A former Inglewood teacher convicted last month of murdering one woman and kidnapping and sexually assaulting a second nearly two decades ago has died in custody while awaiting sentencing, according to police records.
Charles Wright, 59, died on Aug. 13, about a month before his scheduled Sept. 10 sentencing for the unsolved crimes, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
Sheriff's Lt. Steven De Jong said Wright had been in a medical facility since April for a medical condition prior to his arrest. De Jong said jail staff attempted to render aid after Wright was found unresponsive and that no foul play was suspected.
The in-custody death list on the sheriff's website does not list Wright's cause of death, as it is said to be pending a final autopsy report. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's website lists Wright's cause of death as “deferred.”
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.
Gascón’s office said last month it expected Wright to be sentenced to 50 years to life in state prison for his convictions of first-degree murder, kidnapping for oral copulation and forcible oral copulation — crimes Gascón called “particularly heinous” for having been committed “by someone who was in a position of trust and authority.”
Wright was a middle school teacher in the Inglewood Unified School District when he was arrested in early 2022 after DNA and fingerprint evidence linked him to the murder of Pertina Epps, a 21-year-old who was found strangled in a Gardena garage in 2005, prosecutors said.
Cold case investigators had resubmitted evidence from the unsolved murder for modern forensic testing in 2021 and arrested Wright, of Hawthorne, when it matched him, investigators said.
In 2022, Wright told The Times that he was innocent of the crime and that his fingerprints were only on the woman's purse because he had been selling handbags from his car. He did not explain the DNA evidence.
“I didn’t do this,” he said.
Wright was later charged with the kidnapping and sexual assault of an unidentified 18-year-old woman in 2006, for which he was also convicted last month.
“Fortunately, justice delayed was not justice denied,” Gascón said in a statement after the sentencing.
