Mistaken Identity (Anthony Wilson)
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Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie. Every Monday, me and my best friend Britt break down a new case, but not in the way you've heard before, and not the cases you've heard before. You'll hear stories on Crime Junkie that haven't been told anywhere else. I'll tell you what you can do to help victims and their families get justice.

Join us for new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday. Already waiting for you by searching for Crime Junkie wherever you listen to podcasts. You see the worst of the worst every day. 911 operator 2415. Yes, yes. I got this girl in my house. If you're a victim of a homicide, you have a family. Doesn't that family deserve some kind of answers to what happened to you? I don't know what's wrong with us.

People can't be allowed to commit crimes like that and go unanswered. She's acting all crazy, and I want her out of my house. Hello? Hello? I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anasiga Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder.

Here on AOM, we've had the opportunity to highlight all types of cases from big cities to small towns and victims from all types of backgrounds and socioeconomic status. For us in our former careers and even our work here, every case matters. Doesn't matter who the victim is. Everyone deserves justice. Every victim should be remembered.

And for today's story, we spoke with former homicide detective Chris Scandal. And I worked with Chris in Brooklyn for years. I knew him both when he was a detective in a precinct and he came out of one of the busiest areas in Brooklyn, but also as a homicide detective. You know, when I was speaking to him for this case, it reminded me that...

You don't know so much about the backgrounds, about those people that you work with. And that was certainly true of Chris. You know, he is a meticulous detective. I first thought he was like one of those old school guys, but I learned very quickly that I was wrong. And he has the making of everything from past to present as part of his DNA. But also within his DNA, I found out while talking to him for this podcast, is that being in law enforcement is something that actually runs in his blood.

The people in my family who were cops, I looked up to and I thought that was something that I should give a shot. It's a funny story. My uncle worked in a 7-9 and my uncle worked in a 7-3, unbeknownst to me, you know, that I would end up in Brooklyn North as well. This case begins in the confines of the 8-3 precinct in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. The call was for a DOA, which is short for Dead on Arrival.

So when the officer went into this apartment, which was really just basically one room, he

He saw that there was someone who was deceased and clearly had been there for a while based on decomposition. But again, they don't know walking in whether that is someone who has died by natural causes or something more suspect. And because of the state of the body, it was hard for him to really figure out what was what initially. But there was something around the body that made him call in for other detectives.

All unexplained deaths are investigated to determine whether a crime has taken place or perhaps it is a natural death. But that would not be the case here, as officers had located an excess amount of blood at the scene. It's really just a one room. It's not even really a bomb. It's a one room with a bathroom in the corner. There's a mattress on the floor. That's his sleeping arrangement. Deceased in the Brooklyn apartment was 50-year-old Anthony Wilson. He's on the mattress, decomposed and bloated.

Based on the condition of the body, investigators would determine that it had been there for quite some time. And that's when the bloating and decomposition take over. You can see there was some kind of trauma to it, but you couldn't really determine the extent of the injuries at the scene. So when officers on scene went into the bathroom in this small little apartment, they did notice that there was blood inside the bathroom, even in the sink. The blood also appears that has been tried to either be mopped or wiped up with a towel. It appears someone tried to clean up some of the blood.

And so, Scott, just thinking about that for a second, people can die naturally and there can be blood involved. But then if someone's there like you're talking about and they went in to potentially clean up, well, then you would have suspected, if natural, that that person would have called the police. So the fact that they didn't must have made them march down that road before they even knew the injuries, that this might be something suspicious indeed.

Determining the cause of death would be a big step in this investigation. And they're going to determine whether this is, as you said, at a seagull, whether it's natural or whether this is actually, in fact, a homicide. So it isn't just going to go for autopsy once the body is removed. In a case like this, they're actually going to bring an MLI or a medical legal investigator onto the scene to see what they can help determine before the body is ever moved.

We called the medical legal investigator down from the medical examiner's office so they could do their investigation and they can help determine what happened at the scene as well. And I know that it turns out the medical examiner who was assigned to this case was someone that you also know quite well.

