Family, Friends Defend Pring-Wilson’s Character

A week and a half ago Alexander Pring-Wilson had plans to earn a Harvard degree, attend law school in Colorado and live within a half-day’s drive of his family.

Now, as the 25-year-old Harvard graduate student awaits trial for murder, those close to him continue to wonder what went wrong.

While the details surrounding the fatal stabbing of 18-year-old Cambridge resident Michael Colono remain under dispute, those close to Pring-Wilson say the “Sander” they know is no murderer.

He’s accomplished, well-liked, a “humanitarian” and incredibly driven.

And he’s strong-willed—known to stand up for himself on the field and in the classroom.

Attorney Jeffrey Denner says that’s exactly what Pring-Wilson was doing on the morning of April 12, when he says his client stabbed Colono five times in self-defense.

Pring-Wilson, a graduate student at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, was walking alone along Western Avenue after a night out drinking when he neared an idling car where Colono, his cousin and a woman sat. According to Denner, Pring-Wilson overheard Colono comment on his “staggering” gait, and took offense.

Pring-Wilson approached the car and the two began to argue, Denner says.

Denner argued at Pring-Wilson’s bail hearing last week that his client was being attacked by Colono and Colono’s cousin when he used his pocket-knife to stab Colono.

Assistant District Attorney Adrienne Lynch described Pring-Wilson as an aggressor who opened the door to the car and began stabbing Colono almost immediately.

Colono, who suffered four stab wounds to the torso, died later that morning at Beth Israel Deaconness Hospital.

While those who know Pring-Wilson can’t believe that he would ever resort to violence, some say he would be unlikely to back down if challenged.

“I can imagine Sander would respond negatively if he were insulted and he’d had too much to drink,” says Marcia Dobson, chair of the Classics Department at Colorado College, where Pring-Wilson spent his undergraduate years. “I can imagine he would say, ‘I’m not going to take that from this guy.’”

Full of Determination

Friends and family say that this brand of determination has marked Pring-Wilson’s personality all his life.

Pring-Wilson was born to former Colorado Springs District Attorney Cynthia M. Pring and attorney Ross A. Wilson, and lived on a ranch with both until age six.

The two divorced when Pring-Wilson was young, but shared parental custody throughout his youth.

Pring describes her son’s voracious appetites for books—he taught himself to read when he was less than three years old, and pored over Shakespeare by fourth grade, she says.

At William J. Palmer High School in Colorado Springs, Pring-Wilson left his mark as a musician and an athlete.

Pring-Wilson sang in the choir, played piano in the jazz band, acted in school plays and served as captain of the football team.

In college, he captained the rugby team.

Despite not really being “that great an athlete,” his mother says, several described Pring-Wilson as driven and aggressive on the field.

Rugby Co-Captain James C. Orofino, says Pring-Wilson frequently played through serious injuries—including several to the head.

“He played through more injuries and more pain than I’ve ever seen anyone play through,” says Orofino

The same characteristics have carried over into his academic career.

According to his mother and friends, Pring-Wilson earned perfect scores on the logic section of the ACT and the verbal sections of both the SAT and the GRE.

After spending time in Russia on an exchange program, he returned to study there for several months during college.

Pring-Wilson graduated from Colorado College in 2000 with a major in classics.

Colorado College Philosophy Professor John Riker, who taught Pring-Wilson, says he was a persistent philosopher.

“He was not a pushover in any way,” Riker says. “He’d stand his ground...[he’d] hang in with his view.”

The next step for Pring-Wilson was Harvard, where he enrolled in a two-year masters program at the Davis Center.

After spending last summer in Croatia, Pring-Wilson worked this year on a thesis about reconstruction efforts in Bosnia.

The secretary of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ student council, Pring-Wilson recently received acceptance letters from several law schools, including the University of Colorado, where he planned to study environmental law next fall.

Putting His Mind to It

Pring-Wilson’s life outside of school, as friends and family describe it, shows similar streaks of independence and determination.

He has a knack for carpentry—so he built a gazebo behind his mother’s house.

One summer he decided to learn to cook, Pring-Wilson’s aunt, Dawna Wilson recalls.

After he had set his mind to it, there was no dissuading him.

“He learned how to cook out of a French cookbook so thick it was more like a doorstop,” Wilson remembers.

“He meticulously followed every recipe,” she says, and by the end of the summer had mastered the difficult chocolate mousse souffle.

Dobson, Pring-Wilson’s classics professor, says her former student enjoys outdoor activities, especially hiking.

She speculates that this love for the outdoors, and his independent nature, might explain why Pring-Wilson chose to walk several miles from the Western Front, a pub in Cambridge, to his apartment in Davis Square on the night of the stabbing.

“It doesn’t surprise me that he would walk four miles home to his house in the middle of the night,” Dobson says. “He was very free that way. He wasn’t terribly cautious.”

But logical explanations end about there, Dobson and others say. Though he once played a violent sport, Pring-Wilson was perceived differently off the field.

“Imagine a guy who is a wonderful teddy bear,” Riker says. “He’s a pretty complex guy.”

And Pring-Wilson’s only run-in with the police, Denner says, was for streaking across the Colorado College quad.

The result of these facts, and their intimate knowledge of “Sander,” leaves those who were close to Pring-Wilson in deep disbelief

Wilson says she can’t imagine that her nephew is a murderer.

“There has to be stuff we don’t know. This doesn’t fit,” she says. “People don’t just instantly turn into killers.”

—Hana R. Alberts contributed to the reporting of this story.

-Staff writer Jenifer L. Steinhardt can be reached at steinhar@fas.harvard.edu.