Prairie Confidential

Speaker 1 the Creator of Homeland, Claire Daines and Matthew Rees star in the new Netflix series The Beast in Me as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences.

Speaker 1 The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat-and-mouse story about guilt and justice and doubt, now playing only on Netflix.

Speaker 2 If you're a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility and your machinery isn't working right, Granger knows you need to understand what's wrong as soon as possible.

Speaker 2 So when a conveyor motor falters, Granger offers diagnostic tools like calibration kits and multimeters to help you identify and fix the problem.

Speaker 2 With Granger, you can be confident you have everything you need to keep your facility running smoothly. Call 1-800GRANGER, clickgranger.com, or just stop by.
Granger for the ones who get it done.

Speaker 3 The night before, Angela thought that she'd heard somebody messing at the front door of the residence. She felt she was being watched.

Speaker 3 All the wounds that she had to her body, it was a very angry attack.

Speaker 1 My girl ain't answered on the phone. The officers could see a lot of blood.

Speaker 4 She was just this sweet little southern girl, so senseless.

Speaker 1 He found the back door to the residence kicked open. She's kicked in.
He doesn't go in.

Speaker 3 People thought that there was something suspicious about that.

Speaker 1 Did he try to point the finger at anybody else? Angela's ex-husband.

Speaker 1 What happened to your face?

Speaker 1 I did a scratch of hands.

Speaker 1 Did he have an alibi?

Speaker 3 He said he did.

Speaker 1 They asked me if I would be willing to come up there and wear a wire. He got sloppy.
She said, well, the knife was a backup, it was supposed to be a gun.

Speaker 1 I think she was almost proud of the whole thing.

Speaker 1 Wow. That was my response.
Wow.

Speaker 1 It was dark on the Great Central Plain.

Speaker 1 Moonless in the early hours that Friday, the 13th of November.

Speaker 1 A small night wind shivered along flat deserted streets and nipped with freezing little teeth at the ruins of autumn in Minot, North Dakota.

Speaker 1 Was there a muffled cry, the sound of a car making haste away?

Speaker 1 No one heard.

Speaker 1 Not a thing.

Speaker 1 It's a modest place, Minot.

Speaker 1 Modest in a good way.

Speaker 1 And uncommonly friendly, comparatively speaking, of course.

Speaker 3 It's comfortable. It's a family community.

Speaker 1 North Dakota, nice. Maybe an old-fashioned phrase, but it still fits.

Speaker 6 The people who have been around a long time still greet each other on the street.

Speaker 1 As they did that chilly morning in November 2015. when parents dropped off their kids at this elementary school.

Speaker 1 And where, later that morning at Minot State University's Department of Nursing, Professor Diane Sholl wondered why one of her students hadn't shown up for an 11 a.m. exam.

Speaker 4 Before we all started taking the test, I said, has anybody heard from Angela?

Speaker 1 Angela was this woman.

Speaker 7 My name is Angela Wilder. I'm a student nurse with MSU, and I'll be assessing your cardiovascular system today.

Speaker 4 She was just this sweet little southern girl.

Speaker 1 Sweet little southern girl.

Speaker 4 Yep. Always Miss Diane and yes, ma'am, and no, ma'am.

Speaker 7 Okay, I'll let the doctor know, and he'll be in with you shortly.

Speaker 1 Angela Wilder was, in addition to a nursing student, a mother of three, who, just days before, had revealed to her professor that she was pregnant. Did you have any advice for her?

Speaker 4 Well, we talked about...

Speaker 4 How stressful school is. We talked about, you know, her not feeling well.

Speaker 4 And then that's when I just told her, yes, she's expected to come to class, but if she couldn't, she needed to call and let me know, and we would just make other arrangements.

Speaker 1 But that morning, no call, no Angela. Was she ill?

Speaker 1 Class was over before one of Diane's students dropped a kind of bombshell.

Speaker 4 She said, well, I think it was Angela's house when I drove to school, but there's police tape around it and a lot of people in hazmat suits.

Speaker 1 And indeed, it was Angela's house. This little place next to a Lutheran church across the street from that elementary school.
It was Angela's fiancé home from a night shift who called 911.

Speaker 1 I just got home. My back door is kicked in, and my girl ain't answering the phone.
My son's inside with her and everything. I'm about to go in and see what the f is going on.

Speaker 1 Okay, why don't you just wait for officers? I'll get him over there. So, the fiancé stayed outside.
The officers went in.

Speaker 1 The house was neat, tidy. They found the two-year-old unharmed.
They went down the hall, looked in the next bedroom, and there she was, very dead.

Speaker 1 I didn't know at the time exactly how many times she was stabbed, but I knew that it was vicious. Why not police Detective Sergeant Dave Goodman? How many eventually did you find out?

