A town hall took a bizarre turn when one of the candidates running for an Arizona Senate seat stood up and told the crowd about the time he shot and killed his mother.
The crowd had gathered in an Arizona church to listen to potential lawmakers discuss their potential solutions for gun-control. The event was sponsored by Moms Demand Gun Action and things were seemingly going as expected until Bobby Wilson took the mic and launched into the story about killing his mother.
Wilson framed the story as a "good guy with a gun" fable by saying he killed a crazed attacker in self-defense in the middle of the night. He left out the part about the woman being his mother and that his sister also died that night and the family's house was burned down.
Newspaper headlines from the time of the killings in 1963 painted a much more complicated story than simple self-defense.
Screenshot William Flannigan, azcentral
Screenshot Choctaw Country Weekly
Clearly Wilson isn't hiding his past; he shared the video of the story on his Facebook page. His story begins around the 1:33 mark.
According to AZ Central, the story is far more complicated. Wilson originally confessed to the murders, then changed his plea, claiming he had amnesia about the events of the night. Eventually, after two trials, the state dropped the charges against him in 1973.
People are suspicious of the story.
This mystery may never be solved, but it stands as a good lesson on the importance of getting out and voting.
According to Fox News, accounts at the time completely contradict Wilson's telling of the story.
Reports in the local paper at the time, the Choctaw County Weekly, contradicted Wilson's account of the events. The bodies of Wilson's mother and sister were found "in a 'perfectly relaxed' position, indicating they died in their sleep from suffocation," the paper said, according to the Arizona Republic.
Perhaps when Special Counsel Robert Mueller is finished investigating Russian interference, he can pop over to Arizona and take a look at this case? Yikes.
H/T: Huffington Post, CBS News
