Published: April 14, 2006 11:33 am         

Parole hearing nears for convicted murderer

Steven Wilson hopes to see the west coast again someday.

“If he ever gets out, I’m going to pick him up and take him right to the airport,” said his cousin, Bruce Hayes. “He’s planning on a one-way ticket to California.”

Oklahoma is full of bad memories for Wilson, Hayes said, with the death of his stepdaughter, the loss of his wife and sons, and the unending hours of 24 years spent in prison.

Wilson’s mother is 76; his father is 80. Both disabled, they still run a business. A large portion of the money goes to attorneys back in Oklahoma. The Wilsons have had six representing their son over the years; Hayes estimates they’ve spent upwards of $150,000 trying to help.

“We love our son, Steven, very much, and would like to have him home,” said his mother, Clara “Jerri” Wilson, in a statement. “He could live with us, and we need his help.”

The mother’s plea is only tarnished by the thought of Linda Notzen, who will never see her child again. Notzen’s daughter, Audra Matheny, was murdered in 1982 at the age of 11, and Steven Wilson - the child’s stepfather - was convicted of the crime.

Wilson’s family still maintains his innocence, however, pointing to several unanswered questions from the trial. And even if his conviction is never overturned, they believe he has spent enough time in jail for any crime he may have committed.

According to a report by the Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C., research and advocacy group, the average life sentence nationwide is approximately 29 years. Grady County district attorney Bret Burns, however, said that 15-20 year life sentences are not uncommon.

After 24 years in prison, Wilson’s family believes it is time for him to come home, regardless of what may or not have happened in his past.



Making of a man

Steven Virgil Wilson was born Sept. 30, 1951 in Louisiana, the second born son of Glen and Jerri Wilson. Wilson’s earliest memories are of the Chickasha area, where he and his brother, Glen Jr., spent their younger years. The Wilsons owned a truck stop outside of town, running the station and a small restaurant for about five years. They moved to California in 1960.

Wilson described his early years as uneventful, and later told a psychologist that his most devastating childhood experience was failing the third grade. The failure was attributed to his difficulty in pronouncing and spelling words.

As a teenager growing up in California, Wilson had average grades, held down different jobs, and was outgoing, with many friends. He had several girlfriends, but not a steady one.

Within two months of his high school graduation, Wilson was drafted into the U.S. Army. He was 18. Once he completed basics, he attended a specialized electronics school which required him to qualify for a top-secret clearance.

In June 1971, Steven Wilson was sent to Vietnam.

“Initially, he was assigned to a communications center where he was acquainted with the electronic equipment during the day and at night guarded the perimeter of the base camp,” said Thomas P. Scarano, Ph.D. in a report. Scarano was a licensed clinical psychologist who met with Wilson after Audra’s death. “Mr. Wilson became very disillusioned, feeling that the Vietnamese people did not want them in their country, and realizing ‘men were uselessly dying.’”

Wilson told Scarano that after about three months in Vietnam, he was attached to seven Marines whose sole purpose was to protect him and the electronic equipment he carried into the field. For the next six months, his mission was to be dropped into suspected enemy positions to monitor enemy troop and equipment positions, using a radar detection system. Wilson said that it was clearly understood that if he anticipated being taken prisoner, the Marines were to kill him and destroy the equipment to present the enemy from capturing Wilson and the equipment.

“During many of these missions, Mr. Wilson’s team encountered the enemy. He revealed that he had many confirmed kills and after several of these types of experiences there was no longer any feeling when he killed someone,” Scarano said in his report. “Even though five of his Marine escorts were killed, he said, ‘I never cared about them dying because I would not become close to them.’ When questioned further, Mr. Wilson did admit he felt responsible for their lives because ‘They wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for me.’”

Wilson told Scarano that his most traumatic experience in Vietnam was when their base camp was overrun and his team was captured for four days. The North Vietnamese could not identify him because they all wore the same uniforms without rank.

“One of the only Marines he ever became close to, Eric, was taken out in front of the remaining men and they ‘torched him up with a flame-thrower,’” Scarano reported later. “At this time, Mr. Wilson began to weep excessively, saying repeatedly, ‘They were after me. Eric should have never died.’”



The domestic life

After he returned from Vietnam, Wilson was stationed at Ft. Hood, Texas. He was awarded the National Defense Service medal with two Bronze Service Stars, the Republic of Vietnam Campaign medal, the Meritorious Unit Commendational medal, a Good Conduct medal. the Bronze Star medal with Valor and a Purple Heart.

Wilson began taking classes in electronics school while he was stationed in Texas. It was there that he met Margaret Fegel. The couple were married on Aug. 17, 1972 in Bell County, Texas.

