Timesuck with Dan Cummins - Short Suck #52: Protected Predator: The Johnson City Scandal

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

A serial predator drugs women, keeps a list of victims, and somehow keeps slipping through the cracks — while the people meant to stop him sure do appear to keep looking the other way. This week, we follow one relentless prosecutor as she pulls at a thread that unravels disturbing alleged corruption, institutional failure, and a justice system that seems more interested in protecting itself than protecting victims. For Merch and everything else Bad Magic related, head to: https://www.badmagicproductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In November of 2020, 32-year-old Michaela Evans went out to have a good time. It had been a long year. Technically, it had only been eight months since March of 2020 when everything really changed, but we all know how long that time felt. After a couple months of pandemic lockdown, just about everybody was eager to get out and let off a little steam. And Michaela was no different. So she hit a few bars, then made her way to a local businessman's garage, more of a playground than a workspace, with a swing, a bar, a flashy sports car to have a couple more beers after hours. Michaela didn't think that she had to be on her guard. This was Johnson City, Tennessee, after all. A friendly college town with tree-line streets,

local quirky coffee shops, a few historic districts. Some flashy businessman who liked to party after the bar shut down for the night was about as exciting as things got. At least, that's what Michaela thought. The next thing she knew, she was waking up in a hospital a week later. She had fallen five stories from the businessman's condo, a total of about 68 feet.

Her legs and pelvis were shattered. She was intubated and underwent multiple surgeries and would remain bedridden until mid-2020, nearly two years after her initial injuries. By that time, her incident had taken on a life of its own. It was looking more and more like her accident was not an accident. Amongst the partying businessmen's personal items, investigators found an alarming list of women's names, over 20 of them. And at the top of this list was a single word, raped.

When prosecutor Kat Dahl was told about the evidence, she was stunned. Not just by the idea of a prolific predator, stalking the bars and garages of Johnson City, but by the fact that nobody, including police who were aware of multiple alleged incidents before this, seemed to be interested in doing a goddamn thing about it. Words and ideas can change the world. I hated her, but I wanted to love my mother. I have a dream. I'll plead not guilty right now.

Your only chance is to leave with us. Welcome to another edition of Time Suck Short Sucks. I'm Dan Cummins, and today I'll be sharing the insane story of Sean Williams. And I won't say much more than that. So we can just follow this twisted story as it unfolded. This is a story that popped up on my phone's news feed. maybe six months ago, nine months ago. Once I started reading, I couldn't stop. And then our longest tenured and most prolific researcher, Sophie Evans, had the story pop up on her newsfeed as well just a few

weeks ago. She also could not stop reading once she started. And when she reached out to me and proposed that we dig in further to the story, find out if there was enough info to become either a proper time suck topic or a short suck topic. I told her, hell yeah, let's go for it. And here we are, this story is outrageous. This twisted tale began in September of 2020. Many of us probably have a feeling for what that month was like, right? If we don't remember the exact month, it's probably due to the way time seemed to run together during the pandemic, right? Days melting into other days, weeks melting into other weeks, months melting as well,

occasionally punctuated by pandemic-a-fied versions of holidays, video calls to relatives you hadn't seen in a while, mass trips to grocery stores. and for too many of us, conversations of how to hold a funeral during the days of social distancing. In other ways, however, life was starting to get back to some semblance of normal around then, at least in parts of the country. Depending on where you lived, bars might be open or schools. You might have been back and working from the office again, at least part of the time. And if you lived in Johnson City, Tennessee, you might have been partying just like you used to. Johnson City with a population of just over 71,000 is Tennessee's eighth most populous city. It's metropolitan area home to just over 200,000 people, many of them working for or students at East Tennessee State University and the Medical Mid-Tech Corridor,

anchored by the Johnson City Medical Center. It's a very prosperous city. Good place to live if you're trying to make a good life for yourself, but don't want to sacrifice access to nature, outdoor activities, family life with major employees. including Ballad Health, AT&T, multiple hospitals, and the American Water Heater Company, Johnson City and its metro area, had a gross metropolitan product of just over $9 billion in 2019. All that in a place where homes cost quite a bit less than the national average, lots of jobs, relatively affordable homes, low crime rate more, and interestingly enough, the citrus soda slash liquid rat poison of Mountain Dew originated in Johnson City.

So much sugar, it's almost solid. In 2012, PepsiCo actually announced a new malt-flavored version of the drink named Mountain Dew Johnson City Gold, in honor of the area being the birthplace of the closest thing to fucking crack cocaine. I used to drink like water when I was in grade school. But Johnson City hasn't always been such a wholesome place. Back in the 1920s, during the era of Prohibition and all its gangsters, locals started to refer to Johnson City as little Chicago, owing to a thriving criminal underworld in the city and in a surrounding swath of Appalachia.

The hills and rugged landscape allowed criminals to escape undetected, or at least that's what police often said. More often, in all likelihood, those criminals were lining the pockets of law enforcement, a cut to keep their businesses running smoothly. This attitude towards corruption did not seem to fade as a 20th century war on. In 1969, a nearby Cock County, a series of news reports prompted the arrest of numerous law enforcement officials on charges including extortion and bribery. And yes, they really have a Cock County. Spelled C-O-C-E, I watched five different newscasters, pronounce it affirmatively as Cock. Good for you, Tennessee.

Also, in trying to look up that pronunciation, I got a pretty good feel for the general perception of Cock County. Titles like The History of Moonshine in Cock County. For nearly 100 years, one of the most lawless places in America, Cock County, Tennessee. That one was actually a six-parter. Other videos are titled Jail Conditions You Can't Believe in Cock County, Tennessee. Drugs, a family tradition,

in Appalachian, Cod County, Tennessee. And family lockup, same blood, same bars, Cock County, Tennessee. Most of the videos that pop up initially seemed to be related to crime. Further probes in the following decades. Followed that one in 1969 and uncovered the involvement of Cock County Law Enforcement Officers.

