In January 2024, deep in a roadside field in Western Maryland, Brice Boots, the estranged husband of a former Baltimore Police officer, was found dead. A month later, she was dead too, having overdosed on fentanyl in what was later ruled a suicide.
By that point, their short, troubled marriage had been bleeding into the court system for well over a year. But prosecutors hope to prove that what finally ended their union was a family conspiracy to kill the man, a plan aided by Boots’ now-dead wife, Frances Hamilton.
Keon Wilson-Hawkins, one of the officers’ two nephews in custody, is set to begin his first-degree murder trial Monday in Frederick County Circuit Court. The 21-year-old is accused of helping Hamilton abduct and drag Boots from his Pikesville home to his death out west.
Hamilton’s other nephew, Alonzo Epps Jr., is scheduled to go on trial in late August.
Authorities have not explained how Boots was killed, other than describing his death as a “very disturbing murder.” It’s unclear what motive prosecutors will lay out for the 65-year-old retired truck driver’s killing, though court records show that the couple had a possibly violent marriage.
Wilson-Hawkins’ public defender, Linda Zeit, declined to comment.
Frederick County deputies found Boots’ body on the afternoon of Jan. 10, 2024. The sheriff’s office said they had received a call that afternoon about a “suspicious” SUV sitting in a field. It had been there for hours, they were told, its flashers blinking hundreds of feet beyond Crum Road.
The case became a “non-stop priority” for Sheriff Chuck Jenkins, leading to Wilson-Hawkins’ arrest in March and Epps’ in May. At first, Epps’ relationship to the victim was unclear, though several motions over evidence have since referred to both defendants as Hamilton’s nephews.
Neither man’s indictment offers much detail on the conspiracy, other than naming its three accused parties. Court records suggest, however, that Frederick prosecutors Ricky Lewis and Joyce King have compiled a lengthy case for jurors to unravel and interpret.
The state is expected to call 50 witnesses against Wilson-Hawkins, including the medical examiner who performed Boots’ autopsy and FBI agents who appear to have collected cellular location data from the night of the incident, court records show.
Authorities said phone location data had placed Hamilton and Wilson-Hawkins at Boots’ home on Jan. 9, but added that only the defendant and Boots had traveled to Frederick County. Epps’ alleged role was not immediately clear.
The trial before Frederick Circuit Judge Scott Rolle is scheduled to run until July 14.
In that time, Lewis and King will try to convince a jury that on the night of Jan. 9, 2024 and early into the next morning, the couple’s troubled marriage ultimately led to the killing.
Hours before Boots was found in Frederick County, he and Hamilton were due in a Catonsville court to contend allegations of domestic violence they had made against each other. Hamilton showed up and was granted a final protective order against Boots, who was by then dead.
The couple
According to Boots’ 2022 divorce complaint, the couple married in a religious ceremony two years earlier. There isn’t any information in public records about how they met, and Boots’ obituary makes no mention of Hamilton.
When they married, Hamilton was no longer a police officer, having been fired from theBaltimore Police Department in early 2007.
According to a discrimination and harassment lawsuit she then filed against the city, Hamilton was a member of the department’s Accident Investigation Unit. She claimed her team wanted her off their squad because of her race and gender, asserting she was also being retaliated against for reporting overtime fraud. The city’s legal team said her supervisor “preferred” not working with her because “she was too aggressive in her enforcement” of traffic laws.
The civil rights claim failed in federal court, and Hamilton went on to become a lieutenant in the city’s sheriff’s office. In 2010, she unsuccessfully ran for the sheriff’s position herself against her former boss, John Anderson.
According to his obituary, Boots was born and raised in Baltimore. An exceptional three-sport athlete at Edmondson High, Boots attended Virginia Union University on a baseball scholarship before later going to Towson University.
Later in life, during his career driving semi-trailer trucks, Boots kept up with sports that were less stressful on his body, like bowling, a lifelong passion, and competitive cornhole.
“Brice was a multi-faceted individual. He was creative and possessed many talents and passions. In a word, he was interesting,” the obituary states. “How many of us knew the many layers of his personality? He could not be described by any stretch of the imagination as dull.”
Allegations of abuse
Warring allegations in court paint different pictures of both the husband and wife, ones rife with abuse and fear.
Hamilton requested the first protective order between the couple in September 2022, less than a month after Boots filed for divorce. She told the court that her husband was doing “whatever he can” to get her out of their house, describing him as a vengeful person.
“I feel my life is in constant danger,” she wrote in her petition, which was denied because there was no statutory basis for relief, according to the Maryland Judiciary.
Hamilton filed another protective order request against Boots on Dec. 30, 2023, less than two weeks before he was killed. In that petition, Hamilton claimed her husband had hit her while moving coats in a closet.
Boots, who filed a counter petition against what he called “a false protective order,” was dead by the time that request was fully adjudicated.
Court records suggest Wilson-Hawkins and Epps became a regular presence in the couple’s divorce in the final weeks before Boots’ death.
Body-camera footage referenced in court documents shows both defendants at Boots’ house on Dec. 30, the day Hamilton filed her protective order.
According to prosecutors, Boots called Baltimore County Police and complained that Hamilton and the two men, whom she called her “nephews,” were there unlawfully. In his protective order petition about a week later, Boots said he called authorities because his neighbors had seen Hamilton with “3 young guys” going in and out of his house while he was not there.
What, if anything, came from the Dec. 30 encounter with police was unclear.
Prosecutors signaled their intent in court documents to call two of Boots’ friends or neighbors to testify. The men, records show, both checked in with Boots the night he was assaulted.
According to the state, Boots told one of them “on the night in question” that Hamilton was at the house with her two nephews.
Boots said he would call the man back when they left.
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