Convicted Killer’s Request For Medical Parole Denied

The case sent shock waves throughout the borderland.

In 1995, a man in a wheelchair shot his wife, used a hatchet to cut her up, then scattered her dismembered body around El Paso and southern New Mexico.

That same year, James Patrick Bradley, the man in that wheelchair, was sentenced to life in prison.

Recently, his daughter reached out to ABC-7 to say he had requested immediate parole for medical reasons.

The crime was shocking, and the way police worked with the media to help solve it was unprecedented.

It took days for police to gather the victim’s body parts one by one, all 21 of them. They had been spray-painted in gold, gray and blue to get rid of fingerprints. But to find the killer, police first had to find out who the victim was.

That was when police decided to allow the local media to show pictures of Suzy Hahn Bradley’s severed head. Just a few hours after those pictures hit the airwaves, several witnesses came forward, saying they recognized her photograph.

“It was a shocker, when y’all shared the picture on the TV. I was telling my mom, ‘If her hair were redder and she had freckles, it would be a spitting image of Suzy,’ and my mom goes, ‘No, no, I just saw her last week,'” a friend of Suzy’s told ABC-7 at the time of the investigation.

James Patrick Bradley ultimately confessed to killing his wife. Nine months later, in November 1995, a jury sent him to prison for the rest of his life.

ABC-7 learned Thursday that Bradley’s request for release was denied.

His daughter told ABC-7 that family and friends submitted letters to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice requesting that Bradley remain behind bars.

“My father is a horrible person and has no business being let out. As far as I am concerned, he can die alone in his desolate cave!” wrote Michelle Bradley.

Link:Court of Appeals decision affirming Bradley’s conviction.