A Mays Landing man serving a 55-year prison sentence for murdering an Egg Harbor Township woman and dumping her on the side of a Hamilton Township road will get a new trial after an appellate decision overturned his conviction.
Timothy Wright, now 45, was convicted in 2022, of strangling Joyce Vanderhoff more than nine years earlier.
But on Tuesday, an appellate court ruled that the state illegally kept Wright's cell phone, and that a judge was wrong in not suppressing the evidence found on the device, which included turn-by-turn instructions from the dump site to Wright's home.
Wright, who was serving his sentence at New Jersey State Prison, now will be released to the Atlantic County Justice Facility, and is entitled to a detention hearing under bail reform.
The Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office is petitioning the state Supreme Court to overturn the ruling.
The case seemed cold when Wright was arrested in Pennsylvania in April 2019.
It was the GPS information found in a file a detective downloaded and saved from Wright's phone that seemed to break the case, according to the affidavit of probable cause obtained by BreakingAC at the time.
The trip was made the night before police received a call early on Valentine's Day 2014, saying a body had been found on the side of County Road 559-Weymouth Road.
Wright originally gave detectives permission to search his phone less than a day after Vanderhoff's body was found, when he was brought in as a possible witness since he was the last person known to see her alive.
He first was told it would take 15 to 20 minutes, but then detectives told him "their computer was down or something like that, and that they had to keep (the) phone," according to Wright's testimony at a suppression hearing.
He became concerned about getting his phone due to contacts he needed, and kept calling asking for an update, he said.
Things got heated on Feb. 24, 2014, when Wright and his then-girlfriend, Shannon Carlin, came to the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office to get the car he allowed them to search.
Carlin recalled Wright "was irate, screaming they (are) not going to give me the phone," she testified at the hearing.
She also recalled a detective said that "they had technical difficulties getting information off of (the phone)."
Timothy Wright is currently in New Jersey State Prison. (N.J. Department of Corrections)Detective Mitzi Cruz also testified to overhearing Wright "upset that his phone was (not) being given back," and that "he needed a phone" because "his daughter was ill or something like that."
He was given a voucher for a new cell phone. A warrant to search the phone was obtained a month later.
None of the detectives involved in the interaction with Wright testified at the suppression hearing, the appellate judges noted.
"(W)e are persuaded that the motion court erroneously found the State met its burden to show that defendant had not revoked his initial consent to search his phone," Judges Heidi Willis Currier, James Paganelli and Ellen Torregrossa-O'Connor wrote. "We further conclude the court improperly found, without support in the record, that probable cause and exigent circumstances alternatively justified the warrantless retention of the phone, and that the delay in obtaining a warrant was reasonable, depriving defendant of the opportunity to address those issues."
It is not clear how strong the state's case is without the now-suppressed evidence.
"We are pleased that he court made the right call in protecting Mr. Wright's fundamental constitutional rights under our Fourth Amendment," defense attorney John Bjorklund told BreakingAC. "There is a need to protect all of us from unwarranted government intrusion as demonstrated in this case. The state clearly overstepped what is reasonable and what is not."
He would not comment on strategy for the new trial, including whether he again would present a different man as Vanderhoff's killer, Michael Heuser Jr..
Heuser testified that Vanderhoff had called him for a ride while he was working at Walmart overnight, but said he never heard from her after a text at about 6:16 a.m. Feb. 13, 2014.
"He testified he left the store at 7:16 a.m. and did not see or try to contact Vanderhoff, and surveillance video showed him clearing snow off his truck and driving away," according to court records.
Joyce Vanderhoff"Nobody could ever understand the hell our family has been through with this," said Kathy Lydon, Vanderhoff's grandmother who raised her. "It sucks the life out of you."
She has cut herself from the world over the past decade. She struggled to describe the anger and pain this latest chapter has caused.
"I have become extremely, extremely bitter," Lydon told BreakingAC. "The only thing that keeps me sane is going to the Lord.
"I raised that child. I loved that child," she continued. "I lost everything."
The appellate panel also was asked to look at other issues in the case, but those were rendered moot after the new trial was ordered. That included sentencing Wright to an extended term without submitting the predicate facts to the jury.
The appellate decision did write that if Wright is convicted again, "a jury must consider defendant's eligibility for sentence as a persistent offender."
The defense also contested surprise testimony by a state expert that claimed the thermometer used to determine the body and outdoor temperature was faulty. Temperatures were a pivotal part of conflicting theories in time of death.
With a new trial, that testimony no longer is a surprise, the judges noted.
