A former US soldier was sentenced Thursday to 30 years in prison for the murder of a 19-year-old, pregnant fellow soldier more than 20 years ago on a US base in Germany.
Shannon L. Wilkerson, 44, was found guilty in May of second degree murder in the death of Amanda Gonzales, according to the US Department of Justice.
Court documents say Wilkerson beat and strangled Gonzales to death on November 3, 2001, in her barracks room at Fliegerhorst Kaserne, then a US Army base in Hanau. Prosecutors told jurors that Wilkerson believed that he was the father of Gonzales’ child and that the pregnancy would interfere with his military career and his marriage to another soldier at the base.
“Shannon Wilkerson brutally murdered Amanda Gonzales, a fellow soldier who Wilkerson knew was pregnant at the time,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “While nothing we can do will reunite Amanda with her family, we hope today’s sentencing brings some measure of closure and comfort to Amanda’s loved ones.”
The FBI’s New York and Jacksonville Field Offices investigated the case, assisted by the Army’s Criminal Investigative Division, the original investigators.
According to Task and Purpose, Gonzales was four months pregnant when she was killed. Army investigators conducted hundreds of interviews and offered more than $100,000 in rewards for information, but the case remained cold for more than two decades. The breakthrough was DNA found on a sweatshirt, prosecutors said at the trial.
Gonzales worked as a cook at Headquarters Supply Company, 127th Aviation Support Battalion at the time she was murdered. She had been in Germany for eight months, investigators said.
The indictment against Wilkerson said he was on active duty from July 1999 until July 2004, with a deployment to Iraq from April to October 2003. He was discharged from actie duty in July 2004 and from the Army Reserve in June 2007. His highest rank was sergeant.
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[Featured image: Amanda Gonzales/US Army Criminal Investigation Division]
