Following child’s brutal death, Attorney General Todd Rokita’s team ensures killer’s sentence is upheld

Unspeakable acts are held accountable

A violent criminal must continue serving 25 years for her role in the brutal death of a 10-year-old boy following the successful work of Attorney General Todd Rokita and his office before the Indiana Court of Appeals.

“Nothing we do can bring back to life the innocent victims of senseless violence,” Attorney General Rokita said. “But we can — and we do — work to make sure the vicious criminals who commit these unspeakable acts are held accountable.”

In 2020, Rachel Wright and her wife, April Wright, took responsibility for the care of April’s 10-year-old brother. Instead of providing nurture, however, the two women tortured the child through heinous patterns of abuse — ultimately killing the boy in October of 2020 by dislocating his mandible and two of his cervical vertebrae.

When emergency responders examined the child, they found numerous wounds over his whole body in various stages of healing — “cuts and puncture wounds to his face,” according to court documents, along with “lacerated and swollen lips caused by blunt force trauma, tears in his nostrils, bruised eyes, and lacerations and puncture wounds to the back of both of his ears.”

The perpetrators applied makeup to the deceased child in attempts to cover up his facial wounds. Further, the two women “staged (the boy’s) body in his bedroom next to a partially eaten plate of food to make it seem that he had died in his sleep,” according to the court documents. Then they “called 9-1-1 to report that (the child) was not breathing. Although (he) had already been deceased for some time, (the two women) feigned surprise that they had just found (the child) unresponsive in his bed, and they went through the motions of attempting to resuscitate (his) lifeless body.”

On January 20, 2023, April Wright was sentenced to 35 years for her role in her brother’s death, and her wife, Rachel Wright, was sentenced to 25 years.

In appealing her sentence, Rachel Wright argued that mental illness played a role in her actions and that she later demonstrated remorse.

The appellate court, however, concluded that Rachel Wright’s supposed remorse “did not include any acceptance of responsibility on her part for the harm she herself directly caused to (the child). In short, Wright has failed to present us with any compelling evidence of her positive character.”

The court’s ruling is attached.

• Wright opinion.pdf