ID is re-airing a Deadly Women investigation into the murder of Dennis Spunaugle by his wife, Delpha Jo Spunaugle, and her friend Edwin David Woodward at Dennis’s home in Edmond, Oklahoma.
By the summer of 1993, Spunauagle had spent about two years trying to persuade someone to kill her husband, 40-year-old Dennis, a local entrepreneur who ran a screen printing shop in Edmond.
On August 14, Spunaugle asked her friend, Woodward, to stay over at her home as his presence would allegedly make Dennis less likely to verbally abuse her when he came from an evening of drinking.
Dennis went to bed without incident soon after he arrived home, and Woodward slept in the couple’s motorhome, which was parked in the drive.
At some point in the night, Spunaugle awoke Woodward, telling him, “It’s time.” The pair crept into the bedroom where Dennis was sleeping, and Woodward whacked him in the head with a baseball bat. The blow didn’t completely incapacitate Dennis, who began fighting back. During the struggle, Woodward stabbed his victim multiple times.
As dawn approached, Dennis was still not dead, so Spunaugle grabbed a rope, and two killers coiled it around the victim’s neck and pulled it until he was dead.
Delpha Jo Spunaugle and Edwin David Woodward dumped remains by the roadside after Dennis Spunaugle murder
The cops believe the motive for the killing was financial; Spunaugle hoped to pocket $150,000 in life insurance proceeds.
Watch the Latest on our YouTube ChannelFive days later, a passing trucker spotted Dennis’s remains lying in a dry creek bed at the side of a rural road. The remains were already maggot-infested and partially skeletonized.
The two killers were quick to admit they played a role in the murder but also blamed each other for being the driving force. Woodward claimed Spunaugle had manipulated him and that he was intoxicated.
Spunaugle claimed that Woodward had forced her into the killing by threatening to murder her and her children. She said he was a devil worshipper who had licked Dennis’s blood from his knife.
Delpha Jo Spunaugle and Edwin David Woodward convicted for killing Dennis Spunaugle
The pair were trialed together in 1995 and were both convicted. Woodward received a life sentence, but the jury gave Spunaugle the death penalty because they believed she was the ringleader. The jury foreman explained, “She was the driving force in the crime, and Mr. Woodward was only following her instructions.”
A couple of years later, Spunaugle’s conviction was overturned in an appeals court. The new ruling declared that Spunaugle had been wrongly denied the right to argue in court that she was under duress at the time of the murder.
She was scheduled for a second trial in 1998, but she decided to rule out the risk of a death sentence by pleading guilty to first-degree murder. She was given a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Woodward was sentenced to life without parole, but according to Oklahoma Dept. of Corrections records, he was, in fact, paroled in 2019.
This episode of Deadly Women re-airs Saturday at 9/8c on Investigation Discovery.