photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Aaron B. Wright, left, appears Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025, in Douglas County District Court.

After hearing testimony from several witnesses, a judge in Douglas County District Court Tuesday found probable cause to set a jury trial for the man facing second degree murder charges related to the stabbing of a 35-year old woman last summer.

Aaron Blake Wright, 63, was charged with second-degree murder in the death of 35-year-old Jina Reyes-Woehler, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and mother of two whose body was found Aug. 29 behind the vacant VFW building in the 1800 block of Massachusetts Street. After several witnesses provided testimony, Wright entered a plea of not guilty, and the judge set a jury trial to start July 27.

As the Journal-World reported, Wright was arrested on the same day Reyes-Woehler was found.

Austin Corbitt, an officer with the Lawrence Police Department, made the initial contact with Wright, and was one of the several witnesses called to testify in Tuesday’s hearing. Corbitt said that he responded to the scene after hearing a call that a city bus driver reported being flagged down by someone reporting that there might be a deceased person behind the vacant VFW building.

Corbitt said he began speaking to witnesses on the scene, including Wright, who was wearing a red sweatshirt. Corbitt said he approached Wright to ask him questions, and Wright got “irate” and started saying he didn’t know anything and that “he didn’t touch her.”

During the conversation, Corbitt said he saw what appeared to be “dark red stains” on Wright’s left sleeve, and Corbitt believed they could be dried blood. Corbitt said he went to pat down Wright and asked if he had weapons on him. Wright told him he had a pocket knife in his back pocket. Corbitt then retrieved a folding knife with a 3.25-inch blade from Wright’s pocket, and he said he noticed “red stains” on the knife.

Several other witnesses reported seeing what appeared to be dried blood on Wright’s clothes, which included the red sweatshirt, a tannish yellow long-sleeve shirt he wore under it, jeans and a camo-colored hat.

Lawrence Police Officer Kelsey Kemppainen told the court she collected DNA evidence from Wright that included a swab of what appeared to be dried blood on the palm side of his left hand, plus samples from his clothes and his knife. She testified that she sent those to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation for testing. DNA evidence that included both profiles of Wright and Reyes-Woehler were found on his shoes and on the knife blade, according to Kemppainen’s testimony.

When Wright was first interviewed by police, he suggested that Reyes-Woehler may have died from alcohol. Richard Snell, a friend of Reyes-Woehler, said he, Reyes-Woehler and two others met Wright behind the VFW. Snell said he had “three bottles of gin,” and the group was drinking and socializing. After a while, he and the others planned to leave for Watson Park, but Reyes-Woehler told him she was going to stay behind. Snell said he and the others left for the park “when it was “still daylight” and did not return to the area, leaving Wright and Reyes-Woehler alone.

During cross examination of Snell, Madeline Muller, an assistant public defender with the area’s public defender office, asked if it was true that Snell had told officers that on Thursday — the day before Reyes-Woehler was found — that he and Reyes-Woehler were “drinking since (they) woke up.” Snell confirmed that was accurate, but also said that while they had been drinking, they were not “totally drunk.”

Altaf Hossain, the lead coroner who performed the autopsy of Reyes-Woehler, testified Tuesday that Reyes–Woehler was found to have alcohol content of 0.365, which he said is “pretty high.”

Even with the high blood alcohol content, Hossain deemed that the manner of death was homicide, with the cause of death due to stab wounds. Hossain testified that Reyes-Woehler had multiple deep stab wounds, including one that went through her fourth and fifth ribs. The autopsy also found that one of her lungs had a laceration, and there was blood in the left chest cavity.

Wright is being held on a $1 million cash or surety bond in the Douglas County Jail. He has a lengthy criminal record, including two convictions for attempted first-degree murder in Douglas County in 1996. He was released from prison in that case in 2013, according to the Kansas Department of Corrections.