Ex-soldier sentenced to prison for murder of comrades

A former U.S. soldier has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for murdering a pregnant 19-year-old soldier at a U.S. Army base in Germany more than two decades ago, officials said.

Pfc's 2001 cold case Amanda Gonzales was put to rest in May when a jury found Shannon L. Wilkerson guilty of second-degree murder.

“Evidence presented in court indicated that Wilkerson feared he was the father of Gonzales' unborn child and that her pregnancy would interfere with his military career and his marriage to another soldier on base. “Wilkerson was a member of the United States Armed Forces at the time of the crime but was later discharged,” Justice Department officials said in a news release.

At trial, prosecutors said Wilkerson was married to another woman but believed he was the father of Gonzales' child, and almost immediately after the murder he gave up his hard-partying habits for a quieter church lifestyle.

Gonzales' “dead, injured, mostly naked body” was found in her third-floor barracks room on November 5, 2001, after she failed to report for work. At the time of her death, Gonzales was a cook on her first Army assignment with the 127th Aviation Support Battalion's Headquarters Supply Company. According to the Army Criminal Investigation Department, she had only been in Germany for eight months.

According to court documents, Gonzales was four months pregnant when she was found strangled and abused in her barracks at the Fliegerhorst Kaserne, a former U.S. Army base in Hanau, Germany. The Army conducted hundreds of interviews and even offered over $100,000 as a reward for information to help find her killer, but the case remained unsolved for over 20 years.

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A breakthrough in the case came with a DNA discovery on a gray sweatshirt that led to Wilkerson being charged in the murder, prosecutors said at his trial.

Gonzales' mother and stepfather, Gloria and Mike Bates, were interviewed on the Catch My Killer podcast interview in September 2020. They told the podcast reporter that the murder of Vanessa Guillén in 2020 brought renewed attention to the cold case of their daughter with the “eerie” Similar facts between the two women: both were young, of Spanish descent and were murdered at a military base.

Gloria Gonzales said she was referring to the public role that Gloria Guillén, Vanessa's mother, took in advocating for her daughter's case.

“All of that [Guillén’s] My mother went through it, I went through it, and if I had known that it wasn't just me going through it – I would have told everyone, 'Don't let your child go to church,' because it goes on like this.” Gloria said.

Wilkerson was on active duty as a mechanic from July 1999 to July 2004. He was stationed in Iraq between April 2003 and October 2003. The last rank Wilkerson held was sergeant, according to the Army. According to a federal indictment, he was discharged from active duty in July 2004 and discharged from the Army Reserve in June 2007.

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