Convicted child killer who murdered five-year-old Georgia girl after paying victim’s mom $2,500 to have sex with her appears emotionless in court as he is sentenced to death
A ‘soulless’ killer who paid a mother $2,500 to rape and sodomize her five-year-old daughter before killing her in an abandoned house remained unresponsive as he was handed four death sentences.
Jeremy Williams, 39, kidnapped little Kamarie Holland from her home in Columbus, Georgia, before raping and strangling her.
Mother Kristen Siple told police she found Kamarie missing and her front door was open when she woke up at 5:50 a.m. on December 13, 2021.
But she pleaded guilty last month to one count of human trafficking and faces up to 20 years in prison after giving Williams an hour to rape her own daughter.
“If there was ever anyone who deserves the death penalty, it’s Jeremy Williams,” Russell County Sheriff Heath Taylor told reporters.
“He’s a different kind of evil that we in society simply don’t need to have around.”
Jeremy Williams, 39, betrayed no emotion as he was handed four death sentences by Russell County Circuit Court Judge David Johnson
Williams is now on death row at Holman State Prison in Atmore
Kamarie was described in court by her now 13-year-old sister as ‘so sweet and caring’
The little girl’s body was found late that evening in the basement of an abandoned house where Williams had once lived, just across the Alabama state line in Phoenix City.
During the trial in Russell County Circuit Court, some jurors were moved to tears as they were shown videos of the rape and bodycam footage of officers finding her body.
Witnesses lined up to convict the serial child molester, who was already a suspect in the murder of a one-year-old boy in Alabama and was acquitted of lowering a three-year-old boy into a bowl of boiling water in 2009.
Williams’ ex-wife called him “soulless” and told him, “You are no longer worth my tears,” and a 23-year-old woman who was just four when she was abused by Williams called him a “monster ‘.
“I feel so much that I can’t feel anything at all,” she said.
Kamarie’s mother Kristen Siple (left) pleaded guilty last month to one count of human trafficking in connection with the sale of her daughter and faces up to 20 years in prison
The little girl is pictured with her mother, who pleaded guilty to one charge of human trafficking
“You don’t deserve life yourself,” Kamarie’s father Corey Holland told him. “We don’t have Kamarie and you don’t deserve to see your children or your life.”
He also read from a letter from Kamarie’s 13-year-old sister in which she wrote: ‘I don’t understand why anyone would hurt her – she was so sweet and caring.’
Williams was also sentenced to life in prison for production of obscene material about a child and human trafficking, 20 years for human trafficking conspiracy and 10 years for abuse of a corpse.
Columbus Police Officer Sergeant Jane Edenfield, who found Kamarie’s body, returned to the Alabama courtroom Monday along with several of her colleagues for the sentencing.
‘To hear the other victims and know how much he did. And as one of them said, it took so long,” she said. ‘Heartbreaking. Heartbreaking.’
Jury foreman Stacy Mote also returned for sentencing after returning the guilty verdict.
“This has been a very difficult thing to bear, and I am sure you have seen all the emotions on our faces,” she told reporters.
Siple maintained her innocence before pleading guilty last month
The abandoned house where Kamarie’s body was found just hours after she disappeared
“If there was ever anyone who deserves the death penalty, it’s Jeremy Williams,” Russell County Sheriff Heath Taylor told reporters.
“On behalf of all the jurors involved, we are proud of the young victims and witnesses who came forward to speak their difficult truths, because we know it was excruciatingly painful.
“By coming forward, they all gave a voice to little Kamari. No child should have to experience what happened to her.”
Williams is now on death row at Holman State Prison in Atmore, but Russell County District Attorney Rick Chancey said he will likely die before the killer does.
“At the current rate, my life expectancy right now is probably shorter than his,” the 55-year-old told WRBL.
He said he had recently visited the little girl’s grave and added: ‘There is no reason the baby should be in the ground. I want to remember her, not this joker. Jeremy is not someone I want to remember in my life.”