Wilson later described his days with Margaret as satisfying. The couple lived off-post, and Wilson was working part-time at a funeral home. Wilson said that he enjoyed working as a mortician.

“I felt like I was fixing something instead of killing and destroying things,” he said.

Wilson said that everything seemed good in his life when Margaret unexpectedly announced she was moving to Michigan. She left, taking their young son, Steven Scott Wilson, with her. The divorce was granted on May 9, 1975. Wilson said he later found out that his wife had left because she did not want to move to California.

After his discharge came through that same year, Wilson went, alone, back to California. He stayed with his parents and missed his wife and son. During this time, Wilson said that he was very depressed and spent time drinking and smoking marijuana as a way to dull the pain.

But if the drugs eased the loneliness, something else helped wipe it away completely. That was Linda Matheny. She had been a single woman for about two years, and had a five year old daughter named Audra. The couple met, and dated. They soon married, saying their wedding vows on May 15, 1976.

“Linda lit up my life,” Wilson said.

Although his wife remembers Wilson as a batterer, Wilson felt that even though their marriage had problems, they were still solvable. He admitted later that their disagreements sometimes ended in physical conflict. Wilson said that when Linda said she was leaving him, he was become scared and angry because he loved her and the children so much.

The Wilsons were blessed with a son in 1977, and named him Christian Sean Wilson. Wilson felt complete with his two sons, Scott and Sean, and his stepdaughter, Audra, and so he underwent a vasectomy operation. The sterilization surgery was performed during the December after Sean was born.

Wilson started studying a new type of grave liner that was gaining popularity in California, and thought it might go over well back in Oklahoma. In 1981, the family made the trip back to his childhood state. They moved in with Wilson’s cousin, Bruce Hayes, and his wife and children for several weeks while they searched for a home to call their own. They found what they were looking for in a small town outside of Oklahoma City.



Final free days

The Wilsons moved into their home in Tuttle in 1981 and Audra was enrolled in the fifth grade at Tuttle Schools. At 4 years old, Sean was still not old enough to attend public school. Linda found a job, and Wilson went about the work of making his business plan a reality. He found backers, including the man who sold him the house in Tuttle.

“I invested some money in his little business,” said Dennis Meyer, who estimated he put around $3,000 or $4,000 into the enterprise.

Meyer said the idea sounded like a good one, but as the months went by, he began to wonder if Wilson was more of a doer - or a dreamer. Wilson would come by Meyers’ office and talk about his plans for the business, but little seemed to actually pass the planning stage. Meyer said he started thinking Wilson was a “little different,” but he still seemed like a good man.

“I knew that [Wilson] was a little odd, but he loved his little boy and seemed to love his wife and the little girl,” Meyer said.

Wilson’s parents sent money every month too, to help with the business they believed in and to make sure the house payment was made. They planned on moving back to Grady County in 1982 to help get the business going.

The Wilson family began making friends in the Tuttle community. They started attending church services and Bible studies at the Tuttle church of Christ. Their neighbors, a man, woman, and her daughter, became friendly with them as well; the man, Mike, became friends with Wilson, and the two of them would often spend time together at the Wilson home.

Wilson also remained close to his cousin, Bruce Hayes, and his family. Hayes and his wife had children that were around Audra and Sean’s age, and the families enjoyed getting together as often as possible.

Christmas came and went. The Wilsons celebrated New Year’s 1982 with Tuttle as their home. Audra turned 11, and the Wilsons threw a party for her at their house. Although dark clouds appeared on the horizon as the Wilsons fought and he became abusive to his wife, they still managed to stay together as a family.

That all ended in May 1982.



Everything falls apart

May 11, 1982 was unremarkable within the Wilson household but for the death of Audra Matheny.

Wilson had been playing the role of single dad that week; his wife was in California handling some business with their former home and visiting family. That day, Audra was at home sick, and Wilson gave her and Sean chicken noodle soup for lunch.

That evening, he and Sean went to Williams IGA and bought hamburger meat, milk, buns and other groceries before going back home to cook the burgers outside.

While Wilson grilled the burgers, Audra and Sean piled into their parents’ bed to watch “Gorilla at Large,” a 3-D movie playing on channel 25. The movie started at 7 p.m., and Wilson cooked up dinner and served it up around 8 p.m. The family ate together while they watched the remainder of the movie. The show ended at 9 p.m., and another movie was starting on HBO at 9:15 p.m., and they turned it over to that channel.

At 9:30 p.m., the phone rang. It was Wilson’s aunt, Mary Hutzel, who was helping to organize a family reunion. The event was to be held at the Wilsons’ home. She had already called several times that day with information about the reunion. During the 9:30 p.m. call, she gave Wilson the number of a nephew of hers that he was going to invite. Wilson called out to Audra to get paper and a pencil, and she wrote down the number as he repeated it to her.

