They had a litany of crimes that they were wanting to commit.
“I was a monster.”
“There’s nothing that compares to this just in terms of the sheer brutality.”
“They were indulging their fantasy.”
“I was under the impression that friendship is more important than anything else, even the lives of others.”
On January 5th, 1997 in Belleview, Washington State, police receive an urgent call. Two young boys under bicycles drove through this path.
They discovered the human body.
When investigators arrive at the scene, they find a young woman with a rope around her neck. One assumption was made that the person could have committed suicide by hanging. Then the rope broke and she fell to the ground. But it’s soon evident she’s been murdered.
“The rope had been tied with two knots securing the rope around her neck. That would indicate that the killer wanted to make sure that she would not survive.”
A search turns up several cigarette butts. Detectives also get a name. After the body was located, it was identified through a checkbook that was found in the back pocket of her jeans. Determined it to be a Kimberly Wilson of an address approximately four to five blocks from this location.
Radio David 31. I’m proceeding on 121st Avenue Southeast Wilson residence to make a death notification. careful.
When I arrived at the Wilson’s residence, I went up to the front door and there was no answer.
The back door is unlocked.
At this point, my gut tells me that there is something wrong. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if it’s a danger to me or to the people that are in the residence, possibly. I called out so that anyone in the house would know that I was there. There was no answer. I walked to the end bedroom. In the doorway, I discovered the body. It was a young girl. She was face down in a pool of blood at the threshold of the bedroom. Her head and torso was bludgeoned and slashed.
No. No.
Probably by a knife of some sort.
Please. No.
There’s quite a bit of blood spattered throughout the walls and the door where she was lying. I didn’t know if that murderous suspect was still in the home and possibly ready to attack me.
No, please. No.
But I had to keep my wits about me and was prepared to take a life if someone a suspect were there. I could see a woman on the bed, bludgeoning, her head mutilated, blood spatter all over the wall and the the headboard of the bed. But the horror is not over yet. There is a male lying in a huge pool of blood at the foot of the bed with clothes only in a t-shirt. An unbelievable shoe print mark in blood on the back of the t-shirt and some shoe prints from the puddle of blood on the carpet.
Three people lay slaughtered in their own home with a fourth at the park.
Police officers very rarely come upon dead bodies. Locating the bodies for me was a traumatic incident.
A detailed forensic search gets underway.
We found a cutup black t-shirt that had the front section cut out of it.
Electrical items are missing as only cut power cords remain.
This might lead one to believe that it was a burglary and the burglary might have gone bad.
The family had endured frenzied attacks. It was evident from the scene and from the bodies that the objective of these murders was the act of killing itself.
Police find numerous bloody footprints and other forensic evidence which could reveal the killer’s DNA. The autopsy reports confirm the victims as Bill and Rose Wilson and their 17-year-old daughter, Julia. All three died from extreme blunt force trauma and multiple stab wounds.
I describe the killers as severely psychologically disturbed with the extreme amount of rage uh given the number of people that were killed.
The pathologist reveals Rose Wilson was attacked in her sleep and repeatedly stabbed even after she was already dead.
It was clear that she hadn’t been moving at the time that there was no motive other than the killer’s effort to experience plunging that knife into that woman.
Bill Wilson had also been repeatedly clubbed and stabbed.
A piece of the suspect’s knife, the tip, was found embedded in his skull. It seemed very likely that there was more than one person involved in the homicides because there were two distinct weapons used and used repeatedly. There was clearly some kind of long cutting instrument, some long blade that someone wielded against all the victims and wielded with great enthusiasm.
It was equally evident that someone had used uh what appeared to be a baseball bat.
Julia was found in her bedroom doorway, suggesting she heard the attacks on her parents before meeting a similar fate. The amount of defensive wounds suggests she fought for her life.
Julia Wilson was bludgeoned over her head. Her throat was slashed and a number of knife wounds into her chest.
The body in the park is confirmed as 20-year-old Kim Wilson, the oldest daughter. The coroner verifies she had been strangled and kicked with such force her spleen was damaged and three ribs broken.
A community is terrified. Two killers are roaming free and the police fear they could strike again.
In January 1997, Belleview police are investigating the brutal slang of the Wilson family. The quiet Seattle suburb is terrified. Quadruple murders are extremely rare, but they’re even rarer in this part of the world. So, I think the entire community was in shock and frightened. And I think it affected people very deeply.
The ferocity of the attacks baffles police.
