Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
They say everything ´s bigger in Texas – including a killer´s cover story , apparently.
On sept. 9, 2016 , a women named chacey poynter called 911 the rose city policedepartement in panic around 10:50 PM.
It´s a female hyperventilating.And ther phone goes dead.
911: she´s pinging on kenner at 25,95. shes´s extremely out of breath , she sound like she´s running. …
The first responders arriving to a unmaintained county road ,25 .95.
they dont knwo what they´re getting into as they´re going dowm this dark road in the middle o of the night Thay see a white female flagging them down.
Che was just frantic, she had blood on her shoulder area and it´s all over her leg and her shirt
Chacey told police that her husband, robert Poynter,was a bit futher down the road, he´d been shot in the head. chacey claimed that she saw a shadowy figure. she had called robert to come help her because her jeep was stuck in the mud.
However, police on the scene were reportedly skeptical right away about Chacey’s story, per a report from CBS News. For starters, she claimed that she got Robert’s blood on her arms after she pressed her hand to his head.
A detective that interviewed her pointed out that it was blood spatter on her arm, which would indicate that she was lying about how Robert’s blood got on her initially. What else was Chacey lying about?
The late Robert poynter/source:48 hours.
a silhouette of somebody still in the jeep.
The jeep was covered with blood.there was no indicatiion of struggle
When chalcey says her husband robert poynter ,a decorated fire department captain was gunned down by a shadoway figure just feet away from her on this Rural road in in roy city Texas.
Its not even a traveled road it´s for farmers to use to make access to their fields.
That night sergeant shane meek wondered
this broken road and how chasey and her husband ended up on and questioned a breathless chasey in the back of his squad car.
Chacey says the couple planned to meet at fast food resturant for tacos.
she texted her husband. chacey says while texting ,she got stuck.
As a fire captain,robert was used to coming to the rescue , he rushed to her side. As chasey waited on the side of the road for robert to back up , she heard a gunshot.
This was a clean assassination ,robert unfortunately didn´t have a clue what happened to him.”said shane
The victim was sitting in the driver´seat, he´s got as entry wound approximatelly on the temple on the right side and the wadding from a shotgun shell was still in his skull.
chasey says as ashe ran for help she saw that shadowy figure.
while sympathetic sergeant meek was puzzled.
some guiy just happened to be standing there in the shadows of the threes to step out and shoot this guy point blank in the head with a gun just didn´t make sense.”
But whoever that suspect was why would he want robert poynter dead? robert was a devoted public servant a career firefighter
university park firehouse near Dallas where robert spent 19 years as a firefighter and later a captain .
A firefighter with the touch of a gentle giant.
Robert poynter a had three daughters , a six and a half year old with chacey .
and from his first marriage , Natalie and Nicole.
Back in 2008 his 20 year marriage to their mother amy poynter , his high school sweetheart began to unravel. then Nicole discovered her dad had a second cellphone.
chalsey was a 20 year old, working as a nurse aid , she was introduced to robert through a mutual friend.
robert and chacey were married on december 28 2009, she was 22. he was 40.But almost seven years later. ,chacey says the couple love faded.And that night in the Squad car ,chacey decided to share her frustrations.
chacey was young and stupid when we got married… i didn´t want to be married anymore. he´s trying to take my daughte away from me…”
Just over an hour after chacey poynter held her husband´s head blodied head in her hands she kept giving sergeant meek details ,not of the shooting , but of the state of her marriage.
sgt. shane meek: why would he try to take your daughter? like was reason did he give you?
chacey : because he knows that´s what´s goiung to hurt me the most .
sgt shane meek: her story kept adding all these different twists and turns and pices of information that just werent fitting in the place of the puzzle.”
chacey says three years into their marriage the couple grew apart.
According to chacey ,robert had a temper. he wass taking testosterone and steroids to treat low testosterone levels and chacey claims ,that made him violent.
Robert´s ex-wife amy dosen´t buy it.
When Natalie was 16, she lived with her dad sand chacey for six month and never saw him become violent.
chacey believed she had a good reason for not reporting the alleged abuse to authorities.Despite there problems ,chacey says she tried to keep the spark alive in the marriage.
This was done for Robert , chacey had a friend tha was a photograph and she did a boudoir shoot for chacey. she said ,he wasn´t attracted to me after she lost all the wight . he liked me when i was havier.
Over a two- year span chacey transformed her body .
chacey admits she began seeing other men a lot of men.
