Man arrested in connection with case of former Baltimore Police officer believed to have conspired to kill husband

Dan Belson, Baltimore Sun
·2 min read

Frederick County authorities said Tuesday that they arrested a second suspect in connection with the killing of a Pikesville resident who was found dead in January.

It was not immediately clear how the second suspect, 23-year-old Alonzo Michael Epps, of Baltimore, is accused of being involved in the death of Brice Wendell Boots, who was 65 when he was found dead in a Frederick County field. Court records, including Epps’ charges or attorney, were not immediately available on Tuesday, though police said he was being held at the Frederick County Detention Center on a four-count indictment including a first-degree murder charge.

In March, Frederick County Sheriff’s Office investigators arrested a 20-year-old from Baltimore in connection with Boots’ death. In charging documents, detectives alleged that Keon Wilson-Hawkins conspired with his aunt, former Baltimore Police Officer Frances Virginia Hamilton, to kill her husband, Boots, while the couple was in the midst of a messy divorce case. Wilson-Hawkins’ attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Boots and Hamilton, who died in February in a suspected suicide, were scheduled to appear in court for a hearing on a protective order on Jan. 10, the same day Boots was found dead in a field on the 8200 block of Crum Road in Walkersville.

Investigators then went to Boots’ residence in Pikesville, where neighbors told them that Hamilton and a man believed to be her nephew had been at Boots’ residence the night before, according to the news release from Frederick officials. Police searched his house the next day and found “evidence consistent with a physical altercation occurring within the home and Boots being forcibly abducted.” They traced Wilson-Hawkins’ phone and found it had moved from Boots’ residence to the Walkersville field that night.

Hamilton was once a lieutenant for former Baltimore Sheriff John Anderson and herself ran for sheriff in 2010.