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Texas Woman Found Slumped Over Bathtub, Dead and with Her Hands Tied Behind Her Back
Susan Woods, 30, was discovered dead in the bathroom of her Stephenville, Texas home by her father in 1987 amid her divorce, after she failed to show up to work for two days.
After six years of marriage, Susan Woods was ready to start a new life — but she never got the chance to.
Susan, 30, was discovered dead in the bathroom of her the Stephenville, Texas home by her father on July 28, 1987 amid her divorce, after she failed to show up to work for two days.
“His world just ended,” Sgt. Donnie Hensley, then an investigator with the Stephenville Police Department, told "The Monster At Large" episode of Dateline: Secrets Uncovered of the father’s grim discovery.
For nearly two decades, Susan’s estranged husband Michael Woods would live under a cloud of suspicion as many in the small Texas town believed he’d been the cold-blooded culprit. But in 2006, the case took a surprising turn and revealed an unexpected killer.
Who was Susan Woods?
Susan grew up in Stephenville, Texas, a town dubbed the "Cowboy Capital of the World."
“Susan was a very shy, timid, but happy-go-lucky person,” her close friend Cindy Hayes told Dateline.
In a town filled with cowboys, Susan, an avid car aficionado, was drawn to a rocker from Indiana who sported long hair and a leather jacket, Michael Woods. Michael told Dateline’s Natalie Morales that he never fit in in the town, but still found himself drawn to Susan.
“She was gorgeous," he told the newsmagazine. "She was absolutely gorgeous. And she was amazed to hear my stories about other places 'cause she'd never been anywhere or gone anywhere. And she was just fascinating to be around. She was just so full of love."
Susan and Michael Woods' marital problems
The pair eventually got married in 1980 and while Susan worked full-time to support them, Michael, a musician, struggled to find work in Stephenville.
“It was always the same story," Michael recalled: "'You got long hair,' 'You got a beard,' 'You're weird,' 'We don't like you.' You know, it was very hard for me to find work."
Susan’s friend Gloria Martin told Dateline that while Susan worked at a sandpaper factory, Michael spent more time lifting weights, sleeping, watching TV and playing around.
The marriage fell apart after Michael moved back to Indiana to help his brother with an apartment building he’d just purchased and Susan decided not to go with him. Michael left town in Susan’s classic 1965 Mustang, leaving behind hateful notes around the house and a vitriolic cassette tape for her to find that aired all his grievances against her.
“Very offensive. Very offensive,” Hensley said. “You know, just like putting her down in every which way you could.”
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What happened to Susan Woods?
Susan was eager to move on and even dated another man, but five months after Susan filed for divorce, she would be found brutally murdered in her home.
Sgt. Richard Pringle, one of the first to arrive after Susan’s father called 911, described walking into the home’s bathroom and finding a gruesome crime scene.
“Her nude body was slumped over the bathtub," Pringle told Dateline. "Her hands were tied behind her back. It appeared like it was maybe a tank top or something and twisted up and then one end tied to one hand, the other end tied to the other hand. They were pretty high up, which told me that had been used as leverage to keep her in the water.”
There was also a mark around Susan’s neck that appeared to have come from a cord. Investigators discovered fingerprints on the bathroom sink, mirror and tub, right next to the body.
In the bedroom, there were clear signs of a struggle. The mattress was hanging over the bed, there were scuff marks on the floor suggesting the bed had been moved. An electrical cord was lying on the bed and a pillow seemed to have makeup on it, suggesting Susan’s head had been shoved into it.
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In the living room, it looked like Susan may have been entertaining a guest before her death. The TV was left on, an ashtray filled with cigarette butts sat on a small table — even though Susan didn’t smoke — and snacks and a can of Coke were left sitting on the table.
“Somebody had been sitting there smoking and watching TV,” Pringle said. “It just seemed like it was somebody that she knew or was comfortable letting into her house.”
Investigators try to figure out who killed Susan Woods
In the months that would follow, investigators took a hard look at the men in Susan’s life, including the new guy she’d dated, but found nothing concrete to tie them to the murder.
Detectives also spoke to Michael. Although he claimed to have been in Indianapolis at the time of Susan’s death, authorities believed it was possible he could have secretly returned to Texas to carry out the dark deed.
“Everybody I talked to said she was scared of Mike,” Hensley said.
Their suspicions were heightened further after they noticed while having Michael under surveillance that he was trying to sell some of the items he'd taken from Susan when he left in a yard sale, like her rabbit fur coat and some figurines.
They got a search warrant for his home in Indiana and recovered the coat and figurines, but were unable to find any evidence to link him to the murder.
Michael, who had initially been cooperative and insisted he had nothing to do with the killing, eventually asserted his right to a lawyer and stopped answering questions.
Michael Woods not a match for fingerprints left at crime scene
For decades, Susan’s death would go unsolved. Although Michael’s fingerprints didn't match those found at the scene, he remained under suspicion for killing the woman he would call the love of his life decades later.
“I love her. I loved her then and I love her now,” he told Dateline. “I never met anybody like her. She was so sweet.”
Susan’s family was so convinced that Michael was involved in her murder that they filed a wrongful death lawsuit against him and won.
But the truth about the brutal murder would still take years to uncover. Nearly 15 years after Susan died, Lt. Don Miller of the Stephenville Police Department sent some of the evidence, including the cigarette butts recovered at the scene, to a crime lab with the hope of learning more about the suspect. Male DNA was recovered, but there was no known match in the system.
Finally, a suspect is linked to Susan Woods' murder
Then, in 2006, Miller finally got the break he’d been waiting for when he submitted fingerprints taken from the crime scene to a national computerized fingerprint database and surprisingly got a hit.
The fingerprints matched to Joseph Scott Hatley, the younger brother of one of Susan’s closest friends.
Martin, Susan's friend, described Hatley to Dateline as a “Beaver Cleaver type” who often pestered his older sister’s friends but seemed harmless. But after he returned from a stint in the Air Force, Susan’s friends noticed that he began drinking heavily, they said.
“Scott never seemed mean or violent, never saw any kind of that in him at all,” Hayes said of Hatley, who also happened to be her first cousin.
Investigators would learn that just a year after Susan’s death, a 16-year-old girl reported being held against her will and repeatedly raped and beaten by Hatley, her ex-boyfriend, near a desolate creek.
Hatley held her head down in the water and told her he’d “killed before," she said.
“A few times I passed out because he would beat me so hard in the face and the head,” the woman, who only wanted to be referred to by her first name of Shannon, told Dateline.
Authorities didn’t feel they had enough evidence in that case to charge Hatley — who'd claimed their interaction was consensual — and no charges were ever filed.
It wasn’t until they ran those fingerprints through the system that Hatley was linked to Susan’s murder.
Who killed Susan Woods?
After his DNA was matched to the cigarettes butts left behind at Susan's home, Hatley was arrested in 2006 for her murder. While behind bars, Hatley agreed to plead guilty to Susan’s murder and offer up details about a case against another suspect, in exchange for a 30-year sentence.
Where is Joseph Scott Hatley today?
He was paroled in 2018 after serving just 12 years because of a state law applied to crimes committed at the time of Susan’s death. Hatley died of cancer in 2021.
In a conversation with Dateline after he was released, Hatley called Susan's murder “madness” and “out of control.” He said he went to Susan’s house that night and she let him in. He said that they enjoyed some snacks and listened to music, but that when he tried to make a move on her, Susan slapped him and he went into “pure rage” and attacked her.
“I’m changed,” he insisted. “The older I get, the more remorse I have, the more understanding I have that what I did was something unchangeable.”