Natalie accidentally found evidence on chacey´s computer that her stepmother was cheating.
Natalie says while her father pulled overnight shifts at the firehouse ,chacey often snuck out for hours at the time,leaving natalie and her then four year old sister alone.
Natalie eventually found the courage to tell her dad about chacey´s cheating ways.
Deeply troubled robert filed paperwork for divorce but ended up not following through.
Robert installed a security camera next to the front door.
to try and catch chacey cheating with one of her lovers.Then just 12 days before roberts murder the doorbell rang.
chacey: as soon as that doorbell rang, i was out that door telling him he had to go “
and from that moment ,robert knew.
On the night of robert´s murder, sergeant meek had a hunch that chacey poynter knew more she was saying.
Allthough she wasn´t under arrest she was read her right.
But chacey kept on talking revealing what she was up to before fateful rendevous with her husband
Hanging out with someone named michael Garza.
Investigators say the more chacey poynter talked the more she seemed like a suspect then a grieving wife.
sgt. meek Hyperventilating´s now stopped and she ´s gone into this stutter talking whitch leads me to believe that she does these´pauses to gather additional thoughts”
so sgt meek thinking it´s a performance .
sgt . meek:it started seeming more and more that way.
And a perfomance with a recurring character michael Garza.
chacey began having an affair with michael Garza after meeting him on facebook in the summer of 2016.
This selfie captured one intimate moment.
Robert shared his frustrations about chacey with his boddies at the firehouse.
Robert was hopeful the marriage could be saved.he took chacey and daughter to mexico on vacation but it backfired.
Not long after chacey told srg meek about the iaffair with michael garza she was driven down downtown
to be questioned by detective michael burk.The interrogation started at 2:20 in the morning.
It lasted eight hours.
Among those issues her affair with Garza.And she gave more detail about robets murder.
Detective Burke presssed her . Two hours into the interrogation detective burke b roke through.
Mickey as in Michael Garza.
Now cornered ,chacey changed her entire story, she says she told garza about roberts alleged anger issues
chacey told 48 hours Garza rode with her that night,the plan was to confront robert outside the jack- in – the -box.
and demand he leave chacey alone.
Garza tells chacey to make a right onto county road.25 95 chacey asked garza what´s going on he said he´s going to meet us here. chacey now claims it was Garza setting a trap.
He told chacey to take my jeep back up around the first corner and let robert know that her jeep stuck and she needed robert come help her.
But …. chacey´s jeep wasn´t stuck
When robert arrived, chacey noticed something kind of tuching. he wore thecologne that he wore on their wedding day and he hadn´t worn it since and chacey made a joke about it. and robert laughed .
Robert could never have imagine that he was just moments away from death.
as chacey was walking to the jeep she said ” stop!” to Garza.
and then There was a gunshot.
chacey called 911 , Garzia took the phone from her and threw it donw on the ground.
prosecutor jeff kovach doesn´t buy any of it.
prosecutor jeff kovach: the question is which one of those stories does she want us to believe. heard him, scare him, ot just have a talk. , non of them are credible
Investigators believed that chacey were luring her husband to this remote area so he could be murdered.
chacey :”there was no plan to bring him out and murder him, there was no talk of that .
On september 10th the morning after her husband´s murder ….
chacey poynter was arrested for conspiracy to commit murder .
The couples daughter would stay with chacey´s mother.
Investigators then set out to find the man who allegedly shot robert poynter. But michal Garza the truck driver had hit the road.
On september 15m 2016 just five days after his wife was charged in his death,captain robert poynter was laid to rest .
Guards guarding his Urn,his ashes the entire time.
firefighter from all over Texas honored him .
Investigators say just the day before he was gunned down ,robert had reach out to a divorce attorney on facebook .sending this provocative message.
chacey:“He had contacted a realtor, said he was going to put the house up for sale . he was going to have custody of our daughter”
The next day , he is killed do you think that´s just a coincidence?
prosecutor jeff kovach :that´s not a coincidence. that´s why the murder happened when the murder happened .
Natalie says chacey had convinced her father to change his almost 685 thousand dollar life insurance policy instead of the girls getting the money ,chacey was made the primary beneficiary
prosecutor jeff kovach: we believe that was the motive that she saw him as an ATM machine and she was going to milk the las little money she could get out of him
Prosecutor calvin Grogan says investigators discovered a mountain of digital evdence.
prosecutor calvin grogan : there were plenty of text messages after the life insurance beneficiary designation change occured in april indicating that chacey poynter was looking for somebody that would take care of robert.
