A former Lindbergh School District teacher and coach has been charged with statutory sodomy after three former students came forward to say he sexually abused them as minors, more than a decade after an earlier case against him collapsed when his accuser was found dead. James Wilder III, 60, of Ballwin, was booked on a $300,000 cash-only bond following the new charges filed Wednesday.
Wilder faces three counts of second-degree statutory sodomy, but outlets differ on the fourth count: First Alert 4 reported that prosecutors charged him with a completed count of first-degree statutory sodomy involving a person younger than 14, while The Call reported the fourth count as attempted first-degree statutory sodomy involving a person under 14. Under Missouri law, second-degree statutory sodomy applies when someone 21 or older has deviate sexual intercourse with a person younger than 17, according to the Missouri Revisor of Statutes.
Wilder taught and coached in the Lindbergh School District, according to First Alert 4's report, which also detailed the allegations underlying the new charges. Investigators say three former students disclosed sexual contact with Wilder: one was under 14 and the other two were under 17 at the time. The alleged conduct unfolded across three separate stretches: one from August 1995 through September 1996, another from August 2005 through December 2006, and a third from April 2007 through November 2008.
Cold Case Unit Handles Investigation
The St. Louis County Police Department's Bureau of Crimes Against Persons Cold Case Unit is handling the investigation, per The Call's report on a probable-cause statement describing how three separate students disclosed sexual contact with Wilder from his time as a teacher. The Lindbergh School District fired Wilder in 2015 and had him sign an agreement barring him from ever returning to campus, First Alert 4 reported.
A Case That Died With Its Accuser
Wilder was previously charged in 2013, when he was 48, with six counts of statutory sodomy, according to First Alert 4's account of that earlier prosecution. That case fell apart after his original accuser, Emilie Morris, was found dead in her apartment in 2014, the outlet reported. Morris's story later became the subject of an Oxygen Network documentary called “The Case Died With Her,” which aired in 2020.
Older St. Louis Post-Dispatch coverage described Wilder as a Lindbergh cross-country coach who was fired years after allegedly having a sexual relationship with a student, and reported that he had been charged with sodomy for allegedly having oral sex with a female student 17 years earlier, according to stltoday.com. A related report from the same outlet placed those earlier alleged acts in 1996 and 1997, a timeframe that does not fully match the 1995-to-1996 window cited in the current charges, and the discrepancy between the two accounts has not been resolved.
What Missouri Law Says About the Charges
Missouri law treats first-degree statutory sodomy and its attempted form as a felony punishable by life imprisonment or a term of years of at least five years, subject to statutory exceptions, according to the Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Wilder remains held on the $300,000 cash-only, no-10-percent bond described in The Call's report as he faces the newest round of charges tied to the decades-spanning cold case investigation.
