The FBI is the most sophisticated law enforcement agency in the world, pursuing the most dangerous criminals in Washington D.C. when a suburban mother disappears into the night.
“Brian and his wife had gone out Friday night and the last he had seen her was about 11:30 that night.”
The bureau mobilizes.
“When you don’t have any eyewitnesses, it creates certain challenges. You run down every detail that you can. You leave no stone unturned.”
December 13th, 2003. It’s 3:30 in the morning in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, a suburb less than half an hour from the FBI’s headquarters in Washington D.C. Dispatchers get a 911 call from a man who says his wife is missing.
“Can I help you?”
“Yes ma’am. Um, my wife left out of here tonight about 11:30 to run to the store which is on the corner, and she is still not back.”
“You want to report her missing?”
“Yes.”
When police arrive at the home, the distraught husband, 36-year-old Brian Wilson, retraces the couple’s evening.
“I fell asleep right here on the couch. I don’t know how long I was asleep.”
On the night of Friday, December 12th, he and his wife had a date night. His wife, Inga Wilson, had dropped the children off at her aunt’s house. They went out to dinner and a movie.
“Once they got back to the house, um, Inga decided that she wanted to go out and get some candy.”
31-year-old Inga plans to go just up the street, but her husband never sees her again.
“He went in the house and he fell asleep, woke up a couple hours later and realized that she wasn’t home.”
“He called on the cell phone looking for her but, uh, never found her.”
“Inga, sweetie, where are you? You—you should have been back by now. Give me a call when you get this message.”
Inga Wilson is the mother of two boys, ages nine and three. There’s no way she would disappear in the middle of the night. Brian is panicked and begins searching for his wife.
“He gets up and he gets dressed, gets his car keys, and he sets about looking for her.”
The closest gas station is less than 5 minutes away. At the entrance to the community is a Shell gas station with a convenience store. He figures that that’s where she was heading to go get the candy. But the store clerk hasn’t seen anyone matching Inga’s description. Brian begins driving around the neighborhood looking for any signs of his wife.
“He drives around the community looking for her, doesn’t see her. He’s calling her cell phone, back to the house, see if she’s back yet. And then he repeats the loop.”
Inga is nowhere to be found. Brian calls her family to see if they’ve heard from her.
“Yeah, I’m looking for Inga.”
Inga’s aunt, Helen Furlow, is one of her closest relatives.
“Inga is one of my favorite nieces of all. She’s just a people person. The girl had it going on.”
She is shocked to hear from Brian so late at night.
“Oh my god. Just a phone call, um, 2 something in the morning. Her husband called me and said, ‘Have you seen Inga?’ I don’t know where she is. He said that he hadn’t seen or heard from her. I said, ‘Oh my god.'”
But neither Aunt Helen nor any other family member has heard a word from Inga. So naturally, the family is really getting worried. Brian calls his own relatives for support, then contacts the police.
“Who’s your wife?”
“Inga Wilson.”
“I-N-G-A.”
“Is she Black or White?”
“Black.”
“How old is she?”
“Uh, 31.”
When the first officer arrives at the house, Wilson’s mother is actually at the house with him, waiting with him. Now, as he’s looking for his wife, police issue a bulletin for Inga Wilson and her missing vehicle.
“Want to do something to it?”
All Brian can do now is wait.
Less than 12 hours later, a man walking in northeast Washington D.C., more than 15 miles from the Wilson home, sees something disturbing.
“The um gentleman was walking down the street here. We noticed the vehicle sitting over here and it looked like someone was in it.”
He takes a closer look and realizes that she wasn’t asleep, and in fact, you know, that she had appeared to be suffering from gunshot wounds to the head and was dead, and calls 911.
“DC Emergency 911, can I help you?”
“Yes ma’am. It’s a car with a body in it.”
Police rush to the 3000 block of Adams Street. There they find a green SUV with a dead woman inside.
“Initially, uh, the detectives didn’t have anything to really go on because we had to get her identified.”
Once we got her address and kind of an idea who she was, it turns out she had been missing since the night before. The victim is identified as Inga Wilson.
“Inga was in the passenger seat. The vehicle was facing in this direction. She was seat-belted in the seat and the vehicle was just parked here. Was not running. The vehicle was off and the doors were closed.”
“There’s blood pooled, um, underneath her and also on the armrest, uh, to her left. Her glasses had been blown off of her face. I remember the frames were in the passenger side map pocket.”
Inga Wilson had been shot a total of four times.
“Yeah, mhm.”
“In an SUV with gunshots to the head.”
“And blew, a very devastated—”
“Very devastated.”
Because the crime took place inside the D.C. city limits, police can call upon the most powerful law enforcement agency in the world: the FBI.
“Now what’s unique about the District of Columbia is that the laws are so written that the FBI actually legally have concurrent jurisdiction with the police. So legally, the FBI could work a local sexual assault or a local rape or a local murder.”
