Garrett Wilson

In May 1994, Wilson was selling musical instruments to music stores on a route that ran through several southern states. Vicky and his daughter, Marysa, lived in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area while Missy lived in Maryland. Near the end of the month, Missy called Garretts answering service to let him know she would be visiting a friend in Pensacola, Florida, in case he wanted to get together. A few hours later, she got a call from Vicky who had picked up the call.

Missy, dont hang up until I tell you who I am, she said. Missy didnt stay on the line, but it began to occur to her that there was another woman in the picture. Additionally, she made this mental leap: Maybe Garrett had killed their baby.

Garrett Wilson with daughter
Marysa, 1993
(Author's collection)

Garrett, youre married and have a baby, dont you? she said.

Yes, I do, Missy, he said. His former wife went ballistic.

Garrett, you son of a bitch! Now that I see what youre capable of, I know you killed my baby! she shouted into the phone.

Missy then called his friend, John Farley, and told him of her finding. He seemed to believe that Garrett needed counseling.

Missy, Garrett needs help. He cant deal with money and hes needed help for a long time. You cant believe how many women have been in here crying over him, he said.

You mean, while he was married to me? Missy was incredulous.

Yes. At least three.

Missy begged John for a direct office phone number. She got through to Wilson.

How could you do this to me? she said. Her former husbands answer was chilling.

Youd be dead if you were here.

Wilsons remembrance of the conversation is different. He denied the youd be dead statement, instead recalling that Missy made this threat:

I am going to destroy you.

Missy now believed that she had been wronged for nearly six years and that she had been living with a man who had killed their only child for money. She set out to prove it, hiring both a lawyer and a private investigator. She didnt know, for example, how many actual dollars worth of insurance her former husband had and she wanted to know more about the other babys death.

The PI, Larry Robinson, found the smallest policy and the $50,000 amount caused him to give a whistle. But he didnt know about the second one. He located Debbie Oliver and after he told her a little about his investigation, he was stunned when she became emotional and began crying.

He killed that womans baby, too, didnt he, she sobbed. She said that on the night that Brandi died, her husband hadnt given her a vitamin pill after all.

I feel bad I havent helped with Brandi, she said Wilson told her. Why dont you take a sleeping pill tonight, and Ill take care of the baby. She said when she woke up, the baby was dead.

Robinson soon discovered about Wilsons two insurance policies he had purchased on Brandi a month before her death. He was pretty sure that was a motivation for murder, but there was a problem. How do you arrest someone for murder when the autopsy clearly says that the cause of death is natural, caused by Sudden Infant Death Syndrome?

Montgomery County sent their best female detective, Meredith Dominick, to question Wilson in Texas. He was candid, and freely told her about the $100,000 policy that they hadnt known about. This caused the detectives heart to skip a beat. The amount provided serious motivation for murdering a child. Still, she told Missy, there would probably be no arrest. They couldnt change the autopsy and as long as the autopsy read the way it did, they had little chance of an indictment.

Desperate, Wilsons ex-wife began writing letters to every politician she thought could help her. She wrote her congresswoman, her two U.S. Senators, the governor of Maryland, and the then-president, Bill Clinton. In every case she got back a form letter or a note saying they had forwarded her letter to the county prosecutor, whom she was already pressuring to do something and getting a deaf ear in response.

The prosecutors and the police had decided that a jury might look at her as someone only out for revenge, a spurned spouse who wanted her husband in prison because he had dumped her for another woman. Then there was the business of the cats. If a mother suspected her baby was in trouble, why would she feed her cats before going to her childs aid? The answer the detectives got when they asked her that question wasnt very satisfactory.

Why didnt you go in the babys room? the cops asked her.

I dont know. I wish I did to this day, she said.

When the cats came first and the baby second, there was a problem.