Speaker 1 How many stab wounds? Somewhere near 40. And there was the fiancé, and you've got a crime that looks like a crime of passion.
What story did he tell about coming home?

Speaker 1 He reported that he had been at work all night. When he arrived home and found the back door to the residence kicked open, he said that he was obviously concerned about that.

Speaker 1 If that was me, I think I would have rushed in there to see what was going on with my family. And I say that too.

Speaker 1 Of course, until you experience that yourself, I guess none of us know how we would react.

Speaker 1 Still, Goodman's detective instinct kicked in. So what if some 911 dispatcher told him to wait? Would an innocent, worried parent really do that? It was suspicious.

Speaker 1 Why did Angela's fiancé Chris stay outside? And had he really been at work all night as he said he was?

Speaker 1 They took him downtown for the first of several interviews, where Goodman and his partner, Detective Sergeant Krista Matice, sized him up. His name was Chris Jackson.
How did he present?

Speaker 3 He was calm. He was crying.
He was upset. He was mad.

Speaker 1 Where was he that night?

Speaker 1 Chris said Angela drove him to work at Walmart.

Speaker 1 Dropped him off before 11 p.m.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I kiss her and I say, I love you, sweetheart. Drive safe.
Have a good night. Angela was nervous, he said, afraid to be left alone.
Why did he say she was anxious during the night?

Speaker 3 The night before, she thought that she'd heard somebody messing at the front door of the residence. She felt she was being watched.

Speaker 1 So, said Chris, he called and he texted her repeatedly. But after 2 a.m., he said, she didn't pick up when he called.

Speaker 3 And he figured she had fallen asleep.

Speaker 1 But no, she wasn't sleeping.

Speaker 1 But who killed her? And why?

Speaker 1 When Chris first arrived at the police station, they let him make a phone call.

Speaker 1 It was obvious he had his own suspect in mind. Richie's probably the fing piece of who did it.

Speaker 1 God, I fing hope they piece it too. I fing hope so.

Speaker 1 Richie?

Speaker 1 Who was he?

Speaker 1 A pregnant young mom, dead, her toddler nearby. And an investigation about to lead to even darker discoveries.

Speaker 3 Her fingernails were broken off.

Speaker 1 Detectives talk to Richie. What happened to your face?

Speaker 1 Are they getting closer or getting played? Did he have an alibi?

Speaker 3 He said he did.

Speaker 1 The wind on the prairie is a fickle thing,

Speaker 1 like people sometimes are. Is that why Angela Wilder's fiancé, Chris, was so angry? Richie's probably the f ⁇ ing piece of who did it.
There was a history to this.

Speaker 1 Long before that November morning in 2015 and far away from Minot, North Dakota, in Alabama, Angela met Richie at church. They were the best of friends as kids.

Speaker 1 And after Angela had a baby as a teenager, it was Richie who scooped her up, married her, adopted her little girl, and before long they had a boy of their own.

Speaker 1 All witnessed by Angela's sister, Crystal.

Speaker 8 She tended to date guys that were funny, that were gentle, that were intelligent. And really,

Speaker 8 Richie was all those things.

Speaker 1 Richie was in the Air Force. That's why they moved to Minot, big air base there.
And it's where Angela pursued her dream of becoming a nurse.

Speaker 8 She took classes whenever she could. She could have up to two jobs at a time, still attend her classes, and take care of her kids.

Speaker 1 Why did Richie and Angela's lifelong bond rupture? Who really knows? But theirs curdled into a corrosive, toxic anger.

Speaker 1 Richie was court-martialed, convicted of domestic abuse, drummed out of the military. A divorce followed.

Speaker 1 But then, like the prairie wind, their affections shifted. Richie remarried a small-town North Dakota girl named Cindy, who had moved to Minot and become a kindergarten teacher.

Speaker 1 And soon Cindy and Richie had a baby of their own. And Angela got engaged to Chris, and she had another baby too.
And these two new families all settled down again.

Speaker 1 Or they might have, except for Richie and Angela's nasty custody battle.

Speaker 4 She said he's just fighting me all the time, you know, and it's just been really hard with the kids.

Speaker 1 It was bad between those two. Scary.

Speaker 8 I got a frantic phone call from her one morning. And I was like, calm down, what's going on? She says, it's Richie.

Speaker 8 I just woke up, came out of my bedroom, went into my living room, and he's sitting on my couch and looked at me and said, see, I told you I can get to you if I wanted to.

Speaker 1 Is that what happened here? An angry ex-husband's revenge?

Speaker 10 Hello. Hi, are you Richie? Yes, ma'am.

Speaker 1 Hi, Richie. My name is Mr.
Richard. A few hours after the murder, after talking to Angela's fiancé, Chris,

Speaker 1 detectives Goodman and Matice called Richie in for a talk.

