Mary Jane Terry booking photo Forest County Sheriff’s Office
Mary Terry might not be going on trial for the murder of her husband if a Wisconsin man had fallen asleep in front of his television last fall instead of finding himself drawn to the bright flash of a brake light in his living room window and seconds later, the sound of a thudding “doo, doo, doo, doo” heard from the road.
But Terry, 49, is going on trial, a circuit judge in Wisconsin decided Tuesday, because as police allege, the “doo, doo, doo, doo” was the sound of her husband, Donald Britten Jr. being dragged by her truck after she struck him with it in October.
Terry faces felony charges of first-degree homicide and homicide by intoxicated use of a motor vehicle, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show. She has denied any wrongdoing but has not formally entered a plea as of Wednesday. A plea hearing is on the docket for late February.
According to a criminal complaint, Forest County Sheriff’s responded to a 911 call about a man lying in the road on Oct. 19 just after 9 p.m. When they arrived, the deputy said Terry was standing over her husband’s body. Officers said identifying the couple was easy since law enforcement had “previous contacts with both subjects over the past 20 years.”
When Terry saw the deputy emerge from his squad car, police said she immediately asked: “Billy, is he dead?”
Without signs of life, CPR was quickly performed and Terry was questioned. At first, police said Terry told them that her husband had been hit but when asked by who, she said: “I don’t know, he had my truck.”
A series of field sobriety tests determined Terry was significantly intoxicated, police said.
Records show she had a blood alcohol content level of .298 and met almost every single criteria police use to determine a person’s excessive drunkenness. Notably, according to the Cleveland Clinic, a blood alcohol content in Terry’s alleged range can cause alcohol poisoning, be potentially fatal or cause a person to lose consciousness.
Police allege the story the 49-year-old woman and bar owner gave them wasn’t adding up.
On the night Britten Jr. was found on the road, Terry told police she was at home when she noticed that her truck, the one she said her husband was driving, had “stopped and parked in the middle of the road north of her home.”
Terry then allegedly said she walked up to her truck but didn’t see her husband.
Instead, police said she told them “she then drove the truck back to her house to get her phone, which was in the house, and then returned to the location of the decedent.”
But police said Terry never actually retrieved her cellphone. When she returned to the scene, someone else was with Britten Jr. and was on the phone with police, the criminal complaint states.
The next day, however, after being read her rights, Terry’s alleged version of events had shifted.
Now Terry allegedly told police that she and her husband went for a drive, looping around a lake while talking. At some point, they got into a fight about her bar, Barb’s Place.
Terry told police she was dropped off at home after the argument and that she suspected her husband “did another loop,” according to the complaint.
Terry claimed it was “a little while later” that she saw the truck parked up the road from her home. She ran up to the truck and told police it was still running with the driver’s side door wide open.
Her husband, she said, was next to the vehicle and injured. Terry told police during this interview that she then decided to drive the truck back to her house and call 911.
“The defendant did not acknowledge not getting her phone as she did the night before,” police wrote in their report. “At that time [Terry] asked where her phone was. She was advised that they had her phone. They further advised that it was located in her house. The defendant said she went back up to where the decedent was and there was someone on the phone with police. The defendant, again, denied hitting [Britten] with her truck.”
Britten’s body and face were covered with abrasions and he had “an injury to his back right shoulder” that looked like a “90 degree L-shaped wound consistent with angle iron” or steel.
The same iron was found protruding over the rear driver’s side corner of Terry’s truck and below it there were two dents and two impressions. The dents matched up with those found on her husband’s upper torso and hips. The impressions on the dust of her bumper also looked like “legs/fabric patterns,” police said.
Marks on the ground indicated Britten was dragged for 48 feet. An autopsy report confirmed his preliminary cause of death was blunt force trauma caused by compression.
Around his body, police also located what appeared to be a ring for someone’s finger — they did not say whether it was his wedding band. It was broken into two pieces.
They also found a black piece of plastic that seemed to be part of the vehicle, a DeWalt utility knife, a set of keys, including a broken key, and a broken fob for a vehicle.
Police said a neighbor told them that around the same time Terry claimed her husband had gone driving off into the night, he was at home watching television when through the curtain of his window, he noticed brake lights flash outside.
It “seemed odd to him,” he said.
Going in for a closer look, the witness told police he flipped on the lights and pulled back the curtain but as he approached his window, the car sped off.
Walking to another window in the home for a better look, it was about 10 seconds later when the neighbor claimed he heard a “‘prolonged’ thud which he described as, ‘doo, doo, doo, doo.’”
Ten seconds after that, the witness told police he could now see a body lying in the street, with no vehicle in sight.
Local ABC affiliate WBAY reported Tuesday that about a week after her husband’s death, investigators learned Terry was allegedly chatty with a fellow inmate while in detention. She allegedly admitted that she “f—– up and killed my husband.”
“I don’t remember anything,” Terry allegedly confessed.
The inmate reportedly told authorities she overheard Terry on a jailhouse phone call with her daughter mentioning something about paperwork for cremation being in the truck, prompting investigators to obtain a search warrant. WBAY reported police found “cemetery papers” in the vehicle.
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