EXCLUSIVE PIC: One year after he shot Michael Brown, cop Darren Wilson is writing his memoirs and studying criminal justice following a series of dead-end jobs and living like 'a prisoner'
- Wilson has spent the last year in fear for his life and bouncing from one dead end job to another including working in warehouse of boot store
- 29-year-old shot Michael Brown, 18, on August 9 last year in Ferguson, MO, leading to a nationwide crisis over police-black relations
- Former cop is 'scared for his life' and knows 'somebody could be coming after him' sources tell Daily Mail Online
- Received $400,000 in donations but has been largely unable to access it for technical reasons, sources say
- Bought his current home through a trust, leading to suspicions he was trying to shield assets from legal action
- Wilson says his stepson asked him:'Why did you shoot him? Was he a bad guy?' The ex-cop replied: 'Yeah, he was a bad guy.'
Darren Wilson is writing a memoir and is planning to become a motivational speaker because he wants to 'do some good in the world', Daily Mail Online can reveal.
The former cop who shot dead Michael Brown hopes to get on the lucrative law enforcement speaking circuit where he could earn thousands of dollars for each appearance.
An investigation by Daily Mail Online has revealed that Wilson has spent the last year in fear for his life and bouncing from one dead end job to another including working in the warehouse of a boot store.
Wilson, a father-of-two, was given $400,000 in donations from well-wishers but cannot access it all because of a technical issue, friends said.
Ahead of the first anniversary of shooting Brown this Sunday, he has been studying criminal justice at a local college to try and salvage a career after resigning from the police force in Ferguson, Missouri.
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Everyday life: Darren Wilson pictured shopping near his home in the St Louis area. The former officer has had some jobs, but is spending most time as a house husband. His wife is a serving Ferguson officer
Under threat: Sources close to Wilson said he was living with the knowledge that 'somebody could come after him' and being careful about his movements
Keeping fit: Wilson seen running on a field near his Missouri home, where he exercised for 30 minutes. He used to play hockey with friends but does not any more
As he was: Darren Wilson, pictured as a uniformed Ferguson officer, in the months before he shot Michael Brown (right), a killing which created a storm over race and policing
Sources close to Wilson, 29, described how he is living the life of a prisoner - even though he has not been convicted of a crime.
They are worried that he could end up like George Zimmerman, the Florida neighborhood watch coordinator whose life has fallen to pieces since he was cleared of shooting dead unarmed black 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012.
A close friend said: 'Darren's life is over. Every day he is scared for his life and is looking over his shoulder.
'Knowing that somebody could be coming after you, eventually that's going to get to you and you're going to need some help.
'He can't be left on his own, he has to have people around him. He used to play hockey with his friends but that doesn't happen any more.
'He's struggling with money too.
'He can't get a job, nothing is working out. He's got a lot of support from his friends and people who know him, but it's hard.'
Wilson became the most notorious policeman in the world after shooting dead Brown on August 9th last year in Ferguson, a suburb of St Louis.
The killing sparked more than a week of violent protest and a national debate about policing and fueled the most severe racial tensions in America in a generation.
Wilson had stopped 18-year-old Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson because they were walking on the street.
Affection: Darren Wilson with his wife Barbara Spradling and their new baby. He lives with his wife and baby, and her son from a previous relationship
Restricted: Darren Wilson is unable to live openly, taking care not to go out without a baseball cap and sunglasses to keep his appearance discreet. He is seen with his wife and young baby near their home
Family: Darren Wilson's wife, holding a baby seat, two older children and Darren Wilson's sister are pictured together. His family has rallied round while he 'lives like a prisoner'
Amid a fog of conflicting testimony, what is clear is that Wilson and Brown had an altercation which ended with the officer shooting nine bullets into the body of the aspiring rapper.
Some witnesses said that Brown had his arms up in surrender at the time, a claim which sparked the protest chant: 'Hands up, don't shoot'.
Wilson said that Brown was charging towards him and that he was so angry he looked like a 'demon'.
Following a protracted hearing in which Wilson gave testimony a St Louis grand jury did not indict him, sparking another night of rioting and arson which destroyed entire blocks of Ferguson.
A Department of Justice investigation brought no charges and now all the remains against Wilson is an ongoing civil wrongful death lawsuit brought by Brown's family.
