Former California Marine arrested in kidnapping of Wal-Mart clerk

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The surveillance camera captured the crime in chilling detail: A college student punches out after her night shift as a clerk at a Texas Wal-Mart and walks toward her truck in the parking lot. Suddenly she is attacked by a shadowy figure in a long, dark coat and kidnapped.

On Friday, 19-year-old Megan Leann Holden was found shot to death in a ditch near Stanton in West Texas, about 380 miles west of Tyler, where she had been abducted.

Police said she was killed at the hands of a man who went on a multistate crime spree before he turned up Friday at an Arizona hospital with a gunshot wound.

The suspect, Johnny Lee Williams, 24, who served with the Marines at Twentynine Palms before his discharge last year, was being held on a $1 million bond on an aggravated kidnapping charge from Texas, authorities said. Williams was driving the woman's pickup truck, which was parked outside the hospital.

The apparent abductor -- a man in a long, dark coat -- was seen loitering around the front entrance of the store "for a good period of time," Tyler police spokesman Don Martin said. The man was also seen on tape about 90 minutes before the abduction, emerging from a bathroom and walking around inside the store.

The tape later shows Holden getting into her truck just before midnight and the man "running up behind her and either hitting her or pushing her," Martin said.

"There's no doubt this was a total stranger abduction," Tyler Police Chief Gary Swindle said.

Swindle provided little detail about the killing, but said Holden died of a gunshot wound, adding: "We have every indication that she was shot at the location where her body was found."

Authorities said Williams kept heading west as he continued his crime spree, attempting a robbery at an Arizona RV park, but was foiled by a store worker who fired the shot that landed Williams in the Arizona hospital where he was treated and then taken into custody.

"He said, 'This is robbery, I want all the money in the cash register,"' retired New York City firefighter Richie Chapman said. "And as he said that, he drew a weapon from underneath his shirt, and I drew and fired."

Because Holden was kidnapped in Tyler, Smith County District Attorney Matt Bingham said he would seek capital murder charges.

It was not known if Williams had an attorney.

Police said Williams was arrested last month in Tyler on a cocaine possession charge. He was released the same day on $2,000 bond. Williams also was involved in an armed robbery at a convenience store in Texas on Thursday, authorities said.

Williams, a preacher's son who served in Iraq in 2003, was given a bad conduct discharge from the Marines last February for allegedly using marijuana, the North County Times reported. He was a logistics clerk last assigned to the 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force at Twentynine Palms. He enlisted in January 2001.

"Something happened to my son," the suspect's mother, Pat Williams, told Dallas television station KDFW, saying he had trouble adjusting to civilian life after serving in Iraq. "Some of the things that he endured I may never know. But it changed who he is and for that I'm sorry."

Williams was on voluntary appellate leave pending a case review by military officials, the North County Times said. He did not receive military pay and allowances while awaiting his appeal.

His awards included the Presidential Unit Citation, National Defense Service Medal, and the Navy and Marine Corps Sea Service Deployment Ribbon.

As word spread Friday of the Tyler Junior College student's death, about 100 people sang "Amazing Grace" and prayed during a candlelight vigil held outside the store where Holden had worked for about a month.

Martin, the police spokesman, said the victim's mother was in a wreck while driving to Tyler. She was shaken and covered with cuts and bruises after flipping her car three times, a relative said.

Stacey Sullivan, Holden's high school principal, described her as a friendly, easygoing girl who made a point of saying hello to people by name.

"Megan was just one of those students who you instantly liked," Sullivan told The Dallas Morning News in Saturday's edition. "Everyone is so upset because it was such a senseless tragedy. Why did this have to happen to her?"



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Associated Press writer Arthur H. Rotstein contributed to this report from Bowie, Ariz.


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[USMCRET6391]

<sigh> I wonder why they didnt mention that he was a former high school senior? The media really pisses me off when they make a big deal out of some criminal's former service...as if the service made him that way.......

[Grimmy]

Betcha dollars to donuts they trot out the war in Iraq as responsible for this murderer's actions and try to hang his entire defense on that.

And like every murderous scum bag we're gonna have to hear from his mommy about what a sweet sweet baby he was.

Sometimes, the Chinese method of imprisoning the entire family just makes a wierd sorta sense.