Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - BONUS: Suspect On The Run in Murder Of Mother Found Shot Near Cemetery With Two Young ‘Terrified’ Children

Episode Date: August 5, 2021

A Florida mother was found shot to death in a vehicle with her two young children inside. Police say the father of one of the children is a suspect. A $20,000 reward is offered in the arrest of Benjamin "Bambi" Williams, 38. According to Peca's mother, the 27-year-old woman agreed to meet the father of her four-month-old at a cemetery where William's sister is buried. Peca’s two young children were not physically harmed. Joe Scott Morgan, Professor of Forensics at Jacksonville State University and author of "Blood Beneath My Feet," joins us to discussion the evidence in this case and the possible link to other murders.To report information about the case, call the St. Petersburg Police Department at 727-893-7780. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I'm executive producer Jackie Howard. Police now have a suspect in the shooting death of 27-year-old Joanna Pica. She was shot in the face while holding her four-month-old baby, and also her four-year-old was in the back seat at the time. This suspect is now on the run. Police are offering a $20,000 reward. Joining me now is Joe Scott Morgan, professor of forensics at Jacksonville State University. He is also author of Blood Beneath My Feet. Joe, there's a lot to talk about in this

case. Let's talk first about the fact that this woman was shot multiple times in the face. You know, when they found Ms. Pica, she was actually in the front seat of her vehicle, actually in the driver's side of the vehicle, seated there. And according to the police, when they arrived at the scene, they were unable to detect that she was actually holding a four-month-old baby, still clutching this baby in her arms. Now, they didn't go into graphic detail, but I can tell you from my experience that more than likely, this was as a result of just the tremendous amount of blood that had literally poured down onto this little baby and onto the baby's clothing, the mother's clothing. So essentially, the baby was camouflaged in blood. Now, in this environment, everybody can envision what a tight space in the front seat of a car is.

Or just in a car in general, it's a tight, confined space that maybe, you know, they're in Florida. It's summertime. Maybe the air is maybe, you know, they're in Florida. It's summertime. Maybe the air is running, so the windows are up. People can understand this. It's very confining. And so can you imagine within that space, someone seated in the front seat, passenger seat, takes a weapon out and points this weapon, and we can only assume probably within about 18 to maybe 20 inches at the furthest distance away from the target, and then pulls the trigger over and over and over and over again.

The report or the sound, the echo would have been tremendous within the car. And it wasn't just the four-month-old baby that heard this. There was a four-year-old seated in the back seat of the vehicle as well. This was his mother in the front seat. Now, the four-month-old might not have memories of this, but let me tell you something. That four-year-old in the backseat, this will haunt him more than likely until the day he dies. The suspect in this case, Joe, Benjamin Bambi Williams is 38, is the father of the four-month-old. So that in itself makes you wonder how someone could do this. So you were talking about the distance in the car. We're assuming that he was also inside the car. We don't know this yet. But given that we believe he might have been in the car when this happened, more than likely he's covered with blood as well.

In this particular case, the perpetrator would have been literally showered with blood in this environment. His extended arm, the weapon, and let's just say, for instance, he wasn't inside of the vehicle. If he was just standing outside of the vehicle and, say, stuck the weapon inside the window to fire at this poor young mother at point-blank range in the face, his hands and the weapon, again, are still going to be covered in blood. And in addition to that, the ceiling, the liner inside of the vehicle, also the back of the seat, will be covered in blood as well. And what's so important about this in understanding kind of the nature of this blood staining.

You know, from a forensics perspective, when we begin to examine blood stain patterns, one of the things that we look at is we try to judge velocity. And so folks understand if it's low velocity, that's something that could be generated maybe perhaps with a punch to the face and you have a bloody nose. And blood is going to be kind of large droplets that'll be scattered everywhere. Then you have medium velocity, which if folks at home will think if someone was struck with a hammer or a baseball bat, the droplets would be smaller because the velocity would increase. But when it comes to a firearm, that's what we recall, that's what we call high velocity blood staining. And the significance of that is,

did he punch her beforehand? Did he slap her around? Or was this just a straight up shooting? If there is high velocity blood droplets within this environment, we will know just by virtue of the way this interior of the car is assessed that that was generated from the high muzzle velocity of this weapon as those rounds slammed over and over and over again into their target, which obviously was this poor woman's face. One thing we do know, though, Joe, considering that she was shot multiple times in the face, we will really never know whether or not she was beaten. Because these injuries are so markedly catastrophic, and what I mean by that is that when a high-velocity round slams into tissue and bone, it's very, very disruptive.