I can't say Cock County enough. in drug-related crimes, including cocaine distribution and smuggling drug money. But Caw County is like almost an hour's drive from Johnson City. If these two places are brothers, Johnson City is supposed to be the good one. But is he? For most of recent history, Johnson City has presented itself as the kind of place you might go for college and then decide to settle down in, you know, a solid mid-sized city with plenty of employment opportunities, access to the Smoky Mountains, and its fair share of restaurants,

breweries, small businesses, close proximity to Cock County. One of those small businesses, excuse me, one of those small businesses was owned by a man named Sean Williams. Williams, who was 49 in the fall of 2020, owned glass and concrete contracting, which specialized in restoring historical buildings. He and his workers repelled down their facades, limiting the need for scaffolding and earning Sean the nickname of Spider-Man. But he hadn't always been a successful businessman.

A little bit about Sean here. Sean was raised in a modest suburban home in Largo, Florida. According to his sister, their mother was a hustler who worked several jobs to provide for the family as a notary and at the reservations line at Delta, eventually doing clerical work for Sean's business. When Williams was nine, his parents got divorced. A few years later, his mother remarried, moved with Williams to a small town in North Carolina where his stepdad owns some property, but apparently not very good property. It was almost doomed from the start. His sister Auburn Shapiro would later say. There was no house.

We lived in trailers on welfare. Sean's stepfather, a lawyer who was later disbarred for billing clients for work he did not perform, was in addition to being a grifting scumbag, a physically and emotionally abusive alcoholic who also struggled with heroin addiction. So probably not like the best dad. Probably not in the running for best dad on any given year. He would make Sean sleep outside on an unhealthy. heated porch and in the cold or, you know, do shit like punch him in the stomach for any perceived

acts of disrespect. And so Sean started to look elsewhere for love. And while still in his early teens, it sounds like maybe when he was 13, Sean fathered his first child, a daughter, first and only child, I believe. And then when the young dad was only 14, child protective services, CPS took him into custody to get him away from his shitty family. For the rest of his teens, he was sent to a series of foster homes and juvenile justice programs, often running away soon after he arrived. At one point, he fled a disciplinary camp with several other students he had persuaded to join him.

At one of his placements, a foster mother, began a sexual relationship with him, leading to the end of her marriage. Fuck is so wrong with so many people. Man, the recent Epstein filed revelations, the more I've looked into them, they just have left me feeling paranoid. Like, why is pedophilia so fucking common?

Why can't we just, you know, let people, people in prison for abusing drugs or even selling street-level amounts of drugs out and fill those spots with the fucking rampant petos in this country. Anyone interested in running for office on a fucking death to pedophiles platform? If you are, you will probably get my vote. At the age of 18, Sean started a relationship with a 35-year-old woman, one that would ultimately last seven years. While they lived together, Williams grew weed, launched his first business, first cleaning high-rise windows. and they say weed kills your ambition. He then expanded into waterproofing,

pressure washing, and historical building restoration. The company grew, became more and more profitable as he netted contracts on large buildings in Greensboro and other cities in the area. Then in the mid-2000s, he got a contract to restore a building in Johnson City, Tennessee. Then began renting the first of several apartments he would ultimately own there,

including the condo he would later own. He liked Johnson City. It suited him. It was close to Cock County for God's sense. sake, it hadn't shed its reckless past, and he was able to find and use and sometimes abused just about any drugs he could get his hands on. Any drugs he desired, he could get his hands on any of them. He loved a party, and he partied hard in Johnson City. And to most people in the area, he became known not just as a successful businessman, but also a bit of a hard partying playboy, kind of guy who

had a glass front garage on a busy street downtown that housed a red Ultima GTR sports car and a rope swing. More and more locals came to know about, many of them experiencing it for themselves, Williams' wild parties thrown in his fifth story, 3,000 square foot condo, a block from that garage. After nearby bars closed, people would head to Williams' apartment, where he kept shit like drones and exotic reptiles, as well as a seemingly endless supply of alcohol and drugs, mostly cocaine, which he served from a large pepper grinder.

And that was where Michaela Evans, who he started this story with, found herself on a human night in September of 2020. She had gone with a friend of hers to Williams' garage, where Williams was drinking with several people, including his best friend and occasional roommate, Alvaro Diaz. And at some point, Williams began pushing Evans on that swing in the garage. And although she had had only a few beers and a single shot earlier in the evening, now she rapidly starts to feel very, very woozy.

And then soon everything goes black. Investigators would later find out that she had walked Deshawn's apartment after blacking out, or rather had been escorted, half-drague, probably. she had gone up the elevator and then something terrible happened. A sound like a gunshot rang out from near the apartment, not long after she made it to the apartment. But it was not a gunshot, it was Michaela's body hitting the ground. She had fallen five stories from Williams' window.

Her next memory would be more than a week later when she woke up from a coma in a hospital bed. She had fractured more than a dozen bones, including her skull, bones in her back, her legs, she had dislocated her elbow. Hours after the fall, police had done. searched Williams' apartment, common after an incident like that, and they had found more than 200 rounds of ammunition. And since Williams had a felony conviction for growing weed in the 90s, it was

illegal for him to possess firearms or ammunition. Investigators then called in 29-year-old special assistant U.S. Attorney Kat Dahl, a federal prosecutor in Johnson City. Almost all the cat's cases involved run-of-the-mill, in her own words, federal charges related to drugs or firearms. In other words, pretty open and shut cases. And at first, it looked like this was going to be another one of those. Indeed, she didn't even think that authorities would want to press charges, given that Williams had no significant criminal record, and he didn't have a firearm with which too well used that ammunition.

But when she arrived at the briefing, Investigator Toma Sparks told Kat something alarming. We think he's a rapist. During the search, Sparks said they had found a long strip of paper with a handwritten list, 22 first names, one of which was accompanied by the word baby, along with an entry that read No-named girl. Ugh.

