Bill Wilson (convict)

Bill Wilson was a man wrongfully convicted in Blount County, Alabama of murdering his wife and child in 1912.

Background

In 1908, Bill Wilson's wife, Jenny, divorced and left him. She took their 19-month-old child with her. In 1912, the skeletal remains of an adult and child were discovered by the Black Warrior River. As news of the discovery spread, many area residents, presuming the remains to be ancient, visited the site in the hope of finding Indian relics.

When no relics were found, a farm worker named Jim House began speculating that the remains were not Indian but those of Jenny Wilson and her child, both of whom had disappeared shortly after Jenny’s divorce. House also belatedly asserted that, following the divorce, he had seen Jenny go into her former in-laws’ home carrying a basket. The next day, House said, he noticed footprints leading toward the river and found what he described as a “child’s cloth” and blood on a rock. After hearing House’s tale, the county solicitor charged Bill Wilson with murder.

Murder trial

The prosecution presented the alleged evidence, along with witnesses who claimed that Wilson had made incriminating statements. One claimed that Wilson had vowed to kill his wife if he ever saw her again.

The prosecution’s medical expert acknowledged that the remains appeared too ancient to be that of Jenny and her child, though he left open the possibility that they might be. He said the skull of the child had second teeth, which usually do not develop before age four.

The defense presented six witnesses, including Jenny’s sister, who testified that they saw Jenny at various times several months after the prosecution contended she was dead. Four of Wilson’s relatives, and Wilson himself, denied House’s contention that Jenny had come to his parents’ home after the divorce. The defense medical expert testified that the teeth in the adult skull were those of an elderly person and that a nineteen-month-old child would not have second teeth.

Despite this strong defense, Bill Wilson was convicted and sentenced to life in prison on December 18, 1915.

The verdict overturned

After the trial, a curator from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC examined the bones and declared them to be very old skeletal parts of four or more different persons. The trial judge, named Blackwood, realized that justice had miscarried, but he no longer had jurisdiction over the case. Judge Blackwood asked the governor to grant clemency to Wilson, so that he could be released. Before the governor took action, Wilson’s appellate lawyer located Jenny and her child, then 11, living in Vincennes, Indiana. She returned to Blount County on July 8, 1918, and the same day, after authorities confirmed her identity, governor Charles Henderson granted Wilson a pardon.

References

* [http://www.law.northwestern.edu/wrongfulconvictions/exonerations/alWilsonBSummary.html Center on Wrongful Convictions]