Speaker 1 But he didn't seem to know what was going on. And I'll tell you, Angela's dead.
Oh, really? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Did he seem upset by what had happened? He didn't. No.
Did that strike you as odd? It did, yes. Well, you'd want to have some reaction.
It's the mother of his child. That's what we would expect.

Speaker 1 Their questions got tougher. Did you kill her? No.
Nope. No.

Speaker 1 I'm 100% truthful. Did he have an alibi?

Speaker 3 He said he did. Did you work last night?

Speaker 1 From 7 to 11, yes, ma'am. Okay.
Where did you go after you left work?

Speaker 1 Straight home.

Speaker 3 Can anybody tell us what time you got home?

Speaker 1 Cindy.

Speaker 1 That is his new wife, the kindergarten teacher, who confirmed that when she woke up for the baby during the night, Richie was beside her in bed. He was home the three times that I was up.

Speaker 1 If that's the truth, Cindy, then that's fine. I mean, maybe he was home during those three times that you were up during the night.
Is that possible? Sure.

Speaker 1 But what do you know about this?

Speaker 1 So, maybe the detectives could get some evidence from the crime scene techs, who told them Angela had tried to fight off or kill her.

Speaker 3 Her fingernails were broken off. It appeared that the assault actually occurred while she was in bed and ended up on the floor next to the bed.

Speaker 1 Your DNA is not going to show up anywhere on her? No.

Speaker 1 It's not possible. The DNA

Speaker 1 is going to show up under her fingernails.

Speaker 1 But they couldn't help but see the scratch. What happened to your face? Where? You had a scratch in your face from my face.

Speaker 3 He had the story that he had been wrestling with his younger son and that he had got scratched.

Speaker 1 Police also impounded two cars driven by Richie and his wife, and in one, a small spot of something dark brown on the inside of a door.

Speaker 1 Visible to the naked eye, but not obvious that it was blood, but enough suspicion for them to go ahead and collect that.

Speaker 1 And when the lab called back a few weeks later with news, well, it was quite a moment.

Speaker 3 We were excited. We couldn't believe it.

Speaker 1 That spot in Richie's vehicle, it was indeed blood. Angela's blood.
We ended up standing up during that conference call and hugging. We were so excited to get that news.

Speaker 1 But no arrest, not yet. Not until more results came in on material found under Angela's fingernails.

Speaker 3 About a week later, we heard back on the fingernail clippings and that came back to Richie and we said, okay, let's go get him.

Speaker 1 And so they did.

Speaker 3 We found him at a local gym in town. I said, I have an arrest warrant for you for the murder of Angela.

Speaker 1 Richie Wilder Jr. was charged with murder.
He soon pleaded not guilty.

Speaker 3 We offered an interview to him. He didn't want to talk and he went to jail.

Speaker 1 And then, a couple of months later. Hi, Richie.

Speaker 3 Remember us? Detective Matthias Detective. Good night with the land.

Speaker 1 Richie asked to see the detectives again

Speaker 1 because

Speaker 1 he was finally ready to tell the truth and blow the whistle on

Speaker 1 his accomplice.

Speaker 1 Wait, accomplice?

Speaker 1 He drove her off the bed. He kept just stabbing her.
I was like, what the f ⁇ are you doing, man? Richie's story and why, he said, he kept it secret. He kept writing to my family.

Speaker 1 He's like, if you tell anybody, he's like, I'm going to kill your wife. I'm going to kill your little one.
You're going to your little one.

Speaker 1 Struggling to see up close? Make it visible with Viz. Viz is a once-daily prescription eye drop to treat blurry near vision for up to 10 hours.

Speaker 1 The most common side effects that may be experienced while using Viz include eye irritation, temporary dim or dark vision, headaches, and eye redness.

Speaker 1 Talk to an eye doctor to learn if Viz is right for you. Learn more at Viz.com.

Speaker 1 From the Creator of Homeland, Claire Danes and Matthew Rees star in the new Netflix series The Beast in Me as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences.

Speaker 1 The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat and mouse story about guilt and justice and doubt, now playing only on Netflix.

Speaker 1 Most Most holiday gifts end up in a drawer or the back of your closet or accidentally left at your cousin's house. Not this one.
Mint Mobile is offering unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month.

Speaker 1 That's their best deal of the year, aka a holiday gift you'll actually use every single day. Don't get them socks.
Get them premium wireless for $15 a month.

Speaker 1 Shop Mint Unlimited plans at mintmobile.com slash dateline. That's mintmobile.com slash dateline.
Limited time offer upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months.

Speaker 1 Plan required, $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra.
Initial plan term only.

Speaker 1 Greater than 35 gigabytes may slow when the network is busy. Capable device required.
Availability, speed, and coverage vary. See mintmobile.com.

Speaker 1 He drove her off the bed. He kept just stabbing her.