At the top of the list was an underlying word, raped. Then in a safe, they found a literal baby doll, a doll made to look like a human infant that appeared to have been turned into a makeshift sex toy. I'm sure many of you have been hearing about similar heinous shit recently in connection with the Epstein list. Stuff so outrageous, you might think,

no way, it's too evil. Come on. No one's fucking doing that. That can't be true. the fuck it can't. There is no limit to the evil of some humans, right? They hold nothing sacred. They are capable of doing things,

not seen even in the most graphic torture porn horror movies. Important to remember that. To never just write something off is not being true because it seems too outlandish to extreme to be believed. The doll in this case could have been some kind of, I guess, weird, dark, really messed up, practical joke or fucked up attempt at humor, you know, even in a, or even evidence of a planning stage,

but not necessarily violent acts, were it not for two police reports filed by women who had said that Williams had sexually assaulted them? So Cat doll is gobsmacked. And then she's even more gobsmacked when she asked the investigators if they had contacted those victims, if they had identified any of the women from the list,

and they said no. Also something important to remember in the strange timeline we were living in. There are people capable of doing the most horrific things imaginable to men, women, innocent children, babies, and then there are even more people willing to look the other way. Right? So fucking gross.

These investigators also didn't seem to be very sympathetic to the victims. One investigator described the black tube dress that Michaela Evans had been wearing the night she fell from the window. He said, quote, she's dressed like a real, well, I won't say it. What a cool guy. Fucking probably an Andrew Tate fan. This comment, this overall attitude of many of the local officers was extremely. extremely disturbing to Cat Doll and the case immediately became her top priority. Right? Good on her.

In the following weeks, she stayed up late night after night in her two-bedroom rental house, 20 minutes drive from Johnson City, scrutinizing, not in Cock County, but maybe close, scrutinizing Williams' social media accounts and financial and property records. She combed to the names on the list, identified several of the women, but when she urged the police to interview them, excuse me, there was no response. They also didn't respond to her request to hand over the two-sumption. sexual assault allegations paperwork against Williams. She asked a second time, asked a third time, still no reply.

On the fourth try, she finally got them from investigator Thomas Sparks, and what she read was incredibly disturbing. In November of 2019, Brianna Pack, who was 22 at the time, was drinking at a bar near Williams' apartment, when she and a friend ran into Diaz, Williams' close confidant, who brought them back to the apartment, right, the condo. She'd been feeling fine that night, but then, after she accepted a beer from Williams, she began to feel groggy. She tried to leave, but Williams N. Diaz blocked her exit. Her last memory was of sitting on a barstool. She told police that she woke

up in Williams' bed the next morning, unsure of how she had gotten there. A friend drove her to an urgent care clinic to obtain a drug test, came back positive for benzodiazepines, which she had not knowingly taken. Then she went to a hospital for a rape kit, which would finally be processed in the fall of 2020 and it would reveal that she had tested positive for DNA that did not belong to her. In other words, Breonna did everything that a victim is supposed to do. And it seemed like it was going to pay off when she contacted the Johnson City PD. And officer told her, other women have reported similar things there. We know exactly who this guy is, according to her account.

But then the police failed to follow up with her for a fucking year and a half. They also did not take her calls when she tried to follow up, right? Bad cops. Always out there making the jobs a good job. cops so much fucking harder than it already is. When Thomas Sparks did finally talk to her, he asked her what she was wearing on the night of the assault. That fucking piece of shit.

Brianna grittered teeth answered the questions. When she asked for protection against Williams, Sparks refused, allegedly calling Williams, quote, untouchable. Scary. And then soon, Sparks stopped answering her calls entirely. Then in June of 2020, a 22-year-old whose name has not been published in sources had a similar horrifying experience. And before I share details of this next experience,

time for this week's first to two mid-show sponsor breaks. If you don't want to hear these ads, please sign up to be a space as on Patreon, get the catalog ad-free, these episodes early and more. Thanks for listening to those ads. And now it's returned to June of 2020

when a 22-year-old, whose name has not been published in sources, had another horrifying experience with Sean Williams. She had been out drinking in Johnson City when she encountered her friend Alvaro Diaz, right, that fucking dirtbag, probably. And she went with him to Williams' apartment. Same shit.

She has a drink, starts to feel woozy, blacks out. At around 3.30 that morning, she woke up with Williams on top of her. She jumps up, immediately calls 911, screaming for help. When the police arrive, minutes later, she is running from the building, crying. Officers help her get home, offer her a rape kit, which she declines. Later that month, she goes to the police station, gives a statement, where an officer puts down that the incident had been a, quote, attempted rape. Now the fuck did it come to that assessment.

The officer also wrote that she was declining to pursue charges because she had, quote, learned her lesson. When Kat later read that, she was incredibly disturbed, not only by the incidents, but by how the police both framed them and consistently failed to act. The second woman had literally run screaming from Williams' apartment and the police never even interviewed him. To Kat, this is all sounding a lot like a cover. of course she knew that sometimes police simply dismissed women's allegations because they did not believe them indeed the same thing had happened to her personally in 2016 when she went out drinking with a friend a supposed friend emerged from a blackout to find him sexually assaulting her when she reported it to the police in arlington virginia the investigator assigned to her case told her

quote it's not rape if he's drunk too what in part that experience galvanized her to work in criminal justice and in her years as an attorney, she, you know, had heard stories after stories of investigators failing to handle sex crimes, not taking action, not being competent, letting their own fucked up personal biases stand in the way of doing their job. And something about this now that she's working on feels different. Dahl is especially perplexed by the response to Evans' fall. Sparks on an officer named Justin Jenkins, who arrived at Williams' apartment soon after the incident, agreed to demand from Williams that they leave.

then come back later with the warrant, even though there is an exception to warrant requirements when evidence might be tampered with. So it looks like they did this to give this guy a favor, give him time to get rid of a bunch of evidence. In addition, the officers had photographed security cameras pointing at the window that Evans had fallen from, but then they did nothing to secure and or examine them.

Pretty fucked. Also saw Williams accessing footage from the cameras on his phone, which they did not confiscate, until he had left the station. Again, it looks like they gave him time to get rid of to delete some possible incriminating evidence. Then when Williams returned to the apartment, he was there for several hours unsupervised, during which time he and Alvro cleaned up the apartment, hiding cameras in a closet,

gathering drugs and firearms and metal ammunition box that Williams then threw out a fucking window. During that time, Williams also received a call from an employee with law enforcement connections who warned him when the officers were going to come back. when they returned investigators did not bother even recovering the ammunition box and they did not look at all into the contents of some devices they seized including computers, memory cards, and phones. Just didn't even bother to check them out. When Dahl read the records of the search,

she asked Sparks for a warrant to access the remaining devices. Two months later, Sparks submitted a draft warrant that Dahl found so vague and incomplete that she considered it not even usable. She believed that either a judge would reject. it or any evidence gathered under it could be challenged in court. Now it looks like some of these officers are stalling so they can get rid of more evidence. Meanwhile, other women are coming forward with allegations. When Dahl took on the case in November of 2020, Kaylee Murray, at that time a single mother of three, reported Williams to the FBI.

