Police records reveal new details about MD judge’s killer

On October 19, 2023 at 5:03 p.m., Pedro Argote opened an email and learned that he had lost custody of his four children after being exposed as a controlling, abusive father at a court hearing earlier that day.

At 6:11 p.m., Argote was fueling up his 2009 Mercedes SUV at a Sheetz in Frederick, where he had lived in an apartment since April.

He drove 30 miles northwest toward Hagerstown, where he stopped in a Lowes parking lot and sat in his car for 15 minutes. Then he turned off his phone.

Next, surveillance cameras picked up the trail, showing Argote’s SUV driving toward a well-maintained neighborhood just a few miles from the Maryland-Pennsylvania border.

At 7:54 p.m., a neighbor’s Ring camera caught the SUV driving past the home of Washington County Circuit Court Judge Andrew Wilkinson.

The SUV stopped in the street as a person emerged from the home’s garage and unlocked the silver pickup in the driveway. When the person opened the truck’s passenger door, the SUV’s brake lights went off. The driver had put it in park.

Then the Ring camera switched off and could no longer detect any further movement in the early autumn twilight.

Police later reported what happened next: Argote approached Wilkinson in the driveway and fired three shots, hitting the judge twice, before fleeing in his SUV.

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Wilkinson’s wife and neighbors, hearing the shots, immediately rushed outside and called 911. But Argote was gone and Wilkinson died less than an hour later at a nearby hospital.

The brazen shooting of a Maryland judge in his own driveway stunned the state and shook the core of a legal system designed to replace violence as a means of resolving disputes. It sparked urgent meetings about judicial security and passing legislation to keep judges’ home addresses off the internet.

Now, more than 100 pages of police files released in response to a public records request by The Daily Record shed new light on the horrific shooting and provide a fuller picture of Argote’s actions after his family finally escaped him.

Argote died by suicide a few days after the murder. His body was found in a wooded area near the West Virginia border after an intensive week-long search by law enforcement.

Police and court records show there were signs before the shooting that Argote posed a danger, at least to his family.

When officers visited Argote’s wife in the hours after Wilkinson’s death, she became hysterical.

“I knew he was going to do something,” she said, according to police reports. Her divorce had become increasingly difficult in recent months and she was convinced that Argote’s mental state had deteriorated.

He was estranged from many of his family members. At the divorce hearing, which ended just hours before Wilkinson was shot, Argote’s adult daughter testified that her father beat her with a belt and other objects and installed cameras throughout the house so he could monitor her every move.

“The reason I had the courage to testify was so that my siblings would not have to go through the mental anguish that I am currently experiencing,” said the woman, who testified that she left home at 18 and not with her father had spoken since.

Argote’s wife, the mother of his four younger children, said the abuse and isolation worsened when Argote found out she was planning to leave him.

Wilkinson immediately granted Argote’s wife a divorce and sole custody of their children, who were then 12, 11, 5 and 3 years old.

“The way Mr Argote has isolated these children and mothers over the last two years has, I think, continued throughout the marriage and it is shocking,” Wilkinson said. “I think he’s abusive in more ways than one.”

Argote was not in court that day. He claimed to have a headache.

Maryland Judge Killed: Everything You Need to Know

His wife turned to her lawyer with a warning: They should not take Argote’s absence lightly. She believed “he was going to do something crazy,” according to police records.

She later told police that she was “convinced Pedro was going to kill her, but wouldn’t try while she was in the presence of her children.”

Instead, Argote went against the judge who ruled against him. Investigators later discovered that Argote’s search history on his home computer included queries about Wilkinson, the lead investigator on the case told The Daily Record in an email.

“Exactly what information those searches yielded, I don’t know,” said Kevin Klappert, a detective with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office. “But at the time, I and others searched for the judge’s name on Google and it didn’t take long before we found his address with publicly available information.”

According to investigative files, Argote’s wife also told police that her husband had an interest in weapons and anti-government views.

He closely followed the news about bombings and people trying to break into the White House, she said. He spent a lot of time at a shooting range practicing shooting. Sometimes he brought home targets with human outlines and showed them to his wife. The bullet holes were always in the center of the target, she told police.

His wife recalled that Argote had also attended the Montgomery County Police Department’s Citizens Academy years earlier. He came home from those classes and discussed cases he learned about there, she said, noting what he believed were mistakes police made in their investigations.

In an email, an MCPD spokesperson confirmed that Argote attended Citizen Academy 10 years ago after passing a background investigation.

“During the Citizens Academy, only high-profile cases will be discussed with participants,” said Capt. Stacey A. Flynn. “The department encourages anyone suffering from domestic violence to contact the Family Justice Center and those experiencing a mental health crisis to contact the Montgomery County Crisis Center.

“Judge Wilkinson was an exemplary public servant who will continue to be missed. Our heartfelt MCPD condolences go out to his wife, Stephanie, and children,” Flynn said.

During a search of Argote’s home, police found a training certificate issued by Citizen Academy, according to police records. Investigators also found an “abusive litigation” article with handwritten notes, a blue notebook with a timeline of his divorce case, a purple notebook detailing his interactions with his children and his complaints against his wife, and a red notebook with Notes and witness statements Preparation materials for upcoming court dates.

“Nothing in the documents recorded above indicated a direct connection to the murder of Judge Wilkinson,” a police lieutenant wrote. “However, the recordings showed Argote’s growing frustration with the judge, his ex-wife’s attorney, the attorney assigned to the children and the legal system in general.”

A search of Argote’s mailbox at a UPS branch in Hagerstown uncovered a letter from the Armed Citizens’ Legal Defense Network stating that Argote’s membership would expire later in 2023, as well as evidence that his small digital business Advertising was in crisis.

Argote’s wife also told police that he owned a Glock pistol and an AR rifle, but said he sold the rifle before Wilkinson’s shooting. Evidence was found at the scene of the shooting and where Argote’s body was found that confirmed he had used the Glock in the murder.

Argote always carried the gun with him, his wife told police, “even though it was illegal” to do so. Argote was a registered gun owner but was briefly ordered to hand over his two firearms in June 2022 when his wife received a temporary protection order against him.

The order was lifted ten days later after Argote and his wife agreed to a “nest arrangement” under which he would live on the first floor of the family home and she would live upstairs with the children. He later moved out of the house completely.

Argote’s wife said her husband never threatened her with a gun, but described their relationship as “20 years of domestic violence” in an interview with police after the shooting.

Argote’s behavior also became increasingly concerning in the weeks leading up to the Oct. 19 hearing, his wife told police.

When Argote picked up the children as part of the couple’s court-ordered custody agreement just days before the hearing, he walked to the front door instead of waiting in the car as he was supposed to, which frightened his wife.

Two weeks earlier, he delivered a chilling message as he parked the SUV at his wife’s house: “It’s all over on the 19th.”

Argote may have meant that he expected to win the custody battle.

But that didn’t happen. On October 19, after skipping that day’s court hearing, Argote lost divorce proceedings and custody of his children after years of abuse and controlling behavior finally came to light.

At 5:03 p.m. he opened the email informing him of the decision