Speaker 1 Richie Wilder Jr. had a new story.
A new and shocking story that put him in his ex-wife Angela's bedroom the night she was stabbed to death. But did he kill her?

Speaker 1 Oh no, Richie said.

Speaker 1 So who did? Richie was finally ready to reveal the secret. To point the finger at the very man who first accused him.
The killer was Angela's fiancé, Chris. I was like, what the f are you doing, man?

Speaker 1 But to start from the beginning, Richie said Chris had discovered Angela was cheating on him while he worked his night shift at Walmart.

Speaker 1 He wanted to catch her in the act, prove she was an unfit mother, so they, Chris and Richie, would win custody of their respective kids sounded good to Richie so Friday November 13th 2 15 a.m Richie told us that he picked Chris up from Walmart that he drove him to the house they were supposed to catch her in the act of cheating on Chris when we opened the door it looked like there was two people in the bed you know and of course when we pull back the cover the first thing I noticed there wasn't a person on the bed that was a body pillow but maybe Chris didn't understand that said Richie because he went crazy and started stabbing her i ran over there

Speaker 1 i mean

Speaker 1 i touched her neck to feel her pulse you know because she was kind of like you know like

Speaker 1 and like as i would touch her pulse whatever she like leaned up and like scratched the mess out of my face i grabbed her hands she was just like i love you that was why his face was scratched said richie and his dna was under her fingernails Anyway, afterwards, said Richie, he drove Chris back to work, dropped him off at Walmart.

Speaker 1 And where did Chris ride? ride from? In the passenger scene.

Speaker 1 The same side of the car where that spot of blood was found. Angela's blood.
When we first interviewed you, Richie, why did you not tell us this?

Speaker 1 Well, one, because he kept threatening my family. He's like, if you tell anybody, he's like, I'm going to kill your wife, I'm going to kill your little one, you know, your little one.

Speaker 1 It was quite a story. The only problem?

Speaker 1 Walmart, where Chris worked, has cameras everywhere. And it just so happened that Detective Goodman had spent most of the night before the interview with Richie watching videos.

Speaker 1 Videos that kept witness of every movement, every minute.

Speaker 1 If Chris left the store to kill his wife, then Goodman wouldn't find him on any video shop between 2.15 a.m. and 3 a.m.

Speaker 3 Every five to 10 minutes, we have him there at the store. We have him in the entryway sitting down eating his lunch during the time that Richie's telling us he's stabbing Angela.

Speaker 1 In fact, the only times Chris briefly left the store, his schedule breaks. So he simply couldn't have taken part in such a game with Richie.
He couldn't have, and we knew that.

Speaker 1 Goodman held back as Richie spun his tail.

Speaker 1 And then?

Speaker 1 Chris did not leave Walmart during those times. I know he did, but I picked him up.
I know he didn't because I watched him on video. And minutes later, Richie Wilder, his bluff called, simply folded.

Speaker 1 You can stop anytime you want. I'll stop him.

Speaker 1 And so when Richie Wilder's murder trial started a few months later, the evidence shows that. Prosecutor Kelly Dillon was confident.

Speaker 6 I felt I had a very strong case. My strategy was to simply present the crime scene, present the physical evidence, and present Richie's multiple stories about how this went down.

Speaker 1 Straightforward enough. As Richie listened, his wife Cindy dutifully seated near the defense table,

Speaker 1 the prosecutor called witnesses who told the jury about Angela's blood in one of Richie's cars, about DNA linked to Richie under Angela's fingernails, about the changing self-serving stories Richie told.

Speaker 1 She like leaned up and like scratched the mess out of my face. I grabbed her hands.
She was just like, I love you.

Speaker 6 Up to that point, I was thinking he might be able to convince a jury.

Speaker 6 But then when he got to the point where Angela sat up and said, Richie, I love you.

Speaker 6 It was done. It was done for me.
It's just such an incredible thing to throw into that story. It was just an example of Richie needing to be the hero.

Speaker 1 What did he gain from killing her? Or what did he think he would gain?

Speaker 6 Control.

Speaker 6 He wouldn't have to deal with Angela anymore.

Speaker 11 Richie Wilder is responsible for Angela's murder and only Richie Wilder.

Speaker 1 Richie's defense attorney countered that the murder weapon was never found and suggested Richie was somehow set up. I think there's reasonable doubt here,

Speaker 1 and I ask that you find

Speaker 1 Richie Wilder in my place.

Speaker 1 And the jury went out and returned in less than an hour.

Speaker 6 I've had simple theft cases that have taken longer to decide than this case did.

Speaker 12 We, the jury, find the defendant Richie Edwin Wilder Jr. guilty of the crime of murder.

Speaker 1 Guilty. Richie's wife, Cindy, dissolved in tears in the courtroom.
And then again, later, in the hallway.