But that is not the story of what happened to Darren Wilson.
New life: Darren Wilson with family and friends at his wedding to Barbara Spradling. The wedding was in October
Marriage: Barbara Spradling was a serving officer with the Ferguson, Missouri, police department when they met. The 37-year-old has two children from her previous relationship with a firefighter,
Over the past year he has largely remained silent and out of the public eye, giving just one interview to ABC News in which he said he had a 'clean conscience' and speaking briefly to the New Yorker in March, in comments which were finally published this week.
In March he resigned from his $45,302 a year job at the Ferguson police department, where he worked for six years, following the damning Department of Justice report, which said the force was racist and breached the constitutional rights of its citizens.
With no severance package, no college degree and an infamy which means he can barely go out in public, Wilson's options have been limited.
He wrote in his resignation letter that it was his hope to 'continue in police work' but that has yet to happen.
He also has to try to support his wife Barbara Spradling, 37, who was a Ferguson officer but has now resigned, and they had a baby. She already has another young son from a previous relationship.
What may surprise some is that Wilson has to work at all given the amount of money that was raised on his behalf on websites like Gofundme.
Estimates of his war chest ranged from $400,000 to $1million but Daily Mail Online understands that the real figure is at the bottom end of the scale.
The money was administered by the nonprofit Shield of Hope, which is run by his lawyers and the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 15 in St Louis.
Exercising: Wilson keeping fit near his home. He had played hockey with friends but has given that up. He has also had a series of dead-end jobs but is now writing a memoir and studying criminal justice
Friends were not sure what the exact issue was with the money - financial data for this year is not yet available for Shield of Hope - but they told Daily Mail Online that Wilson was 'desperate' for cash.
Among Wilson's jobs has been a brief stint in sales but that only lasted a few weeks.
He also worked at Chuck's Boots, a warehouse in Fenton, a suburb of St Louis, that describes itself as the largest boot store in the world with 70,000 pairs on the shelves including some made from ostrich, shark and alligator skin.
When Daily Mail Online visited a pile of Confederate Flag bandanas lay on the counter by the till.
A worker at the store said that Wilson was put in the warehouse sorting out the stock but that he left after a couple of months.
The worker said that Wilson just 'didn't seem to fancy it'.
The worker also said there was a dispute over Wilson being hired among some of the employees but that he did not know the details.
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The worker said: 'The owner gave Darren a job because he was trying to help him out. He felt sorry for him.
'He was going to give him some police accounts as we do a lot of work for law enforcement, but it didn't seem to be for him. He just didn't want the work.
'We thought that if he worked in the warehouse away from the public it would be best for him. I'm sure he was paid OK for it, so I don't know why he walked away.
'He was quiet. He wasn't racist at all and seemed like a nice guy'.
Chuck's Boots owner Randy Markel did not return a message asking for comment.
When not hunting for a job Wilson has been a house husband and keeps the blinds drawn on the home, which sits on a quiet street.
He has been advised to wear sunglasses and a cap when out in public to disguise his appearance and has tinted windows on his car.
While looking for ways of making a living Wilson was introduced to R. Emmett McAuliffe, a former radio show host who is now an 'entertainment attorney' based in Clayton, Missouri.
He is now representing Wilson; the two men are both big sports fans and one of the lawyer's shows used to be called 'Friday Night Fracas'.
Notoriety: Video footage released in the wake of Michael Brown's death showed Darren Wilson standing looking at the black teenager's slumped body
Aftermath: A police picture of Darren Wilson taken after the shooting of Michael Brown showed him in hospital where he was examined for evidence of physical harm by Michael Brown
Examination: Red marking on Darren Wilson's face became part of the forensic evidence which was presented to the grand jury which decided not to bring charges over Michael Brown's death
McAuliffe's LinkedIn profile says that he is head of intellectual property and media law at St Louis law firm Riezman Berger.
His company profile says that he is 'well-equipped to advise and counsel clients on how best to harmonize trademark, copyright and right of publicity to create an effective long-term branding strategy'.
Wilson is currently working on his memoirs which Daily Mail Online understands will focus on his life after being cleared.
The book is a work in progress: it was only after he resigned in March that his life as he knows it now began.