According to Wilson, Audra went to bed a short time later. He went to take a bath at 10:30 p.m., then got back in bed with a drowsy Sean. Wilson said they both fell asleep with the television on. The doors to the house were unlocked.

That night, between 11 p.m. and 12 a.m., Wilson said, Audra was up, and coughing.

“I was half asleep and she just went to the bathroom and coughed and gagged a little bit and it sounded like she was going to throw up, and she walked back and I said, ‘Are you all right?’ and she says, ‘I feel sick,’ and then she went back into her room and she laid down and I did not go into her room and check on her,” Wilson said to authorities the next day.

He said that he wasn’t overly concerned with her coughing, since it sounded like what she had been doing all day long.

Wilson did not wake up again that night, he said.

The next morning, the alarm went off, and Wilson went to wake his stepdaughter but found her dead. He immediately went and called the Tuttle Police.

When the authorities arrived and talked to him, they believed the death looked like a natural one, and told Wilson so. His cousin’s wife arrived, and they went about cleaning up the house, trying to get it a little cleaner before the anticipated relatives arrived. Wilson took the sheets off of Audra’s bed and put them in the washer, trying to lessen the slight smell that permeated the room. Sean woke up and watched television with his dad and the police officers.

Already wheels were in motion, unbeknownst to Wilson. Audra’s body was being examined by various doctors, and they were become more and more convinced that she had been raped and murdered. After they came to that conclusion, they looked for a killer - and the blame fell to Wilson.

He was arrested less than 12 hours after Audra’s death was reported. Four-year-old Sean was there, watching as the police put his dad in handcuffs and led him away.

Wilson was taken to Grady County Jail and booked, then taken for an interview at the district attorney’s office. There, he expressed bewilderment at the entire course of events.

“I haven’t ever been through anything like this,” he said. “All I have seen in the last hour or couple of hours since this happened and it’s my whole damn life falling apart and I don’t even know what the hell is happening to it...All I know is that I have lost a hell of a daughter and I don’t know what in the hell happened.”



Twenty-four years

Wilson’s arrest eventually led to his conviction at the hands of a Grady County jury. The prosecution asked for the death penalty, but that was not granted. General consensus on both sides is that 11 jurors wanted to hand down the death penalty, but one woman was not able to vote that way. He was given a life sentence instead, and was moved to the Lexington Correctional Center. He was there for six years, then was transferred to Jess Dunn Correctional Center in Taft, Okla.; in 1995 he was moved to James Crabtree Correctional Center in Helena, Okla.

During his time in prison, Wilson has been a model prisoner, and has only been disciplined once - for possession of contraband after a couple of quarters were found in his shirt pocket after visitation. For that he lost 15 days in the prison gym.

Wilson received an Associate in Arts - sociology/corrections degree from Oklahoma City Community College in 1985 and a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology from Central State University in 1989. He has tutored many other prisoners, helping them get their high school equivalency (GED) tests finished. According to his cousin, Bruce Hayes, Wilson has even learned sign language so he can help deaf prisoners finish their high school educations.

“He’s probably the most important person at every prison he’s been at, including the guards,” said Hayes. “There’s no telling how many people he helped get their GEDs.”

Wilson has also trained other inmates to make leather belts, bill folds and purses, and has worked with computers. He was assigned as an ADA orderly in 2002. He also received numerous tutoring and tutor training certificates, completed workshops and acted as Commander of the Veterans Post at Jess Dunn.

His latest assessment with the state department of corrections, dated Dec. 7, 2005, gives him top marks on all counts. But for the severity of his crime, he would be in a minimum security prison. Instead, he is in James Crabtree, which is medium security.

One thing Wilson is not interested in would be the sex offender program. He refuses to take part in any sex offender training, saying that he has never been convicted of a sexual crime. Although alleged rape was part of the state’s case in the trial, it was not part of the conviction. However, the district attorney’s narrative claims Wilson admitted sexual acts with Audra, so he has been assessed as a sexual offender by the prison system.

He has been up for parole several times since 1982, and each time the narrative about him speaks with glowing terms of his work in prison, his demeanor, and his record there. Then it bluntly states parole is not recommended due to the severity of the crime.

Wilson is up for parole again this month; the pardon and parole board will meet next week at Hillside Community Corrections Center in Oklahoma City. At that time, they will decide if his time to go free has come. Wilson and his family hope that this year is the year that he gets on that plane and goes home, to California. They can’t imagine that anyone would want different.

“I don’t understand how anyone would want to hurt a family like us,” said Wilson’s mother, Jerri. “We didn’t do anything.”

The pardon and parole board will be reviewing parole candidates from James Crabtree Correctional Center at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, April 20. More information may be found on their website at www.ppb.state.ok.us.