The results of a monthslong investigation into the apparent suicide of his 25-year-old girlfriend inside his Henrico County apartment reached Wyatt Ward Hollar while he prepared to ship out with his National Guard unit in Mississippi.
It was July 24, 2007, and Hollar sat down to talk with veteran Henrico homicide detective Thomas Holsinger and Kevin Harver, a forensics specialist who had collected much of the evidence surrounding Danielle Wilson’s death.
They had traveled to Mississippi,Charm pendant, they said,key rings, because they wanted to be honest with the young soldier and Virginia Military Institute graduate who had been shot multiple times in Iraq; he had spent four years there working under a private contractor training police. He saw a lot of friends die, good people.
But he chuckled that he guessed some of the men who had attacked him and his fellow instructors and trainees had been recent graduates.
The conversation, which had been recorded and was played yesterday at Hollar’s second trial, grew a bit more tense.
"You’re not under arrest," Holsinger promised. "There’s no warrant or anything. But some of the results have come back that aren’t really explaining your side of the story."
Hollar listened patiently,Charm bracelet, and then Holsinger lowered the boom.
"There is no way she shot herself," Holsinger said of Wilson, who had graduated from James Madison University and planned to go to graduate school in business. "Based on my investigation and everything that I’ve learned, you did not tell us the truth. Of course, that’s not unusual in my line of work."
Holsinger pushed, speaking of VMI’s tradition of honor and truthfulness. He said scientific evidence, months of testing and test fires of a gun that Hollar said Wilson used all showed that the gunshot was fired from as far away as 3 feet,tiffany, an impossible distance for the woman to have executed a self-inflicted gunshot wound to her chest.
There was gunshot residue on both of Hollar’s hands and on one of Wilson’s hands, Holsinger said.
Hollar didn’t budge under the gentle prodding of Holsinger, whose soft but urgent voice belied a dogged determination.
"I’ve told you the truth," Hollar replied. "I can’t explain what your reports say. What I told you is what happened."
He pleaded his case again and again, even when Holsinger said he should expect to be arrested on a murder charge after investigators and prosecutors took their case to a grand jury.
Hollar, then 28, was indicted and arrested in February 2008, almost a year to the day after Wilson’s death.
Yesterday, the second day of his second trial, Hollar showed the same unshakeable confidence he expressed in Mississippi almost three years ago, as a rapt jury listened to the hourlong conversation with Holsinger and an earlier voluntary discussion with the detective the morning of Wilson’s death.
Now 30, Hollar won a new trial after being convicted in October 2008 of second-degree murder and being sentenced the same night to 15 years in prison. He was taken in handcuffs from a courtroom in front of his weeping family.
But the decision was overturned when Hollar’s legal team, Cary Bowen and Susan Parrish, discovered that jurors had listened to portions of the first interrogation that weren’t played in court.
The same legal team is now counting on new forensic findings that state experts had been wrong to conclude that Wilson could not have shot herself. Prosecutors, however, have a new expert who is expected to say the original findings by the state were correct.
The trial continues this morning in Henrico Circuit Court and is expected to last through Friday.
Contact Bill McKelway at (804) 649-6601 or bmckelway@timesdispatch.com.