A former U.S. soldier was sentenced to 30 years in prison for murdering a pregnant, 19-year-old soldier on an American Army base in Germany more than two decades ago, officials said.
The 2001 cold case of Pfc. Amanda Gonzales was put to rest in May when a jury found Shannon L. Wilkerson guilty of second-degree murder.
“Evidence introduced at trial 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 the base. Wilkerson was a member of the U.S. Armed Forces at the time of the offense but was later discharged,” Department of Justice officials said in a release.
At the 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 dropped his hard-partying habits for a quieter church-going lifestyle.
Gonzales’ “dead, bruised, mostly naked body” was found on Nov. 5, 2001, in her third-floor barracks room after she did not report for work. Gonzales was a cook on her first Army assignment at Headquarters Supply Company of the 127th Aviation Support Battalion at the time of her death. She had been in Germany only eight months, according to the Army Criminal Investigation Division.
According to court documents, Gonzales was four months pregnant when she was found strangled and battered in her barracks room at Fliegerhorst Kaserne, a former U.S. Army base in Hanau, Germany. The Army conducted hundreds of interviews and even offered over $100,000 in reward money for information to help find her killer, but the case remained cold for over 20 years.
Subscribe to Task & Purpose today. Get the latest military news and culture in your inbox daily.
A breakthrough in the case came with a DNA discovery on a gray sweatshirt which caused Wilkerson to be charged in the murder case, prosecutors said at his trial.
Gonzales’ mother and stepfather, Gloria and Mike Bates, were interviewed by the Catch My Killer Podcast interview in September 2020. They told the podcast reporter that the 2020 murder of Vanessa Guillén had brought renewed attention to their daughter’s cold case with the “eerily” similar facts between the two women: both were young, Hispanic, and murdered on a military base.
Gloria Gonzales said she related to the public role that Gloria Guillén, Vanessa’s mother, took in advocating for her daughter’s case.
“Everything that [Guillén’s] mother was going through, I went through it and if I would’ve known about this that this wasn’t just me going through this — I would’ve been telling everybody ‘don’t let your child join the service’ because this is going on,” Gloria said.
Wilkerson was on active duty between July 1999 to July 2004 as a mechanic. He deployed to Iraq between April 2003 and October 2003. The last rank Wilkerson held was sergeant, according to the Army. He was discharged from active duty in July 2004 and from the Army Reserve in June 2007, according to a federal indictment.
The latest on Task & Purpose
- Marine sergeant major fired from West Coast bootcamp now in brig amid investigation
- Army sends troops, artillery to the Aleutian Islands as Russian planes again fly near Alaska
- Marine who died trying to reach trapped Osprey pilots honored for final bravery
- Former West Point garrison commander cleared of most charges that led to firing
- Navy’s first fully gender-integrated submarine joins the fleet. Here’s what that means