(CBS) Starting in 1994, the police began looking into Garrett Wilson’s past.

They did so at the urging of Missy Anastasi, Wilson's third wife who believed her ex-husband had a hand in the 1987 death of their son, Garrett Michael.

“He had a love for money,” says Montgomery County Homicide Detective Meredith Dominick. “He liked to show it - he liked to flash it - he liked to spend it. There was a passion about it." She says he was willing to commit murder to get it.

By 1997, police were convinced that Wilson had indeed killed his baby son for insurance money.

Wilson himself gave police a critical piece of evidence, when he revealed that he had taken out a second life insurance policy, worth $100,000, on Garrett Michael.

Anastasi claims she knew of only one policy, for $50,000, which Wilson had gotten just weeks after their baby’s birth. But after his son died, Wilson collected on both policies, a total of $150,000. The prosecutor, Doug Gansler, says Wilson spent the money in three months, buying cars, furniture, and paying off debts.

“Missy didn’t know, or said she didn’t even know, that he had that much insurance on the baby, which always puzzled me,” says Adrian Havill, the author of "While Innocents Slept," a detailed look at the case.

Anastasi says Wilson told her that the money came from large commissions he received at work.

During the investigation, police found that Wilson had fathered another baby, who had died mysteriously, years before he met Anatasi.

“He didn’t just do this once, he did this twice,” says Dominick. “Not one baby died, but two babies died. There were a lot of dots to connect. We were able to connect them. And it painted a horrible picture.

In 1981, Wilson was 24, and married to a woman named Debbie Oliver. The couple had a baby girl together, named Brandi Jean. When she was 2 months old, Brandi Jean died; officials ruled that she had died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Wilson had taken out two life insurance policies on Brandi Jean.

Says Dominick: “Both cases were so similar. There was this common thread, and that thread was Garrett Wilson.”

Wilson bought a $30,000 policy from an agent named George Smith. At the time, Smith had no idea that Wilson had also gotten a $10,000 policy from another agent. “When we first wrote this, I don’t think Debbie even knew this was being written,” he says.

Hours after his daughter was pronounced dead, Wilson called Smith. “Something was wrong,” says Smith. “I knew it. This little girl shouldn’t have died.” Smith was so suspicious that he saved Brandi Jean’s file. It is the only file he has held onto in this way.

But in both deaths, SIDS was thofficial cause of death. Dominick and Gansler both say that this was a major stumbling block for the investigation.

But more than a decade after Garrett Michael died, prosecutors asked the medical examiner, Charles Kokes, to take another look at the case. After looking at new evidence, Kokes decided that Garrett Michael’s death was a homicide.

The key evidence? “This was not the first sudden infant death syndrome in this family, in association with- the father, Garrett Wilson,” says Dr. Kokes. The odds of two such deaths happening in the same family are “astonomically high,” he says.

SIDS expert Dr. Linda Norton, who reviewed the prosecution case, says that the odds are one in four million. She notes that SIDS is not genetic at all. “I think both of these children were smothered to death, and they were smothered, by their father.”

“If two or more children die in the same family, reportedly of SIDS, then there’s a murderer in the family, and Garrett Wilson was that murderer,” says Gansler.

In 1999, Wilson was charged with murdering Garrett Michael. The trial began that year.

Not everyone agreed with Norton and Kokes. “In my opinion, it can’t be proved as murder,” says Dr. Miles Jones, a forensic pathologist from Kansas City, who testified for the defense. He says that the cause of Garrett Michael’s death was undetermined, and that the cause of Brandi Jean’s death was SIDS. But Kokes believes the brain swelling he found in Garrett Michael is evidence of suffocation.

The jury took two hours to come back with a verdict of guilty. Wilson was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

But it wasn’t the medical testimony that impressed the jury most. The key, jurors said, was Anastasi’s testimony. Testifying was a very important moment for her: “I couldn’t bring the baby back, but the least I could do was- the person responsible- put him where he belonged.”

Vicky Wampler, Wilson's fourth wife, still believes that Wilson is innocent. “What Missy took from my daughter - is she took her father,” Wampler says. “I told (Marysa) that her daddy was not coming home - that he was never coming home.”

Wilson’s trial for the murder of Brandi Jean keeps getting postponed. In Brandi Jean’s case, the prosecution faces a much larger hurdle. In that case, the autopsy reads: “undetermined.” So Wilson has been offered deals: second-degree murder is one. But Wilson tells Havill that he couldn’t face his daughter Marysa if she knew her father had pled guilty to murder.

Go back to the beginning of the story:

Part I