So the medical examiner who performed the autopsy in this case was Dr. Freddie Fredericks. And, you know, one of the perks of speaking to someone that you know and have worked with is that we get to kind of walk down memory lane a bit and reminisce. And both of us started to kind of giggle when we talked about Dr. Fredericks. First, we both have so much respect for her. She was a wonderful medical examiner who I worked with.

over and over again throughout the years. But there's just something about her. You know, we talked about the fact that she's from Haiti and she has this accent, but there's almost like this sing-songiness in her voice that whenever any of us came into contact with her, she always could make you giggle and smile and remember the lighter side of life at the same time.

She was just a joy. You're dealing with death. You're dealing with autopsies, a place that no one is happy to be, but it's a very important place to be. The autopsy is very, extremely important. So you would go there and you would leave there smiling because you dealt with Dr. Frederick, not because of what you had to do with what was job related.

Whenever you have a stabbing, well, that is an up-close, more personal attack, whether they know each other or not. You know, a gunshot can be from a distance. A knife stabbing has to be up close. So here when they determined it was a stabbing and there were 10 stab wounds, you know, Scott, right away, this is something that someone had one objective on their mind.

As you mentioned the fact that they're inches away from each other, that has to say something. In most cases, actually your victim and your suspect are looking at each other if the stab wounds are in fact are to the front part of the body. So it feels personal. And I'm sure at that very moment when you're thinking about a knife being the weapon, it really shows that rage is involved. Ten times indicates to me a level of violence that's indicating that this is not just a random act.

DNA in this case is an important step, but perhaps not for the reason you may be thinking. And here's why. In stabbing cases, it's common for the knife to slip in the killer's hand while multiple wounds are involved. And obviously, there's blood involved.

Also because the attacker could be cut in the process. So the hope for investigators here is it's possible that some of the blood that's in the apartment either is a mixture of your victim and your suspect or just the victim, but perhaps just the suspect. So that really can give you a single profile of that potential killer.

They did a bunch of swabs of DNA and blood and stuff recovered. So there was hope with that because the DNA evidence at that point, and it's getting better and better always, but that's a pretty solid lead. And that was what we were hoping for.

But nothing is quick about DNA today, nor was it at the time. It often takes not just days, but weeks or months even to return results. So while he's waiting to see if any conclusions could be reached that would push this investigation forward, Detective Scandol went on with his investigation, obviously seeing if there was anything around the area that could aid him, any witnesses, any people outside the

Detective Scandal also goes to phone records and the phone records in particular, he's looking to see if there have been any emergency calls placed from this address in the months before the body is found. I got the phone records. I see there's a 911 call. And so now I take the next step. I actually pull the records of the 911 calls. He actually speaks to the 911 operator.

He says something like, she's trying to kill me. To the 911 operator. The call is terminated.

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The call just goes silent. Like, what was happening? Why did the call just end when it did?

We do know this entire case began with a 911 call to a Brooklyn dispatcher. Investigators were trying to determine why a patrol car was never dispatched. And if so, the question is why? And could that have made a difference in this homicide?

Every call to 911 generates a response, whether it's a hang up, whether it's no one on the end of the line, an open line, it generates a response. For some reason, our victim called the 911 and it fell through the cracks. There was no 911 response. There was no spring job generated. There was no response generated when he called 911.

And that is one of those things that you really don't hear about. I was trying to think if I'd ever heard of that before, because it automatically goes from the dispatch and then it goes out through the sprint. And it's like this teletype almost, if you picture it going out at the same time. So the fact that this call was able to fall through the cracks and was never transmitted and that no one ever showed up, well, it is just such an unfortunate circumstance.

Now, I have actually heard of that before, Anastasia, but it is so extremely rare. In fact, the way the system is set up, that if even someone dials 911 and doesn't say anything at all and just hangs up, that will still bring a uniform response to the location, and that's in every city and jurisdiction in the United States. It's a fail-safe approach for the system. The thought is that if perhaps the person calling for help

can't say in front of the person because they're fearing at the moment. An example is domestic violence. Police are mandated to respond to every 911 call, no matter what. Often people are calling because they have an emergency, which isn't even a crime. They're having...

some sort of medical emergency, but now all of a sudden something happens and they lose consciousness. Well, this is one of the reasons that ambulances can still get there in time. So the fact that it broke down to this degree here and that what is found when they do go there months later is just the body rather than the person, the alive person of Anthony Wilson.

