Wade Wilson’s ‘Troubled’ Early Years: The Making of A Convicted Killer
Speaking to former classmates of Wade Wilson, the tattoo-covered Florida man facing the death penalty for brutally murdering two women, one word was constantly used to describe his early years: “troubled.”
Wilson, 30, will learn in a few weeks whether he will be put to death or spend life in prison for murdering Kristine Melton, 35, and Diane Ruiz, 43, in October 2019. A judge will hear a request from Wilson’s lawyers for a new trial or acquittal in Melton’s murder at 9 a.m. on August 27, followed by his sentencing at 2 p.m.
But years before Wilson committed the murders, he lived with his adoptive parents Steve and Candace Wilson in Tallahᴀssee, attending Deerlake Middle School and Lawton Chiles High School, presumably graduating in 2013. Newsweek spoke to a few of Wilson’s former classmates about what Wilson was like growing up.
Newsweek made multiple attempts to contact Steve and Candance Wilson but never heard back. Newsweek also made multiple attempts for comment from Leon County Schools and Lawton Chiles High School. Last week, someone at Chiles High School said “No comment” and hung up the phone on a Newsweek reporter. Additional follow-ups by Newsweek were unanswered.
Newsweek spoke to more than three of Wilson’s former classmates to gather information. The classmates wanted to remain anonymous for their privacy and safety.
‘Looked so eerie’
A woman who claims she attended Deerlake Middle School and Chiles High School with Wilson wanted to remain anonymous in Newsweek’s reporting. She had the same group of friends as Wilson in middle school, and they sat together for lunch.
“Nobody would eat. They would just pᴀss drugs around, which was so weird to me,” she said, claiming she once dated one of Wilson’s close friends, who was also “wasn’t a very good kid either.”
“He [Wilson] would always wear this black hoodie with his hood over his head, and [her former boyfriend] did the same thing,” she remembered of high school. “They always looked so eerie together – just like at 6:30 in the morning, the sun hasn’t come up yet – You just see them on the side of a building, and I’m like ‘Oh, wait, those are my friends.'”
The woman claims Wilson was the first person she ever smoked marijuana with when she was 14 years old.
“We would smoke in the woods before school started, and that was almost a daily thing after the first time. Sometimes it would just be me and Wade, and sometimes [her boyfriend] would be there. But every time I was alone with Wade, he never gave me any vibes that I was unsafe.”
She said he would sometimes hang around her and her boyfriend, “but most of the time, he was either with the girl he was dating or he was flirting it up with the girls.”
She claims Wilson “did not respect authority whatsoever” and was expelled from high school “because he was smoking weed in the bathroom and caught the toilet paper roll on fire.”
‘Wasn’t really respectable’
A second woman told Newsweek that she and Wilson had a brief relationship in high school circa 2012 that formed from running in the same friend group. She claimed he “wasn’t really respectable” to her and cheated on her during that time.
In one alleged high school incident, the woman recalls returning to her desk to find money had been stolen from her bookbag, which she believed to be Wilson’s doing. The woman, who says this happened before she and Wilson dated, says she told the teacher, and then the principal and another staff member came into the classroom, demanding answers.
“They stopped the class from leaving even after the bell, and then no one would fess up to it. They’re like, ‘Whoever took the money out of [her name’s] bag, fess up right now so everyone can just leave and go to their next class, or we’re going to just sit here all day’ and no one fessed up.”
Eventually, she said, “too much time went by” and the class was dismissed without a confession. Believing Wilson was still the culprit, she says she “cussed him out” and confronted him in front of a crowd of classmates.
“It pissed me off because he was trying to make a mockery out of it or laugh about it or pick on me and make fun of it,” she said.
The woman claims Wilson had contacted her from jail as recently as “March or May” of this year but she no longer takes his call after he allegedly made a hurtful remark about something she did not want to disclose.
‘Troubled’
Without hesitation, a male high school classmate of Wilson’s described him as “troubled.”