Speaker 10 He's a good man. He's a good husband.
He would never do anything that would hurt his kids. None of it makes any sense to me at all.

Speaker 10 I know that I was home that night. I got up on a couple occasions with my kids.
When I got up, he was at home.

Speaker 1 Sad. Still so loyal.
Still clinging to that long-demolished alibi.

Speaker 1 Not so uncommon, really, for a spouse to refuse to accept an awful truth about her man.

Speaker 1 Anyway, Cindy was left to pick up the pieces. Her sister Abby moved to Mina to help.

Speaker 13 I just felt like she needed me as a sister and she needed the support. I've been a single mom for years.
I know how hard it is to do it on your own. So I felt like I

Speaker 13 was going to do what I could to help her to bear that burden and to figure things out.

Speaker 1 And it helped. Cindy went back to her teaching job.

Speaker 1 But even with Abby there, she felt lonely. A certain kind of lonely.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 He didn't leave the house that night. Yes, he did.
He didn't leave the house that night.

Speaker 14 No, he didn't.

Speaker 1 Growing suspicions about Cindy.

Speaker 3 Did she drive him there? Was she inside the house? Was she involved in this?

Speaker 1 And a secret revealed. Wow.
That was my response. Wow.
They came out and they asked me if I would be willing to come up there and wear a wire.

Speaker 1 Murder can have so many innocent victims, like the children. Angela and Richie's forever deprived of both parents now.

Speaker 10 I am what the kids have now. I am.

Speaker 10 They've been with me for the past year and they will continue to be with me.

Speaker 10 And they need to know that their dad is a good man.

Speaker 1 Stepmother Cindy, the kindergarten teacher, said she was doing her best in trying circumstances, raising as stepkids the children of the woman her husband had just been convicted of murdering.

Speaker 1 She did get some help, mind you, from her sister, Abby.

Speaker 13 I saw that she was struggling and needed some help, you know, trying to figure out the whole single parent thing.

Speaker 1 But of course, Abby had to wonder what happened that night, the night Richie murdered Angela. Human nature, really.

Speaker 13 I had tried to ask her a few times,

Speaker 13 you know, are you sure he was home that night?

Speaker 1 Same question that bothered those Minaught detectives. But Cindy stuck to her story.

Speaker 1 He didn't leave the house that night. Yes, he did.
He did leave the house that night.

Speaker 1 No, he didn't. I was upset.
But as you could tell,

Speaker 1 they had their doubts about Cindy.

Speaker 3 Did she drive him there? Was she inside the house? Was she involved in this?

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 no way to know. We just did not have anything to go on.
Did you kind of put it out of your mind?

Speaker 1 We did. Meanwhile, Abby helped Cindy with the kids and watched her sister grow even more sad.

Speaker 13 She did seem lonely.

Speaker 13 She wanted someone to talk to. She wanted a companion.

Speaker 13 It seemed like she was just dealing with the realization that her husband wasn't coming home.

Speaker 1 It wasn't necessarily romance she was looking for, just a man to talk to. Like the bartender she'd once known at a Minot watering hole called The Original.
His name was Matt Walters.

Speaker 1 He and Cindy had met before her marriage to Richie in 2013. We hang out on slow nights and sit there and do shots together.
And there was one night where we had a really good, in-depth conversation.

Speaker 1 Ever since then, she felt this connection. That's how she always referred to it, was this connection.
But did she trust you, feel safe with you?

Speaker 1 She seemed like it. They lost track of one another after Cindy married Richie, and Cindy had a little girl.
But after the murder, Cindy found Matt on Facebook.

Speaker 1 She said something like, I suppose you've heard. And I said, heard what? And she linked an article to Richie being arrested.
Did you feel a bit sorry for her? Yeah, I felt really bad for her.

Speaker 1 Matt and some friends took Cindy out for a drink at, well, where else? And talked about,

Speaker 1 you guessed it, Richie's arrest. Did she have any comment about his guilt or innocence? She insisted that he was home alone with her all night and he never left.

Speaker 1 And I think the only thing I ever said to her is, if that's not true,

Speaker 1 and you testify to that in court, you could end up in prison. Matt knew something firsthand about prison.

Speaker 1 He'd done a little more than a year behind bars himself in his early 20s for burglary before turning his life around and going to work as an electrician. You warned her.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I let her know that prison isn't a place she wants to go to. Anyway, Matt was a shoulder to cry on.
She was going through a really crappy time.

Speaker 1 And even after Matt moved to Denver, they chatted online. And one day, Cindy said something very disturbing.

Speaker 1 We were talking about how Richie got caught and he's going to prison and I said, well, a knife's kind of a a stupid way to do something like that. And she said, well, the knife was a backup.

Speaker 1 It was supposed to be a gun. Wow.
That was my response. Wow.
She wasn't the innocent bystander. She wasn't the innocent bystander.
And

Speaker 1 the right thing is to let the proper people know.

