Prosecutors Made a Rare Concession in a Murder Case. But Will It Matter?

On a Wednesday morning in early May, Ruben Wright, a tall man with piercing dark-brown eyes, walked into the visitors’ lounge at Neuse Correctional Institution and quickly went to work. 

He grabbed a table and a chair from a stack along one side of the wide, empty room and placed it in the middle. He took a cloth and a spray bottle and wiped the table clean before he sat down. 

Every day, he does a punishing workout of running and strength training. Every day, he cleans the showers and sweeps around the day room. No one asks him to do it. He does it because he wants things clean and orderly. He does it because that level of discipline was ingrained in him during 29 years as a U.S. Marine. 

He does it because he sees it as the only way to survive. 

“If you get in trouble here, you’re never going home,” he said. 

Wright, 69, has been fighting to go home since January 20, 2006, when an Onslow County jury convicted him of first-degree murder in the death of James Patrick Taulbee, a retired Marine who lived a few miles from Camp Lejeune with his wife, Zenaida. 

Wright, who is serving a life sentence, has maintained that he is innocent and argues that military and local law enforcement officers fabricated their case against him. The state claimed that Wright had his friend Randy Linniman, a Marine gunnery sergeant, modify a .22-caliber rifle with a suppressor and drive him to and from the Taulbees’ home the day of the shooting. 

It didn’t help Wright’s defense that he was having an affair with Zenaida Taulbee. 

Wright’s attorney, Jim Coleman of the Wrongful Convictions Clinic at Duke University School of Law, filed a motion for appropriate relief in January 2024, arguing, in part, that race played a role in his conviction. 

Wright had been one of the Marines’ highest-ranking Black noncommissioned officers, third in seniority out of 50 gunners in the world, Wright said in an affidavit. His military career took him to more than 50 countries, and for three years he served as part of the honor guard for then-President Ronald Reagan. He also became an expert in weapons deployment. In 1991, he was shot in the foot while clearing Iraqi bunkers during Operation Desert Storm. He was about to be promoted to Chief Warrant Officer-5, the highest ranking for a Marine warrant officer and a major achievement for a Black man who grew up in South Bend, Indiana, and enlisted right out of high school. (Since 1992, 121 Black Marines have been promoted to Chief Warrant Officer-5, according to a Marines spokesman.)

Coleman said that such a high-ranking officer deserved a more thorough and fair investigation and that if there had been one, Wright likely would not have been charged. All the physical evidence presented in the case pointed to Linniman, who is white. Law enforcement agents found the murder weapon at Linniman’s house, and only Linniman’s fingerprints were on the gun. Wright said he was on the military base when James Taulbee was killed. 

Linniman has insisted that he knew nothing about what Wright had planned when he drove him to the Taulbees’ house that morning, nor did he know Wright intended to use the modified gun to kill someone. 

“Nobody would believe that story if you were investigating this and you weren’t biased,” Coleman said. “So the question is, why are they biased against Ruben? Race is one explanation. I’m not saying that I know that’s the explanation, but I think it is certainly a fair inquiry.” 

Prosecutors built their case against Wright largely based on statements from both Linniman and Zenaida Taulbee, who were charged with first-degree murder. Zenaida, who is Asian and a native of the Philippines, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and conspiracy. She testified at trial that Wright was jealous of her husband and that she saw Wright get out of the front passenger seat of Linniman’s car and head to her house. Now 57, she is serving up to 31 years at Anson Correctional Institution. She is scheduled to be released in 2028.

Linniman, now 60, was acquitted of first-degree murder and accessory after the fact but was later convicted on federal gun charges. He served 12 years in prison. He declined to comment for this article. Zenaida Taulbee did not respond to three requests for comment. 

In Wright’s appeal, Coleman argues that Onslow County Sheriff’s detectives and Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) agents either mishandled or failed to turn over surveillance footage from Camp Lejeune’s Main Gate checkpoint.

The only footage from the Main Gate is a screenshot of the back of Linniman’s car as it left the base just after 4 a.m. on the day of the shooting. No one has been able to explain why the actual footage isn’t available. Prosecutors did produce footage from the base’s Piney Green Gate checkpoint that showed Linniman, alone in his 2004 white Honda Accord, returning 33 minutes later.