You just don't know if it would have made a difference, but it really does start to make you wonder about the exact timing of when he was stabbed in relation to that call. So here's what we know so far. The caller is likely the victim, and based on what he said, the killer may be the person he's referring to, and the description is a woman. Next, investigators will want to do a canvas of the building to begin constructing their timelines.

When was the last time someone saw the victim? Based on the condition of the body, clearly it's been in the apartment for quite some time. And next, could somebody in the building identify any females they may have seen hanging around the victim's apartment?

Well, we had a couple of witnesses, no one who actually saw anything, but a couple of witnesses that had told us about the victim, Anthony. He would let women stay with him and they would get high together and he would let them stay with him either for money and or for sex.

You can already start to see here where certainly Anthony Wilson was having a difficult time and that within that drug-fueled world that they were living with, you know, there weren't always the things that people want to talk about, but it really was what it was, whether it was people were staying there and giving him money or maybe it was a trade for narcotics and maybe even something physical. We don't know, but it certainly was something

the underbelly, the things that people don't often talk about but may play into being very relevant here.

No one was even looking for him. Nobody knew he was gone. But that doesn't mean he doesn't deserve that effort. But you know what? What we were told, and I used to preach it to young detectives, there are no nonsense cases. Every case you catch, you should be practiced for that day you work on a case where the cop gets shot or killed. You have to put that effort in. These cases that you have to work, you have to work them just as hard and just as tenacious and just as tireless as you do with the other cases. And you'll be able to do it. And this case kind of jumped out to me because this is a case that nobody cared about, but it didn't deserve any less effort.

As police are doing their door-to-door search in the victim's building, they're asking about information about anything or anyone the neighbors may have noticed in and around the victim's apartment. But clearly, the focus has turned to a woman, likely the killer the victim was referring to on that 911 call. We got the name of a woman from two different people. We got the name Renee from somebody. We got a statement from a female witness that told us that this Renee was staying with him.

So while it's probably clear, this is obviously a pretty big lead. Who is she? We know that Anthony had struggled with substance use of narcotics for many years and that many people that circled in his world that stayed with him, they were there because they shared the narcotics in common. Well, right away, that might make her more difficult to locate whether she has something to do with this at all.

But right now, she is person of interest number one because she is the first person, the first woman that they are connecting to the inside of Anthony's home. Okay, so I really like Renee, meaning in police terms, she's a real person of interest for me. The fact that she has his phone is a big step in the right direction for the investigation. And by the way, I'm going to drop my big red flag right by her name.

And then we had another male who had known Renee and was actually trying to get together with Renee. But he ended up receiving a phone call from Renee on the victim's cell phone. So he gets a phone call that she's got to come and chill. I got something happened. I need someone to chill with. I need somewhere to go. He claims he told Lear I had to poke him, that I had to stab him. I poke him, he'd stab him.

So I find this really interesting, right? Now, this is our witness relaying a conversation he allegedly had with Renee, repeating it back to detectives. And while perhaps something may have been lost in translation, which you know happens, this seems pretty clear. This is someone who admits to being with your victim and admitting that he was stabbed. And that is not public knowledge. Pretty important, I think.

And that she said she did it, at least according to this witness. So at the moment, pieces are starting to click together and they need to find this Renee. But based on several factors, that may not be easy. First, all they have to go on right now is her first name. And next, it appears she's not someone with a permanent address or a job or not an easy trail to follow.

And if she is someone who is also a longtime abuser, which again, they were getting that from the witness that she was and she didn't have this permanent address. She's someone that may not be easy to find. We did some computer checks and background investigations and checks with the police computer systems. And we found a woman by the name of Renee who had taken some arrests in that area.

And based on that computer check, they were able to pull a photograph which would give them an opportunity to place that photo in a photo lineup, also called a photo array, to see if any witnesses will pick her out. We show a photo array. It's six randomized photos that are similar in nature. I said, do you recognize anybody in these photos? He picked out one of the photos as Renee.

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So now they have an identification, but is that going to be enough to make an arrest? Well, it's an identification of what? It's by one person who says that there was a woman who came and said that she used the word poke. But again, they don't know enough yet. Can they figure out where this woman even was? Like, is it that the witness has an ax to grind? Is he being accurate? Is he mistaken? Does he even have the days right when this happens? So there definitely is going to be more digging that investigators need to do.

