Pring-Wilson, convicted in stabbing after a fight, dies quietly in Colorado at 47 as electronics exec

A former Harvard graduate student convicted in 2004 of stabbing an unarmed Cambridge teen to death after a night of drinking died in mid-August.

Alexander Pring-Wilson died in his native Colorado Springs, Colorado. He was 47, according to his obituary announcement. The cause of death is not listed.

In Cambridge, Pring-Wilson’s criminal case came to exemplify the city’s growing class divide coupled with the role that stereotyping and wealth can play in criminal justice.

The son of two attorneys and a member of the influential Pring family in Colorado, Pring-Wilson was a Harvard master’s candidate and an aspiring environmental attorney in 2003. After a night of drinking in Somerville and Cambridge, he was walking alone in the rain down Western Avenue after dancing at the (now closed) Western Front music club.

About 2 a.m., he crossed paths with Michael Colono, an 18-year-old Cambridgeport resident who was in the back seat of a cousin’s car parked outside the Pizza Ring while waiting for a food order.

Colono laughed at Pring-Wilson’s drunken stagger and after trading insults the two started fighting on the sidewalk. Colono suffered five wounds from a nearly 4-inch military-style knife that Pring-Wilson said he used for cutting carpet, according to court testimony.

One of the wounds sliced Colon’s right ventricle, pouring blood into the pericardial sac encompassing his heart. It would soon fill up, making it more difficult for the heart to beat and eventually stop, which it later did at Beth Israel Deaconess hospital.

Manslaughter conviction

Although character evidence isn’t allowed in self-defense cases, Pring-Wilson’s attorneys fed reporters unflattering details about Colono’s juvenile record while promoting Pring-Wilson’s credentials and likening him to Gandhi in open court. It worked.

In its coverage of his bail hearing in Cambridge, one Boston newspaper described Pring-Wilson as “strikingly handsome.”

The defense team also enlisted the polling company of future Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway in an attempt to change the location of Pring-Wilson’s trial to a more favorable venue in Berkshire County, where they claimed residents would be more tolerant of a defendant who carried a knife. The tactic was unsuccessful, but Pring-Wilson’s lawyers endured.

Despite a manslaughter conviction in Middlesex Superior Court, Pring-Wilson would eventually serve just 15 months for the stabbing death. His conviction was appealed by a high-priced legal team, leading to a retrial, a deadlocked jury and a mistrial, resulting in a 2008 plea agreement.

After the criminal trial

Pring-Wilson never got his master’s from Harvard. Instead, he returned to Colorado, where he went by the name Sander Wilson, and worked for his stepfather’s electronics company, Low Voltage Wiring, which does mostly federal government and military business as LVW Electronics.

In 10 years, Pring-Wilson worked his way up in the company from business operations to the senior position of chief operating officer, according to his LinkedIn account.

In a civil suit, a Middlesex County Superior Court judge ruled that Pring-Wilson didn’t do enough to avoid the fight and a knife was more force than he needed to survive the altercation. His parents’ homeowner’s insurance policy later covered the $260,000 cost of wrongful death damages determined in the civil claim.

The Harvard Crimson covered Pring-Wilson’s arrest and ensuing judicial proceedings closely. But Harvard officials never acknowledged publicly his role in Colono’s death. The university’s official news outlet, The Harvard Gazette, didn’t report on the stabbing or Pring-Wilson’s trials.

He is survived by his wife, Janice Olmstead, and daughter Charlotte Alice Wilson, the obituary reads.

Policing improvements in Cambridge: reform or rhetoric?

Byline: Christopher Calnan
Dateline: Cambridge, Mass.
Publication: Cambridge Day
Section: Online
· Christopher Calnan

Fourteen years after policing in Cambridge attracted national attention, the city’s two police departments are again considering improvements to how they interact with the general public amid calls for reform.

Attempts at change by the Cambridge and Harvard University police departments share similar traits, such as soliciting reviews from outside experts and appointing committees. They also operate under some very different parameters.

 

In 2009, the Cambridge Police Department came under scrutiny after Sgt. James Crowley arrested Harvard University professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. on the porch of his university-owned house.

