(CBS) Garrett Wilson and Missy Anastasi didn't
exactly have a marriage made in heaven. Wed in 1986, they lost an infant
son the following year.
Anastasi suspected her husband may have
had a hand in the child's death. But when the medical examiner ruled that
the baby had died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, she put her
suspicions aside and decided to stay with Wilson.
But the marriage
wasn't easy. With Wilson, a charismatic Harold Hill-type character who
sold musical instruments for a living, moving around the country, from one
sales job to another, they were apart for months at a time.
Then
in 1993, Anastasi discovered that her husband had secretly filed for
divorce. Wilson later told her that he regretted having divorced her, and
wanted to give their relationship a second chance. A year later, she
agreed to join him in Texas, where he had found a high-paying job.
A few weeks before the move, Anastasi got a call from Vicky
Wampler.
"I wanted to call, and say ‘It’s time to move on,’" says
Wampler, who is Wilson's fourth wife.
Earlier that year, Wilson
had married Wampler, and they had settled into a comfortable life just
outside Dallas with their then 10-month-old daughter, Marysa.
Anastasi was devastated. It was then she realized that Wilson was
capable of anything.
When Wilson called her to explain his new
marriage, she accused him of murdering their son.
"I said,
‘Garrett, now that I see what you’re capable of doing to me, I know you
killed my baby,’ and he said, ‘ Missy, you’d be dead if you were here.’"
Anastasi went to the police and told them of her suspicions.
Although the case was very cold, she was determined to push it forward.
She spent the next four years, writing hundreds of letters to countless
officials, asking for help.
"If Garrett Wilson had never left
Missy, this never would have come forward before, because she had - lock,
stock, and barrel - believed in him," says prosecutor Doug Gansler, who
led the case against Wilson. Details of that case are in
"While Innocents Slept," a true-crime book by writer
Adrian Havill. Anastasi even warned Wampler to
protect her daughter.
"He’s just not capable of hurting a child,"
says Wampler, who believes that Anastasi is motivated, not by justice, but
by a desire for revenge.
"This type of relationship had gone on
for years. He moved, and she followed pursuit. When she realized that he
wasn’t coming back to her, I think that she became obsessed with his
destruction."
Liz Bahlmann, another woman with whom Wilson had a
relationship, agrees.
"She (Anastasi) would go to the ends of the
earth and spend her entire life until she destroys him," says Bahlmann,
She encountered Anastasi in 1985, before Wilson was married to her.
That summer, nastasi caught Bahlmann and Wilson on a date at a
Delaware beach. Both women then discovered that Wilson had also been
dating the other. Anastasi was enraged, Bahlmann says, and hit Wilson with
her sandals.
Wilson and Bahlmann left the beach in separate cars.
Bahlmann says Anastasi chased them in her car. "It was very frightening,"
she says. She says that she went off onto the shoulder; Anastasi denies
this.
That day, Wilson told Bahlmann that he had intended to end
their relationship and be with Anastasi. But by the end of the day he had
changed his mind.
A few months later, he proposed to Bahlmann. But
shortly after their wedding invitations went out, Bahlmann discovered that
he had already married Anastasi.
"It was devastating, it was
painful," says Bahlmann, who in her last conversation with Wilson told him
that she wanted the $3,000 she had lent him. Wilson paid off the money
soon after his son died.
How did Wilson cast his spell over so
many women? He was charismatic and caring, says Bahlmann: "He treated you
like a queen- like you were the only person on earth that mattered."
But despite her bad breakup with him, Bahlmann says that Wilson is
not capable of
murder.
"Garrett Wilson is a con artist. he is
motivated by greed, and the vehicle to get his greed is women," says
Gansler. "He would certainly prey on a particular type of woman- a needy
woman, someone who would be sort of taken in by him."
Can
police gather enough evidence? Find out:
Part
III