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Another Secret Service Fail
Left: Antonio Wilson (Roswell Police Department). Right: Fabiola Thomas (Obituary).
A Georgia man will spend the rest of his life behind bars for brutally killing a woman who rejected his obsessive, romantic entreaties.
On Tuesday, Antonio Wilson, 43, was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for the June 2019 murder of Fabiola Thomas, 39.
Prosecuted as a domestic violence case by the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, the killer and his victim had only dated a short while before the home invasion and strangulation that took Thomas’ life.
During the trial, prosecutors showed that the two had first met on a dating app, according to a courtroom report by Atlanta-based ABC affiliate WSB.
And, the woman undeniably played things safe.
“Ms. Thomas did everything that you would think you should do,” Assistant District Attorney Abigail Potter told WSB-TV. “She told her friends where she was going. She would only meet him in public places.”
While, in Wilson’s mind, things moved quickly, Thomas clearly did not reciprocate those too-much, too-fast feelings. While he appeared to fall in love apace, she just as swiftly rejected him.
“She unfriended Antonio Wilson the day before she died,” Senior Assistant District Attorney Nalda Charles told WSB-TV.
The woman also made her decision quite explicit.
“I don’t give a [redacted] about a ring,” Thomas wrote in a text to Wilson, “keep your ring, I’m not your woman, never was, stop claiming me because I never claimed u.”
Another text from Thomas to Wilson reads: “u crazy, I don’t want nothing from a man I barely communicate with, jewelry, money … don’t mean nothing to me if you don’t know who I am.”
The day after receiving those messages, the killer determined the victim lived at the Atlantic Newtown Apartments in Roswell, Georgia — a far-flung northern suburb of Atlanta — and broke in. After strangling her to death, he left the woman’s body in her bathtub.
“And that is the most chilling part because she’s getting ready for work, she’s in her pajamas,” Charles added. “It was just so egregious. It was unnecessary, it didn’t have to happen. She was unarmed, defenseless, and in her home, all because she said no.”
Thomas was killed early in the morning on June 8, 2019. Neighbors reported seeing her outside near her car at around 7:30 a.m. that day. At around 8:40 a.m., her roommate called police.
“The male caller was frantic and hysterical, he advised officers that his roommate was in his bathtub and that something bad had happened to her,” law enforcement said initially — when the case was a mystery.
The deceased woman’s obituary elegiacally recounted:
Fabiola began her dance of jubilee upon the streets paved in gold as the Lord welcomed her home.
Wilson was charged with malice murder and arrested in October 2019.
His conviction also occurred on Tuesday. After hearing from witnesses who placed the killer at the apartment and looking at crime scene photographs, Fulton County jurors took just 30 minutes to deliberate before finding him guilty, according to the TV station.
“My sister was attacked and murdered in her home,” the victim’s brother, Myrto Charles, told WSB-TV. “My sister enjoyed and loved life. She had dreams and goals she wanted to accomplish, yet that all died with her, when she was gasping for her last breath.”
During the sentencing hearing, those who knew her grew emotional.
“Her life mattered,” one of Thomas’ loved ones said through tears. “She lived with purpose.”
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