So if, say, for instance, she had been punched beforehand or struck with something else, it would be very difficult to make a determination or delineate between these two. Really, the only saving grace here is going to be the nature of the velocity of the blood spatter itself. And, you know, it's really hard to discuss or understand what the dynamic of this event was that led to her death. All we know is that, per the victim's mother, the mother stated that Joanna had agreed to meet the alleged perpetrator at a cemetery, of all things, at night where his sister was buried. And the mother had gone on to say, well, you know, she really, the victim really cared for the perpetrator, that she had had a child with him, and that he just wanted to go there. And, you know and she implied just to

be comforted. And so this poor young woman agreed to go to a cemetery at night with these small children in transit out there, and to sit there in the middle of a graveyard in the middle of the night and have a talk with him. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Joe, one of the things we found out from the police is that this person, Williams, is a suspect in other murders, how will they be able to connect all this? You know, what's really fascinating is that this person who allegedly shot Joanna was intimately involved with her. But there's an indication that he might be tied or linked to multiple other homicides in the Florida area, in the Tampa area. And so when you begin to think about that, you think, well, this guy's out on the run. He's armed. Well, you know, it's kind of like a carpenter. A carpenter chooses to use a hammer.

Many times, people that are involved in multiple homicide events, they choose to use the same tool as well, and that's the same weapon. It's something that they're familiar with. It's something they get a level of comfort with. So from a forensic standpoint, when we're discussing ballistic evidence, let's say, for instance, they take projectiles that are recovered at this scene where they know he was and possibly was with this same weapon, they can retrieve those spent rounds, those projectiles that pass through this poor woman's body, probably lodged within the vehicle or within her body, maybe in a couple of cases, and pair those up or match those up with these other suspected homicides. And that is a huge bit of physical evidence.

This is what we call linkage in forensic science or connectivity, where you can kind of draw a line that connects all of these seemingly maybe before random events or maybe things that police just kind of suspected. But now you've got hard, hard evidence here. It's just really a shame that this young lady had to lose her life. So what about the shell casings, Joe? If we make the assumption that he was using a semi-automatic weapon, which by and large, most people carry now that carry weapons as opposed to revolvers that have all of the

rounds on a little cylinder, these shell casings, as they're fired, they are ejected. Well, if you're contained within a confined space, guess what? Those rounds are not going to go bounding out all in the grass or down the pavement. They're going to be contained within the cockpit of that vehicle. So when they go to recover, not just, you remember, I talked about the projectiles that had passed through her body and maybe lodged in the seat or in the door panels. Not only are they going to have that bit of ballistic evidence, you're going to have the shell casings as well. You're going to have the shell casings as well. And many times these shell casings are made out of very soft metal, much of the time brass.

And what happens with this is that there are, with semi-automatic weapons, you'll see these little strided marks on the sides of the casing itself. And those are actually ejection marks where the ejector, this automatic, semi-automatic process, draws the spent casing out and casts it aside. Well, that metal is so soft that there are very distinctive marks that are made on the sides of it and on the base of it. And guess what? Just like the bullet itself that's fired can be connected to a weapon because the rifling marks, those striations on that soft brass, they can be matched up as well. And again, this goes to these other suspected homicides that this person might be involved in. If they recovered those shell casings from those scenes as well, from a forensic standpoint, this could be a slam dunk. Joe, one thing that really strikes me about the horrendous nature of this crime, the shooting is bad enough. But to shoot the person who is holding your child and is the mother of your child.

I know you're not a forensic psychologist. I get this. But the idea of that is just really difficult to grasp. Even the mother of Joanna Pekus said, he's not human. You know, I've had kind of a difficult time wrapping my head around this idea of an individual that would execute a young mother, and not just any young mother, the mother of his child, and in front of another child. It really gives you pause, doesn't it? Why is it that, you know, I'm looking at this through the lens of an investigator, not so much as from the

perspective of a forensic psychologist, which I'm not. If I were an investigator in this case, I'd be thinking, why do you leave the kids alive? What is it within you that compels you to shoot the mother and then not shoot the children? And I think that we can draw some conclusions here. To shoot somebody in the face or to really disfigure them gives you an indication of anything but mercy, okay? Disfigurement, that sort of thing. You're sending a message like you hate that person. If he had taken this woman, put her on her knees, have her lean forward and shot her execution style in that,

we could draw another conclusion. But, you know, at the moment she died, the last thing she probably saw was the muzzle flash from that weapon illuminating the interior of the car, flashing back in her eyes like a brilliant flashbulb. And then that was the end of her life. And I really think that it goes to the pathology of this guy, what's going on in his brain, I can say this. He's dangerous, and he needs to be caught and brought into justice as soon as possible before more people are killed. The St. Pete Police Department agrees with you. This guy is dangerous.

Benjamin Robert Williams, 38, is considered armed and extremely dangerous. He is 5'8", weighs 135 pounds. His nickname, Bambi. There is a $20,000 reward available for his arrest. If you have any information on Benjamin Williams' whereabouts, please call 1-877-WANTED-2. Again, that's 1-877-926-8332. This is Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I'm Jackie Howard. This is an iHeart Podcast.