Speaker 1 So Matt did. He called the Minot Police, who by then had all but given up on the Cindy angle.

Speaker 3 There was a phone call into the General Police Department phone line. This individual had given his name and phone number, and that he had information in regards to the Angela Wilder homicide.

Speaker 1 So, what'd you do? We arranged a time for Detective Matias and I to place a call, and we heard him out.

Speaker 3 He seemed very credible. He was somebody that had this bad gut feeling from conversations that he had with Cindy that there's more to this.

Speaker 1 So, detectives took the next step. They enlisted him as a confidential informant and gave him a a name, CI-17-001.

Speaker 1 I mean, what's it like to be a confidential informant? During the time, it was kind of cool. It was kind of like what you see on TV.
The arrangements, however, were a little daunting.

Speaker 1 They came out and they asked me if I would be willing to come up there and wear a wire. Boys would like to hear that.
I was kind of stunned and dumbfounded for a second.

Speaker 1 You know, after a second of thought, if she was involved, you know, the right thing was to go up there and and help him careful you can never know when you set a trap exactly what you'll catch test test test i'm almost there

Speaker 1 it got to the point it seemed like an hour in where she wasn't saying anything anything relevant cindy stays silent until all of a sudden it happens are you mad at your husband no like i'm i'm proud of him i'm just pissed that he got caught and that he got sloppy and impatient and

Speaker 16 because we like had this thing like planned for like two years.

Speaker 1 Looking to crack the code on your career? Well, maybe it's time to get your degree.

Speaker 1 Southern New Hampshire University offers over 200 programs you can complete online. No set class times means you can do it all on your schedule.

Speaker 1 And with some of the lowest online tuition rates in the U.S., they make getting your degree affordable, too.

Speaker 1 Get started at SNHU.edu slash dateline. That's snhu.edu slash dateline.

Speaker 5 Hey, this is Will Arnett, host of Smartless. Smartless is a podcast with myself and Sean Hayes and Jason Bateman, where each week one of us reveals a mystery guest to the other two.

Speaker 5 We dive deep with guests that you love, like Bill Hayter, Selena Gomez, Jennifer Aniston, David Beckham, Kristen Stewart, and tons more.

Speaker 5 So join us for a genuinely improvised and authentic conversation filled with laughter and newfound knowledge to feed the smartless mind. Listen to Smartless Now on the Sirius XM app.

Speaker 5 Download it today.

Speaker 17 Just got a new puppy or kitten. Congrats.
But also, yikes.

Speaker 17 Between crates, beds, toys, treats, and those first few vet visits, you've probably already dropped a small fortune, which is where limited pet Insurance comes in.

Speaker 17 It helps cover vet costs so you can focus on what's best for your new pet. The coverage is customizable, sign-up is quick and easy, and your claims are handled in as little as three seconds.

Speaker 17 Pro tip: Lemonade offers a package specifically for puppies and kittens. Get a quote at lemonade.com/slash pet.
Your future self will thank you. Your pet won't.
They don't know what insurance is.

Speaker 1 What do you do when you suspect an old friend has helped commit an awful crime? Do you wear a wire for the cops?

Speaker 1 Matt Walters was willing, but how could he even arrange a way without arousing suspicion to see Cindy? After all, he lived way off in Denver. How did you organize the meeting with Cindy?

Speaker 1 Well, I told her I got laid off and I was going to come back to Minot to see some friends and asked her if she wanted to hang out. She seemed to jump at the opportunity.
But nervous? Oh, yes.

Speaker 1 Investigators set up a secret meeting at this hotel. There were four detectives sitting there, and that's when it kind of hit me like, holy, holy cow, this is for real.

Speaker 1 But how to do it without spooking her? The detectives had an idea.

Speaker 3 One of our options was to have a hotel room, which we had audio and video wired, and we were going to be in the room next to it.

Speaker 1 But Matt was engaged to a girl in Denver. I said, no, that's not going to happen.
There's only around one reason you go to a hotel room. And I'm like, you know, I'm not doing that.

Speaker 1 So they considered hiding the wire on his body.

Speaker 1 Matt didn't like that either. Cindy was very careful and paranoid.

Speaker 1 And I just gathered that if they put a wire on me and we started talking about this stuff, there was a chance that she would want to search me.

Speaker 1 He felt that it would be better

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 just go for a ride or to go out and have his car wired. So police did just that.
Then hit a transmitter in the trunk so the detectives could follow and listen in. Test, test, test.

Speaker 1 9.30 p.m. Matt picked up Cindy at her house.
How's it going?

Speaker 1 They went to a bar where Matt turned on a phone app to capture the conversation while they weren't in the car. I'm gonna get a beer.

