SAN ANTONIO – When asked point-blank on national television whether he stole his ex-girlfriend’s body from Mission Park Funeral Home, Bill Wilburn told CNN, “No, of course not, absolutely not.”
A person of interest in the bizarre 2015 disappearance of Julie Mott’s remains after her memorial service, Wilburn said, “The fact that the funeral home is still hoping that I’m going to be their scapegoat at this point is incredibly sad.”
Mott’s family is in court this week suing Mission Park Funeral Home for $1 million.
Wilburn will be in a different court next week to face criminal trespassing charges. In the interview with CNN’s Ashley Banfield, Wilburn admitted that he returned to the funeral home after Mott's body vanished.
“Moments, maybe within a few weeks afterward, I did drive around the building and make myself seen,” Wilburn said. “That was the only time I would say I was actually lingering.”
Court records show that, after being warned in 2015 against trespassing, Wilburn tried twice in June to enter Mission Park Funeral Home. After that, he was placed on full house arrest.
The probable cause affidavit states employees recognized Wilburn as the man caught on surveillance cameras trying to gain access. Now, he’s under partial house arrest after San Antonio police said he was at a hotel across the street from the funeral home last month.
In the CNN interview, Wilburn tried to explain why he has kept going back. He said that, after a family member was killed by a drunk driver, “I drove by that guy’s house a bunch of times.”
Wilburn said that, although he knew Mott was dying from complications of cystic fibrosis, “knowing that someone is going to die, that you know and you care about, you can’t ever prepare for something like that.”
But both the San Antonio Police Department and Mott’s family have said Wilburn was “obsessed” with Mott. He has not been charged in the disappearance of her remains.