It took a little bit because she had removed herself from Brooklyn and from the neighborhood. Perhaps the most difficult person to find is someone who is living a transient lifestyle, staying in one place one night and then staying somewhere the next or even potentially living in a homeless shelter. But that doesn't deter Brooklyn detectives not only to look for Renee, but for others who may know her.

But it really came down to computers, the same computer that had somehow made a mistake and somehow not transmitted the Anthony Wilson 911 call to the place it needed to go to the police. Well, it's that same computer system that now, through different checks that detectives scandaled, gave him the information that he was able to find the woman picked out in that photo array, Renee.

We found out she was actually living in New Jersey, working in Manhattan, which, I mean, is the next borough over, but might as well be the next world over in the world of these cases at Manhattan. When you're talking about an island so small with so many people there every single day, I wanted to get a sense of how many people are actually in Manhattan on a given day.

And the answer is 4 million people. What that comes down to is the daytime population is about 4 million, which is about 1.6 million of commuting workers, 1.4 million local residents, 400,000 out-of-town visitors, and

and 17,000 hospital patients and 70,000 people who are students commuting in every single day. So having said all that, it really takes a tremendous amount of detective skills to track, locate, and get your eyes on a target in a small island full of so many people. But here that they have this woman, they have found her in that sea of people and in those incredible numbers.

And when they started to look at her, well, OK, bingo, she did have a pass when it came to narcotics. So that's going to check off that box that that is going to be at least in the circles that they know would have been with Anthony Wilson. Well, she had had some drug arrests in that same area and without knowing anything else put us in. All right. It could be it's a possibility.

So now they had to start looking at, was there anything else about her that would check off any of the other boxes to at least put her in the pool of who may have done this to him? She was what I would say was not a person from the street. She was actually a regular working person taking care of herself, not under the influence at work. And the kicker is that I think she was eight months pregnant when we talked to her. Renee could not have been more cooperative and was willing to answer any question they put to her. It certainly wasn't what detectives expected.

I couldn't even believe how super cooperative she was. Yeah, take my phone, go through my phone records, everything. So the question could be, is it possible this is the very same person, someone capable of stabbing our victim 10 times? She doesn't really fit the box, right, of at least who would be hanging around Anthony Wilson and living with him at the time. However...

She still is the lead suspect because of one important fact. She is the person who was picked out in the photo array. She had a rock solid, you know, I was here, I was at work and people vouched her, so we ruled her out. She has this rock solid alibi. So what do you do now? You know, that eyewitness who picked her out, that's an important factor.

Now, does that witness have credibility issues or is that witness simply mistaken? Is that witness part of this world? Was he high at the time? Was he drunk on time? It could create problems for prosecuting this case down the road.

this person is mistaken or whether they had purposely picked out the wrong person, they have made an identification of someone who through investigation was determined clearly not to be the person who stabbed Anthony Wilson to death. So what happens down the road? You know, let's just assume they're mistaken. Now let's say they find someone and they conduct an

Another identification procedure will just think about what the defense attorney is going to do with that in court. It's like, well, on one hand it's A and on the other it's B. Is that proof beyond a reasonable doubt? It doesn't mean this person is not going to be helpful. They may well be an important witness depending on the circumstances, but it's definitely going to be something that has to be dealt with and will be problematic, at least in theory, in this case. Without any way to advance the case at this very moment, there wasn't much for detectives to do

except to continue to work on any information that may have come in. But just when Chris and his colleagues think that hope is lost, they find a clue. They receive records that suggest that Anthony's benefit card was being used around town after his death.

That is an EBT card that you get from the government. It is financial assistance that people receive for different types of disabilities. And so the beauty of that card is that there's only certain places that they can be used. And so the hope is that if they can track down exactly where Anthony Wilson's card was being used after he was dead, well, there just might be some cameras or some information that they can obtain as to who it was that was using his card.

We saw the area where they were used. We went to those locations. By the time we got those records, there was no more video or no more cameras. Again, in 2012, the video was not as prevalent as it is today. It was past the timeframe of where they would have saved the video. So what they end up with, and no pun intended, but is another dead end. And you know, this is work that is filled with them. And they think that they're getting ahead or they are getting ahead. And all of a sudden they're pushed back. And that really starts to weigh on them.

