‘He Was My Friend And I Hurt Him’
A Buena Vista woman will serve more than 20 years in prison for the murder of a man she stabbed more than 60 times.
Margaret Mary Wright, 46, pled guilty in April to a charge of seconddegree murder in the death of Carl Agnor in April of 2024.
Her sentencing hearing was held in Buena Vista Circuit Court on Friday and Judge Christopher Russell sentenced her to the maximum sentence of 40 years, suspending 16 years for a 24-year active sentence. She was also sentenced to three years and six months for a probation violation, which will be served concurrently with the murder sentence.
Upon release, Wright will be on five years of supervised probation and must be on good behavior for another 20 years. She will also have to pay more than $7,300 in court costs and more than $4,000 in restitution.
“She can’t be out in [Rockbridge] County for a long time,” Russell said prior to delivering the sentence. “This county has to be protected from her, [and] she has to be protected from herself.”
Russell cited Wright’s extensive history of drug use and probation violations – which was also raised by Buena Vista Commonwealth’s Attorney Josh Elrod in his closing arguments – as evidence that, though she had repeatedly been given chances to turn her life around, she had failed to do so. He went on to say that he hoped she was able to get the help she needed while serving her sentence. - Prior to the sentencing, several witnesses testified in relation to the case.
The first witness – and the only one called by Elrod – was Susan Mohler, Agnor’s sister. She testified about her brother’s love of gardening and horses and said that he was the kind of person who “would give you the shirt off his back and the last dollar in his pocket if you needed it.” She also talked about the loss she and her family have endured since his death.
“I have a recording on my answering machine [from him] that I listen to over and over,” she said. “His son will never forget the day he walked into his house and found him.”
She told Wright that she had “no hatred toward you at all,” but still asked the court for the maximum possible sentence because “there’s no way to ensure she’ll never do this again.”
Wright’s attorneys called two witnesses. The first was Dr. Rebecca Vauter, a clinical psychologist and forensic mental health expert who examined Wright. She said she examined Wright for a total of about six and a half hours over the course of five sessions and that, in her opinion, Wright suffers from “extreme” Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Borderline Personality Disorder, as well as substance abuse issues, specifically methamphetamine and alcohol. Those factors, she said, combined to create “a bit of a perfect storm” on the evening of April 23, 2024.
At the time, Wright had been living with Agnor and attempting to get clean, but that day had taken methamphetamine and had started drinking. The drugs and alcohol, combined with her then-undiagnosed mental disorders, combined for a situation where she may have believed Agnor to be a threat, possibly even someone else from her past who had contributed to her traumas. She added that Wright had expressed “profound regret” at her actions and had spoken about the “gratitude” she had for Agnor for “the help he was offering her.”
On cross examination, Elrod asked about the hallucinations that Wright experienced that night and other symptoms that, though often attributable to the drugs she had taken, had persisted since her arrest and subsequent sobriety. Dr. Vauter confirmed that the symptoms had persisted into a “settled condition.” She added that Wright was not “consistently psychotic,” but that those symptoms “ebb and flow.”
Following Vauter’s testimony, Wright took the stand herself. She opened her testimony by talking about her relationship with Agnor, calling him “my best friend, my protection and my safety from so many things.
“He showed me respect and trust,” she said. “He had patience with me. … He was my friend and I hurt him just like [I hurt] my family. I never meant to hurt him. I’m so sorry. I loved him. I wish I could take it back.
“I miss just being able to snuggle next to him and watch TV and not feel like I’m in danger,” she added. “It felt like home. He didn’t want anything from me. That was nice.”
Wright also talked about some of the traumas that had contributed to her conditions, beginning with her first time running away from home at 14 years old and hitchhiking to Florida. Along the way, she said she said she was raped by a man who picked her up and then dropped her off in North Carolina. When she reached Florida, she began using crack and nearly overdosed on heroin before seeking treatment and coming back home to Buena Vista. She ran away again soon after, at age 17, and ended up in Alaska working as an “escort” for two years, and the things that she saw and experienced during that time led to more drug use and, according to Dr. Vautner’s testimony, heavily contributed to her PTSD.
“I was homesick,” Wright said. “I got into a world I didn’t know how to leave. I didn’t want to think about it, so I got high.”
Wright said she was eventually brought to Washington, D.C., by a man who wanted her to help him open an escort service there, and was able to get out of that life and again came back to Buena Vista. During that time, she’d had a child and during her efforts to get clean and try to regain custody, she met a man who told her of a place in Texas that could help. She moved there with him, where they were married. He introduced her to methamphetamine, which became her primary drug of choice, she said. Wright had two more children and eventually moved back to Virginia.
She also developed a drinking problem and had several starts at getting clean, but kept relapsing. In 2024, after contacting the Rockbridge Community Services Board – something that Wright’s probation officer at the time had been “begging” her to do – she was sent to a rehabilitation facility in Newport News, but ultimately left because the women who worked there “weren’t nice.” She made her way to Richmond and got into a program there, but returned to Buena Vista shortly after when her godmother passed away, losing her place in the Richmond program. She ended up moving back in with an ex-boyfriend and using drugs again and shortly after that met Agnor, who took her in and encouraged her to get clean.
On the night of April 23, 2024, Wright said she had taken drugs and had been drinking. She said that she started to think about how Agnor reminded of the boyfriend she had been living with, as well as a person she’d encountered during her time in Alaska, due to all three having a similar “tall and slender” build.
“I felt very confused and hurt and trapped,” she said. “I wasn’t used to somebody that was nice to me [for no reason] other than my father.”
In her confusion, she said, she picked up a knife and began stabbing Agnor, not realizing who it was. Wright testified that her memory of the incident “ends after the first or second stab.”
During her testimony, Dr. Vauter said that she believed Wright to be sincere in her remorse for her actions and truthful in her recollection of the events surrounding the murder.