It didn’t appear that that Bill or Rose Wilson had any enemies or engaged in any kind of high-risk uh lifestyles that might have made them, you know, subject to the predation of people like this.
The Wilsons were an all-American family here.
The father, Bill, he worked as an accountant for a steel firm locally here. The mother, Rose, worked at the University of Washington.
Kim, their oldest daughter, was visiting for the holidays.
Kim, worked at the Americanore uh in San Diego as a government uh subsidized organization for youth.
The youngest daughter, Julia, was still in high school.
A massive murder investigation is underway.
I speak to family members, associates of the family, neighbors, anyone that can give me information that would lead me to a possible suspect.
A friend of Kim comes forward and tells police about a boy Kim used to date years ago.
She supplied me with information about a young man named David who dropped out of high school.
You can do this.
Would bum cigarettes off of Kim and and meals.
The friend says David Anderson owed Kim money. She began to keep a tally of the amount of money that he owed her and began to become more assertive about suggesting to him that he needed to pay it back.
The woman also tells police about David’s friend, Alex Barann.
Yeah.
She thought Alex was a bit weird. Alex kind of had a a Seattle grunge look, you know, greasy hair, kind of darker clothes, not not clean shaven, kind of dirty. He was always real quiet, never really said a lot. And when he did, it was either inappropriate or didn’t have much meaning. He was David’s constant companion. And we heard also that Alex Baranni and David Anderson were sort of engaged in sword play and sword collection and our attention focused very quickly on those two.
David Anderson was born on March 2nd, 1979. One of four boys, he grew up in Belleview, Washington. His father was a security systems manager and he had a stay-at-home mom. There were rumors among the kids that we interviewed that he uh had a very difficult relationship with his father. His dad was very much a disciplinarian with him and David, I think, rebelled against that and and acted out.
From an early age, David unleashed his pent up feelings on others. A bully is generally related to someone that has a great deal of insecurity. David expressed his anger through devaluing and rejecting other people before they could reject him. But to some, he showed a friendlier face.
I never noticed David being unusually aggressive or violent.
You know, David was kind of a pretty boy. I think I can think of at least three or four girls that he had been with that, but I can think back and think, you know, he had more girlfriends than I had.
Anderson was an attractive young man. He had a wide circle of friends. He was apparently admired by a number of his peers.
I think David’s personality typology was narcissistic. These people generally are somewhat grandiose and fun to be around and draw other people to them, attract people to them.
In 1991, at the start of seventh grade in middle school, David Anderson met Alex Bar. Alex Banni Jr. was born on May 14th, 1979 in Ohio. He was a fast learner who started reading books when he was just 3 years old. He was a very bright kid, a very intelligent, engaging individual. The family relocated to Everett in Washington State. At the age of eight, Alex’s parents divorced and he became introverted.
I really didn’t feel very close to either of my parents. At that point in my life, I was kind of distancing myself from a lot of people. I could have really used a brother or sister, somebody to share the load, you know, somebody to talk to. Would have been nice, somebody that was constant.
His father had custody, but Alex ended up shuffled between both parents for several years, transferring schools each time.
My father started moving us around a lot. So, I didn’t have a chance to make a lot of new friends and stuff.
As his isolation increased, so did his anger at the world.
I stopped trying to get friends. Recess at school, I’d walk around by myself, you know, walk in circles around, you know, it’s just me by myself, you know. I wasn’t trying to reach out to other people. Uh it led to depression and alienation and ultimately built a great deal of rage. Used to hate everyone.
After David and Alex met in seventh grade, they became more than just good pals.
David was my absolute best friend in the world.
I, you know, I loved him like a brother, you know, and I would do anything for him. He’s a he was the person that I felt understood me.
There’s no question that when the two of them got together, they empowered each other.
Together, they intend to shock the world.
I wanted to do something that was inconceivable to a normal person.
In January 1997, Belleview police are investigating a quadruple homicide dive deeper into the unusual friendship of their chief suspects, Alex Baranni and David Anderson.
The relationship between Alex and David was a curious one, but the two of them together, there was a certain intimacy. I’m not suggesting it was sexual, but it was the kind of intimacy that you associate with people in a romantic relationship. Um, they were inseparable.
For the first time in his life, Alex Banni no longer felt alone. a person that feels so alone and so separated from society when they find that one person that they really understand and that they believe really understands them. It’s it’s solid gold. You can’t you can’t just give it up.
