a few words that I’ll not say on here, but basically I was asking her, “What in the heck? What are you even thinking? What do you mean? Tell me. Girl, you better have put him in his place. What do you mean he’s telling you not to text and drive? He’s not your dad. Come on.” And she’s like, “Well, girl, he just wants it for my safety. You know, girl, I’m just telling you, this man is crazy about me. He loves me so much. I mean, think about it, girl. How many people have ever told you to don’t text and drive or don’t talk and drive because they want you safe?”
Wendy Lyons:
And that’s how she saw it. I saw it for what it was. He didn’t want her on the phone, particularly with me because he knew I saw all this. I’m not saying it was just me. He didn’t want her on the phone with nobody, I don’t think, but definitely not me.
David Lyons:
Were there other things that went on with regard to things like the phone behaviors and things like that?
Wendy Lyons:
Yeah, it changed. Like I said, it just got less and less, and then I recall one day we were talking and she’s like, “He’s pulling in, girl. I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you later.” And I knew that if he’s, and at this point they’re married, so I knew that if he’s coming home, by the time he got off work, we weren’t going to talk again. Later between us didn’t always mean in 10 minutes, it’s probably tomorrow, and we knew what that meant and that’s okay. But it got to where we would message or we’d send funny things on Facebook Messenger or text, and then it got to where she would say, “He’s coming home. Don’t don’t message again after this.” And I thought, why is she doing that? I guess she didn’t want him hearing the phone go off or seeing her on it.
Wendy Lyons:
And then she made mention of, “Don’t text back after this. I’m going to delete the text,” and I was so blown away by that because we were talking about nothing really serious. I mean, with us, it could be anything. It was not one person in particular. It might just be a song, or this, or talking about coworkers that we don’t like. But I remember thinking why is she deleting that? Sometimes we would be swapping messages, or sometimes we would be swapping recipes back and forth, or her telling me, “Click on episode 22, season four.” And so it’s nothing in particular that we were saying that I thought he would get mad over or that anybody would get mad over. But when she said she’s going to delete them, that really struck a chord with me, because I thought we’re not talking about him or anybody, why are we deleting that?
David Lyons:
Did she ever give you an idea that he had access to her phone, or to her social media accounts or anything?
Wendy Lyons:
Oh, yes. They linked those and she had access to his, and he likewise had access to hers, which is probably why she didn’t want the messages there. But again, there weren’t anything that I would’ve been embarrassed for him to see. But yes they did, they had access to that. They created, she had always had her separate account and he had his, and he convinced her how much money they would save by putting the plans together in his name. I think they had to end up putting them in her name because the bill was going to be quite high, but that’s kind of irrelevant, but he still had access to it as well as she did. So now we have a joint phone plan, everybody’s on it together, like one big happy family.
David Lyons:
Joint access to social media?
Wendy Lyons:
Yes. Joint access to social media. I mean, I don’t think that texting came to his phone. I think her texting just came to her phone, but yeah, they had access to each other’s social media.
David Lyons:
But that’s not uncommon. Again, I know a lot of people do that, but looking back do you think that was for good reasons or bad reasons?
Wendy Lyons:
Well, I think it was for bad reasons, because I remember I was so blown away by it. I could think that she would want access to his, because there had been some conversation that she and I had had that kind of was unfavorable about some things in his past. So I could see her, knowing her, she’s going to want to keep track of that to make sure that some of these things don’t get repeated, but she had not ever done anything that would warrant him needing to check up on her. But I think it was very much a quid pro quo thing. If you’re going to check mine, I’m checking yours. And she said, “Okay, I don’t care.” She didn’t have anything to hide. So, that was not like her, she was not one to share her stuff. She’s very private, very assertive, very, “You don’t need to meddle in my business. You let me handle my business,” kind of person.
David Lyons:
Got you. What other red flag things were you seeing in this time period?