New York literary agent Ryan Harbage said that Wilson’s selling points were that he had a high national profile and had been through a ‘high stress experience’.
But a memoir would be complicated because of the pending civil lawsuit by Brown’s family.
He said: 'I think the only way Wilson could have a best-selling book would be for him to make a case for the extreme dangers of law enforcement and the importance of law enforcement in a way that could appeal to people that believe in those things.
'However his platform is terrible because the court of public opinion has convicted this guy. There are too many legal issues pending for him to really deserve a publisher’s resources on a major level.'
Among the other options being explored for Wilson is that he will become a speaker at law enforcement events where he would get a sympathetic crowd of police, former military and security personnel.
A friend said that Wilson feels that he has 'something to say' and that he can 'do some good' with his story, so long as he gets a chance to tell it.
Wilson's only experience in the field so far was in March when he appeared at the annual fundraising trivia night in St Louis run by Chris Hunt, a policeman turned advocate for cops accused of wrongdoing.
Wilson was given a standing ovation by the crowd of 500 people but only spoke to thank those who attended.
A picture posted on the Facebook page for Hunt for Justice shows Wilson and Hunt standing next to each other smiling broadly.
Hunt for Justice has given Wilson financial aid in the past and continues to do so, though he was not paid to speak at the event.
Hunt himself has good reason to understand Wilson's plight. The St Charles County sheriff's deputy was convicted of burglary and assault in connection with a controversial 2009 meth bust - while on duty.
Explosion of rage: The decision not to charge Darren Wilson over the death of Michael Brown was followed by riots in Ferguson, and protests further afield. Police cars were targeted and shops looted
In flames: Disorder on the streets of Ferguson after the decision to clear Darren Wilson.
Support: Pro-police demonstrations were held in St Louis, Missouri, in August after the death of Michael Brown, and again in November after the decision to clear Darren Wilson
He took his case to the Missouri Supreme Court which threw out two of his three convictions and he plead no contest to the remaining charge of peace disturbance.
Hunt told Daily Mail Online that Wilson was a 'good person who has been crucified by the media...but he didn't do anything wrong'.
He said: 'All he was doing was defending himself and unfortunately he's suffering the consequences.
'My advice to Darren is to take care of himself and to protect his family.'
Hunt denied that Wilson had put the Brown shooting behind him.
He said: 'This is the first thing that he thinks about when he gets up and it's the last thing he thinks about when he goes to bed. It's what he thinks about in between.
'It's not just something he went to work and did one day and leaves it behind him. It continues to be with him.'
Last year in the months after shooting Brown Wilson took steps to move on and secure his future starting with marrying Spradling in October.
Public appearance: Wilson at a quiz night organized in St Louis in April where he was applauded
The two had met when they were both Ferguson officers and fell in love. Wilson divorced his first wife Ashley at the same time as Spradling broke up with John Blumenthal, with whom she had a child.
In October last year a limited liability company bought a home in the St Louis area for $188,000.
It was registered in the name of Barbara Wisehart, an estate planning lawyer. She did not return calls and emails asking for comment
According to land records, at 4.32pm on Friday November 21 the LLC transferred the property to Wilson and Spradling through a quit deed claim, a simple property transfer.
Nine minutes later at 4.41pm on the same day, Wilson and Spradling gave the property back to the trust via another quit deed claim.
Three days later on Monday November 24th, the grand jury said it would not indict Wilson.
Wilson will almost certainly have been advised that Brown's family would at one point bring a wrongful death lawsuit against him and the Ferguson police force, which they have now done.
But did the way he bought the property mean that it would be exempt from the lawsuit?
New York based attorney Dan Bright. who has dealt with dozens of cases involving LLCs being used to hide assets, said it was 'suspicious'.
He said: 'Putting an asset in an LLC makes it harder to enforce a civil judgement.
'First you would have to get a judgement against the person and if you couldn't find any assets owned by that person you have to sue the LLC as well.
'People end up litigating for years to try and recover assets that have been transferred by family members into LLCs.
'Just because he has done it doesn't mean he is going to get away with it but it would make it harder and slow down the process. The goal usually is that you make it so hard for someone that they give us before they get what they want.'
Bright added that Wilson could have temporarily transferred the property into his name to borrow money against the house, possibly to pay legal fees.