“People that were on track for college, I’d say, weren’t his acquaintances,” the man told Newsweek about who Wilson allegedly surrounded himself with. “The kids that got into trouble, he would hang out with them, mostly.”
The man added that Wilson “always pushed the boundaries as far as crazy things he would do,” including allegedly “trespᴀssing and breaking into cars and all that stuff” after high school.
“Just like, why would you do that?” the man said. “Even if he didn’t get anything monetarily out of it, it was just something he liked to do.”
Who are Wade Wilson’s Adoptive Parents?
Every classmate Newsweek spoke to about Wilson had nothing but good things to say about his adoptive parents Steve and Candance Wilson.
One of the classmates described Wilson’s adoptive parents as “super friendly people, church-going people” who “meant well” and “wanted better for him.”
“He had the world given to him,” she said of Wilson. “He had a nice house in the suburbs with his parents who adopted him. They had greyhounds and expensive vehicles, but they were not just all about their material stuff. Their mindset was in the right place, too.”
“But for some reason on that course, something fell off. Something didn’t make sense – like it wasn’t appreciated or was taken for granted,” she claimed.
Another classmate claimed Wilson once stole his parents’ car and disappeared for three days
“I remember everybody at school talking about it like, ‘What was he thinking?'”
“His parents were loving from what I have heard,” she told Newsweek. “I’ve never met his parents, but I always thought about them and felt bad for them, because I know that they tried everything they could. That’s what I remember hearing back then. I don’t hear anything about them now, but I remember them trying really hard to keep him under control, and nothing they did worked.”
Newsweek made multiple attempts to contact Steve and Candance Wilson and never heard back.
Wade Wilson’s Ex-Girlfriend Alleges Abuse
In June, Wade Wilson’s ex-girlfriend Kelly Matthews made a series of TikToks revealing that he was never violent with her until he allegedly tried to kill her.
Matthews claimed Wilson choked her in a car “two or three times” on February 18, 2019.
She says Wilson pushed her on the floorboard of her car, cut off her clothes with a knife, and told her to stay down there until he put her in the back of the car and allegedly Sєxually ᴀssaulted her.
“At some point, he bit my face, bit me in the chin,” she said, showing off the pictures from the alleged attack in a June 15 TikTok, which included a pH๏τo of her “busted lip.” Matthews also claimed he gagged her, tied a shirt around her face, and tied her hands and feet together with a used garbage bag inside the car.
Matthews reported the alleged ᴀssault to police, who she claims “failed me so severely” by not arresting Wilson. She believes Melton and Diane Ruiz’s murders could have been prevented if the detective in her case had “actually done his job.”
“I think these women would still be alive because I would have testified against him for this,” Matthews said. “My whole family, all my friends, everyone would have stood up for this. And this detective basically said ‘You were into that kind of thing so, we can’t really do anything about it.'”
Wade Wilson In Trouble Behind Bars
Wilson also faces additional charges stemming from two separate incidents while incarcerated for the Melton and Ruiz murders. On September 30, 2020, Wilson and his cellmate, Joseph Katz, allegedly attempted to break out of the Lee County Jail.
Officials searched their 10×10 cell and found that the window’s metal frame had been removed and several cracks in the thick security glᴀss. A metal stool that had previously been bolted to the concrete floor had also been removed.
Detectives determined Wilson was the mastermind and charged him with attempted escape and criminal mischief.
Wilson, along with five other people, was also arrested on drug-related charges on April 20, 2023. A K9 found two bags of drugs – which both tested positive for methamphetamine – and contained loose cigarettes, suspected narcotics, lighters, and pills outside in the jail’s receiving area.
Officials reviewed recorded inmate phone calls and learned that Wilson spoke to someone named Bonnie Wiggins about narcotics. Police then conducted an undercover investigation where they watched Wiggins and three more suspects outside the jail.
✓ Ryan Mitchell
Speaking to former classmates of Wade Wilson, the tattoo-covered Florida man facing the death penalty for brutally murdering two women, one word was constantly used to describe…