Wendy Lyons:
Really, just the lack of communication with her. Just the morning phone calls stopped because he would call her for the morning phone calls, or on the way home from work they would stop because he was calling her. So he’s starting to realize that’s our talk time, so he now made it his talk time. So then we had to adjust it to where we would talk when she’s cooking dinner. Well, it’s kind of hard to do with three young children there, but we did, but he knew that, and so sometimes we would talk and he would text her and say, “Have you left work?” And she’d say, “Yes.” And he’d say, “Then what I haven’t you called?” So she’d say, “Girl, let me call him real quick, get him off my nerves, or to get him off my back.” Then that became the norm.
Wendy Lyons:
Then it became the morning talk times weren’t the morning talk times for a long time, or the afternoons, because then he called to see how her day was. He had to check on her day, make sure she had a good day, tell her that he wanted her to have a good day, and how his day is going or how it was, or his prepping for that day. He worked an evening shift and she worked standard daytime hours.
David Lyons:
Was it my imagination, or did she start to pick weight back up when they got together?
Wendy Lyons:
She did. Not initially, but then she did. Shortly thereafter, she did. With this gastric surgery, she could only eat certain things and couldn’t eat large portions. It’d make her sick if she did. She had to have a lot of protein. She started gaining the weight. So, we got the gym membership renewed. Now, they had just gotten together when we had to renew it. We were doing our daily, nightly rather, workouts, and he knew about this. This was right after obviously that he knew, they were married at this point. Then she said he wanted her to workout with him. She did, so then I lost my workout partner. It wasn’t an invite, like, “Hey, come workout with us.” He just wanted it to be her and him. He told her that couples need to do that stuff together. That’s nothing she needs to be doing with her friend. He enjoys working out, he knows she enjoys it, so that’s something that they need to do together.
Wendy Lyons:
So they started doing that together, and then that kind of slacked off, and then just not quite even a year ago yet I messaged her and I said, “Hey, I’m going to be renewing my membership. Do you want to?” And she said, “Yes, girl, yes. I’ve gained so much weight. I’ve gained,” not all of her weight back, but she gained a good bit of her weight back, that she wasn’t content. And so we agreed to meet at the gym to purchase our memberships, and we had her time picked out, and I remember she got there, it was right after she got off work and she was very rushed. She gave her information, they looked it up. She gave her credit card and she goes, “Girl, I got to go.” And I said, “Oh my God, I haven’t even signed up yet. Are you not even going to wait for me to sign up?” And she said, “No, I’ve got to go get the kids.”
Wendy Lyons:
Well, I knew it wasn’t time for her to get the kids yet. She needed to get home before he realized that she wasn’t yet home. I think he maybe had it down to a science of how long it took, or maybe he had talked to her and she should have been home in a few minutes. But she left before I even got signed up. She gave her name, her information, her credit card, she was gone, with the promise of, “This week, we’re going to start working out.” Now, I knew that it was going to be when he was at work. Sadly, we never worked out, not once. She would make a couple of excuses. There’s a dance recital, there’s this, there’s that. “After the recital’s over, girl, I swear I’ll have more time. Please don’t give up on me. I swear I’ll have more time.”
Wendy Lyons:
The recitals got over and I just didn’t bother with it anymore. I knew that it was probably making it hard for her. She didn’t have a way to do it probably without listening to him. So I didn’t hound her over it, and we just, sadly, we never got to workout again the second time we renewed.
David Lyons:
Well, at some point, did he, because I think I remember you telling me this, that he went and bought gym equipment and put it in the garage and told her she could workout at home?
Wendy Lyons:
Yes, and she didn’t know that I knew that. I learned this after her passing and someone told me this, someone that had been in the house, and they said that the garage was converted into a gym. I’m convinced he probably maybe found out, because they had joined accounts together. Maybe he saw the membership charge on the card. I guess, “If you’re going to workout, you’re going to workout at home. You’re not going to workout with her again.” That really, when I found that out, that answered a question for me of why we never worked out. Number one, she wasn’t allowed, and number two, she had equipment at home if she needed to workout.