I think Alex saw David as someone who was probably a little bit cooler than he was, someone was a little bit more popular. So I think he he really looked up to David and that kind of role model figure.
In 1995, Alex and David dropped out of school. Rebels without a cause.
I think high school was a difficult time for both David and Alex of just not fitting in with the mainstream. They both were 17 years old. They pretty much were just lost juvenile delinquents. They both had no direction in their life. had no good relationships with either of their families.
They both worked construction jobs and hung around with their own unique group of friends.
I hate to describe myself as a goth kid, but I pretty much was. Yeah. I started seeking out more of a kind of a counterculture thing. You know, I got involved with wearing all black in high school. Thought about depressing thoughts a lot. You know, I was very angry most of the time, but I didn’t go out looking for fights. Uh, never attacked anyone for no reason.
David and Alex fought fantasy battles in the park.
You know, I can remember David and Alex playing this game they called Kintto, which I guess is a like a Dungeons and Dragons. take this PVC piping, you know, the plumbers’s pipe, and put the uh styrofoam uh insulation around it, mock it up like a sword.
Eventually, their fake swords were replaced.
I used to keep samurai swords. I kept them as art because they’re really beautiful objects.
David Anderson displayed his collection of knives and bats, and Alex did the same. And so it was no secret uh that they had weapons and that they practiced with them.
I often thought very dark things. I often thought, what would it be like to kill somebody? Um what would make me cross that line?
Investigators learned from the teenager’s friends that they talked openly about murder.
David brought up the idea of murder uh before Alex.
You ever thought about like murdering somebody?
I think it was brought up in the gauge of being a fantasy at first.
David would expound on a list that he devised of people he wanted to kill. His friends were sitting around. They would talk about it. They would add names who they hated, who he hated. meter there.
David’s former girlfriend, Kim Wilson, was shocked to find her name on their debt list. Although she didn’t think they were serious.
She confronted both David and Alex about it.
I don’t think that she ever realized or or understood that her life was in real jeopardy.
On January 9th, a few days after the Wilson’s bodies were discovered, police visit Alex to question him about his whereabouts that night.
He indicated that he was home all that night with David Anderson. They were playing video games.
His alibi quickly falls apart.
Another renter in that home indicated that Alex had left. sometime around 11:00 with David Anderson. This essentially put a conflict in Alex Bronny’s alibi.
They came and asked me if I would give another uh another interview down at the station. I was kind of worried, but at the same time, I really didn’t think that they were going to arrest me. Uh, I was definitely egotistical enough to think that way, but then again, I realized that they knew I was lying. At that point, I just felt like, well, if they if they know, then what’s the point of trying to hide it?
He had on all of her dark clothes, black.
He was describing in enormous detail in the most uh vivid way murdering the Wilsons.
I didn’t expect it. He was in an exhilarated state, you know, just time. I couldn’t stop thinking like he was aroused uh by what he’d done and what he’d planned so long to do.
When I realized I was strangling her, I remember seeing her face turn blue and I just I couldn’t stop.
He spoke of stabbing the mother in her temple as she lay in the bed.
The more I did it.
At times he was overtly excited about it, saying, you know, the human skull is a hard hard thing.
We’re like the skull.
He thought he could stab the person in the head and plunge the knife right through it.
to hear Alex Branny describe in sort of excruciating detail. It It’s almost hard to believe that anyone could recounted in such great detail with no real signs of remorse at all.
I think that the way I described this stuff was not because I wanted to shock so much as just be real with it, make people understand.
With who?
And he knew Julia was in her bedroom down the hall.
I definitely was not in the moment. I was almost like a zombie sleepwalking through it after after killing the girl in the park. I was so absolutely numb that I could have done anything at that point, you know. Then there’s, you know, somebody on your shoulder saying, “Well, you have to finish what you started.”
She knelt in front of him crying and he said, “I’m sorry. I have to do this.” And he and he killed her there.
I was a monster.
He had no remorse about what he did to that entire family.
During police interviews, I said, “You know what? I don’t feel guilty.” And that wasn’t true. I did immediately realize that I’d done something very wrong.
Why did you go to the house?
His candid confession surprises investigators.
He said that he had been feeling, and I quote him, as if he were in a rut. He wanted to experience something transcendent. He wanted to experience uh uh something that was uh uh extraordinary.
The one thing Alex won’t talk about is who was with him that night.
Spent an awfully long time in interrogation, making up lies to protect others, taking the full blame.