Well, at that point, it's kind of a standstill. We're doing a lot of administrative functionality, not a lot of investigative work at that point. A lot of trying to collect evidence, waiting on the crime scene reports to come back, waiting on the lab work to come back, things of that nature. And the one report that they are most curious about is the DNA test. Remember, a fair amount of DNA was collected from Anthony Wilson's apartment when his body was discovered.

Well, on March 20th, almost three months after the victim's body was discovered, the results were in and detectives get a match. Ever dream of a three-row SUV where everything for every passenger feels just right? Introducing the all-new Infiniti QX80 with available features like biometric cooling, electronic air suspension, and segment-first individual audio that isolates sound.

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That's 50% off unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your life. Redeem your 50% off at rosettastone.com slash anatomy. That's rosettastone.com slash N-A-T-O-M-Y. So the results come in and the name that pops up as a match is a name that no one had heard of yet. It's actually tied to a female named Natara Wisdom.

So let's remember how we got here.

You have a witness who said he spoke to a woman named Renee who admitted to having stabbed Anthony. So police then identify Renee. They put the photograph of that person in a photo array. She's identified. Then they go to speak to that person. And nope, that's not her. They end up with someone that has a clear alibi and was not involved in this homicide. So now they get a DNA hit and it is of a person, a woman. But her name is not Renee. So who is Atara Wisdom?

We run her criminal history and her photo comes back and you look at the photo of Atara Wisdom next to the photo of Renee and they could be sisters. Based on what we investigated, it doesn't look like they were later. I think they look strikingly alike. Atara Wisdom was not someone that was ever on their radar at all. But this also shows the Achilles heel in a sense to witness ID. Somebody could be so positive about an ID with all the right and good intentions to

I mean, that is an incredible coincidence that when you put photographs of these two women side by side, that they look so similar that they could actually be related, even though they obviously have not much in common and definitely not the same name. But it is a coincidence like this that can really turn an investigation on its head.

We do our due diligence, all our background and everything. It would appear that she's got a criminal history. And now we said we need to speak to her. We need to find her and see what she has to say. We take a look. She's someone who's more along the line of that street life than Renee. So she was more difficult to find, more difficult to locate.

Back out on the hunt for the alleged killer, a hunt facing some of the same issues as earlier. Somebody who is transient, somebody who doesn't have any ties to a specific location within New York City. The place we finally located her was in a homeless shelter. And that presents issues as far as identifying and finding someone in and of itself, because there are protections in place that are there to keep the occupants safe.

To be in a shelter, you have to actually register and go through the system. So there's a way you can check to see if someone is actually a resident of that shelter. But then when you go there, they have to be there. They have to agree to talk to you. They have to, are they there? Are they not there?

People end up without homes, you know, undomiciled for various reasons. It could be they're down on their luck. It could be financial considerations. It could be problems in the home, like domestic violence that people are fearing for their safety. And they decide it is better to go into one of these shelters than to keep themselves at risk where they are. So the cities or the places that these shelters are in, they are cognizant of those things. So it is not so easy necessarily to find someone to locate and speak with them once they're inside.

Once the detectives located Atara Wisdom at the shelter, they wanted to sit down with her and ask her what she knew about the death of Anthony Wilson. But they didn't want to do it there.

We just told her it was an investigation. We didn't get into any of the details of it, that we need to speak to her at the precinct and not here in front of all the other people at the shelter. I mean, there's obvious reasons why detectives want to bring her back to the precinct station house to do the interview. They want to control the environment. They also don't want other people at the shelter knowing that she's talking to police, which could warn other witnesses in this very case that she's now been located and potentially cooperating.

She told us that she had lost the place where she moved in with Anthony. She met him at, there's a doctor's office on Broadway. I think it's one of these pain management places where they go and they get, you know, illegal drugs, as opposed to when they're not using crack. She met him over there. He let her stay with her.

So what is the tactic going to be when they sit down with her, right? They have her DNA, which puts her inside of the apartment, but not so fast because the one thing they already know from her is that she was staying with him. So you would expect some of her DNA to be there. So Scott, you know, you need to think about what detectives are going to do now armed with that information as they proceed to try and speak with her. I would hold back the fact that

a DNA sample not only was collected, but as a match to her. Because I would want her to lay out the entire story, A to Z, what happened in that apartment with Anthony Wilson, and see if my DNA evidence, where it was collected, backs up her story with science. But it didn't become much of a tug of war, at least as to that.