In October of 2019, she said she had gone to a Halloween party at Williams' apartment, or she took a drink from him. Bet you can guess what happened shortly afterwards. Yep, she blacked out. Her next memory was of finding him passed out on top of her naked. That incident ultimately kicked off a downward spiral that ended in a mental health crisis that led directly to her surrendering custody of her children. Then in early 2020, in the midst of this mental health crisis, Williams contacted her, and they struck up a friendship.

Not good. He expressed regret about his lifestyle, told her that he wanted to change things, and they remained in contact until November. Why did they stop hanging out again? because that month she snorted a line of cocaine Williams had offered her and blacked out again. The next thing she remembered that night, he was holding her down trying to manually penetrate her, first vaginally and then when she pushed him away, anally. She waited until she thought he had passed out and then fled the apartment.

Later, not trusting the Johnson City PD, she contacted the FBI, but they then immediately informed who else but Thomas Sparks. Officer looked the other way. Later that day, when Sparks interviewed her, he said inaccurately that no other way. woman had wanted to pursue charges against Williams because everyone else was too scared. Why was he lying? Kaylee Murray took that as a veiled threat and said she wanted to press charges, but then she

would not hear from the police again for five months. Which, you know, I guess it makes sense. I mean, they were probably super busy. They were probably super busy writing up jaywalking and failure to come to a complete stop at stop sign tickets. And then when she followed up with Sparks, he told her not to expect anything until the results of a rape kit came back, and then she wouldn't hear anything for more. than four years.

I mean, they were probably swamped with disturbing the peace citation's paperwork from late night frat parties and maybe had issues with some snack and soda vending machines in the station, you know, not working properly all the time. You know, a lot of phone calls

with vending machine, repairman, that kind of shit, you know, very time-consuming. By December of 2020, Kat was understandably getting more than a little frustrated. She had been on the case for a month. Nobody wanted to hear about it, it seemed. So she reached out to her supervisor

at the Department of Justice, Wayne Taylor, who scheduled a meeting between Kat and officials with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. When Carl Turner, the chief of the Johnson City Police Department, found out about this DOJ meeting, he called Taylor furious that it was planned without his consent, and in response, the meeting was fucking canceled. And now Chief Carl called Kat Dahl into his office.

Dahl, suspicious of his intentions, smart lady, recorded their meeting, in which Turner seemed indifferent to the case and rejected her suggestion that they contact women whose names match those on the fucking list, the rape list that officers had seen at the apartment. I don't know if that's girls she's raped or girls she's had consensual sex with, and he calls it whatever he calls it, Turner said.

Seriously, dude, that's a fucking good reason to not even call him? This guy seems like a piece of shit. Instead, he proposed that they place cameras outside Williams' his garage. Increasingly distressed, doll warned Turner that, based on the baby doll sex toy, she believed Williams might be praying on children in addition to women. and she believed that because she's not a fucking moron. Turner didn't seem to care. After the meeting, Chief Carl contacted Wayne Taylor,

Dahl's supervisor, and told him that Dahl had exhibited poor communication skills. Basically, she doesn't understand her place. He would continue to complain over the following months, with her focus on the case becoming a running joke in the police department and out in the wider law enforcement community. One colleague jokingly suggested that cats serve as bait. telling her allegedly, quote, If you're so obsessed with this case,

why don't you go have a drink at LaBelle? This was a bar where Williams was rumored to prey upon women. Let him take you up to his apartment, then give us a call. Kate was rightfully fucking horrified, completely stumped. These motherfuckers truly did not seem to care at all that this guy was raping women, and possibly children as well.

In a span of just a few weeks, her relationship with the police department kept deteriorating seemingly beyond repair, and she didn't really understand why? Why? Why in the hell had they ever even told her about the assaults in the first place if they clearly didn't want her to do anything about them? Well, Cat doll would come up with a theory about this. She suspected they wanted to get Sean Williams on something, but not something big, like the ammunition charge, just so they could make it, you know, seem like they were not

given him a free pass, you know, so it didn't seem like, you know, that he was just above the law. And then they continued to intentionally mishandle his most serious crimes. But again, Why gave him a pass at all? Because he was, it seemed to her, clearly in bed with some corrupt cops. Not knowing what else to do in April of 2021, Kat secured an indictment on the ammunition charge. After all, or ammunition charge. After all, you know, that was what they seemed to want, right? At least they could align on that, couldn't they?

No. Her theory was wrong. The arrest warrant was placed under sealed to reduce the risk that Williams might flee. During the next three weeks, Cat doll lodged more than 30 requests with sparks and other Johnson City Police officers asking them to go and fucking arrest him. Right? They had a warrant now and they refused. She was offered various weird excuses as to why they would not arrest him, such as they were too busy at the moment.

That is the fucking lamest excuse ever. Literally is their fucking job to arrest people. Like their number one job. And these guys are like, uh, yeah, sorry. Can't. Sorry, something come up. Can you imagine call 911 and instead of getting connected with dispatch? You just get a recording.

Sorry, but all of our officers are busy right now and do not have time to make any arrests. If you believe you are the victim of a crime or that a crime is in progress, that sucks. Doesn't sound fun. Best of luck figuring something out. We're rooting for you. Click. Another excuse for why they couldn't arrest this guy was that they had conflicting training schedules. that's fucking crazy

I know we're training that day but can't you just arrest him no I got we're training for like the next three months straight just a lot so much training so much training

or as one officer Jeff LaGalt told her Williams simply was not a priority now we got we got other you know a lot of criminals here in Johnson City

we'll get to the serial rapist later one point an officer told Katz that they couldn't execute the warrant because they lacked the code to the front door of Williams's building and Dahl recalled actually actually

asking, are you law enforcement? Like, are you actually cops? What are you fucking doing? Do you guys just dressing up in cop uniforms? Just plain pretend? This is so absurd, but also completely on brand in a way for America right now, sadly. Finally, in mid-May, in mid-May, an officer was sent to knock on Williams' door. Great job.