And many of those texts more than ten thousand were between chacey and her lovers.
prosecutor jeff kovach: she having affairs with multiple man , danny Mims , Brad golden. sean butcher michel Garza.
prosecutors believe chacey began grooming Garza for murcer convincing him that robert was an imminent threat.
prosecutor jeff kovach: she used sex to manipulate men , she´s not going to come right out ,” hey will you kill my husband for me ?” chacey poynter plats the victim and then she uses that to manipulate people and she told all of these men that she´s just abused battered women
She texted garza from that mexian vacation where the couple was reconcile ,quote;
+
Garza answers *** him , no , i will shot that dud “
Is michael talking about murdering chacey´s husband?
chacey: i didn´t think he was serious. i didn´t want him involved , i told him that .
This is brad golden.
he ´s the lover caught on the security camera video.
He say´s chacey manipulated him
Brad says chacey told him horror stories about robert.
police couldn´collaborarw any of her story of abuse they spoke with neigbhors ,friends, there was no evidence to support it at all .
Chacey had made allegations about robert´s anger issues to ex -lovers.
sean butcher and danny mims who she often texted
prosecutor jeff kovach: she often texted eight days prior to the murder ,” i wish he´d run out of air in a fire ” moving back to july 11 th”i need him gone,- g-o-n-e all capitalized
Danny mims replies : “i´m not a magician, chacey anwers”:” well , i need one.”
prosecutor jeff kovach: sean butcher says to chacey :”what do you need to leave?” “chasey poynter says:”i would be better off with gone, benefits and can´t lose custody”. the day before the murder it´s from chacey to garza:”i´ve med up my mind”. it think it´pretty s clear its about killing robert poynter.
with Garza on the run, a SWAT team raided his house coming up empty.
But the next day Garza turned himself in and he was charged with robert poynter´s murder.
He did not want to speake to the investigators only wanted to speak to his attorney .
with their two suspects now behind the bars, investigators hope to finde direct evidence linking Garza to the murder.
five weeks later that evidence would come from a farmer.
911 : what´s your emergency?
farmer:i believe i found a shotgun
who unearthed the murder weapon while plowing this field , less then a quarter mile from where robert was shot .
That shotgun was still loaded,the shell hadn´t been ejected and there´s two more in the magazin and theyre all main killing slugs consistent with what the medical examiner said wich used to killed robert poynter.
investigators did a search on the firearm. a 835 ultimatic .it came to matthew Garza , michael Garza´s brother. Police now had what they needed.
Michael Garza would be the first to face trial
prosecutor calvin grogan : michael Garza just happened to be the person that was in chacey´s life at the right time and all it really took for chacey is to basically just dangle the bait.
Do you thingk chacey intended to scare her husband or kill him?
From her bizarre perfomance, the night her husband was murderedto her confession about her lover michael Garza…..
Investigators was convinced chacey poynter was determined to have her husband killled that night.
On july 10 2018 , the prosecution put alleged trigger man michael Garza on trial
He had pleaded not guilty, when Garza took the stand he made a shattering announcement implicating chacey.
He says that he gave her his brothers shotgun , because he thought that she was abused, he implied that she did it.
Garza told the court , he couldn´t have murdered robert poynter, because he was tending to a sick animal on the family farm.
The jury didn´t find Garza´s Alibi credible.
On july 20th michael Garza was found guilty and sentenced to 99 years in prison.
Prosecutors were hopeful that they prove chacey wanted roberts money and that she was the mastermind.
prosecutor jeff kovach: there´s no way michael Garza was ever going to get robert poynter out on that road alone ,only chacey could do that and she played her part well.
Using chacey´s texts prosecutors demonstrated that her alleged lover michael garza was really a sinister ploy.
prosecutor jeff kovach: he´s the dumb idiot she got to do this.
In fact Garza didn´t know that after he shot robert , chacey planned on spending the night with another lover .
prosecutor jeff kovach: She was texting brad golden while , she´s out there committing this murder , she had sex with brad golden that morning , they still planned to meet up that night .
chacey´s defense attorney´s scott cornod and frank huges say the state´s obsession with chacey´s affairs ,tainted the jury . while chacey chose not to take the stand ,jurors did hear her speak…
through those recorded police videos…..
One that captured tihs revealing moment….
At the end of her two -week trial, the jury began it´s deliberations …After the fourth hour .
chacey poynter was found guilty of murder.
jury´s sentence chacey poynter to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 30 years .