The Murder of Penny Anderson (Massachusetts)

When a woman was found murdered in her Springfield, Massachusetts apartment during the spring of 1984, it only took a matter of days to zero in on a suspect and secure an arrest. And then at trial, a jury decided Edward Wright was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

The New England Innocence Project has since taken up his case. So, who really killed Penny Anderson? Was it the man serving a life sentence for her death or someone else?

The Discovery

A resident of an apartment building in Springfield, Massachusetts was in a deep sleep when something cut through the quiet of his slumber just before 4 a.m. on May 14, 1984. Blinking into the dark, it took a moment for him to register what he was hearing. A woman was screaming, and it sounded like it was coming from the building next door.

The man rose and crossed the room to his window, his eyes tilted upward to lights on inside a neighboring apartment in the same direction of the noise. He could just barely make out the words. Please don’t do it, she was yelling. The woman was calling out for someone to call the police, but the neighbor stood there helpless. He didn’t have a phone.

For 15 long minutes, the screams continued before the night went quiet again. Then all he heard was the distant sound of a car’s engine turning over and driving off.

Hours later, around 2 p.m. that afternoon, a woman pressed her ear up against the door of her daughter’s second floor apartment at 306 Dwight Street Extension in Springfield. She could hear a baby – her grandson – crying on the other side, but when she knocked and called out to her daughter, no one came to the door.

The woman soon returned with her husband and an official from the Springfield Housing Authority, who owned the apartment building. It was just after 3 p.m. when they stepped inside the unit to a terrible scene. 24-year old Penny Anderson was lifeless on the living room floor lying in a pool of blood. In the next room, still crying but thankfully unharmed in his crib, was Penny’s 8-month old son.⁽¹⁾ The baby was safe in the arms of his grandmother as Springfield Police were called to the address.

Early Investigation

Court records show that Penny was fully clothed when her body was found, but her hands were bound with a blood-soaked length of pink ribbon. According to reporting by Cynthia Simison for The Republican, an autopsy revealed that she’d been stabbed 60 times and died from a fatal wound to her jugular vein and one to the carotid artery. Tests also indicated the presence of seminal fluid and sperm cells in Penny’s body. She likely died early the same day she was found between midnight and 6:15 a.m. but the medical examiner could not determine a more precise time of death.⁽³⁾ What was clear though, was that this was a violent homicide.

At Penny’s apartment, detectives could see no signs of forced entry or any indication that it had been ransacked. Helayne Lightstone reports for the Morning Union that there was no weapon at the scene and no foreign fingerprints to speak of either. However, police collected at least 15 piece of evidence from the scene, including blood samples. They found a bloody shoe print in the kitchen and photographed the visible tread pattern.

Conversations with witnesses helped to piece together the final hours of Penny’s life. Pamela H. Metaxas reports for The Republican that Penny was last seen alive on Sunday night at the Club 418 Lounge a few blocks down from her apartment building. Penny previously worked at the lounge as a dancer but was reportedly between jobs at the time of her death.

A dancer at the club who knew Penny told police that she saw Penny there around 11:30 p.m. on May 13. She watched as Penny screamed at a man and hurried out of the bar. Penny was pointing at the guy as she yelled, and dropped her purse in the process, spilling the contents all over the floor. She left soon after.

The man Penny was reportedly yelling at night was a former boyfriend, Allen Smalls. When police tracked him down for a conversation, Allen confirmed that he was at Club 418 Lounge on Sunday night. He explained that he’d known Penny for about six years and, yes, they dated for a time, but he ended things with her in the summer of 1982.

According to his signed (but not sworn statement), Allen saw Penny at the club several times over the course of that evening. At one point, he said he saw a man whispering in Penny’s ear, and then Penny left with that same man around 11 p.m.

As for the heated exchange that the other witness saw, Allen’s version was that as Penny was on her way out the door, he asked where she was going and she told him she was going to pick up her son and then was going to bring the guy back to her apartment to have sex. Allen told her, quote, “Don’t go home because I’ll be there when you get there.” End quote. Penny reminded Allen that they weren’t together anymore, and then she left. He said that was the last time he saw Penny that night.

