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Arizona Senate candidate Bobby Wilson brought up an extraordinary personal take on the issue of gun violence during a public meeting in July 2018, describing the time, 55 years earlier, when he had used a gun to defend himself against a crazed attacker: Here's how an Arizona Daily Star reporter tweeted about the account Wilson gave at that meeting: What Wilson didn't convey during that meeting was that the person who allegedly tried to kill him as he slept was his own mother, whom Wilson shot dead. Nor did he mention the fact that his teenaged sister was beaten to death in the same incident. However, his extraordinary anecdote prompted an investigation by the Arizona Republic newspaper, which brought to light some disturbing details from the episode, prompted shocked reactions on social media, and garnered the attention of the national news media. The deaths In June 1963, Wilson was arrested and charged with the murder of his mother, Lavonne Wilson (52), and his sister, Judy Wilson (17), at the family's home in Hugo, Oklahoma. According to local news reports from the time, as well as Choctaw County court records which we obtained, the 18-year-old Wilson gave shifting accounts of his involvement (although Wilson now denies this). On 23 June 1963, police told the Lawton Constitution newspaper that Wilson (whose legal name was John Robert Wiste) at first claimed he was awakened by an explosion occurring in the early morning hours of 20 June and fled the family home before it went up in flames. He reportedly told police that he returned to the house later that day, found his mother and sister dead, and put them in bed. But according to later news reports, by that time autopsies of his mother and sister had confirmed that they had died before the fire started, and Wilson subsequently led police to the location of a rifle. Two days later, the Lawton Constitution reported that Wilson had confessed to killing both women and then setting fire to the house. (In an email to us, Wilson denied ever confessing to the murders.) The trials After attending his mother's and sister's funerals, Wilson was arrested and charged with two counts of murder. His lawyers, Vester Songer and Hal Welch, argued that Wilson had suffered amnesia, could not remember key events from the night of 19-20 June, and therefore was not fit to stand trial or offer a rational defense. Choctaw County District Court Judge Howard Phillips ordered that Wilson be admitted to Eastern State Hospital for three months for medical and psychiatric evaluation. In September 1963, Dr. Ruth Annadown, Acting Medical Superintendent at the hospital, wrote to Judge Phillips to say that It is the opinion of the staff that the patient has a complete amnesia for the allegations. Having interviewed Wilson, Dr. Walter E. Blevins, Staff Physician at the hospital, relayed the young man's own description of the night his mother and sister died. It is worth quoting extensively, because it constitutes an account of Wilson's memories of that night, offered just five weeks afterwards: In an email, Wilson told us that Dr. Blevins was mistaken in his report about the interview, saying that He actually [was] referring to the allegations of law enforcement at the time, which was [sic] proven wrong at the trial. According to court records and news reports, Wilson's first prosecution for murder ended in a mistrial in 1965, but the case was set for a retrial in 1966. Wilson and his lawyers maintained that he still suffered from complete amnesia about the crucial events of 20 June 1963, and Dr. Moorman Prosser, a psychiatrist, gave expert testimony to that effect, writing: In March 1966, Judge Phillips ordered that a jury decide whether Wilson's amnesia meant he was incapable of mounting a proper defense. The jury sided with Wilson, but the case was not dismissed outright. As the Arizona Republic reported in 2018, the case was suspended on the basis that Wilson might someday recover his memories from that night and be in a position to present a proper defense. In December 1973, with the murder charges still pending and Wilson then 29 years old, his lawyers petitioned Choctaw County District Court to dismiss the case, arguing that the seven-year delay had been unreasonable and denied him his constitutional right to a speedy trial: The court agreed and dismissed all charges against Wilson. Later life In a 2017 interview with Arizona's Green Valley News, Wilson averred that he obtained a degree in political science from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1968 and a law degree from Texas Tech University in 1973. Wilson practiced law in Burleson, Texas, before moving to Phoenix, Arizona, in 1995, taking a position as law lecturer in Maricopa County Community Colleges and starting a private investigation firm. He told the Green Valley News that I didn't take the Arizona bar. I'd already done the law thing in spades, and I just wanted to move straight into something else completely different. However, Wilson told us in an email that he tried to take the Arizona bar exam in 2012 but his efforts to practice law there were thwarted by an old controversy. That old controversy was that Wilson had stopped practicing law in the state of Texas under a cloud of misconduct allegations in the early 1990s. He had been convicted of defrauding a client by committing forgery in Johnson County and was suspended from the practice of law in June 1990, but in the ensuing years Wilson persisted in advertising his services as an attorney and billing and collecting legal fees from client, according to the State Bar of Texas. While disciplinary action was pending against Wilson for alleged professional misconduct in July 1994, the Supreme Court of Texas received a letter written by a Robert J. Wilson announcing his resignation from the state bar, and the court thereafter ordered that Wilson's law license be cancelled and revoked and his name be ... dropped and deleted from the list of persons licensed to practice law in the State of Texas. The resignation letter read (in part): The Texas Supreme Court revoked and cancelled Wilson's state law license the following month. Wilson told us in an email that he had never resigned from the bar; that the resignation letter had been sent by some unknown person who had forged his signature. Wilson told us that he had written to the State Bar of Texas in 2012 asking to be reinstated so that he could practice law in Arizona, but his requests were denied. As of July 2018, the State Bar of Texas web site lists Wilson as having been not eligible to practice law in Texas since August 1994. Recovered memories In 2010, Wilson published his memoirs in book form as Bobby's Trials, in which he asserted that he had never confessed to killing either his mother or sister, and that corrupt and abusive police had lied to the local press about the case. In the book Wilson gave a detailed account of the events of that fateful night, claiming that early in his legal career (about ten years after the deaths), he visited a crime scene at a gas station in Texas while representing a client, and the odors of blood and gasoline brought back a full, conscious recollection of what had happened in the early morning hours of 20 June 1963. Since then, Wilson has averred he remembers that his sister was killed when his mother, aiming for him, struck her with the butt of a rifle. He has admitted that he shot his mother dead, but he denies setting the house on fire, claiming instead that his mother's wild shooting caused jars of gasoline stored in his bedroom to smash and spill, and the house subsequently exploded when a light switch shorted. In Bobby's Trials he described the event in a markedly different fashion than was recorded by Dr. Blevins back in 1963: In an email, Wilson told us that I stand by the wording and information in my book, 'Bobby’s Trials,' it is the most accurate description of what occurred. As of July 2018, Wilson is running as a Republican in Arizona's 2nd State Senate District. The Republican primary election is scheduled to take place on 28 August 2018.
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