Prosecutors say the missing footage doesn’t matter, even though they now concede there’s no evidence Wright was in Linniman’s car when it left or returned to base. They are pushing to uphold Wright’s conviction. 

Wright says he knows he made a mistake cheating on his own wife, Debra Wright. But he insists that mistake doesn’t mean he committed murder. 

Evolving Storylines

Zenaida Taulbee got home from her job as the manager of Camp Lejeune’s Burger King at around 7:45 p.m. on January 5, 2004, and immediately knew something was wrong. She also had been calling her husband all day, but he didn’t answer, she testified. Arriving at the house, she saw her husband’s computer keyboard in the driveway. The front door was open, the door jamb broken.

Her husband’s office was in disarray, and the computer’s central processing unit had been unplugged, Onslow County Sheriff’s detectives reported. 

She went over to her neighbors Evelyn and Patrick Koch’s house and told them that she thought there had been a break-in. The Taulbees’ house was on a quiet Chestnut Court cul-de-sac, just off Piney Green Road and a few miles from Camp Lejeune. Violent crime was rare. 

At the Taulbees’ house, Evelyn Koch said they found James Taulbee lying in bed, two gunshot wounds to his face. Blood covered the pillowcase and the back wall. 

Onslow County Sheriff’s deputies soon fanned out through the neighborhood to find any witnesses. Evelyn Koch initially told investigators that she’d seen a white man standing outside that afternoon talking to James Taulbee, but she later amended her statement, saying she had her days mixed up and had seen them on another day. She also said that she heard two loud noises around 4 a.m. on January 5, 2004, which seemed to come from the Taulbees’ house. She said she didn’t call 911 because it was only later that she realized those noises might have been gunshots. 

Another neighbor, Barbara Marsh, a schoolteacher who shared a love of sailing with James Taulbee, testified that around 4:15 a.m. that day she heard two startling noises. She also saw a car turn around in the cul-de-sac, and its headlights flashed through her windows. 

No one testified to seeing the shooting. Investigators initially thought Taulbee had been shot sometime in the afternoon or early evening, but the medical examiner later concluded the shooting took place at least eight hours before his body was found. And the statement from Linniman helped detectives conclude that James Taulbee was shot sometime after 4 a.m. that morning. 

Investigators also found voicemail messages Wright left for Zenaida in the hours after her husband’s body was discovered. Wright had given Zenaida a separate cellphone so they could communicate without her husband knowing. Wright never mentioned James Taulbee’s name or that he had died. But prosecutors alleged Wright was speaking in code, implying that he knew James Taulbee was dead before it was public. Wright said he was just keeping Zenaida updated on his plans to travel to California for training; he also said he wanted to check in because she was stressed about a meeting with a regional manager who had come to the restaurant that day. 

Zenaida Taulbee repeatedly denied that she was having an affair with Wright in early interviews with law enforcement. She eventually admitted the affair, as well as another with a former Marine before she met Wright. In an interview in early January 2004, she said the other man harassed her and implied that he might have been involved in her husband’s death, but he provided a solid alibi and was eliminated as a suspect.

Authorities linked Wright to the crime scene through Linniman. On January 14, NCIS agents searched Linniman’s Camp Lejeune house and found a modified .22-caliber weapon in a locker in his baby’s room. They also found other gun parts, including a lawn mower muffler investigators believed was used as a suppressor. 

NCIS agents and Onslow County Sheriff’s deputies talked to Linniman the following day. He first told investigators that he had picked up Wright at a U-Haul station, where he said Wright was returning a rental. But sheriff’s detectives checked with two U-Haul stations and found no record of Wright renting a U-Haul. 

When they interviewed Linniman a second time five days later, Linniman changed his story. He told them he picked up Wright outside the military base’s gym and Wright directed him to the Taulbees’ house. Linniman insisted that he had no idea where he was driving Wright that morning. And while he claimed Wright asked him to modify a gun for him with a suppressor several months earlier, he said he did not know Wright planned to use it to murder anyone. Wright had said he needed it to take with him if he were deployed to Iraq, Linniman claimed. 

Linniman also said he didn’t know Wright was having an affair; he believed Zenaida was Wright’s wife. But Ruben Wright had been married to Debra Wright for 27 years by 2004, and they had two daughters. Debra Wright testified in Linniman’s trial that she met Linniman at a military event and at a party and that Linniman knew they were married. 

