The Wrong Guy

Of more immediate concern were the victims: Amy Wingfield, deceased, and Alisa Stewart, in critical condition from a gunshot to her lower back. According to a police affidavit, the two close friends returned from lunch and shopping around 1:30. Wingfield was driving and parked her SUV in the lot behind the hospital. As she turned to close the door, an unknown assailant fired what was believed to be a high-velocity rifle from a long distance. The bullet entered her skull and exited an eye socket, killing her instantly. Stewart heard a loud popping sound and sensed something spew on the car window. She ran to her friend and saw her sprawled on the ground, blood pooling around her head. As she bent down to check, she felt a burning pain in her back. Her legs went numb, and she knew she had been shot. Hoping to call 911, she crawled toward Wingfield's cell phone. She started shaking uncontrollably, however, and could only cry out for help.

Although Stewart had no idea who shot her, lead detective Randy VanDertuin quickly began assembling a list of possible suspects. Stewart had intimate relationships--past and present--with three suspects: a former boyfriend, an ex-husband who was behind on his child support and a current live-in who was an avid hunter and drove a blue pickup. Her relationship with her current boyfriend was so volatile Stewart's family told the police he was their man. But all three had alibis, and her boyfriend passed a polygraph. Besides, it didn't seem logical that Stewart was the primary target when Wingfield took the first bullet. Also, the second shot ricocheted off the SUV before hitting Stewart, lending more credence to the idea that she was an afterthought.

Topping the list of remaining suspects was Amy's husband, Raymond Wingfield, an Allen firefighter and failing home builder. VanDertuin recorded conflicting accounts of Raymond's behavior at the hospital after he was informed of his wife's death. "Wingfield appeared to be displaying behavior consistent with an individual who had suffered great loss." He had even wrecked his vehicle after learning of the shooting, and then at the hospital he hit a wall and broke several bones in his left hand. But "Sgt. Collins [a Texas Ranger] suggested that Wingfield's actions seemed a bit extreme and had a concern that the extra emotion might be staged."

Oddly, at 3 o'clock on the afternoon of the murder, McKinney reserve officer P.A. Schulte was approached by "a white male," who identified himself as an employee of Bob Thomas Ford in McKinney and handed the officer a set of keys saying, "A woman just came into our office, threw these keys on a desk and said, 'Those keys belong to the shooter's vehicle.'" The vehicle was the same gold Ford Explorer that had been wrecked by Wingfield, who had rented the SUV to test-drive earlier in the day. Although Wingfield was not ruled out as a suspect, not much was immediately done with this information. Whether that was because he was a local firefighter and one of their own, or whether he played the part of the grieving spouse with such aplomb that the police felt uncomfortable confronting him, other than a "rushed" interview on May 18 he would not be interrogated again until May 22, two days after his wife's funeral.

McKinney detectives weren't quite so deferential to the last suspect on their list: Paul Edward Wooley.

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Amarillo, May 17, 2002, 1:53 p.m.

By the time Wooley arrived in Amarillo, he felt as though he was "on a trip to nowhere." The sharp pains in his chest had him believing he was going to die. While on the road, Marvin Morris and Charles Schmucker, another close friend of Wooley's at Xtera, told him that the company had been evacuated after learning about the McKinney shootings. He now felt that people he had worked closely with for the past 18 months believed he was capable of murder. Old thoughts of suicide began to resurface, and he asked the clerk at a La Quinta if he knew a priest. Rather than phone a priest, the clerk, worried about a potential suicide, called the cops.

When the Amarillo police arrived, Wooley felt calmer. He told the officers he was going to Alaska on vacation and assured them that he had no intention of harming himself. He had phoned his mother and spoken with her pastor and told the police he just had a lot on his mind. Officers wanted him to seek professional help and directed him to a psychiatric hospital in Amarillo. They confiscated a handgun, a rifle and a hunting knife but agreed to return them after he spoke with a counselor.