Speaker 1 I wanted us to all be comfortable together. I hadn't seen her in years.
He didn't push too hard, didn't probe. This is just my second drink.

Speaker 1 For now, he was just an old friend catching up till past midnight. Then...
I drove her home and, you know, she didn't get out of my car, which is good.

Speaker 1 But it got to the point, it seemed like an hour in, where she wasn't saying anything,

Speaker 1 anything relevant. Detectives Goodman and Matthias, parked no more than 30 feet away in the dark, were desperately trying to to stay awake.

Speaker 15 At some point we both were probably thinking, okay, we're on hour four.

Speaker 15 We're sitting in this dark car. You're getting tired.
You're getting exhausted. We've been listening for hours.

Speaker 1 There's nothing there.

Speaker 15 And then all of a sudden it happens.

Speaker 1 You know, I said, well, I should probably get going.

Speaker 1 And her body language changed and just the tone of the situation changed.

Speaker 1 It was pretty obvious that

Speaker 1 she was angry. Angry.
She seemed angry.

Speaker 1 Angry about what? Well, I wasn't sure, so I asked her. Are you mad at your husband?

Speaker 14 No, like, I'm proud of him.

Speaker 16 I'm just pissed that he got caught and that he got

Speaker 16 sloppy and impatient. And

Speaker 16 because we had this thing planned for like two years.

Speaker 1 Planned for two years?

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 15 It was almost like the floodgates opened and she got it all off of her chest at once.

Speaker 16 He came home that night and he said it got sloppy. She fought back.
He had to do what he had to do.

Speaker 9 She put up a good fight.

Speaker 1 Like, she did. Oh, I'm sure she was fighting for her life.

Speaker 16 And that's what got him too.

Speaker 18 Was like, if it was me, I would have gone back and cut her fingers off. I would have burned him.
I would have lit the house on fire.

Speaker 1 What was it like to hear that? It was the hardest mental thing that I've ever had to do to hold back that urge to to tell her to shut the f up that she's sickening that that she's she's disgusting.

Speaker 16 Be fing like went psycho on her because the hate and the anger and the frustration and and I totally would have done the same thing too.

Speaker 1 I know it's like I said before a knife is a stupid way to kill somebody.

Speaker 16 Well he had a gun that was untraceable but and every time he like took it it kept like jamming and I guess that night it it was an old old I helped him clean up he left again to like dispose of the clothing and the and the weapon and everything and I thought we were like in the clear do you think you're a horrible person or do you think it needed to be done because now you said

Speaker 16 that it needed to be done

Speaker 1 needed to be done she said as if murder was somehow a winning solution to their long-running struggle over who got custody of the kids.

Speaker 1 And finally, remember how Angela told her fiancé before the murder that she was worried about being watched? Angela was right to be worried.

Speaker 16 Like, I helped him.

Speaker 16 Like, I would leave, like, when he worked nights, I would leave the house at like midnight and like sit outside her house in my vehicle seeing who came to the house, when her boyfriend left, where, when she, yeah, we f ⁇ ing had this planned out.

Speaker 1 And he f ⁇ ed up.

Speaker 14 Because he didn't clean the car good enough.

Speaker 16 One f ⁇ ing spot of blood in my car.

Speaker 1 When she said that, can you tell me what that was like?

Speaker 15 We were pretty excited.

Speaker 1 There were some high fives in the car. All right, let's call it a f ⁇ ing night.
I'm beat. You're beat.
We'll see each other again.

Speaker 1 Right?

Speaker 1 Maybe. Wrung out and exhausted.
Matt rendezvoused with detectives at the sleep inn. Well, we got back to the hotel and we went into the room and I said to him, is it too soon to hug you?

Speaker 1 A few days later, the detectives went to the school where Cindy was a substitute teacher, third grade that day.

Speaker 3 We met with her privately in an office at the school. I showed her that I had the arrest warrant for her for being a part of the homicide with Angela.

Speaker 1 How'd she take it?

Speaker 3 She really didn't respond. She didn't cry.
She didn't make any statements.

Speaker 1 Oh, but she would.

Speaker 1 Such a surprise on the way. These were the statements you're about to make.

Speaker 1 Cindy said she was just bragging.

Speaker 19 A handful of things in that conversation are somewhat true, but for the most part, it's false and extremely exaggerated.

Speaker 1 But would anybody believe her? It was kind of a shocker in the courtroom that day, in fact, wasn't it?

Speaker 1 Cindy Wilder was tiny, almost childlike in her jail jumpsuit.

Speaker 1 Barely five feet, maybe a hundred pounds. A trusted teacher of the very young and very innocent.

Speaker 1 And yet here she was in court answering to allegations of a very big crime, of huge hatreds, of lying to everyone, even those who loved her most.

