Almost 10 years have passed since 69-year-old Brenda McCutcheon was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of her husband in Asheville, North Carolina.
Frank Buddy McCutcheon Jr., 64, was a surgeon of more than 30 years who primarily practiced plastic and reconstructive surgery as previously reported by the Asheville Citizen Times. Buddy and his wife owned and operated Cosmetic Surgery of Asheville before his death of a gunshot wound to the back of the head.
Brenda initially told authorities that she had been woken by a loud bang on the night of July 15, 2016. Rising to check for the source of the noise, she found her husband lying dead on the couch in their TV room, where he often slept.
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Despite her claims, suspicion was quickly placed on Brenda herself. Here’s a quick rundown on the nearly 10-year-old case five years after Brenda was denied a retrial.
What happened to Buddy McCutcheon?
At first, Buddy’s wife, Brenda McCutcheon, testified that she found her husband dead of a single gunshot wound to the back of the head in the TV room on the first floor of their home. She said that her husband often slept in the TV room as he liked to have the television on at night while she did not.
Investigators found the firearm that killed Buddy, which Brenda testified was normally kept in a kitchen drawer, tossed into rows of ivy planted in the couple’s yard.
Oxygen.com reported the timeline of events as explained by Brenda. She told investigators that on the evening of July 15, 2016, she woke to a loud bang at around 3 a.m. Upon rushing downstairs, she found her husband bleeding heavily from the fatal gunshot wound.
Brenda claimed that, realizing her husband was dead, she ran to a neighbor’s house. When the neighbor didn’t answer the door, she ran back to her own home, retrieved the phone and called 911.
Authorities from the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office arrived within several minutes. Though Brenda was the party who called authorities, suspicion eventually landed on her, with authorities finding no evidence of anyone else having been in the house, and suicide being ruled out as a possibility early on.
During her trial, which began in January 2020, Assistant District Attorney Meghan Lock told the jury that Brenda McCutcheon built her life around her husband, moving from city to city with him and eventually giving up her own career as a nurse to support his practice.
Lock added that, despite her attempts to master taxes and payroll at their office, Cosmetic Surgery of Asheville’s finances “quickly became a mess.” At the time of Buddy’s death, legal documents showed the state was investigating the McCutcheons for embezzlement through keeping employees’ payroll withholdings instead of paying them to the NCDOR as taxes.
“The walls were closing in on her, and that’s motive,” said Lock.
She further suggested that on the night of Buddy’s death, something had changed between the two, possibly a fight or difficult conversation. Lock also suggested Brenda had discovered her husband was having an affair, as claimed by testimony during the trial.
Lock said Buddy’s death allowed Brenda to pin the tax investigation on him and escape a life she never wanted. Lock also cited application documents Brenda had submitted for a new apartment in Tennessee, near her sisters, on July 30, 2016, only weeks after her husband’s death.
Where is Brenda McCutcheon now?
Ultimately, Brenda, who denied the charge on the witness stand, was found guilty of murdering her husband. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
On Dec. 21, 2021, an appeals court found no error in the jury’s verdict finding Brenda of first-degree murder.
Reporting by Iris Seaton, Asheville Citizen Times / Asheville Citizen Times
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