Brad Garrett is one of the FBI’s most storied agents. He’s known as “Dr. Death” for his uncanny ability to solve difficult murder cases.
“I’ve got a PhD in criminology and I was also a profiler. A lot of these cases that I worked, they tended not to come to me unless people were stuck.”
He’s struck by the savage nature of the murder.
“She was shot at close range. It would appear they were shot from the driver’s side to the passenger side where she was found. The killer was determined for her to die in that car.”
The crime scene is rich with clues about how Inga Wilson was killed.
“Got two shell casings in the back. The best we could tell, she had been shot here at this location. The window was shattered, and if you had driven anywhere with the window like that, it would have fallen out.”
Police notice how eerily calm the body looks.
“There were a lot of things that were unusual about the crime scene. For starters, you had someone seat-belted in a car who clearly didn’t see it coming. Didn’t appear that there was any type of struggle that occurred inside of the vehicle. Clothes were not in disarray. It told me it was somebody that she knew, somebody she probably felt comfortable with in the car with her.”
A quick search finds what appears to be drug paraphernalia behind the vehicle.
“There were several empty little zips, ziplock bags that are typically used to package street-level amounts of drugs, like a dime bag of crack cocaine.”
Could Inga have been buying drugs instead of candy? Police are even more curious about what’s missing from the crime scene. There was no weapon found on the scene.
“We knew that a .380 was used in the homicide to kill Inga because we had .380 shell cases.”
But that’s not all the killer took. There were no keys in the ignition. So whoever…
“Lo and behold, we see that I think at around 12:56 a.m. on Saturday, December 13th, there are two direct connects with Brian Wilson’s cell phone. And it was just one of those, you know, ‘aha’ moments in the case.”
“He corroborated Renee’s story about Brian, both texting her and calling her during that time period. It allowed us to show, first of all, that he was in the proximity of Inga’s car and that he had called, in fact, Renee to come pick him up that night.”
The evidence is the last piece of the puzzle. In September 2005, nearly two years after Inga’s killing, authorities arrest Brian Wilson. He is charged with the first-degree murder of his wife. Inga’s family is stunned that Brian has been charged with the heartless crime.
“I mean, it was so devastating. Never suspected him. Never. He played his role real good.”
“Hey Helen.”
“Yeah, this is Brian.”
“But I never forget something the detective said. They said a lot of time you looking the person right in the eye and don’t realize it.”
In May 2007, Brian Wilson goes on trial for the murder of his wife. The prosecution’s case is built largely around circumstantial evidence.
“We didn’t have one big brick. We didn’t have an eyewitness to the murder. But as time wore on, we were able to collect brick after brick after brick. The foundation for the wall, if you will, was Renee Benjamin and her account.”
Prosecutors detail everything they’ve gathered, including cell phone records and the videotaped admission that Brian had a gun at the time of the murder. But the most compelling testimony comes from his former lover, Renee Benjamin.
“I kind of glanced over there at him, but we didn’t make any eye contact. He was just kind of looking off somewhere else. Just the whole process was draining for me emotionally, to have to keep going back, answering questions, and, um, just reliving in that those feelings and my thoughts about my experience with Ryan.”
Authorities break down what they think really happened that night.
“Brian and his wife did go out to dinner and movie.”
“On the way back, somehow he convinced her to ride into D.C.”
“Parked the car, uh, in the 30,000 block of Adams Street, and she was a quiet street, but it was also near a club scene in Northeast D.C., and killed her.”
“And then called Renee Benjamin for a ride home.”
“She didn’t come get him.”
“Someone had been brought back to Upper Marlboro.”
“Um, once he got back there, then he called, uh, the relatives, called the cell phone, and told everybody that he’s been looking for his wife and can’t find her. Have they seen her?”
Brian Wilson refuses to take the stand. The prosecution can’t prove with certainty why he murdered his wife but suggests that he viewed her as standing in his way.
“She was an obstacle, uh, to him, to him living the life I think that he wanted to live with Renee Benjamin. And, uh, you know, it would seem that he took it out on her.”
“She just doesn’t matter because she’s not of any use to him at that point. And so I’ll just get rid of her so I don’t have to deal with her in my next, uh, relationship.”
The drug paraphernalia found at the scene could never be traced to Inga Wilson.
“They weren’t related to the circumstances that led to Miss Wilson’s demise. Uh, no indication in her background that she was a drug user.”
After one week, the jury returns a guilty verdict. Brian Wilson is later sentenced to 66 years in federal prison.
“To die the way she died, it was just unforgivable. For someone to even spend time in jail is not enough. And to think back to that night and I wouldn’t have known just in his voice, you know, talking to him, that he had just done something like that. It’s just mind-boggling to me.”
