Richard McFarland: Murder, Guilty Plea, and 40-Year Sentence

The Richard McFarland murder case ended with a 40-year Texas prison sentence for the November 2002 killing of his wife, Susan McFarland, a telecommunications executive and mother of three whose burned remains were found on an abandoned Bexar County farm nearly two months after she disappeared. McFarland pleaded guilty to murder in February 2004 and remains incarcerated at the Wynne Unit in Huntsville.

Who Susan and Richard McFarland Were

Susan and Richard both attended Webster Groves High School outside St. Louis, though they didn’t date then. They married at the Webster Groves Presbyterian Church in 1989 and had three sons.¹ Around 1997 or 1998 the family moved to Terrell Hills, an upscale community near San Antonio, so Susan could take a position as an accounts manager at SBC Corp. She was the household’s primary earner.²

Richard mostly stayed home with the boys and worked from the house, earning about $21,000 in each of the two years before Susan’s death.³ Friends and family later described his behavior as increasingly erratic, marked by odd spending and get-rich-quick schemes.⁴ Susan was planning to divorce him, citing his harshness, when she vanished.⁵

The Disappearance

Susan was reported missing on Thanksgiving Day 2002. Her 1997 Ford Explorer had turned up abandoned in a parking lot about two miles from the family’s home the day before, but Richard waited roughly 15 hours after police contacted him about the vehicle before filing a missing-person report.⁵ He told his three young sons that their mother “just needed a break” from them.⁴

Terrell Hills police treated the case as suspicious from the outset. Richard became the primary suspect almost immediately.

Evidence That Pointed to Richard

Searches of the family’s Arcadia Street home turned up drops and smears of blood along with clumps of hair, processed by crime lab personnel from the Texas Department of Public Safety.⁶ Blood was also found inside Susan’s Explorer.² The carpet had been removed from Richard’s van, and investigators noted abrasions on the knuckles of his left hand.

The strangest thread involved a Chevrolet Suburban. Police located the vehicle in a neighbor’s garage; it had been reported stolen from a local Texaco station around the time Susan disappeared, and Richard had recently test-driven it. Inside the Suburban officers found an empty gasoline container, charcoal, insecticide, a wallet containing Richard’s AAA card, and a blood stain on the rear bumper.⁵ Investigators also recorded conversations in which Richard allegedly asked the service-station owner to lie to police about the test drive.²

Finding Susan’s Body

For nearly seven weeks Susan’s whereabouts remained unknown. An anonymous tipster then told police they had seen an Explorer and a Suburban at an abandoned farm in southeastern Bexar County around Thanksgiving, along with suspicious activity, according to Terrell Hills Police Chief Larry Semander.⁷

On January 14, 2003, investigators found a body burned beyond recognition on a flatbed trailer at the farm.⁸ Dental records confirmed the remains were Susan’s.⁷ The medical examiner determined she died of blunt trauma to the head.⁹ Richard was arrested within 90 minutes of the discovery.⁵

The Guilty Plea and 40-Year Sentence

Richard was first charged with tampering with a witness, tampering with physical evidence, and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. After the remains were identified, prosecutors added a murder charge. The three sons, roughly six, ten, and twelve years old, were taken into protective custody the same day.²

The trial had been moved to Austin because of heavy media coverage in the San Antonio area and was set to begin February 4, 2004. Before jury selection could start, Richard pleaded guilty to murder. A court clerk later described the case file as a 400-page “mountain of evidence.”⁵

Under the plea agreement, he was sentenced on February 5, 2004, to 40 years in prison, with credit for roughly one year already served and no parole eligibility for 20 years.¹⁰¹¹

Where Richard McFarland Is Now

Richard McFarland, TDCJ number 01218516, is held at the John M. Wynne Unit in Huntsville, Texas.¹¹ He became eligible for parole on January 16, 2023, and was denied. He was denied again at his most recent review on March 5, 2025.¹²

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles gave two reasons for the denial: the nature of the offense, which it described as containing elements of brutality and violence that pose a continuing threat to public safety, and an unsatisfactory institutional adjustment.¹² His next parole review is set for March 2029. If parole is denied through the rest of his term, his maximum sentence date is January 16, 2043.¹¹

1
Times Newspapers. Susan McFarland Funeral Service, Burial To Be in Webster
2
Times Newspapers. McFarland Murder Trial Begins Feb. 4 in Austin
3
Justia. Ex Parte Richard Marvin McFarland
4
Diane Fanning. Gone Forever
5
San Antonio Express-News. Suzanne Simpson Case Eerie 2000s Susan McFarland
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San Antonio Express-News. Can You Prove Murder Without a Body
7
Plainview Herald. Police Identify Body as That of Missing Woman
8
UPI. Missing Woman’s Body May Be Found
9
San Francisco Gate. Children of Man Accused in Wife’s Death Stay In
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Midland Reporter-Telegram. Man Gets 40 Years in Wife’s Murder
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Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Inmate Detail – Richard Marvin McFarland
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Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Parole Review Information – Richard Marvin McFarland