Mar 2, 2006 6:03 pm US/Pacific
Exclusive New Interviews In Christie Wilson Case
SACRAMENTO (CBS 13) ―
The man accused of killing Christie Wilson is Mario Garcia. Tonight, a woman who once dated Garcia says he tried to kill her. She's talking only to CBS 13 and what this woman says happened to her - will give you chills.
Thunder Valley Casino - where five months ago Christie Wilson was sitting at a blackjack table with six hundred dollars worth of chips in front her. It was right around 10 o'clock when her boyfriend called her cell phone.
"Come home," he pleaded. She told him she would - she never did.
As the October sun came up near the Thunder Valley Casino, and Christie Wilson still hadn't returned to her Natomas apartment, boyfriend Danny Burlando started to panic.
"I called some hospitals and jails to see if something had happened," says Burlando.
Something had happened, as you know by now. Christie Wilson disappeared after walking out of the casino with a man she met and gambled with that night and even though her body has never been found.
The man she left with, Mario Garcia, has been charged with her murder.
Tonight we dig into Garcia's past, with the help of the CBS network program 48 Hours, which produced an hour-long special on the Wilson case.
Wendy ward, Garcia's former girlfriend, who says the man charged with killing Christie Wilson, nearly killed her:
"He pulled a gun out of his cabinet and he took a cartridge and he slammed it on the bottom and then he brought the gun over and he held it to my head and then he pulled the trigger," says Ward.
The gun wasn't loaded, but ward's night, she says, was filled with terror.
"I think he said to me: 'Take off your clothes,' and I said no, I was just kicking and scratching and doing whatever I could do and then he choked me, he started to choke me," she says.
Then, ward says, she was raped. But Mario Garcia was never convicted of raping ward. In fact, he pled down to a lesser charge and never spent a night in jail.
Nor was he charged in another incident. Two people in the car he was allegedly driving, drowned as that car went into the water, the victims' relatives claim Garcia deliberately killed them.
"The forensic people told him that the person who survived that accident is someone who knew it was going to happen," says the victims' brother Tom Ford.
No one knew what would happen to Christie Wilson, no one, police say - except Mario Garcia.
(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
Stumble It!
Comments