Catherine Rusoff
A former US Army soldier has been convicted of murdering a pregnant colleague in Germany more than two decades ago. Jurors in federal court in Pensacola, Florida, found 43-year-old Shannon Wilkerson guilty of murder by the death of Amanda Gonzales in 2001another former soldier, at a base in Hanau, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Tuesday.
Wilkerson beat and strangled Gonzales to death inside his room at Fliegerhorst Kaserne, a former U.S. Army base and military barracks, on Nov. 3, 2001, the Justice Department said, citing court documents and evidence presented during the criminal trial. . His second-degree murder conviction carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. A sentencing hearing has been scheduled for August 8.
Gonzales was 19 years old when she died and was four months pregnant. Authorities say Wilkerson believed she was pregnant with his child.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which helped lead the decades-long probe into Gonzales’ murder, previously said her body was found in the barracks two days after her death on Nov. 5, 2001, because she had not shown up for work. Gonzales worked as a cook at the U.S. Army base in Hanau.
A medical examiner later ruled that asphyxiation had caused his death, and a homicide investigation was launched, according to the FBI.
Wilkerson was arrested in Florida on first-degree murder charges in February 2023, more than 21 years after Gonzales’ death. At that time, he had already been discharged from the Armed Forces, although the timing of his discharge and the reasons for it were not clarified. Nor do many of the details surrounding Gonzales’ murder and Wilkerson’s possible motives for carrying it out. CBS News contacted the U.S. Department of Justice for more information but did not immediately receive a response.
“The defendant savagely beat and murdered Amanda Gonzales – a fellow soldier who was pregnant at the time – at a U.S. Army base in Germany in 2001,” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole Argentieri, chief of the Department of Justice’s criminal division. Justice, in a statement. declaration. “His conviction yesterday, more than two decades later, is a testament to the Justice Department’s tireless pursuit of justice. Many dedicated police officers and prosecutors persisted for years, pursuing every available lead and never wavering in their search for evidence to arrest the victim. murderer to answer for his heinous crime.”
Wilkerson was charged under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which gives U.S. federal courts the authority to prosecute crimes committed internationally by former military service members even though they are no longer technically governed by the Uniform Code of Military Justiceauthorities he said after he was taken into custody. This code essentially forms the basis for the laws that dictate how the military justice system works in the US.
