Wade Wilson Victim’s Mom Thinks Dead Daughter is ‘Alive, Well and Married’

Katie Melton lives each day believing her daughter, Kristine, is “alive, well, and married.”

The mother who suffers from Alzheimer’s is unaware that Wade Wilson brutally murdered her in October 2019.

For Kristine Melton’s family, the grief never ends.

Wilson, a now 30-year-old Florida convicted killer, was sentenced to death on Tuesday for the murders of Kristine Melton and Diane Ruiz, but that doesn’t bring peace to the victims’ families.

Kristine’s brother, Robert Melton, 43, reveals their mother’s rapid decline began with his sister’s death who was 35 when killed.

“Kristine’s passing was the trigger that really put her in a pretty rapid decline,” Robert Melton, who resides in Maryland, told Newsweek hours after the sentencing.

After Kristine Melton’s death, their mother moved from Florida into his Maryland home as she requires full-time care.

“Occasionally she’ll have moments of reconnecting with reality, and she’ll have some memory of the event and she’ll re-experience it, which is pretty horrific. That happens on a semi-regular basis, so she gets to re-experience losing her daughter once every couple of months. That’s rough.”

Before her murder, Robert Melton says his sister lived four houses down from their mom in Cape Coral so that she could keep her mother safe from scammers attempting to take advantage of her amid her battle with dementia.

“Kristine was her best friend,” he said. “They had coffee every morning.”

Although Robert Melton believes his mom would be content with Lee County Circuit Court Judge Thompson sentencing Wilson to death, he has not told her about Tuesday’s victory.

“The way I’m probably going to handle this news is when my mom has one of her sort of natural breakthrough periods where she is remembering things, I will fill her in, but I’m not going to force that pain on her today,” Robert Melton told Newsweek. “I’m going to wait until she is going through it naturally and I will let her know. Maybe some part of her brain will hold on to the facts.”

Kristine Melton Was The Family ‘Glue’

Robert Melton tells Newsweek he spoke to his sister on the phone “three or four days” before she was murdered on October 7, 2019, about how to keep their mom safe from financial ruin.

“I think my mom bought a workout device, and Kristine was like, ‘She can’t keep buying stuff. This is insane. We got to do something about this.’ I said, ‘What are we going to do? She just buys random stuff,’ and the joke was she was turning into her father, who also was a little bit of an infomercial, buy-a-product person.”

“So I was kind of pushing Kristine — we were passing the buck — to have that ‘You can’t have credit cards anymore’ conversation with mom.”

Robert Melton described his sister as “the glue that kept me connected to the cousins” living in Florida, which he admits to “not doing a good job at keeping in touch with them with Kristine out of the picture.”

He was unable to attend Tuesday’s sentencing from Maryland after purchasing multiple plane tickets throughout this five-year case only to have court proceedings rescheduled. Their cousin Samantha was in the Florida courtroom and spoke about her beloved Kristine in a subsequent press conference.

“This has been five years of agony,” Samantha said. “We’re done being quiet … This will not be the last Wade Wilson sees of us in a courtroom,”

Robert Melton told Newsweek that his sister was a “fun-loving and super light-hearted person.” He described her as a “super kind, non-judgmental person” and he is “very happy she got to meet my wife before we got married.”

Learning Sister Was Murdered

Robert Melton and his now-wife Nicole were eating dinner at a resort they visited in preparation for spending his birthday there when he received the life-altering call from his mother that his sister had been killed.

“At first, honestly, I thought my mom was just confused,” he told Newsweek. “But then I heard my cousins in the background and that’s when I realized this probably wasn’t a mistake.”

Robert Melton jumped on a plane from Maryland and flew to Florida still not fully understanding the circumstances surrounding his sister’s death. He stayed for two or three weeks to be with his mom during the difficult time.

Wilson and Kristine met at Buddha Live, a live-music bar in Fort Myers, on October 6, 2019. Wilson went back to her Cape Coral home that night, Wilson strangled her to death the next morning.

Robert Melton told Newsweek that he went to Kristine’s house to retrieve some of her belongings after police cleared it. He said “there was still blood” at the home which he helped to clean up.

Robert Melton said cleaning the scene was “surreal” and “horrific” but he was more focused on how his sister’s death was going to affect their mom.

“I really didn’t fall apart until after I got back home,” Robert said.

‘Wade Wilson Doesn’t Seem Like A Person’

When asked how he feels about Wilson not showing any emotion when he was sentenced to death on Tuesday, Robert Melton found his astonishment difficult to put into words.

“He just doesn’t seem like a person,” Robert Melton said of the killer. “It’s so horrific.”

He doesn’t understand the social media fanfare surrounding Wilson, either.

“A friend of mine sent me a link, like ‘Oh yeah, he’s a TikTok sensation,’ and I’m just like, ‘Oh my God.'”

“I don’t want anything in this to be about him,” Robert Melton added. “Two wonderful people died. This should not end up being about Wade.”

“I saw someone online say ‘I hope he doesn’t make any money off of this’ and I just hope that’s not even possible,” Robert Melton said.

Even Wilson’s lawyer Kevin Shirley agrees the fanfare is “ridiculous.”

“I’ve never been involved in anything like this before. I don’t know how many tens of thousands of people are communicating with him or communicating with each other about him,” Shirley told Newsweek. “There’s donations that are set up for him. I think it’s ridiculous, but there’s a lot of people that think otherwise.”

At the time of publication, a FUNDLY fundraiser created to “Save Wade Steven Wilson” and “help us prove his innocence and fight for a new, fair trial” has raised nearly $74,000 of its $100,000 goal. This includes a donor only identified as Jenette contributing a whopping $24,000 and an anonymous donor’s $10,000 contribution.

“Our donation campaign aims to raise funds to help Wade Steven Wilson afford a reputable, specialized, and competent legal defense team to take over his case and appeal his upcoming sentencing on August 27, 2024,” the page, which does not appear to be updated with the news that he was sentenced to death, reads. “This campaign is not a debate about innocence or guilt but about the right to a fair and objective trial.”

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