TCU student murder case defense: Schizophrenic client’s mom among harvested bodies
The man indicted on a murder charge in the shooting death of TCU student Wes Smith in a Fort Worth entertainment district was legally insane at the time of the 2023 killing and suffers from a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, the defense intends to argue at trial when the case goes before a jury in July.
Matthew Purdy suffers from schizophrenia and an antipsychotic is among the medications he has been prescribed at the Tarrant County Jail. Purdy’s defense attorneys had hoped to call his mother to the witness stand to present evidence of her history of mental illness, drug addiction, alcoholism, schizophrenia and alcohol abuse during her pregnancy with Purdy.
An investigator working with defense attorneys David Owens and Brian Salvant searched databases for months to try to find her. The defense team recently learned that Purdy’s mother, Melissa Cooley Waggoner, is dead. The University of North Texas Health Science Center harvested her unclaimed body for medical research, Owens and Salvant wrote in a motion, filed on Friday, requesting a continuance.
Last year, UNT HSC halted a program that used unclaimed bodies from Tarrant and Dallas counties for medical research and training. An NBC News investigation found that there were at least 12 people whose bodies were used by HSC without their families’ knowledge or consent. HSC also sold bodies to medical research companies and the U.S. Army. Shortly before the findings of the investigation were published, HSC announced that it had stopped the program, fired program leadership and would hire a consulting firm to review the program.
In 2018, Tarrant County entered into a contract with the Health Science Center allowing HSC to handle the bodies of county residents for whom no next-of-kin could be located and for relatives who could not afford burial or cremation.
Purdy’s attorneys plan to argue to a jury that he was legally insane at the time of Smith’s killing, according to a notice filed with the court clerk. They are expected to argue that severe mental disease or defect caused Purdy not to comprehend that his conduct was wrong.
The defense motion requesting a continuance, which Judge Ruben Gonzalez denied on Monday, contains a preview of elements of the likely defense trial argument.
“If she’s deceased how am I going to compel her to testify?” Judge Gonzalez, who presides in the 432nd District Court, asked Owens of Purdy’s mother at a pretrial hearing.
Owens suggested that while Waggoner’s live testimony was no longer possible, the defense needed additional time to gather via subpoena information connected to Waggoner from a hospital, a medical examiner’s office and other agencies and to allow for brain scans to be completed and for a defense-hired psychiatrist’s evaluation.
Waggoner died in March 2023. Smith died in September of that year in Fort Worth’s West 7th district. Purdy, 23, has reported that he was about 3 years old when he last spoke to his mother, Tarrant County Assistant Criminal District Attorney Ashlea Deener told Judge Gonzalez at the pretrial hearing.
The Purdy defense team has hired Dr. Richard Adler, a Seattle psychiatrist whose neuroimaging analysis and fetal-alcohol finding had central roles in the defense of two capital murder defendants, Jason Thornburg and Lamont Cousins, whose death penalty trials were held in Tarrant County in the last six months.
Purdy told police he approached Smith, whom he did not know, outside of a bar early on Sept. 1. He did not describe to homicide detectives a clear reason to explain why he shot Smith, a 21-year-old junior from Germantown, Tennessee.
Purdy admitted to Detective Jerry Cedillo in an interview that he was a member of a street gang and shot Smith because Purdy was “sick of this [expletive],” according to a document the district attorney’s office filed with the court clerk.
Purdy told the detectives he shot Smith in the abdomen and shoulder and then, when Smith fell to the ground, in the back of the head. Purdy told detectives he wanted to “make sure he was dead,” according to an affidavit supporting the suspect’s arrest.
Purdy told the detectives that before he opened fire, he asked Smith if he knew Purdy’s father, who Purdy said had been assaulted previously near West 7th Street.
As TCU students with Smith scattered, Purdy yelled “run,” according to a woman whom Purdy struck in the back of the head with a gun before running from the scene. Police found Purdy in a Farrington Field parking lot.
Purdy admitted he would have shot the woman but he was out of bullets, according to the document the district attorney’s office filed with the court clerk. Purdy said he did not really feel bad or remorseful and deserves to die for what he did, according to the document.
This story was originally published May 20, 2025 at 4:13 PM.