David Lyons:
I think through this period that we both were recognizing that, I think it’s such a delicate balance sometimes that people confused with, maybe they think a guy might just be misogynistic or chauvinistic, or old school and whatever. And then the other thing too is that sometimes people are just get into relationships with people that are nothing shy of just being assholes. And that doesn’t mean that they’re going to do bad things, but I remember through this whole process, when you would tell me these stories and we would talk about it, that it had the impression of everything that he was, in my opinion, just from my experience, categorically he was doing everything he could to condition somebody for an abusive relationship.
Wendy Lyons:
Oh, he absolutely did. And if you recall, I forgot to say this, and this was really, really important. She, when they first met, begged me not to tell him what you did for a living. At the time you were still a commander, and she said, “Please do not tell him David is a police commander.” And I said, “Why?” And she said, “Girl, he hates the police.” I remember telling you that, and both of us were just struck in awe that we had to hide your profession for a while. He eventually found out, he didn’t like the police no better, but I think the other tell-tale sign was they got married in July, and you recall we had the Christmas party that December. One thing that she was so upset about, she took off work that Friday, our party was going to be that night, and he was not happy that she took off work. She had gone out, we were preparing food that day and she needed a couple of ingredients and a couple of pans from her house, and when she came back, she was so furious.
Wendy Lyons:
She said, “I’m not letting him come to this tonight.” And I said, “What’s going on?” And he was convinced that because she needed to go out and get more Parmesan cheese, he thought that all of this money that was spent on this food, that she had paid for. She told him, “I didn’t pay for this, she paid for it, but if I did, it’s none of your business. I make my money at work and I’ll spend it how I choose.” They argued for quite a while, because she left it on speaker so I could listen. He was very upset that he thought she bought this food, and then we had matching Christmas shirts, she and I, and I remember her having to run back out to the store because he didn’t have a shirt to match and he didn’t want just me and her to match. So if you recall, me, she and he matched that night, which was really awkward.
David Lyons:
You said something about arguments. Were you getting an impression from her as this move forward, were they arguing more and more frequently, or whatever?
Wendy Lyons:
They were. She was getting tired of it. She was getting frustrated, kind of like, “This isn’t what I signed up for.” And so she would call me, every time they’d have an argument she’d called and she’d say, “Let me tell you what he done said last night. Oh my God, girl, let me tell you what this man put me through this morning.” And so this became more and more frequent, but then tomorrow when she and I would talk, “No, girl, he’s all right. He’s fine, girl. You know I whipped him right into shape.” It was the honeymoon phase. I think he realized that she was getting irritated, so he backed off, and then he would be nice again and she would buy into it, but it wasn’t but a few days later she’d call me and she’s mad about something else. So this just kept perpetuating.
David Lyons:
Did her demeanor start to change through this period? Was she the same happy person, or was that changing too?
Wendy Lyons:
It changed. She was very irritated, but when she was happy, a couple days later, she’d be happy again for a few days, because now he’s doing what she’s told him to do or asked him to do, or what he should be doing. But then it wouldn’t be but a few days later and she’d call and we’d be starting all over again. So she was getting irritated. She was very busy with her career and with the children, and everything she did, she poured her heart and soul into for her children. Running them to dance, running them to this, to that, like all of us parents do. And then he’s over there just adding irritation to the whole mix. Like she had this great big harmonious thing going, and then he came along.
Wendy Lyons:
And it was harmonious for a while, but then what I started seeing was now she’s getting irritated. Now she’s discovering that he’s a slob. He’s not helping her out around the house. She’s incredibly busy, he’s been at home all day because he doesn’t go to work until the afternoon. “Why are your dishes here from all day long? Why are your clothes still on the floor?” She was very meticulous about that, and he knew this, so then not only did she have the children to tend to and dinner to prepare, and homework to do and baths to give, but now she’s got to clean up from his mess from all day long. So she was getting very, very tired of it, to be honest with you.
David Lyons:
Did she ever tell you that she had thought about leaving the relationship, or did she communicate that she had told him that?