Johnson City PD. Fucking incredible work. Williams, who was hosting a party, did not answer. Instead, he called the police. Asking them why a cop was outside his door. and during the call, the officer of the station just closed that, yeah, we have a warrant for your arrest, actually. And so, William's like, okay, all right, cool. And then instead of answer the door, he just flees the apartment.

He evades the officer by repelling out of a window. And what did Johnson City PD do in response? You know, like, how do they try and catch him? They didn't. They just immediately gave up trying to find him. Not kidding. After the botched arrest attempt, there was not much of an attempt, chief of Johnson City Police, fucking all-star law enforcement officer, Carl Turner,

pressed Cat Doll to focus on other cases. What a fucking great guy. In a meeting that month, which Doll recorded, Turner referred to Williams as a nuisance who had already been dealt with. Turner said, quote, he just needs to calm down. He'll get over it.

What the fuck are you talking about? He just needs to calm down. I found videos of Carl Turner on YouTube. He seems, in my opinion, it's just my opinion. He comes across as about as intelligent as a literal pile of rocks. Fucking super thick accent

that I know many smart people have, but he definitely seems more of the country bumpkin fucking good old boy sad bad cop stereotype variety, you know? Look, I know Sean's been pretty goshed on rapy recently, but you know what? He's a good guy. He's a good guy overall. Someone just needs to talk to him about,

and you're part of my language, miss here, beating his meat, for lack of a better term. You know, when a man gets horny, You just got to beat your meat, and then you don't rape. It's that simple as well I teach my sons. Hey, sure, you could rape, but you could beat your meat instead, like your dad does. We'll send an officer to talk to him about that. Reason with him.

He just needs to calm down. He just needs to stop heading out to the bars with the equivalent of a loaded gun on his britches. You know, yeah, he's been kind of rapy, but he'll probably rape less now. Captain Kevin Peters, who was also at the meeting, said, quote, I think we've achieved our desired outcome. Fuck a what? Was there a desired outcome to let him keep raping? Dude hasn't even gotten an official warning about the rapist at this point.

Kat was convinced that William still posed a danger because she is not a good old boy dumb fuck. There were, after all, 20 names on the raped list. A person like that doesn't just stop committing assaults. And also, a serial rapist should, I don't know, in a civilized society, probably be punished for all the raping. There's also that. Kat kept looking into it.

falling up on leads, conducting interviews, and a month later in July 2021, she was told that her job would be terminated. Less than a week. She's getting fired for doing her job. The department later argued that Dahl had brought an insufficient number of indictments before grand juries,

even though she had secured 19 indictments since March of 2020, and had a case going to trial two months after her firing date. Cat, to her credit, does not just throw her hands up in the air, doesn't just throw in the towel and give up. She decides to go to the media. And before I share how that went, time for today's second and two mid-show sponsor breaks.

Thanks for listening to the sponsors. Now let's check back in with this story when federal prosecutor, Katzal, went to the media after getting fired. She wrote an email to a reporter using an encrypted email account and a pseudonym, writing that she was a federal prosecutor who was trying to apprehend a serial rapist,

suspected, but had encountered obstacles at every fucking turn. Crooked cops, suspected. Worst case scenario, she wrote, I believe there is a possibility this person is being protected by local law enforcement. All I want is some accountability

in this case. Yeah, accountability. I think a lot of us lately I've been wanting a whole lot more of that nationwide, right? Accountability and justice. They just feel like they're an increasingly short supply. Cat also would not stop investigating

because she's a fucking boss. World needs more cats. Or at least women named cats. Nothing against cats, but I think we have plenty of things. of the animals. She starts supporting herself now with freelance legal drafting work. As she connected with several of the women on the list from Williams's apartment, all of whom told her similar stories of being drugged and assaulted. All of them had been discouraged as well from pressing charges. Even Cat's social life now started to orbit around Sean Williams.

She's so determined. Drinks and meals become places to gather leads. The day after her fiery, she went on a date with a Johnson City man. She had met on Hinge, and she mentioned the garage, and the man immediately knew. what she was talking about. He supposedly said, oh, yeah, that guy's a creep. There was a girl who got into an accident, died after she left the apartment. This was news to Kat. No one had told her. So she looked into it.

Yep, this is true. The young woman was a 23-year-old named Laura Shea Trent. On the night she died, November 10th, 2020, she and her boyfriend, Noah Seedum, who was an acquaintance of Sean Williams, went to a brewery and then briefly stopped by the infamous garage. Once at the garage, Noah realized that his phone was missing, And he returned to the brewery to look for it.

And then when he came back, about five minutes later, his girlfriend, Laura, was gone. And the garage was closed. Later that same night, Laura began to place frantic calls to various family members. She'd been tipsy when they left the brewery, but now she sounded incoherent, crying, babbling nonsensically. Her sister, Stacey and Sarah, drove around looking for her, trying to get her to describe where she was.

But then Laura stopped responding. Minutes after her last call to her sisters, tragically, Laura Trent crashed her car into a concrete traffic island dying at the scene. Her blood alcohol was tested, showed a high level of alcohol consumption, but there was no testing for the possibility of any date-raped drugs.

Two days later, her sister Sarah called the Johnson City police, telling them that she believed Williams had been with her sister immediately before she died. After she named Williams, an officer told her that Johnson City, quote, lacked jurisdiction in this case, advised her to call law enforcement and nearby Elizabethton, where the crash had happened. Elizabethan then said no, this is Johnson City's case.

They sent her back to Johnson City Police, whom she eventually asked to look into Williams, telling them that she feared that Laura had been drugged by him. She literally never hears back. And now Cat Doll realizes that Sparks had assigned her to the Williams case within a day of Sarah's first phone call. She feels that could not have been a coincidence, but still she is confused, like what the fuck is going on?