Linniman told investigators that when they arrived at James Taulbee’s house, Wright got out and talked to Zenaida for a few seconds before heading toward the house, though he did not see him enter it. Linniman said he had been to Wright’s house before and wondered why Zenaida was there if the two were married. He said he believed this was a relative’s house. 

Within about four minutes, Wright came back to the car. They returned to the base, where Linniman dropped Wright off at the gym and went home. About four hours later, Linniman said he arrived at work and Wright told him to meet him outside. That’s when Linniman said Wright gave him a gym bag containing the murder weapon and another pistol and asked him to get rid of them. 

Linniman asked Wright what happened, but Wright wouldn’t say. “I needed to take care of things,” Wright told him, noting that he had taken care of Linniman’s family while he was deployed to Iraq for six months. “He also told me my family could be untaken care of.” He said he took Wright’s statement as a threat. 

Zenaida Taulbee corroborated Linniman’s statement a day later, and she would testify against Wright in exchange for her guilty plea to a lesser charge. Prosecutors never explained exactly how they believed Zenaida was involved in her husband’s murder, though they clearly believed she helped Wright plan it by allegedly giving Wright a description of the house’s interior and information about her husband’s morning routine. Her testimony also established a possible motive: that Wright was so jealous of her husband that he decided to kill him. 

Most importantly, though, Zenaida’s statements were used to put Wright at the scene. She attested that she saw Linniman’s car with a white arm hanging out of the window, and that she saw Wright, dressed in black workout clothes, step out of the front passenger seat and walk briskly toward her house as she left for work.

She said Wright had told her the day before that Linniman had made a weapon for him and that he had picked it up from Linniman’s house (though Linniman testified at his trial that he gave Wright the weapon at Wright’s office a month earlier). She also said Wright told her to leave home early on the morning of January 5, and that if she saw Linniman and him at her house, she should keep driving. Security footage showed Zenaida arriving at Camp Lejeune at 4:28 a.m. through the Piney Green Gate. 

She testified that even though she had just seen Wright at her house, she went looking for him after she saw his car parked at the gym. When she found him at the gym at 5 a.m., Zenaida testified that Wright was vague about what happened. “We missed it,” he told her. He also told her to call her husband and keep trying if he didn’t answer. Later that day, he came to the Burger King and told her that “they had taken care of the problem,” she said, and that Wright told her it would be a good year for them. Zenaida testified that’s when she suspected Wright had killed her husband. 

At Linniman’s trial, however, she testified that Wright told her explicitly that he had shot her husband and that Linniman reloaded the gun before Wright shot him again. Zenaida didn’t say why Wright, a weapons expert, would need Linniman to reload the gun. It’s not clear whether prosecutors or defense attorneys challenged this part of her testimony because a full transcript of the trial no longer exists. 

In a January 13, 2004 interview, Wright alleged it was Zenaida Taulbee who killed her husband. Though he told investigators she was just a friend, he later admitted they were having an affair; he denied he was at the house the morning of the murder.

“If I were smart, I would give up [Zene] and the other person,” Wright reportedly said in the interview, which was not recorded. When detectives played one of the voicemail messages he left for Zenaida, he allegedly said, “I guess I’m going down, but I didn’t pull the trigger.”

Prosecutors alleged that Wright confessed to his involvement on January 16, 2004, to Sheriff Ed Brown and a detective. At a hearing to suppress that statement, Brown testified that Wright had asked to speak to him while in the brig at Camp Lejeune and that he had gone to speak to Wright as a friend rather than a formal interview. Brown said Wright told him it was Zenaida who shot her husband; all he had done was reload the gun. Wright, Brown said, claimed Zenaida had planned the whole thing. 

“Then he said, ‘I shouldn’t have said that,’” Brown testified. The conversation was not recorded, and Wright later denied making those statements. A judge rejected Wright’s motion to suppress. 

But the prosecution’s theory of the case hinged on Linniman’s account of what transpired. The surveillance footage they provided, however, didn’t align with that version of the story. 

The Missing Footage

For more than a decade, Coleman has been trying to unravel the mystery of the missing surveillance footage.

