When Christopher Jackson got back to his Minot, North Dakota home from work around 7 a.m. on Nov. 13, 2015, the back door had been kicked in. Worried about his fiancée, Angila Wilder — who wasn’t answering the phone — and 19-month-old son inside, he called 911.
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Although the child was safe in his crib inside, officers found the 30-year-old’s bloody body on the ground next to the bed.
“We learned that she was stabbed nearly 40 times,” said Sgt. David Goodman with the Minot Police Department on Snapped: Killer Couples, airing Sundays at 6/5c on Oxygen. “When you’ve got such an overkill on somebody, it suggests that it was personal.”
Jackson immediately named his fiancée’s ex-husband, Richie Wilder, as a suspect. But it took a year and a half for Richie’s new wife, Cynthia, to be arrested as a co-conspirator in the vicious murder.
“Love can make people do crazy things,” said Chelsea McDaniel, a jury member for Richie Wilder’s trial, on Snapped: Killer Couples. “Things that you don’t think about consequences in the long run.”
Who are Angila and Richie Wilder?
Angila and Richie Wilder first met through church in Alabama, before marrying in January 2009. Richie joined the U.S. Air Force, and the couple moved to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. Angila then became pregnant with the couple’s child.
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“Pretty soon things kind of became rocky,” said C.J. Wynn, author of Wilder Intentions, on Snapped: Killer Couples. “The marriage really probably wasn’t meant to be to begin with.”
Angila’s fiancée claimed their marriage was abusive.
“If you could name it, they’ve probably been through it. He doesn’t like her. She doesn’t like him,” Jackson said in a police interview. “He was beating the s—t out of her, and they got divorced over it.”
The couple divorced in the spring of 2012, and both moved on. Angila went home to Alabama and rekindled a relationship with her high school sweetheart, Christopher Jackson. She was soon pregnant with his child, they got engaged, and he moved back to Minot to be with her and the children.
“There was constant fighting over the custody of the kids,” Goodman said. “To the point where Angila and Richie couldn’t even do the weekly exchange.”
She became pregnant with her and Jackson’s second child in October 2015 — two months before she was murdered.
Police focus Angila Wilder's murder investigation on her ex-husband, Richie
Angila Wilder had been dead for several hours when she was discovered by police. She had defensive wounds to her hands, and police took samples of the DNA under her fingernails. Although the rear door had been broken, nothing appeared ransacked or stolen.
Jackson said she’d dropped him off at his job at Walmart at 10 p.m. the previous night. He claimed he spoke to her on the phone at midnight and 2 a.m. during his breaks, but she stopped answering the phone after that. When she failed to pick him up in the morning, he called a taxi to get home and discovered the broken door. Surveillance video from Walmart confirmed he was at work during the murder.
Richie Wilder had a surprising reaction to news of his ex-wife’s death when he was interviewed by police.
“He made the comment very nonchalantly, ‘Oh really?’ And didn’t seem to be too concerned about that at all,” Goodman said.
Richie and Cynthia Wilder. Photo: Oxygen
Although Richie denied abuse claims, and instead alleged Angila was abusing their daughter, police found that Richie had been court martialed after choking Angila in base housing and was dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Air Force.
Richie claimed to be home during the night of the murder, and his wife, Cynthia, confirmed his alibi. He had a scratch on his cheek, but said it was from play wrestling his child. But police tested both he and Cynthia’s vehicles and found a stain on the passenger door panel of her vehicle. DNA testing showed that stain on the door was Angila Wilder’s blood. The DNA under Angila’s fingernails matched that of Richie Wilder.
“That seemed to match the scratch that Richie had on his face,” Goodman said.
On Dec. 18, 2015, Richie was arrested, and a few months later, told police he was ready to talk. He claimed Angila’s fiancéewas the one who actually killed her, because he believed her to be cheating on him. But police knew from Walmart surveillance this was a lie.
“He’s in tears as he’s explaining this. He said he went over there and checked for a pulse … he just kept digging this hole deeper and deeper,” Goodman said.
In Dec. 2016, Richie Wilder was tried for murder, and a jury found him guilty. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Cynthia Wilder admits to plotting Angila Wilder's murder
But in March 2017, a friend of Cynthia Wilder went to police and said he’d had disturbing Facebook conversations with her about Angila Wilder’s murder.
“She started off saying a really leading comment about how the knife wasn’t supposed to be the main plan. It was supposed to be a gun, but the knife was the backup,” the friend said to police.
He agreed to talk to Cynthia again while wearing a wire to record the conversation.
“She began to talk about how they had planned this, how [Cynthia and Richie] had worked together — planning the murder,” Goodman said.
She admitted the planning had been for far longer than police believed.
“Like, I’m proud of him,” Cynthia said on the police recording. “I’m just pissed that he got caught, and that he got sloppy and impatient, ‘cause we like, had this thing, like, planned for, like, two f—king years."
Cynthia said the motive for the murder was custody of the kids.
“Cyndi says that in September 2013 they had a custody hearing, and afterwards she had said to Richie, ‘Wouldn’t it just be easier if Angila was no longer in our lives?’” Wynn said.
Cynthia told her friend that she would have done far more to Angila if she’d been the one murdering her.
“Like, she put up a good fight. She did … She scratched his face,” she said on the recording. “And that’s what got him too, was like, if it was me, I f—king would have gone back and cut her f—king fingers off. I would’ve burned them. I would’ve lit the house on fire.”
She claimed they would have gotten away with the murder except for one mistake.
“I totally believe that it needed to be done. Like, I helped him,” she said. “We f—king had this planned out and he f—ked it up. Because he didn’t clean the car good enough. One f—king spot of blood in my car.”
In November 2017, she entered an Alford plea for conspiracy to commit murder, and in May 2018, a judge sentenced her to life in prison without parole.
“I don’t think that apart, Richie or Cyndi would have carried out this vicious murder. But I think that they fed off of each other quite well,” Wynn said.
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