Finally, she's had enough. She decides to track Sean down herself now. driving past his garage and his condo apartment to see if the lights were on, seemed like his attempt to evade law enforcement was half-hearted. He still has that warrant. He would frequently post on social media, though, sometimes revealing his location in town. A cat followed information in one post to a construction site,

operated by his company in Asheville, North Carolina, at a nearby hotel, she spoke to a manager who told her that Sean had recently been kicked out of the hotel for being too rowdy and for keeping a lot of drugs in his room. This guy's a fucking menace. The manager also said something to make Kat's blood turn cold That he was there with a young woman It seemed like just a matter of time Before something else horrible happened

So Kat doubled down in her efforts Right tries even harder Now she calls U.S. Marshals With leads about where Williams might be She tells them to search the area around a house She had visited in Culloughby, North Carolina Sean's mother had once lived there Dahl believed that the location was significant to him

And that the surrounding woods might provide him a hiding place An official with the U.S. Marshals would later say that Dahl's tips were taken seriously, but they didn't appear to investigate and look into that area. Nothing fucking happened. Perhaps he didn't ever investigate. Perhaps their investigation yielded nothing because, you know, they just couldn't find Sean. Doesn't seem like they looked. Want to guess where he was when they were maybe looking?

Johnson City, Tennessee. He'd spent more than a year after the arrest attempt, staying with the fucking neighbor in the same goddamn building as his condo. and he continued to party and just conduct business openly. They don't care about the warrants. In April of 2022, Johnson City's manager, Kathy Ball, who was responsible for overseeing the police department, even entered into a contract with Sean to buy his apartment.

Fuck it, is everybody there corrupt? According to text messages later disclosed during a lawsuit, Ball's real estate agent, Shannon Castillo, spoke with Williams on the phone, and at one point left documents at his condo for him to sign. Unreal. Hey, man, I know you're busy right now. the police, but when you get a chance, if you can sign these documents.

Ball told Castillo that she had chosen to withhold information about Williams from a home inspector as well, writing, I did not tell him the story behind Sean. Williams eventually pulled out of the deal, sold the apartment to a company owned by another local businessman. Cool, cool. Then eventually Williams, he decides to leave. Fleeing Johnson City spent a nearly a year sleeping in his car, various hotels. During that time, a woman named Alexa Anderson came forward. Alexa had been just 21 years old, a struggling new mother when Williams hired her as a housekeeper, and then he promoted her to his informal personal assistant. She then quit the job when she found sexual images of children on his phone,

including naked photos of her infant son. And he didn't get in trouble for that shit either. The detective she spoke to, Brady Higgins, adopted an accusing tone asking about her history of substance abuse, also did not write in his report that the images of children were sexual in nature. Meanwhile, Williams would be on the run for another 10 months at around 2 a.m. on April 29th, 2023, a security guard for Western Carolina University and Culloughby, North Carolina found him. True to form, he was carrying 12 ounces of cocaine. That's a fucking lot of cocaine. Jesus Christ, 14 ounces of meth, $100,000 in cash roughly, and a slew of hard drives. That's fucking wild. Those drives contained thousands of vans. videos and images that according to federal prosecutors depicted sex crimes against some 67

many of them drugged and unconscious including multiple minors. Investigators later also found a shit ton of additional child porn, more evidence of sex crimes on the devices that the Johnson City Police had seized, right, after Michaela fell, but they had failed to fucking search. Those fucking pieces of shit. This is truly disturbing. So many pieces of shit. story. Evidence later presented at trial showed that Williams used three minor children to engage

in sexually explicit conduct took photos of them. He was sexually assaulting children and making child porn. The evidence showed that Williams sexually assaulted each of the victim's mothers as well while they were unconscious. Around the same time that he took photographic, you know, photographs, pornographic photos of the kids. So he drugged the mom, rate the mom, when mom is fucking unconscious, uh, sexually assault and, you know, make child porn about the kids. Among the victims was a fucking infant boy, a four-year-old, and a seven-year-old girl. My God. And this all might make him one of the most prolific serial rapists in American history.

One of the Johnson City PD, or one that the Johnson City PD, excuse me, had zero interest in investigating. How many rapists and or pedos were or still are members of that fucking police department? Oh, and many of the photographs and videos on the drives had file named consistent with those on the list that investigators had recovered back in November of 2020 that they didn't fucking. look into. And after two years on the run, Williams had been found in the town that Cat Doll had told U.S. Marshals to search, but it seems they didn't. At least now, finally, she would get what she had been hoping for. Some accountability. Williams was charged with multiple counts related to child porn and with possession and intent to distribute methamphetamine and cocaine. More than 20 charges involving child sexual abuse would eventually follow, and he was finally placed behind bars.

But then he tries to escape. In July of 2023, he is accused of attempting to dig out of his cell in a county jail in Jonesboro, Tennessee, where he was awaiting trial on some of the child porn charges, though it was later claimed that he had been digging a hole to exchange items with the neighboring cell. Maybe some drugs, maybe some child porn or both. Or it really was an escape attempt. Because just a few months after that, in October, while being transferred in a van to a court appearance,

Williams lifted a loose portion of the vehicle's wall paneling, snapped off a narrow metal clip underneath, then used that clip to pick the locks on his belly chain and handcuffs, and then kicked out a window which was missing its metal security bar. Where's the fucking driver of this van? Williams then squeezed through the window, jumped onto the road. He did break his wrist in the process, but successfully escaped. And the only camera in the van, ah, not working that day.

Seems fishy. Did someone help him escape? Was it the same person, same people, protecting him back in Johnson City? like some of the police there. The U.S. Marshals working with the FBI and the TBI, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations or investigation, assigned more than 100 people to search for him now.

As helicopters circled overhead and sniffer dogs patrolled Sean Williams Sheldred in an abandoned house just a few blocks from the courthouse where he had been scheduled to appear. He constructed a pulley system to get himself in and out of the house's attic, scavenged for food, including walnuts from a nearby tree. He was able to siphon some power

from a neighboring house so he can know watch his shows and stuff. He then started collecting tools, including a serrated knife, some sockets, use them to work on the abandoned house, do a little upkeep, make it nicer. Perhaps as some who know him think, he also had money buried somewhere nearby that he was able to access because he then drove to North Carolina to see the daughter he had had back in his teens. Carrie Dills, now in her 30s. Carrie, by the way, also one of his victims. The story just keeps getting fucking crazier.