She tells detectives that the agreement that she had with Anthony Wilson was having a place to stay so they can both get high. That was the deal. They had no intimate relationship. But she claimed when the victim got high, he became a completely different person. She would wake up and find him touching her, laying over her, touching her on her shirt and stuff. And she would tell him, you know, that's not why I'm here. It's not like that.

She came right out and admitted that it was her, that she had stabbed him. But her claim to detectives is that it wasn't what they thought. So they got to an odd one. They got really heated and loud.

She said she left, but then she went back a couple of times. So she went back to get her clothes and stuff. She said, oh, I have an interview. I say, I'm going to go back. I'm going to collect my clothes. So she goes there. It's all good. She's there to collect the clothes. We met him. It's all nice. But again, she stayed there. She doesn't go get her stuff and leave. She stays there. So later that night, though, they're sitting on the couch together and getting some stuff. She then claims that Anthony Wilson made a sexual advance on her.

And she tells him, okay, then I'll get out of here. He stands in front of the door and says, uh-uh. He picks up his belt, wraps his belt around his hand. She knew then this is going to get violent. So she picked up the knife and put it in her sweater. The confrontation escalated even more. And then he starts punching her. She gets up to leave. He punches her in the face. He pulls the sweater over her head. As he's punching her, he's pushing her head to the ground. And she's thinking to herself, wow, this keeps continuing. He's going to kill me. So that's when she says she took out the knife and she stabbed him.

She didn't say how many times. She said, I kept staring at him. She ran to the bathroom. She's all messed up. She's got bruises and knots on her head. Now, first of all, we're talking about a slippery slope, right? I mean, I can tell all of you that the second I heard it, I was like, uh-oh, wait a second. She's saying that there is an element of...

sexual assault or attempted sexual assault. Like, wait, who am I looking at as what here? And it's a topic that we hopefully are all very sensitive to. But the problem with her story is that it can't be corroborated. Remember, there are different things that go against what she said. And you have this witness who says that he was with the woman who said she had stabbed him just hours afterwards. But basically,

But based on that and the injuries that she said she had, well, the witness said he didn't see any. She didn't point out any to him. So there's various things that detectives have in their pocket that are already making some of her claims suspect. So I'm going to step on one side here and ask the questions about this self-defense claim, especially with the amount of stab wounds here. You know, Anastasia, 10. How do you justify that? Plus...

The fact that she never attempted to help him after he was fatally stabbed, call an ambulance. Instead, she left him to die. She gathered his things, including his cell phone, by the way, and left his body in a place it would not be discovered for months. I'm already giving pause to what she's saying because there are things in my mind that are going against this being any self-defense at all by anyone's standards. But even under the law...

you are allowed to defend yourself or another person to like violence. Basically, if you think someone is about to kill you, you can defend yourself with like force. So here, let's say she even felt the need to stab him. Well, okay, once. Disagreeable.

Does that stop him? Twice. Does that stop him? How about three times? While we might know the exact number, I can tell you that it is well below the 10 wounds she inflicted on him. So right there, the defense basically is out the window. But then when you start to peel that onion back again, there's going to be more layers that really put what she's saying into question other than the fact that she is the person who caused the wounds that killed Anthony Wilson.

Keep in mind, she's had from November until July to tell somebody what happened to get in front of them and say, you know, even if she was high and I got sober, went through treatment, a couple months later, she could have said, listen, this is what happened. And this guy tried to kill me. I had to stay with him. She never did that. And there's another really big problem for her, isn't there? The 911 call. I don't know what's wrong with her. She's acting all crazy. And I want her out of my house.

She's been at all that he's attacking her and he's the one calling 911. He's the one calling for help. He's the one saying that she's trying to kill me. One saying, I need help here. This guy is attacking me. That is to me the be all end of it all.

You don't call the police and ask them to come help you if you are looking to attack someone else. Yet that is exactly what Anthony Wilson did. And as he's placing that call, the line went dead. I think we're all thinking the fact that this is likely an extremely weak self-defense case.