Wendy Lyons:
They had sought out counseling. She did tell me that they were going to a counselor, because she couldn’t handle, I guess, and maybe there were other things she didn’t tell me that she couldn’t handle, but she couldn’t handle his inability to help her around the house. Just some, I’m sure, other things. So they did start going to counseling, and he was not happy about that.
David Lyons:
Well, didn’t you tell me one time that he accused her of picking a female counselor on purpose to side with?
Wendy Lyons:
Yeah, he told her, “You chose a female so that she’ll side with you.” So she said, “Okay, then let’s choose a male, and you choose the male.” And he said, “No, because I don’t want people knowing my business. That’s the problem with some of you women, you want to tell your business and your problems to other people, and that’s where you’re wrong.” And she said, “No, that’s not what this is. This is counseling, and this is what people do when they try to make problems work.” So they stopped going to counseling. He wouldn’t go anymore. He just told her he’s not going, and he stopped.
David Lyons:
Well, let’s move on, and this is probably the more difficult part of it, of the whole story, of where this culminates into it. And again, any one or two of the things that you’ve talked about, if they stood alone, it would just be like, “Man, okay. That’s just a less than ideal relationship.” But it’s pretty clear that in a whole package, what we’re looking at is an extreme amount of inordinate jealousy, incredible lacks of trust, even though somebody’s saying they want to get into a formal relationship with somebody and formalize that with marriage, and then control and isolation. Again, that’s what I kept seeing watching from my viewpoint, is what started to worry me the most was the incredible isolation that he would do, not just with you, but with other people in the family and in the friendship range, is to not let anybody have contact.
David Lyons:
I told you more than once, and I still believe this, that of everybody, you were last person he wanted her with because you were the closest one to her. And that is usually, for somebody like him, a manipulator, the biggest threat. Is that somebody who knows the person the most can actually maybe get in their ear and speak reason to them. Those are the things that’ll turn into red flags, that sometimes we miss, sometimes we catch. When’s the last time you had contact with her?
Wendy Lyons:
It was probably about, well, talking contact probably three weeks to a month before he killed her. We were driving to work, it was just the, “Good morning, girl.” And I said, “Hey, how are you?” We hadn’t talked for, I don’t know how many days at that point, but it had slacked off a lot. Sometimes, as you know, I’d come home and I’d tell you, “I haven’t even talked to her in a week. I haven’t talked to her in a month.” She called me and she said, “Girl, I just can’t. Girl, I can’t with him anymore.” And I said, “Why? What’s going on?” And she said, “It’s the same thing,” and she was very upset. She was so mad. When Angie would get so mad, she would cry. I knew when she kind of started crying, she wasn’t sad, she was so upset. And she just said, “It’s the same thing. I’ve left a vacuum out since Thursday and it’s still sitting there,” and this was like Tuesday of the next week. And she said, “I just can’t do him and the kids. He’s like a third kid, and I’m done. I’m just done.”
Wendy Lyons:
I remember saying to her, because they had just gotten a house the year before, she had sold her home and they got one together, I remember saying, “Do you need his income to live in that home?” And she said, “No, I don’t.” And I said, “Then kick him out.” And I said, “You do not need to be putting up with that. It’s clearly got you upset. It’s adding more workload to what you’ve got with your children and life in general as it is. Stop doing it. If it’s not bringing you happiness, it’s time to be done.”
Wendy Lyons:
Hey, you know there’s more to the story, so go download the next episode like the true crime fan that you are.
David Lyons:
The Murder Police Podcast is hosted by Wendy and David Lyons, and was created to honor the lives of crime victims so their names are never forgotten. It is produced, recorded and edited by David Lyons. The Murder Police Podcast can be found on your favorite Apple or Android podcast platform, as well as at murderpolicepodcast.com, which is our website and has show notes for imagery and audio and video files related to the cases you’re going to hear. We are also on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and YouTube, which has closed caption available for those that are hearing impaired.
David Lyons:
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David Lyons:
Lock it down, Judy.