She alleged she had no idea who her dad was until she was six years old. And then when she began to have visits with him, he started to sexually abuse her. When Sean arrived now wearing a surgical mask at the discount department store where Dills worked, she did not recognize him. And then she panicked when she did. She told him that she would go get a pen to write down his phone number so she could contact him. Then when she left the front desk, she went and told her manager to call the police. As he waited for her to return, Sean got a bad feeling and took off. He drove down I-75 to Florida, where an hour he hold up for several days in Largo, where he wistfully returned to his childhood home.

How nice. On November 20, 20, 23, Williams' truck was found by a local police officer, and a new manhunt began, and he hid under a canoe overnight to successfully evade detection. This guy was fucking really, really good at being really, really, really back. The next evening, Williams walked barefoot and do a 7-Eleven, got himself a hot dog, asked for some ketchup and to purchase some masks, Tasha Bumgarner, a clerk at the store recognized him from a police photo, waited until he left and called the police. Minutes later, Williams was walking down a nearby trail

when a police SUV swerved into his path as he tried to hide under a tarp, a police dog named Voodoo. Fuck yeah, Voodoo. Let's go. Voodoo sank his teeth into this guy's leg, drawn some blood and fucking pinning him. Oh, but Jengals likes that a lot. The officer then leapt out of the car

and punched John in the face a few times before subduing him, so hail whoever that officer was. And with that, Williams is now taken to the Blount County detention facility in Maraville, Tennessee, where prosecutors now bring an additional charge against him for escaping federal custody. There, he will answer questions from reporters, including the one who had been emailed by Cat Dahl, former federal prosecutor Kat Dahl during her last week on her job. He would claim at first that the material on the hard drives and computers that were, you know,

that he had had been AI generated, right? Fake news. But then he admitted that, sure, he had had sex with women while. they were unconscious, stating that he believed he had their consent because, you know, they'd had prior sexual encounters. Then he would come out with a bombshell that had to have left Cat doll pumping her fist somewhere, jumping up and down and screaming, I fucking knew it! I fucking knew it! He told a reporter for the New Yorker that most of his criminal activity was possible, was made possible, because for years he'd been paying off Johnson City police officers.

Through a woman named Alunder Rutherford, his ex-girlfriend who was at one point involved in his business affairs. Alunda Rutherford denied any involvement, saying she hadn't had any contact with Williams and years, and of course the city denied it as well. But guilty or innocent, of course they're all going to deny that. No one's going to make it that easy to get arrested. In a statement, a city spokesperson said,

to claim that the Johnson City Police Department was complicit in any sex trafficking venture or that its officers benefited financially from such of a horn activity is specious. Specious, by the way, is a little used word that means superficially plausible but actually wrong. But were those accusations wrong? I sure don't think they were. I think those cops are fucking crooked as shit.

Certain facts stand out, right? For one thing, multiple people who knew Alunda and Sean said they were in continual contact when she said they weren't. And financial records proved that they definitely were engaged in some kind of business that was likely elicit. According to these sources, for the duration of their 10-year-long relationship, friend and otherwise, Alunda and Williams were selling cocaine, and about eight years back, so in 2018 or so,

a Johnson City police officer pulled up behind Alunda as she pulled into her driveway. The officer said that he knew she was carrying drugs and cash. He then allegedly made her hand over $5,000 and some cocaine, and then just left. No charges. After that, Williams alleged, Alunda began to periodically give officers large sums of Sean Williams' cash somewhere between two and eight grand at a time,

which was actually a pretty modest business cost. for a man who's making well over 500,000 tax fee dollars a year. And so, if Sean were to go to jail on rape charges, the cash flow would stop. Then when Michaela Evans fell from the window, it is suspected by many that some officers took that as an opportunity to search the premises and make off with over $400,000 from a safe. That was why they didn't want anyone to look too closely at what really happened that night. As a result of these allegations, a civil lawsuit was initially brought against the police department, by a group of nine plaintiffs with accusations about Williams,

and it eventually grew into a proposed class action suit encompassing all of his accusers. The suit which raised these and other claims about police corruption contended that the records show that Thomas Sparks and another officer named Justin Jenkins had access to funds that did not accord with their incomes, like at all. Indeed, between 2018 and 2022, a period in which Alunda Rutherford was seemingly making regular withdrawals,

The two officers bank accounts show a pattern of suspicious cash deposits. In Jenkins' case, they were generally in increments of between $1,000 and $5,000 at a time. Where the fuck's he getting that money, if not from Sean Williams and Alundrautherford? During that time, Officer Jenkins paid off a portfolio of auto, construction, and home loans, totaling more than $400,000, significantly more than his total police department income during that time. Come on. In a filing submitted as part of the lawsuit, though, Jenkins' attorney said that the deposits and loans highlighted in the suit

came from, you know, vehicle trade-ins, some refinancing, the sale of some vehicles and property, and other innocuous sources, and provided some detailed accounting. Still sounds suss as fuck. Sean Williams also had his own records to hand over. When he had fled Johnson City in 2022, he took seven boxes of financial records with him and gave them to a woman named Shelby Moody,

who had he had been set up with a blind date with in 2018. Shelby considered Williams a friend. And when officials at the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation first contacted her for those files, she initially defended him against rape allegations. But then the investigators asked her if she wanted to see her pictures. They then showed her photos and videos of Williams raping her while she was incapacitated. Right? Sexual experiences she had zero memory of, Jesus Christ. In one file, she would later state, quote,

he was holding my eyes open like I'm a dead body. So now she handed over those records. There was clearly a lot to address with this case. More all the time. Like what had really happened to those women and who would be held responsible? Whether Cat Doll's firing was justified. And what should be done about the ongoing police corruption, blatant corruption in Johnson City?