Speaker 13 I felt betrayed because I had felt sorry for her and as a sister I wanted to help her her and then to find out that it all felt like a big lie and that I was betrayed and deceived,

Speaker 13 it was terrible.

Speaker 1 No doubt. She did say what she said on those tapes with the confidential informant Matt Walters.

Speaker 18 Like if it was me, I would have gone back and cut her fingers off. I would have burned them.
I would have lit the house on fire.

Speaker 1 What did you think when you heard that, knowing there was a two-year-old child in the house at the time?

Speaker 3 I thought, well, those are strong words. That's a lot of hate.

Speaker 1 But was it? Or was it something else altogether? A few days before that scene in court. Hello? Yes, hi.

Speaker 3 This is Cynthia Wilder.

Speaker 1 We interviewed Cindy by phone from the Ward County Jail in Minau.

Speaker 1 How would she, how could she, explain all those terrible things she said to Matt on tape?

Speaker 1 Her answer

Speaker 1 was also her legal defense.

Speaker 19 I mean, I'm lonely, and I was trying to see if there could be any sort of relationship.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And I was kind of mostly just trying to impress him.
You were trying to impress him, did you say?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because I know he has had a criminal history, too. So I thought, you know, that would kind of be like our connection, our common thing.

Speaker 1 So you said I did all these terrible things when you didn't really do them?

Speaker 1 A handful of things in that conversation are somewhat true, but for the most part, it's false and extremely exaggerated. So what would be true out of that conversation?

Speaker 19 The fact that I knew about it after it happened.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 And you hid the fact that you knew about it.

Speaker 1 Right. I didn't want to get arrested.
I didn't want to lose my kids. I didn't want to lose my job.

Speaker 1 Would a jury believe Cindy's explanation that she was merely trying to impress a man with a bunch of made-up tough talk?

Speaker 1 Certainly the prosecutor didn't buy it.

Speaker 6 If you're trying to to impress a boy, you make up a story about being a state champion, gymnast, or diver,

Speaker 6 not about being an accomplice to murder.

Speaker 1 In any case, no jury would have to decide. On a charge of conspiracy to commit murder, the prosecutor offered a deal.
Cindy would spend 25 years in prison, then get out to resume her life.

Speaker 1 And Cindy turned it down. She had a strategy of her own.

Speaker 1 She would take an Alford plea, meaning she'd plead guilty not because she did it, but because a jury would likely find her guilty, and that way she believed the judge would impose a much lighter penalty.

Speaker 1 And in May 2018, Cindy's attorney appealed to Judge Stacey Lauser for a lenient sentence, 10 years.

Speaker 1 And now it was the judge's turn. Would she believe Cindy's explanation?

Speaker 9 You were the one person who could have stopped this nightmare. You were the one person who could have intervened, who could have called law enforcement when Richie Wilder left your home.

Speaker 9 You were the one person who could have spared Angela Wilder's life. You chose not to do so.

Speaker 9 I am hereby remanding you to the North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation as to Count 1 conspiracy to commit murder to a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Speaker 1 Life without parole.

Speaker 1 That was kind of a shocker in the courtroom that day, in fact, wasn't it? It was a surprise.

Speaker 1 But I mean, it's certainly, in my mind, well deserved. From Cindy, not a flinch.

Speaker 1 From her sister?

Speaker 13 It almost feels like

Speaker 13 a death of someone in the family. Everything changed.

Speaker 13 At At least before there was some sort of a hope that, you know, even if it was a long period of time, there's still that hope that, you know, we could make memories again and go on trips and, you know, spend time together outside of prison walls.

Speaker 1 And that's gone. But for Angela's sister.

Speaker 3 She's a horrible person.

Speaker 8 She's exactly where she needs to be. And I'm so thankful that the judge saw her for the individual that she is, the monster that she is.

Speaker 1 And so our story ends with a family shattered. And Matt Walters doesn't regret his decision to wear a wire,

Speaker 1 but he struggles. Doing the right thing was not easy.
Isn't even now.

Speaker 1 Basically, I'm responsible for ending another person's life in all meaningful ways.

Speaker 1 Which is fine, she deserves it, but it's still kind of a hard thing to deal with to know you ended someone's life. Like you feel somehow it's on you? Yeah, there's like a weight on me.

Speaker 1 And Angela would surely be working as a nurse by now, would finally have achieved her lifelong ambition to care for people and make them well.

Speaker 4 She pops in my head, and I just think, oh, sad, because she would have been one heck of a nurse.

Speaker 1 This time of year, many are checking off their holiday gift lists. But identity thieves have lists too, and your personal information might be on them.
Protect your identity with LifeLock.

Speaker 1 LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second and alerts you to threats you could miss. If your identity is stolen, LifeLock will fix it guaranteed or your money back.

Speaker 1 Save up to 40% your first year at lifelock.com/slash dateline. Terms apply.