Army Pfc. Amanda Gonzales was 19 when she was found dead in her barracks room after the door was forced open on Nov. 3, 2001. Over twenty years later, an arrest in the case has finally been made by the Department of Justice and the FBI.
Gonzales was a cook stationed at Fliegerhorst Kaserne, then a US Army base in Hanau, Germany, when she went missing. Several days later when fellow soldiers entered her third-story barracks room, they found her remains. The FBI ruled at the time that she had died of asphyxiation
While the evidence that led to the arrest has not been revealed to the public pending a court case, former soldier Shannon L. Wilkerson has been taken into custody in the Northern District of Florida and charged with one count of first-degree murder which carried a maximum sentence of life in prison, the Department of Justice announced.
Wilkerson, now 42, was a soldier on the same base as Gonzales at the time of the murder. The former soldier is being charged under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which gives the U.S. federal courts jurisdiction over crimes committed outside the U.S. by former members of the Armed Forces no longer subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Gonzales was four months pregnant when she was killed, according to the FBI. Wilkerson's first detention hearing is set for March 3.
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