It has all the elements for an intentional homicide. And we don't know exactly what happened in the moments leading up to the murder, but stabbing someone so many times, attempting to clean up the scene, stealing the property and leaving doesn't sound like self-defense to me at all.

But, you know, it is that slippery slope because what she's saying, I mean, look, it puts all of us on guard. I certainly felt like, wait a second, was he trying to sexually assault her? But again, it doesn't add up. Every other piece goes against it. And as Scott, you just pointed out, the 911 call, at least to me, is the final layer that makes me convinced this is not a case of self-defense.

So we do know that this case will be tried in Brooklyn, which is your old stomping grounds, Anastasia, going into court in probably one of the very courtrooms that you've tried cases before. How would you feel walking in in a case against Atara Wisdom? I'd be comfortable walking into the courtroom based on the evidence and what it said to me and that had been put together well.

But not without hesitation. And the hesitation isn't my comfort in what she was responsible for, but it's what the jury would do with her claims, right? You're in a very sensitive area that the defense is going to be sexual assault. And are they going to really look deeper than her claims or just kind of put their hands up and saying woman against man? And she's saying he was trying to hurt her, control her, sexually assault her. Well, game over. I'm not really going to think much more than that. So there's definitely a hurdle here to climb.

But the jury in this case, they clearly analyzed, they went through it, and they did come to their conclusion, and swiftly, the jury found Atara Wisdom guilty of second-degree murder. Fair verdict?

I think so. Again, it really comes down to common sense coupled with all the pieces. You know, if it walks like a duck, if it talks like a duck, you know the saying. It really parts itself out here. One, I don't believe what she was saying at the time that the attack happened. I can't talk about what happened in their relationship before. And obviously, if she had been victimized at all, well, I have empathy for that person.

But there's nothing telling me that's what happened that night. But yes, I do think this equals murder without any legal justification. I concur. Today's case really makes me think of personal struggles on so many levels. Anthony Wilson, you know, what led his life to go down that drug-fueled path? And the same thing even for Atara Wisdom. You know, was it the drugs that fueled her anger or something deeper raging inside her?

And how can we start to spot signs of all these troubles before it is too late so we don't lose the Anthony Wilsons of the world and others to homicide? You know, what are signs that can stop killers before they commit these heinous acts?

And on the other side, how can we also watch for the warning signs of the internal struggles that are impacting law enforcement, be it the detectives, the uniformed officers, the prosecutors that are working in this dark world for all of their careers?

You see the worst of the worst every day. And not only the worst of the worst, people call you when they're at their worst. You see it every day. You deal with it from every step, from whether it's you're on patrol to you're a homicide detective. People committing crimes that they would never have committed. People mutilated. People, victims of things that are not the natural. You see more than people deserve to see in a lifetime.

You can't take it personal.

but you also can't just laugh it off. You have to have some kind of constructive way to deal with it. And if you feel that it overwhelms you at all, or you feel that it's weighing on you, there's lots of venues for help. There's places you can go. A lot of guys don't like to go to their own agencies for help because they feel there's some kind of stigma. There's lots of outside agencies to help. Chris's journey led to important charitable work. That sense of community did not retire when he did.

I currently deal with law enforcement almost on a daily basis. So we offer a hand. We offer an outreach. We offer a way to get help in our daily interactions with law enforcement. We always get this message out there. There is help available. You're not alone. If you need help, reach out. We'll get you help. We often talk about why those in the law enforcement community choose to work violent crimes cases and, of course, homicides. And we asked the question to Chris, why was this case so important to you?

In my mind, this guy was really forgotten. No one was even looking for him. Nobody knew he was gone. But that doesn't mean he deserved any less justice or any less effort. No matter what kind of lifestyle you live, you're a victim of a homicide, you have a family. Doesn't that family deserve some kind of answers to what happened to you? Even if you are a criminal, do you deserve to be murdered? And this case kind of jumped out to me because this was a case that nobody cared about, but it did to me. ♪♪

Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an Audiochuck original. Produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers is executive producer. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

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Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie. Every Monday, me and my best friend Britt break down a new case, but not in the way you've heard before, and not the cases you've heard before. You'll hear stories on Crime Junkie that haven't been told anywhere else. I'll tell you what you can do to help victims and their families get justice.

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