Imagine imagine a 17-year-old kid walking into a police interrogation and saying, “You know what? I did everything, which is exactly what I said.”
He would not confess to David being involved with him in this murder.
I was under the impression that friendship is more important than anything else, even the lives of others.
Alex is charged with all four murders. Investigators bring David Anderson in for questioning.
David Anderson was very, very calculating, cunning individual.
I knew in my heart that David Anderson was involved in this murder somehow. I just didn’t have enough evidence to prove it.
In 1997 in Belleview, Washington, Alex Barani has admitted his part in the murders of four people, but refuses to implicate his best friend, David Anderson.
He said, you know, don’t ask me to route out David. I’d rather get the the death penalty. I believe Alex depended on David and I think he was protecting David out of some loyalty.
David was like a brother, you know, and I would do anything for him.
Investigators questioned David Anderson.
He claims he was playing video games with Alex that night and had nothing to do with the murders.
phone.
David Anderson uh said very little. David was told that Alex had confessed and uh made no difference to him.
He seemed to me to be very relaxed, somewhat nonchalant about everything. And this is a murder investigation, which I thought was odd.
With no evidence linking him to the crime, detectives make a tough decision.
We had to release him. I believe he thought he had outsmarted us.
Let’s not get
Don’t have anything on me.
Without sufficient evidence to secure a warrant for David’s home, investigators search Alex’s rented room. The evidence we found in Alex Baronny’s room was a VCR that was taken from the Wilson’s house. It had blood on it. The Wilson CD player and phone are also recovered. But there are no boots that match the bloody prints found in the Wilson home, nor murder weapons.
Everything that had blood on it was disposed of very far away. Um, there were a pair of boot laces covered in blood found in my garbage can. No idea where those came from. They weren’t mine.
Officers pressed David’s friends for additional information about those murder conversations.
We learned that both of them knew and had discussed the fact that if they committed murder after they turned 18, they might be subject to the death penalty. So there was an element of calculation here.
The juvenile court system would not have such a severe penalty against the juvenile committing murder.
Finally, detectives get a break in implicating David. They find that on the night of the murders, he borrowed a truck from his girlfriend.
A witness came forward and told us he had observed a pickup truck parked in the parking lot of Water Tower Park at the time of the murder.
Inside, police find evidence linking David to the crimes. They discover a cutup t-shirt similar to the one found at the murder scene. But that’s not all.
We found rope in that pickup truck that matched the rope around Kim Wilson’s neck. This gave us probable cause to bring David in and arrest him.
On January 14th, 1997, David is arrested on suspicion of murder while investigators continue to build a case against him. Police now have enough evidence to get a warrant to search his room, and they find a pair of boots and clothing, which are sent for detailed forensic examination. David also has a journal, and it helps seal his fate. The primary target of his anger was Kim Wilson.
I think Anderson thought that Kim basically ought to consider it a privilege to be able to associate with him at all.
His motivation for wanting to kill her appeared to be a simple grudge.
He was outraged when she sort of began to express a certain independence and began to suggest that perhaps uh he ought to pay for his own cigarettes rather than borrowing hers. But it was her demands on him and his perceived loss of control that outraged him.
This seemingly sort of trivial motive seemed to really inflame Anderson in some way that I can’t completely fathom.
David always thought he was smarter than everyone else.
He knew that he wanted to kill Kimberly Wilson and he was going to do it with the help of Alex Barani.
Despite Alex’s confession, the police know they will have to rely on their forensic evidence to secure convictions.
In Belleview, Washington, police finally have suspected multiple murderers, David Anderson and Alex Barann behind bars. Because of the large amount of forensic evidence collected, lab results take 9 months to process. Police learn a cigarette butt found where Kim Wilson was strangled contains her DNA, revealing that she most likely knew her killer.
It was quite clear that Kim had voluntarily rendevoused with someone that she knew and had smoked a cigarette with him.
Kim Wilson did not like Alex Banny and made no secret of that.
I’d only met her a couple times. I, you know, barely knew her name really.
Investigators believe David picked Kim up that night and brought her to the park where Alex was waiting.
Stop acting like my parent.
Yeah.
You think this is funny?
I’m on the right track. All right.
Other microscopic evidence also links the two friends with the murders at the Wilson house. The blood on the shoelaces found in Alex’s room is confirmed as William Wilson’s.
There was blood found on the pair of boots that David wore on the night of the murder.
The blood matches William and Julia Wilson.