Those last two fronts, Cat and ongoing corruption, actually became one of the same thanks to Kat's hard work again. After Sean fled in June of 2020, Dahl sued Turner in the Johnson City Police Department, good for her, for retaliation and wrongful termination, alleging that she was punished because she had reported their handling of sexual assault cases or mishandling and raised allegations of corruption that are very substantial and substantiated, it seems. Soon after it was filed, Johnson City hired a law firm to investigate the police department's approach to sexual crimes. The resulting report identified systematic deficiencies, including, quote, practices that discourage female violence.

victims of sexual assault from collaborating with law enforcement, such as conducting interviews in a manner more appropriate for the interrogation of a suspect. Of 105 recent reports of rape with an identified suspect, police had interviewed the suspect in only 36 cases. Jesus Christ, can't even bother to fucking interview them. Can't inconvenience these rapists. Alleged rapists. The department commonly closed sexual violence cases quickly, too quickly, sometimes because

the victim expressed reservations about. pressing charges. In fact, officers often cited uncooperative victims as a reason for closing cases, even when they had in fact been unable to make contact with the victims. In summary, the report stated that, quote, the department should have moved forward with an internal investigation to address the misconduct allegations. Meanwhile, this was all happening as the group of women who Sean Williams had allegedly raped sought the justice they had been denied. In June of 2023, the group of Williams' accusers, inspired by Dahl's case, filed a federal suit. Then in February of 2025, Johnson City agreed to a $28 million settlement with victims of sexual

violence, right, at the hands of Sean Williams, an enormous sum for a small city. The confidential but leaked settlement, a version of which was obtained by the New Yorker, included strict provisions that the victims should not discuss this settlement or disparage the JCPD, its officers, or any. investigation of her sexual assault. In other words, just like Sean Williams, the city had paid its way out of real moral accountability. How pathetic.

Fuck the Johnson County or Johnson City Police Department. That is fucking gross. Indeed, federal and state officials have mostly refused in recent months to say whether the corruption allegations are still being pursued. The FBI and TBI initiated investigations, but some of those initial efforts consisted of interviews that were only three minutes long. and consistent of the FBI and the TBI agents asking the officers whether or not they stole money.

Did you steal money? And if they were like, nope, they just closed up the file and went on home. Fucking great, great job, team. Guess we're done here. He said no. Case closed in my book. None of the officers were confronted with evidence,

which suggested the FBI and TBI had failed to subpoena them. Seems like the same old gang is in charge. Right? So much corruption. After Cat doll, Cat doll was fired. Johnson City police officers, David Hilton and Jeff Legault, both of whom worked for the police department during Williams' active period of fending, both promoted from Sergeant to Lieutenant.

Keith Sexton, who served a search warrant after Evans' fall, now the county sheriff. While Captain Kevin Peters and police chief, Carl Turner have both, quote, retired, Thomas Sparks and Justin Jenkins still employed by the Johnson City Police Department. Fucking outrageous. And what about Williams? On the morning of February 24th, 2025, Williams walked. into a hearing room in a courthouse in Greenville, Tennessee, with his hands cuffed and chained at his wrist

to be sentenced for production of child pornography and for his escape. And apparently, he was going to try and escape again. As he was transferred to court that morning, U.S. Marshals discovered him hiding razor blades in his shoe, apparently intent on doing something to avoid punishment for the guilty verdicts that had been handed to him in July regarding his escape and November regarding his pornography of 2024. But he would not be able to get out of this one.

At the hearing, Megan Gomez, A prosecutor described how Williams had assaulted minors and their mothers, including a woman, Alexa Anderson, the mother of the infant boy, who sat in court quietly weeping while she spoke. Perhaps realizing he was not getting out of this, William seemed to shrug off the hostility, literally laughing, shaking his head and snorting like the cold-blooded predator he is as the court proceedings wore on. Finally was time for the sentencing. Jay Ronnie Greer, the judge in the child pornography case called Williams a psychopath and a dangerous predator. When Greer said of Williams's crimes, that, quote, with the exception possibly of a serial killer, these offenses are among the most serious offenses that can be committed. Williams then blurted out that it was, quote, shocking that taking a picture of a young girl would be compared to murder.

The skies is so completely fucked. With that, Greer sentenced Williams to 95 years in prison, the maximum allowable sentence. Williams has since appealed and has pleaded not guilty to the additional charges he faces related to child porn and drugs. drugs. But Steve Finney, a Tennessee district attorney, said that he plans to bring even more charges against Williams related to alleged assaults. And a further civil suit has been filed by Evans against Johnson City Police. All of these are now winding their way through the courts as I record this. Until more details possibly arrive, including more possible corruption charges regarding Johnson City cops, we're just left with this insane story. A story that feels, quite frankly, too weird to be real

in moments and yet numerous people have proven that. it is real. A serial predator, sadly, somewhat common. I think of the numerous ones we've covered here in some form or another, Albert Fish, Carl Pan's Ram, Fred West, Ted Bundy, on and on and on and on. But none of those guys, as far as we know, ever had the police in their pockets. None of those guys were allowed to do what they wanted to, whoever they wanted to do it to, as long as the money kept allegedly, but almost not allegedly, flowing into police pockets. This story is a good reminder that though we think of sex criminals as, you know, either high-profile politicians and business tycoons, jet-setting, powerful men with their own, I don't know, private islands who sadly right now seem above the law,

which makes it real fucking hard to take the American justice system seriously at all, or as freaks lurking in the bushes. But there's also a middle ground. A normal seeming, successful local businessman who knew how to take advantage of regular human greed. How many more Sean Williams's are out there? Will they ever be brought to justice? Will the United States ever become a nation with the justice system that we as citizens can actually trust when it comes to sex crimes? One where nobody is above the law, not run-of-the-mill creeps, not business leaders, not politicians past and present, not dirty cops, willing to let a rapist keep raping so they can allegedly put some extra cash into their bank accounts?

And that's it for that fucking disturbing edition of time. Suck, short sucks. If you were, I don't want to say enjoy, if you enjoyed, if you were captivated by that story, check out the rest of the bad magic catalog. Beve your episodes of Time suck every Monday at New Pacific Time. New episodes at the now long-running paranormal podcast, scared of death every Tuesday at midnight, with two episodes of nightmare fuel, fictional horror thrown into the mix each month. Big thank you to Sophie Evans for her initial research.

God, just a wild tale. Even wilder than I remember, you know, when I first, first when I first read it. And thank you to Logan Keith, polishing up the sound of today's episode. Please go to bad magic productions.com for all your bad magic needs and have yourself a great weekend.