Crime and 'Passion': Man Describes Killing

Aug. 19, 2004 -- The man who said The Passion of the Christ moved him to admit to killing his girlfriend told detectives on a videotaped confession that he killed the 19-year-old to cover up getting her pregnant.

"I was not willing to share that child with her and to let others know that I had done things I had with her," said Dan Leach, 21, on the newly released video. "I was like a robot, just following a program. There wasn't any malicious intent. It was cold and calculated, and it wasn't what I wanted to do. It was just what I ended up doing."

Police released the videotape this week after a Richmond, Texas, jury sentenced Leach to 75 years in prison Friday for killing Ashley Wilson, who was 19 years old. Leach's attorney plans to appeal the sentence.

‘Weighing … on My Mind’

On the videotape, Leach admitted to strangling Wilson Jan. 15, months before seeing the Mel Gibson film, The Passion of the Christ.

"It was weighing so much on my mind I had to come forward," Leach said.

Leach described tricking Wilson into writing a list of her troubles that police would believe to be a suicide note.

"She agreed to go ahead and write some things," Leach said. "I wanted some sort of physical evidence on paper."

After strangling her with a cord, Leach said he then covered the murder up to make it look like a suicide. Leach says he wiped his fingerprints from the scene and also left a compact disc playing a song by The Who, "Behind Blue Eyes," to set an eerie mood for when Wilson's body was found.