He said: 'It's suspicious. It's hard to know exactly what he was doing. It would be a weird coincidence if he was thinking about what happen when he was older.'
In June this year Wilson got another boost when he finally sold his old home.
Though the price was not disclosed real estate websites say it is worth around $200,000 - meaning that it would have covered the cost of his new family home.
Whatever Wilson's financial arrangements, the thing he needs more than anything else is the passage of time.
In order to have anything approaching a future, he will have to just wait it out, if precedent is anything to go by.
Since he was cleared in 2013 Zimmerman's life has come apart and he has twice been arrested on domestic violence charges for allegedly assaulting his girlfriend, one time for throwing a bottle of wine at her.
The 31-year-old was also shot at by a motorist and allegedly threatened to kill another driver during a road rage incident in which he said: 'Do you know who I am?'
In New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo is still awaiting the conclusion of a Federal and internal investigation into the choke hold he used on Eric Garner in July last year during an arrest that led to his death.
He spends his days locked inside his house under armed guard 24 hours a day by a marked patrol car that sits opposite his home.
Out and about: Former officer Darren Wilson on his way to his bank in the St Louis area. His car has blacked out windows to offer some anonymity
On the run: Wilson said that his way of coping is that 'I bottle everything up' and that he is so anxious about his safety that he made Spradling check in anonymously when she gave birth to their baby.
Looking back even further, the officers who were caught on camera beating Rodney King in 1991 had the stain hanging over them for years.
The lucky ones got jobs in computing or went to law school but it was the best part of a decade before they could walk the streets without fear of reprisals.
In an interview with The New Yorker Wilson did not apologize to Brown's family for what he had done, something which seems unlikely to ever to happen given the ongoing legal case.
He claimed that the tensions with police are 'not a race issue' and revealed that he has not even read the Department of Justice report into what happened.
He said: 'I don't have any desire. I'm not going to keep living in the past about what Ferguson did. It's out of my control.'
Wilson said that his way of coping is that 'I bottle everything up' and that he is so anxious about his safety that he made Spradling check in anonymously when she gave birth to their baby.
Recalling the hours after he shot Brown, Spradling said that Wilson walked into the Ferguson police station and told her: 'I just killed somebody'.
Spradling said: 'You know, a typical police shooting is: you get about a week to a week and a half off, you see a shrink, you go through your Internal Affairs interviews.
'And then you come back. I didn't think it would be a big weight on his shoulders.'
Debate: The death of Michael Brown has led to nationwide protests over - and new scrutiny of - police relations with African-Americans and the Black Lives Matter movement
Face of protest: Michael Brown. He was 18 when he died and wanted to be a rapper
But as they stayed up all night watching the protests they grew more horrified and recalled saying: 'Oh my God - what's going on? What are they doing?'
Spradling's son, who is six, asked Wilson why they were protesting.
Wilson told him: 'Well, I had to shoot somebody.'
Wilson said: 'And he goes: "Well, why did you shoot him? Was he a bad guy?" I said: "Yeah, he was a bad guy."'
Wilson told the New Yorker he would even like to return to the Ferguson police force, though Spradling says she will not allow him
Wilson said that it would be for a day only - to show people he was not 'defeated'.
With a bitter irony Wilson also claimed in the interview that he joined the Ferguson police force because he 'liked the black community'.
The former officer said that he 'had fun there' because the residents would 'just crack you up'.
Speaking about Brown, Wilson said: 'Do I think about who he was as a person? Not really, because it doesn't matter at this point.
'Do I think he had the best upbringing? No. Not at all.'
In his interview with ABC News Wilson sought to downplay his infamy by claiming that he is 'just a simple guy, that's all I am'.
He said: 'I do family things, spend a lot of time at home, with the family. Casual events. We're just simple, everyday, normal people.'
The reality is anything but.
In a statement McAuliffe said: 'Darren is still living very much in self-imposed hiding in St. Louis. He is not free to move around like you or me.
'Darren began writing his memoirs, which will include an account of his family's ongoing struggle to resume a normal life, after having been absolved twice.'
Wilson's other lawyers from the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 15 also did not return repeated calls, emails and letters asking for comment.
Neil Bruntrager, the St Louis attorney who used to be part of his legal team, declined to comment.
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