Allen told police he left the nightclub soon after and drove home on his moped. He said he was pulled over and ticketed for a motor vehicle violation on the way, and by the time he finally made it back around 3:30 in the morning, everyone he lived with was already asleep.

At Penny’s apartment building, police spoke with that neighbor who’d heard screaming coming from Penny’s apartment and then a car driving away. This narrowed the estimated time of her death to a little after 4 a.m. Detectives also interviewed another neighbor who said she saw Penny drive up to the apartment building in a car with a man and they both went into Penny’s apartment around 12:45 a.m. So, who was that man? Police believed he could have answers about what happened to Penny, so tracking him down was top priority.

The Phone Call

As interviews with witnesses continued in Penny’s case, across town a man named Arthur Turner was recovering from a long night. He’d been traveling home from a trip on the night of May 13th when he got into a car accident. According to court documents, Arthur finally made it home to Springfield around 1 o’clock that afternoon. A few hours later, the phone rang and a tired Arthur picked up.

The caller said it was “Ed”. Arthur only knew one person named Ed who might be calling…His mother Thelma’s boyfriend, Edward Wright. But Ed and Thelma weren’t on good terms at the time. Thelma had recently filed for a protective order against Ed, and Arthur and Ed weren’t exactly best buds either. They’d known each other for about three years and had lived in the same house at one point, but they hadn’t talked on the phone before. Court records describe Ed and Arthur’s relationship as “hostile”.

Still, Arthur listened as the caller explained that he’d done something wrong – he killed someone, a white woman in Springfield. Ed gave Arthur the address: 306 Dwight Street Extension.

During the 36 minute long conversation, the caller went on to say that he had sex with the woman before stabbing her with a 14-inch knife. He claimed he did this because she fired a gun at him. The caller said the victim was possibly under the influence of drugs which he referred to as “tic” and he called the woman a pejorative term often directed at individuals engaged in sex work. He told Arthur to watch the news or read the paper to learn the victim’s name.

Arthur did read about the murder in the paper the next day and that phone call from the night before was fresh in his mind. Arthur told his sister about it, who told their brother, and the brother decided to go to police. Arthur spoke with investigators on May 16 and told them everything the caller said about the murder. He then signed a statement prepared by police without making any changes.

Edward G. Wright Jr. was on the case radar before Arthur even signed that statement. In fact, on May 15th, police showed Penny’s former boyfriend Allen Smalls a photo array to see if he could identify the man she left the club with on the night of her murder. Allen pointed to Ed’s picture.

A Swift Arrest

When the warrant was issued for Ed’s arrest in connection with the murder of Penny Anderson, he was already being held by Wilmington, Delaware authorities for an unrelated charge. An hour after his arrest on the murder charges, Ed gave a statement to a Delaware police officer and admitted to being with Penny on the night she was killed. He said that they went to pick up her son and then went back to Penny’s apartment together where they drank beer and had sex. But Ed insisted that she was alive and asleep when he left her apartment around 1 a.m.

During this interview with Delaware police, Ed reportedly made comments about Penny being under the influence of drugs that night, using the term “tic”, and called her a derogatory word for sex worker. It was the same language and terminology that the caller used during that phone call to Arthur, but Ed denied having that conversation with Arthur. He maintained that he was not responsible for Penny’s death.

Police seized Ed’s shoes as evidence and processed the vehicle he was driving on the night of May 13th into the early hours of May 14th. In the meantime, Ed was held in Delaware for about five months until he was extradited in October. Officials from Massachusetts traveled with him back to the northeast where he would appear in Springfield District Court to be arraigned.

Ed was charged with first degree murder, accused of the deliberate, premeditated homicide with extreme atrocity and cruelty. Edward entered a not guilty plea in Hampden County Superior Court and was held without bail at the county jail.

Penny Anderson’s story continues on Dark Downeast. Press play to hear the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.