He hasn’t found any satisfactory answers. But he argues that the video footage is crucial favorable evidence that, if produced at trial, could have led to Wright’s acquittal. The fact that it is still unaccounted for even after all these years is the main basis for Wright’s appeal.

“It was central to the State’s case that Wright was a passenger in Linniman’s car when it left Camp Lejeune through the Main Gate on the early morning of January 5, 2004,” Coleman writes in Wright’s appeal. “The State’s principal witness, Ms. Taulbee, testified that she saw Wright emerge from Linniman’s white car and rush toward her house where her husband purportedly was asleep on the morning he was murdered.”

Prosecutors implied in their opening and closing statements that Linniman and Wright went to the Taulbees’ house together. Neither Wright’s defense attorneys nor the prosecutors introduced Linniman’s statements into the trial. They also did not introduce the Piney Green Gate footage. And Linniman did not testify. 

Other than the statements Linniman made to NCIS special agents and Onslow County Sheriff’s deputies, “there is no independent credible basis for the State’s claim that Linniman drove Wright to and from the murder scene,” Coleman said. 

NCIS agent Scott Vousboukis reported that he received a CD-Rom disc containing the footage from both security gates on January 23, 2004. Coleman contends it was much earlier based on a detective’s report. Regardless, it remains unclear why the Main Gate footage remains missing to this day.  

Coleman has gone through numerous measures to get an answer, including a 2019 federal complaint under the Freedom of Information Act against the U.S. Navy and a 2020 administrative complaint. Mario A. Palomino, an inspector general with NCIS, investigated Coleman’s claims and issued a report in October 2022 that concluded that NCIS “did not intentionally destroy or withhold exculpatory or ‘critical’ evidence from Mr. Wright.”

Palomino also concluded that the video evidence was not “critical” to Mr. Wright’s defense. Prosecutors, he wrote, considered the video a “footnote” to their case, though Palomino did not explain why. 

Palomino said the surveillance video should have been archived with the NCIS’s criminal case file when it was submitted to the Federal Records System, and his review raised questions about record retention practices and “adherence to policy governing the treatment of evidence.” Vousboukis had failed to properly document what was on the CD-Rom disc that he obtained from Camp Lejeune and did not upload the footage to the NCIS Records Information Management System. 

But, Palomino concluded, there was nothing to suggest that NCIS withheld favorable evidence. 

The only proof such footage even existed is a screenshot of the back of Linniman’s car as it left the base that morning. Palomino argues it is mere speculation that the screenshot came from raw video obtained from Lejeune’s security cameras, and that it’s entirely possible that the cameras could not record video and take photographs at the same time (though that would not explain why video and photos exist for the Piney Green Gate). 

Coleman points out that both Vousboukis and Onslow County Sheriff’s deputies claimed that Wright was in the car, even though the Piney Green Gate footage does not back that up. 

Onslow County Detective Tim Robinson said in his notes that Vousboukis told him in a January 22, 2004, phone conversation that he had viewed video from the Main Gate showing Wright and Linniman in the car. Two months later, Vousboukis sent a copy of the video footage and photos to NCIS Forensic Laboratory, asking the lab to enhance images. There is a “black male in the passenger seat,” he wrote. “Attempt to enhance this because you cannot really see the black male.” 

“The black male should be wearing black clothing and he is a very dark black male,” he added. “This individual is S/Wright.” 

But Vousboukis later told Palomino and testified at trial that he couldn’t identify anyone in the car. He told Palomino that he was only 40 percent sure Wright was in the vehicle. 

Coleman argues that investigators used Vousboukis’ initial claims about the video to get corroborating statements from Linniman and Zenaida Taulbee putting Wright at the crime scene—something the physical evidence couldn’t do. During the January 20, 2004, interview, Brown told Linniman, “I do know that you were with [Wright] when he came through the back gate at Piney Green at 4:39 in the morning.” 

In their answer to Wright’s appeal, prosecutors made a major concession. 

“There is no video or photographs showing Defendant in Linniman’s car either entering or leaving the base,” prosecutors wrote in court papers. But they argue that their admission doesn’t matter because they claim Wright’s attorneys knew the footage didn’t show him in the car. 

Yet, in opening arguments back in 2006, Assistant District Attorney Mike Maultsby argued that the “defendant and Linniman went to Mr. Taulbee’s home that morning.” 