The incident and the reactions it drew provided a type of Rorschach test for race relations in America. It also prompted the appointment of a review committee and a 64-page report, “Missed Opportunities,” that answered few pertinent questions.

Cambridge officials announced in late February several measures designed to increase transparency and public safety. Meanwhile, the HUPD and its advisory board is preparing to update a previous activity report that drew fire when it revealed a disproportionate arrest rate of Blacks, The Harvard Crimson reported in 2021.

More than a decade removed from Gates’ arrest, the looming question is whether the latest round of reports and committees are performative or a prelude to long-awaited progress.

Knee-jerk reactions to specific incidents have previously lacked the needed staying power. The time for change in public safety protocols is long overdue, said Stephanie Guirand, a researcher for Cambridge-based The Black Response.

“People really want there to be a solution, rather than academic discourse,” she said.

Presidential advisor Conway aided Cambridge manslaughter defense team in 2004

Before she became a presidential aide, Kellyanne Conway was a footnote in a long-running saga in Cambridge criminal justice: She sold her polling services to Alexander Pring-Wilson, the Harvard graduate student who pleaded guilty to manslaughter for his role in the April 2003 stabbing death of a Cambridge teen.

A recently uncovered report shows that Conway, now a senior adviser to President Donald Trump, completed a survey identifying the most advantageous venue for Pring-Wilson’s trial. A 25-year-old Colorado native, he had been arrested after Cambridgeport resident Michael Colono died from stab wounds suffered during an impromptu fight on Western Avenue with an intoxicated Pring-Wilson minutes after leaving a local music club.

Pring-Wilson, who claimed self-defense, took exception to Colono mocking his drunken stagger while walking past the now-closed Pizza Ring restaurant in Riverside.

The trial was originally to start in November 2003, but a motion to move it meant a delay to September 2004. 

The 17-page Conway report, which was completed in February 2004, is notable because it’s a tangible example of how money and power can influence – or at least try to influence – the justice system. The report aimed to determine whether Pring-Wilson was more likely to get “a fair and balanced trial” in a county other than Middlesex.

Year after Cambridgeport clash on race, class, no signs Harvard took steps to address issues

A Harvard University official sparked an outcry last summer when she made condescending comments to a Cambridgeport neighbor, a young mother tending to her mixed-race toddler.

The city of Cambridge responded by spending nearly $14,000 on a series of five remedial workshops – but Harvard did not participate, and it remains unclear that the institution has done anything to prevent another collision over race and class.

On July 14, 2018, Theresa Lund, executive director of Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, took issue with the noise created by a child playing outside her apartment in Cambridgeport while her own children were napping. Lund was captured on video confronting the child’s young mother, Alyson Laliberte, and asking if Laliberte lived in one of the complex’s affordable units. At a time numerous white people had been captured on video nationwide being insensitive to issues of race and class, the incident created a social media firestorm and provided a rare glimpse into the university’s commitment to inclusiveness.

Lund was placed on leave, and the initiative’s director, Michael VanRooyen, pledged to address such bias with additional staff training. One year later, a Harvard spokeswoman said VanRooyen wasn’t available to provide details about what, if any, training was provided to staff members. VanRooyen is also chairman of emergency medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, according to his online profile.

Immediately after the incident, Lund wrote that she loved her community and was “committed to engaging in dialogue and actions about how to make it more welcoming and pleasant for all of us to live in together.” She’s now not listed on the Humanitarian Initiative’s website director. VanRooyen had tweeted in defense of Lund that the incident did “not represent who she is,” then deleted the tweet, Harvard Crimson staffer Caroline S. Engelmayer wrote.

Planning to dig

In October, Mayor Marc McGovern and city councillor Sumbul Siddiqui announced plans for “Cambridge Digs DEEP” forums with a plan to address “equity, power, privilege, diversity, inclusion and race.” In a news release, McGovern said the events represented a commitment to social justice: “We know that despite our reputation as a progressive city, Cambridge is not immune to issues of race and class.”

But McGovern also told The Harvard Crimson that the inclusion of university officials in such events was important so they could educate their employees who are in different financial situations than their neighbors. 

Even at the time, Engelmayer wrote in the Crimson, Harvard didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.