John Albers, 38, a White man from Columbia, Missouri, died on January 13, 2019, after a morning dispute in the Fairway Meadows area east of the city turned lethal. Deputies were called to the 200 block of Sarazen Drive shortly after 7 a.m., and they found Albers had been shot; he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Investigators later laid out a chilling, close-range account of how the argument unfolded. In the probable-cause narrative reported at the time, Garland B. Wisley Jr.
refused repeated demands to hand over a handgun during the confrontation and then shot Albers in the head. Afterward, witnesses said Wisley pointed the gun at several other people inside the residence before leaving on foot, turning the neighborhood into the backdrop for an urgent manhunt.
Within days, prosecutors had filed charges against Wisley for second-degree murder and armed criminal action, and a warrant was issued while deputies searched for him. Court and law-enforcement statements described him as wanted not only for the homicide case but also on a separate failure-to-appear warrant tied to drug possession and trespassing matters, adding to the sense that he had been slipping away from consequences even before Albers’ killing.
The search stretched on for months until late November 2019, when authorities said Wisley was arrested in San Luis, Arizona, as he tried to re-enter the United States from Mexico. He was held for extradition back to Missouri, and by mid-December he was booked into the Boone County Jail. Jail and court reporting at the time listed him held on second-degree murder and armed criminal action, with bond reported above one million dollars.
Years later, the case reached its courtroom ending not with the original murder charge, but with a negotiated resolution. In March 2022, a Boone County judge sentenced Wisley to a total of 20 years in prison under a plea agreement: 15 years for voluntary manslaughter and five years for armed criminal action, stemming from the Jan. 13, 2019 shooting on Sarazen Drive.