Coleman filed a motion in April 2024 requesting to depose several NCIS agents and Onslow County Sheriff’s officials, including Brown, the former sheriff. At a May 26 hearing on the motion, Maultsby said prosecutors never claimed Wright and Linniman left or returned to the base together.

“They want you to believe the State embraced what Linniman said,” Maultsby said, according to a transcript. “Obviously, we did not. The reason we didn’t is because we tried him for murder.” 

Prosecutors never presented evidence of another way Wright could have left Camp Lejeune nor offered another explanation for how he got to the Taulbees’ house. 

Maultsby said he could not comment on the pending appeal. 

Experts say overturning Wright’s conviction is an uphill battle. At trial, a defendant is supposed to be presumed innocent, said Daniel Medwed, a law professor at Northwestern University and author of Barred: Why The Innocent Can’t Get Out of Prison. But once convicted, defendants bear the burden of proving their innocence. 

Additional evidence would have to be new and compelling, Medwed said. Even DNA or a new witness would have to be so convincing that the defendant would have had a good chance of getting acquitted if it had been presented at the original trial. 

“It’s a little bit like Sisyphus lifting the boulder up the hill,” he said, “because it keeps coming down on you.”

But it is notable that prosecutors have conceded in court papers that Wright was not in Linniman’s car on that morning 21 years ago, said Maurice Possley, senior researcher at the National Registry of Exonerations. It’s rare for prosecutors to make such a major admission. 

“That could provide the chink in the armor,” he said. 

A 1,000-Pound Monkey

Ruben and Debra Wright have known each other almost all their lives. 

When she was 7, Ruben said he got into one of his first fights because one of his friends pushed Debra on the playground. Though they graduated from separate high schools in South Bend, nothing could keep them apart. 

They married soon after high school and even earned a reputation for dressing alike. Debra, a former social worker, has remained firmly at her husband’s side throughout his legal fight, even as she admits it was tough to learn that he had cheated on her. 

“It’s still hard,” she said, but she made a commitment to Ruben when they married more than 50 years ago, and she won’t turn her back on him now. 

She even obtained a degree in criminal justice and got a job as a victim’s advocate for a prosecutor’s office, hoping it would make her a better advocate for her husband. She lives in Virginia but visits Ruben twice a month. 

Ruben’s two biological daughters, Tina and Tara, followed their father’s footsteps into the military. Tina is now retired from the U.S. Air Force, while Tara is stationed at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia. They both describe their father as strong, determined, attentive. Despite his many deployments, Tina says her father always managed to be there for major life events and would cheer her on in basketball games. “Even though I wasn’t very good,” she said, he’d be there “hollering as if I was the five-star player.”

Tara was 22 when Wright went to prison. 

“My father is a great man,” she said, struggling to hold back tears. “He is human, and humans make mistakes, right? But he didn’t kill anybody.” 

Debra said the family tries to keep him motivated. 

“He and I both try to envision that this is a deployment,” she said. 

It’s not clear how the family of James Taulbee feels about the effort to clear Wright’s name. Mike Taulbee, one of his brothers, declined to comment when reached by phone. After the verdict in 2006, he told The Daily News of Jacksonville the trial had been an emotional rollercoaster for the family. “There is no win,” he said. “This is not a victory.” 

He also expressed sympathy for Wright’s family. “They are suffering a tragedy as well.” 

During Linniman’s trial, the Taulbee family said they believed Zenaida was more involved in her husband’s murder and suggested she was after a $200,000 payout from his life insurance. (Because Zenaida took a plea deal, her charges never went to trial.)

Onslow County Superior Court Judge Henry L. Stevens IV hasn’t ruled on Wright’s appeal, and it’s not clear when he will. He could rule based on the written briefs or order an evidentiary hearing.

Wright, who has been at the Neuse Correctional Institution for the past five years, said he is trying to hold on. Keeping to his Marine-style routine helps, but only a little. 

“I’ve been carrying a 1,000-pound monkey on my back for 21 years,” he said. “So when you ask me, how has it been? It’s been goddamn hell.” 

Michael Hewlett is a staff reporter at The Assembly. He was previously the legal affairs reporter at the Winston-Salem Journal. You can reach him at michael@theassemblync.com.