Teresa Sievers

Case background and investigation

Dr. Teresa Sievers, a 46-year-old physician who ran a medical practice in Bonita Springs, Florida, was killed in her home on the night of June 28, 2015. According to the facts set out by the Florida Supreme Court, she had left a family vacation in Connecticut and travelled home alone, while her husband, Mark Sievers, and their two daughters stayed behind at her mother's home. She pulled into the garage shortly before 11:25 p.m., took her luggage and walked into the house, where two men were waiting.

The court's opinion states that Curtis Wayne Wright Jr. and Jimmy Ray Rodgers, both from Missouri, struck her in the head with hammers until she died. The Lee County medical examiner testified that she died of blunt head trauma. The next morning, after she failed to arrive at work, Mark Sievers asked a family friend, Dr. Mark Petrites, to check on her; he found her on the kitchen floor.

According to the opinion, the first break came about two weeks later, when an informant in Illinois came forward and Wright, a longtime friend of Mark Sievers, emerged as a suspect. Searches in Missouri produced a GPS unit and phone evidence linking Wright to Rodgers, and Rodgers' girlfriend led detectives to items bought at a Lee County Walmart on the day of the killing and to discarded coveralls. Wright initially denied involvement, then confessed, implicated Mark Sievers and accepted a plea agreement. CBS News reported that Mark Sievers was arrested on February 26, 2016; the court record shows he was indicted in May 2016 for first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

Wright testified that Sievers asked him during a May 2015 wedding weekend in Missouri to arrange the killing, in exchange for a share of life insurance proceeds, and that he recruited Rodgers. Prosecutors cited marital problems, custody concerns and life insurance policies as the motive, according to the Associated Press.

Rodgers was tried first. A jury found him guilty of second-degree murder on October 23, 2019, rather than the first-degree murder prosecutors had sought, NBC 6 reported, and he was later sentenced to life in prison. Mark Sievers was convicted in December 2019 of first-degree murder and conspiracy and was sentenced to death, with a consecutive 30-year term on the conspiracy count. Wright, who had pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 2016, was sentenced to 25 years on February 10, 2020.

The Florida Supreme Court affirmed Mark Sievers' convictions and death sentence on November 17, 2022. He has continued to challenge them in post-conviction proceedings. According to the Fort Myers News-Press, Lee Circuit Judge Bruce Kyle denied his motion to vacate the conviction and sentence on February 24, 2026, and his attorneys filed a motion for rehearing on March 6, 2026, arguing that his trial lawyers had been ineffective. The same report said Rodgers was also appealing his conviction.