After crushing his girlfriend to death in 2019 and concealing her dead body in his apartment for days after her murder — as the woman’s husband frantically searched for her — Dustin James Wilder of Virginia was sentenced to just over 20 years in prison.
Wilder, 40, killed Faith Ann Johnson, 44, at his home in Norfolk in October 2019 and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and concealing her body this March, according to online court records reviewed by Law&Crime.
In a Dec. 1 statement announcing the sentence of 20 years and six months for the slaying of the Virginia Beach woman, prosecutors said Wilder called police close to midnight on Oct. 25, 2019, and told a 911 operator: “My girlfriend is dead.”
“I am pretty sure I am the culprit,” Wilder said.
Background: Home where Faith Ann Johnson was murdered in Virginia (YouTube screengrab via WVEC). Inset: Dustin James Wilder booking photo Norfolk Police Department.
Police were dispatched and Wilder was arrested in front of a 7-Eleven convenience store, deputy commonwealth attorney William Maydosz said.
When Wilder agreed to let police inside of his home, that’s when they found Johnson’s body stashed “on the kitchen floor under a pile of blankets,” Norfolk police reported.
Later, an autopsy would reveal that Johnson had a staggering 50 fractures on her rib cage and that the injuries appeared to have happened at the same time of her death. There were “dozens more” injuries to her ribs that the examiner found in various states of healing plus “blunt force trauma to her head” and indications of “trauma to her neck consistent with prior strangulation,” police said.
“A forensic anthropologist concluded that Mrs. Johnson’s injuries were indicative of her being crushed to death while lying on a firm surface,” prosecutors said.
When police first interviewed Wilder in October 2019 they said he divulged that he and Johnson would fight sometimes and that as a couple, they did drugs together. Wilder also initially told police they were getting high for a few days before he found her body.
One day he blacked out, he said, and then woke up to find her on the floor.
The Virginian-Pilot reported that Wilder admitted to police that he had been smoking crack and drinking alcohol before this episode. Wilder said he saw her body on the floor, fell asleep and then woke again some time later. That’s when he realized Johnson hadn’t moved, he said.
Johnson had come to his home “several days before” he told police in 2019, then suggested he thought she had overdosed. During the interview, police noted that Wilder had open wounds on his knuckles on both hands.
Johnson had been reported missing by her husband, whose name was not identified publicly, on Oct. 22, just a few days before Wilder called 911.
The man told authorities he hadn’t heard from his wife for days and when she hadn’t come home, he said he noticed his wife’s car was parked in Wilder’s driveway. When he knocked on Wilder’s door, there was no answer, however.
Johnson and Wilder were friends, he told police in 2019. But disturbingly, he also told police that he noticed sometimes after his wife would spend time with Wilder, she would have bruises on her body.
The deputy commonwealth attorney’s office said last week that it was on Oct. 23, 2019 — more than a day after she was reported missing — that Johnson’s husband noticed a charge on his wife’s debit card.
It was the only time her card had been used in 72 hours.
The purchase was made at a 7-Eleven in Norfolk. With the help of police, surveillance footage was secured and upon review, officers said they found footage of Wilder driving up to the store in Faith Ann Johnson’s car.
Wilder was then seeing going inside the store to make a purchase.
Other footage obtained from the same 7-Eleven showed Wilder driving the woman’s car on two separate occasions, parking and then going inside to use her debit card to make a purchase. Johnson’s husband had frozen his wife’s card when he Wilder tried it a third time.
Wilder pleaded guilty this March to second-degree murder as well a concealment of a dead body. His sentence of 20 years and 6 months is the maximum allowed and a court has ordered him to pay $6,000 in restitution to the Johnson family.
According to reporting in 2019 from local CBS affiliate WTKR, at the time of her death, Johnson had a 10-year-old son.
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