I knew David Anderson participated in the murders. Now, we had physical evidence to prove he was involved in the murders.
He’d apparently cleaned his boots fairly carefully, but he had missed some very small airborne droplets of blood from two of the three victims of the murders in the house. These blood stains are associated with what they call medium velocity blood spatter, which is associated with blunt force, like striking someone with a baseball bat.
Police are now convinced Kim Wilson’s family was killed because they knew she was with David.
The problem with the plan, per se, is that you have to make sure there are no witnesses to who the girl is going out with.
But this was no spur-of-the- moment decision.
In their conversations among their friends, they had noted that if you killed one person, you had to kill everybody in the house cuz they would be potential witnesses.
The unusual bond between David and Alex is a key part of the investigation.
David controlled the relationship with Alex. David was more uh confident, more grandiose, uh generally in control and Alex a follower.
I think their rage together became synergistic.
I believe Alex and David were kind of a lock and a key. They could have walked away at so many different points, but didn’t.
I would rather keep the promises to my friends and kill someone than break the promises that I’ve made to my friends.
Because of Alex’s confession, David’s attorney requests that each teenager is tried separately.
They thought that they would be treated in the juvenile system if they committed these murders before they were 18. They were wrong about that.
David and Alex are both tried as adults.
On October 12th, 1998, Alex Banni pleads not guilty to four counts of aggravated first-degree murder, claiming diminished mental capacity.
The gist of his mental defense was that he was really not responsible because he was under the influence of this other sort of charismatic evil person.
David Anderson wasn’t my idea. I was certainly not taking a lead. I was being manipulated into doing what I did.
There frankly was very little if any evidence that he suffered from any kind of mental illness or infirmity at all.
There really wasn’t much of a case though. Honestly, the the mental defense that we used was basically a complete last resort.
We the jury find the defendant guilty uh of the crime of murder in the first degree as charged.
On November 4th, 1998, Alex Banni is found guilty of four counts of aggravated firstdegree murder.
He knew exactly what was going to happen, and he did not take that opportunity to say anything and or express any any remorse or any empathy for his victims.
I have 777 years to do. I’m basically just waiting to die.
He is currently imprisoned at Stafford Creek Correctional Facility in Aberdine, Washington.
Once I got to prison, that gave me free time to start really thinking about what I had done. My god, what what did I do? Why did I do that? And how could how could I do this to these people? I want them to know that I really do feel terrible about what I did. And I would do anything to make it up, to fix it. I know I can’t, and I’m sorry for that. I feel privileged that I’m still alive. Basically, I was given a chance that I did not give my victims, and I’m not sure if that’s justice, but I’m thankful for it.
On January 25th, 1999, David Anderson stands trial for the murders of the Wilson family. He also pleads not guilty, claiming Alex must have acted alone. With Alex refusing to testify against his friend, the prosecution’s case relies on forensic and circumstantial evidence. But with no confession and no eyewitnesses, his 8-month trial ends with the jury deadlocked.
It’s always really disappointing to have a mistrial. It leaves everything completely unresolved.
On October 11th, 1999, a second trial begins. This time, his defense is different, admitting that there were two killers that night, but David was not one of them. But the jury believes he was there.
David is a very controlling individual. He had planned this murder for over a year from what witnesses tell us. He had collected knives and swords to do this with. He planned almost every aspect of this, obviously, because he wanted to get away with it.
After a two-month trial, David Anderson is found guilty on all charges and receives life without parole. He is currently incarcerated at Washington State Reformatory and still maintains his innocence.
You know, it’s very mixed feelings about getting a verdict of guilty in a case like this because although it’s a relief to everyone, this really was uh four counts of aggravated murder committed by two 17-year-old boys.
Former friends of the killers remain bewildered.
you know, I can’t believe that I was friends with, you know, with two guys that could murder an entire family. Um, more so, I can’t believe that I ever, uh, you know, brought them to my home or introduced them to my parents or my brothers and sisters. And, uh, you know, it just it blows me away.
David Anderson and Alex Barann will never meet again.
I found out that he really didn’t understand me as much as I thought. And you know that friendship is gone. You know it’s over. Now this case out of all the homicides I’ve investigated did affect me. I have a family very much like the Wilson family. A wife, two daughters, same ages. It could happen to anyone at any time. So, I know from the duration of sitting through that trial, I locked every door at night and I made sure every window was shut because you had the sense that monsters were out there and that monsters could break into your house.
David and Alex that night were monsters.
