Johnson City serial rape suspect says ‘angel’ helped him escape from custody

An accused serial rape suspect who allegedly busted out of a prisoner transport van as guards were shuffling him to a court appearance in East Tennessee last year has alluded to having help in the escape.

Sean Williams, a 52-year-old Johnson City businessman, was a fugitive for over a month before he was captured in November near Tampa, Florida.

His first of multiple criminal trials is set to begin Tuesday in Greeneville, where he faces federal charges for the escape and another alleged attempted escape from custody.

Williams is accused of sexually assaulting more than 50 women and children in incidents he captured in pictures and videos, according to police records and lawsuits.

His case has made international headlines with allegations of police extortion payments, a federal public corruption probe and three explosive lawsuits against Johnson City alleging that police for years ignored Williams’ actions, even as multiple victims came forward.

Authorities said he escaped from custody in October by allegedly smashing out the back window of a transport van and may have used a paperclip to get out of his restraints. It remains a mystery as to how the guards didn’t see or hear this taking place.

Defendant speaks out

Williams is now in custody at the Blount County jail near Knoxville.

In correspondence with The Tennessean, he declined to discuss details of the escape but suggested he had help from an “angel.”

“The biggest question is how could I get shackles, cuffs and a belly chain off and manage to get out of a moving van with metal grills on the windows without assistance and without getting notices [sic] by the two deputy’s [sic] on the other side of a thin clear plastic divider?” he wrote in a message. “Something sound strange about that? Nothing about this case is as it seems. The corruption goes much deeper than (the Johnson City Police Department).”

Williams referred to the Bible’s Acts 12:6-11 where an angel rescues the apostle Peter from prison.

“There are good angels and bad ones, both in high places,” he wrote.

Williams was expected to represent himself in the trial Tuesday after a string of four appointed lawyers each asked the judge to withdraw from the case. His next trial is set for Aug. 27, where he’ll face federal child pornography charges.

He has not yet been charged with the alleged sexual assaults of dozens of women, but Williams has maintained his innocence and says he was framed by law enforcement to stop him from blowing the whistle on a larger public corruption conspiracy.

“One day a movie is going to be made about this shit,” he wrote. “Its [sic] all going to come out soon.”

City manager condo controversy

As the criminal cases unfold, new accusations continue to surface in a class action lawsuit against Johnson City alleging that police routinely botched sexual assault cases and refused to investigate claims against Williams.

The latest allegations target City Manager Cathy Ball after it was revealed that she had been in a contract to buy Williams’ downtown penthouse condominium in an off-market sale while he was a fugitive in April 2022.

Ball, who was hired to head the city in December 2021, held a news conference last month where she said she backed out of the contract after learning of Williams’ fugitive status.

Williams at the time had been on the lam for over a year after police failed to serve a federal search warrant on illegal ammunition charges.

He was apprehended in April 2023, after a campus police officer at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina found him sleeping in his car. In the car, police also found more than two dozen ounces of cocaine and methamphetamine, and digital storage devices containing more than 5,000 images of child porn and images and videos of 52 women in obvious states of unconsciousness being sexually assaulted by Williams, according to a search warrant.

Ball in her news conference said she knew nothing of any allegations against Williams and called the potential condo sale an “unfortunate coincidence.”

But new filings in the class action lawsuit cast doubt on that claim, saying it “defies common sense” that Ball wouldn’t have known about Williams since she lived in a building across the street from the condo and had asked then-Police Chief Karl Turner to run a criminal check on the neighborhood before the sale.

“By April 2022, Williams had been the most wanted fugitive in the City for nearly a year,” the suit noted.

Officers accused of changing sexual assault reports

The class action lawsuit also alleges audit trails in the city’s computer system show certain Johnson City police officers accessed police reports and edited notes in sexual assault cases to which they were not assigned.

According to the lawsuit, audit records show that former Capt. Kevin Peters, who has since retired, viewed the police reports for Williams’ alleged victims, even pulling up cases long closed or inactive. The captain at the time did not have a role in investigating the sexual assaults, the suit said.

“Significantly, there is nothing to indicate that Peters — the number two commanding officer in the Department by this point — would have any reason to be actively monitoring these police reports, and regularly viewing and printing them, especially since the investigations went nowhere,” wrote Vanessa Baehr-Jones, a lead attorney in class action lawsuit.

The suit also accuses Det. Toma Sparks of editing case files and removing the name of another investigating officer in a sexual assault report. The final version of the reports differed from victims’ accounts, the lawsuit alleges, adding that Sparks edited files months after he was removed from the Williams investigation.

Lawyers for Peters and Sparks in court documents, however, called the accusations false and have said there is no evidence of a police cover-up.

“The audit trails do not show anything other than that Peters, a supervisor who was supervising, occasionally ‘viewed’ computerized investigative files at a few various times,” wrote Attorney Daniel Rader, who is representing Peters. “None of it even remotely implicates any JCPD officers in some cover-up scheme, and it is nothing more than a red herring.”

A lawyer representing Sparks in court documents said the audit trails were produced by the city and that an edit appears on an audit trail even if an officer simply adds a note or copies the information for a search warrant.

Lawyers seeking cops’ bank records

In one of the more explosive allegations, the class action lawsuit alleges that a Williams business partner was funneling $2,000 in weekly extortion payments to Johnson City officers in exchange for them turning a blind eye as Williams continued to sell drugs and sexually assault women and children.

The business partner, identified in court documents as “Female 4,” allegedly laundered funds through a web of limited liability corporations connected to Williams’ glass and concrete business, according to the suit.

Attorneys in the case are seeking subpoenas for 10 years of tax records, bank statements and other financial information for Turner, Peters, Sparks and three other officers to show whether they were living beyond their means with possible other income sources.

Lawyers representing the officers have said in court documents there is no evidence that any officer took bribes or received any financial payment.

Williams in a message to The Tennessean said his business partner and former girlfriend was paying off police officers with money from his company after she was caught selling cocaine. He said he wasn’t aware of what was going on until later because he wasn’t properly watching his funds.

Williams also alleges that police took more than $400,000 in cash from his safe during an investigation after a woman fell 68 feet from the window of his fifth floor condo in September 2020.

The city has denied that any cash was taken from Williams’ safe.

The woman who fell, Mikayla Evans, last month filed a federal lawsuit against the city alleging that police failed to properly investigate her case.

Evans believes that Williams drugged her and pushed her out of the window of his fifth floor condo in an altercation. The impact shattered her legs and pelvis.

The city is also facing a whistle-blower lawsuit set for trial later this year from a former federal prosecutor who was on contract in Johnson City to prosecute gun and drug crimes.

The prosecutor says she repeatedly urged police to investigate Williams and was later fired from the contracting job after she complained.

According to court records, the U.S. Department of Justice in August-September 2023 opened a public corruption investigation into allegations of police and government misconduct related to the Williams case.

The department has declined comment.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Johnson City serial rape suspect says ‘angel’ helped escape custody