FREDERICK, MD – A Baltimore man convicted of murdering a Pikesville resident during a violent abduction in Walkersville has been sentenced to 85 years in the Maryland Division of Corrections.
In Frederick County Circuit Court, Judge Scott Rolle ordered 20-year-old Keon Naki Wilson-Hawkins to serve life, suspending all but 65 years for first-degree murder, and an additional 20 years consecutive for kidnapping. He also received a concurrent 10-year term for carjacking. The sentence follows his July 9 conviction by a Frederick County jury on all counts, including conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
The case began on January 10, 2024, when Frederick County Sheriff’s deputies found 66-year-old Brice Wendell Boots dead inside his 2003 Toyota Sequoia in a field along Crum Road. The vehicle, located roughly 650 feet off the roadway, was covered in mud and blood. Investigators later determined Boots had been abducted from his Pikesville home hours earlier.
Detectives learned that Boots’ estranged wife, Frances Virginia Hamilton, had been seen at his home the night before his death, accompanied by two men, one identified as Wilson-Hawkins, her nephew. Investigators found signs of a struggle inside the residence and used surveillance footage and cellphone records to track Hamilton and Wilson-Hawkins traveling together to the home before the killing.
Phone data later placed both men traveling west toward Frederick in the early morning hours of January 10, before Wilson-Hawkins’ phone returned to Baltimore around 6:30 a.m. Hamilton was found dead weeks later in Anne Arundel County in what investigators determined was a suicide.
Frederick County prosecutors sought a life without parole sentence. State’s Attorney Charlie Smith said while 85 years is a significant term, the family had hoped for the harsher penalty. “The family will have to endure this defendant getting a ‘Second Look’ after serving only 20 years,” Smith said.
In court, a cousin of the victim described the toll of the crime on the family, saying, “Brice cared deeply for his family and friends. He was brutally taken away from us, and we are left with a deep emptiness.”
