Vallum also falsely claimed to law enforcement that he killed Williamson in a panic after discovering Williamson was transgender. Vallum admitted that he then used a stun gun to electrically shock Williamson in the chest, repeatedly stabbed Williamson, and struck Williamson with a hammer until she died.Īfter the murder, Vallum attempted to dispose of the murder weapons and other evidence linking him to the crime. Vallum drove Williamson to his father’s residence in Lucedale, Mississippi.
On May 29, 2015, Vallum located Williamson at her residence in Alabama and used false pretenses to lure Williamson into his car so he could drive her to Mississippi.
Vallum believed he would be in danger if other Latin Kings members found out that he had engaged in a consensual sexual relationship with a transgender woman. Vallum admitted, as part of his guilty plea, that on May 28, 2015, he decided to kill Williamson after learning that a friend had discovered Williamson was transgender. After Vallum terminated his romantic and sexual relationship with Williamson, he had no contact with her until May 2015. During his romantic relationship with Williamson, Vallum kept the sexual nature of the relationship, as well as Williamson’s transgender status, secret from his family, friends, and other members of the Latin Kings and Queens Nation gang to which he belonged. This is the first case prosecuted under the Hate Crimes Prevention Act involving a victim targeted because of gender identity.ĭuring his plea hearing, Vallum admitted that he had a consensual sexual relationship with Williamson and that he knew Williamson was transgender. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a federal hate crime statute. 21, 2016, to a one-count Information that charged him with a violation of the Matthew Shepard, James Byrd Jr. Attorney Harold Brittain of the Southern District of Mississippi and Special Agent in Charge Christopher Freeze of the FBI’s Jackson Division. Joshua Brandon Vallum, 29, of Lucedale, Mississippi, was sentenced today in the Southern District of Mississippi to 49 years in prison for assaulting and murdering Mercedes Williamson because she was a transgender woman, announced Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Acting Assistant Attorney General Tom Wheeler of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Acting U.S.
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