Former Inglewood teacher recently convicted in cold-case murder, kidnapping dies in jail

A former Inglewood teacher convicted last month of murdering one woman and kidnapping and sexually assaulting a second one nearly two decades ago has died in custody while awaiting sentencing, according to law enforcement records.

Charles Wright, 59, died Aug. 13, about a month before his scheduled Sept. 10 sentencing for the cold-case crimes, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Lt. Steven De Jong of the Sheriff’s Department said Wright had been housed on a medical ward since April due to a medical condition that predated his arrest. De Jong said that jail personnel attempted to render aid after discovering Wright was unresponsive, and that no foul play is suspected.

A list of in-custody deaths on the department’s website does not provide a cause of Wright’s death, saying it is pending a final autopsy report. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s website lists Wright’s cause of death as “deferred.”

L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón’s office declined to comment.

Gascón’s office said last month that it expected Wright to be sentenced to 50 years to life in state prison for his convictions for first-degree murder, kidnapping for oral copulation and forced oral copulation — crimes that Gascón called “particularly egregious” 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 killing of Pertina Epps, a 21-year-old who was found strangled in a Gardena carport in 2005, prosecutors said.

Cold-case investigators had resubmitted the evidence from the unsolved killing for modern forensic testing in 2021, and arrested Wright, of Hawthorne, when it matched him, investigators said.

Wright told The Times in 2022 that he was innocent of the crime, and that his fingerprints were only on the woman’s purse because he’d been selling purses from his car. He didn’t explain the DNA evidence.

“I didn’t do this,” he said.

Wright was subsequently charged in the 2006 kidnapping and sexual assault of an unidentified 18-year-old woman, which he also was convicted of last month.

“Thankfully justice delayed was not justice denied,” Gascón said in a statement following the conviction.