Why Can't We Talk About Amanda's Mom? - Ep.3: The Main Suspect

Episode Date: October 21, 2026

Less than one month after Angel’s body is found, her friend Cassidy Dudley is attacked in Downtown Gainesville. After escaping her assailant, and helping to put him behind bars for that assault and several others that would follow , Cassidy tells Sarah and Courtnay that she believes the man who attacked her is the man who killed Angel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This podcast explores themes of violence against women, sexual assault, and murder, and contains graphic descriptions of violence. Listener discretion is advised. Previously, on Who Killed Angel Harris? We watched Angel walk down, cross over Main Street, in front of the bike trail, and then past St. Francis, and that was the last time that I ever seen her. Alive. I still worked in that area, and I talked to a lot of the girls,

and they had different theories on them. different people who might have been involved or who was seen that night or what they thought they saw. We spent a lot of time talking to people in the area, trying to establish somebody or find witnesses that had actually seen Danny Williams and could testify that Danny Williams was the person following Angel Harris into the secluded area. And we're unable to do that. From ID and dark media, I'm Sarah Kalin. And this is Who Killed Angel Harris? I'm mid-investigation into the murder of Angel Harris with my childhood friend and former Gainesville Police Department detective, Courtney Roberts. When looking into a case from over a decade ago, there can be a lot of noise to tune out.

So we're driving around, getting fresh air, and searching for the quiet here in our hometown. Thankfully, when you get far enough from the businesses and the university, there's a lot of tranquillity. here. The birds echo from tree to tree. The sound of a gator leaving swampy water is never too far away. And it's not that rare to hear an armadillo digging in the grass. But perhaps the sound I lean into most when I'm here is the sound of tree frogs. When I was a kid, tree frogs used to press their bellies up to my bedroom window and I would fall asleep at night listening to their song. It's the chirp of those frogs that has never left me. Their size can make them vulnerable to the elements like weather or the other animals,

but they have their own ways of surviving these dangers too. Often they don't scamper or vanish. They blend in and confuse predators by changing colors. For them, a major part of survival is about avoiding the normal moving hours of other. animals. They move when the world is quieter. There's a kind of commonality to these sweet little frogs and the people we speak to on the streets in Gainesville. Danger can appear in many forms when living a life that moves between the shadows and hiding in plain sight. Most importantly, they must always be ready. In a conversation with Courtney and me, Angel's friend Nicole Romm talks about

time when she was attacked. I didn't deal with a lot of people. I've been through trauma, but like I got pretty lucky. I'm alive. I was never severely beaten. Maybe a knife held to the throat and forced to have sex with one time. I lucked out. I did.

Yeah, it breaks my heart that that's considered lucking out is to only be assaulted at knife point, you know? Only once, right. Yeah. Cassidy Dudley, another friend of Angels, tells us that. us that one time while working the street, she was abducted and beaten with a hammer. I had a head injury in 2006. From what the doctors can determine, I was hitting the back of the head with a claw part of a hammer. It's really messed up my memory. The guy, he was a date of mine for about six months. Really easy date, really quick $100. But he actually kidnapped me.

And he raped me, beat me, and sodomized me for three days. Had me somewhere in the woods, and put me in the trunk of his car and he told me that he was going to let me go, but I didn't believe him. But he did. He put me out in front of the Ose Mall. I never did call the cops or anything like that or say anything about it because I just, you know, when you're in the streets, you don't want to be involved with the cops. You don't want to be labeled as, oh, she's talking to the cops type person

because it can make things really bad for you in the streets. Sex workers often have to act on instinct to get out of the most terrifying situations. And unfortunately, Kastafel. Cassidy's brush with terror when she was struck in the head with a hammer wasn't her last, but it did make her instincts even sharper. On July 24, 2011, almost a month after Angel was found murdered, Cassidy finds herself trapped in a corner, literally. She shares the story of this harrowing experience with Courtney and me.

She is also adamant about her belief that this attacker is the same. same man who killed Angel Harris. It was me, Charles Adams, and this lady named B. And we were all sitting in front of Lynch Park on the bus bench. Charles Adams is Cowboy, Angel's boyfriend at the time she has killed. He is the one who showed up on Cassidy's doorstep, asking her to take Angel in, to help her slow down just hours before she died. Cassidy tells us that there was a lot of trust within the various groups of people on the street.

We all really looked out for each other, you know, especially us girls, because we know definitely what it's like, because we're the money makers out there. The other guys that are, you know, out there with us, they really couldn't get high without us. You know, a lot of them have their own, you know, their own little side hustles and this, that, and the other are people that come through that are looking for dope. The guys would keep condoms for us. They would keep food. They would keep our bags of clothes. watch our things for us. From what happens next on this July night in 2011, it's clear.

Cowboy is someone Cassidy deeply trusts. I know it was late at night, and I had just showed up and I had a pizza. And I told everybody that was sitting there, if you eat pizza, I'll give you a piece of dope, you know. Just trying to get everybody to eat. So I was just about to eat when Scott pulled up on his bike and he was like, hey, he was like, can I talk to you? Cassidy tells us that the man on the bicycle then offered her money for sex. I told him, I can't give you sex. My administration was on at that time.

I said, I'll give you a blowjob. He said, okay, and I said, well, do you know where the dead end is down in porters? And he said, yeah, and I said, okay, let me grab my purse and I'll meet you there. He said, okay. Cassidy reminds us that sitting there eating pizza is Cowboy, who she turns to for help. So I told Cowboy, I said, I've seen this dude, but I said, I really don't know him. I said, I'm going to go up this street. I said, you go up the other street.

And I said, let me get down there with him. And I said, then you come down, you know, so that I would have somebody close in case something was happening. So I get down there. And at first, I didn't think he was down there. I was like, oh, my gosh, you didn't have me come all the way down here. He's not even down here. And he was like, yeah, I am. I'm right here.

He was all the way in the corner. Well, there was a bucket. And I told him, I said, well, can you grab that? bucket and bring it over here so it would be easier for me to send on the bucket and give him oral sex than what it would to be stand up and bend over and do it so as soon as i said he gave me the bucket and i wanted the bucket closer to the edge to where the light was i didn't want to be in the complete dark with this man that i didn't know so as soon as i sat down on the bucket that's when i heard the box cutter come open and he grabbed me and put it to my throat and i screamed and when i

screamed, Cowboy yelled, hey, what's going on? He let me go. I tripped over myself, ended up on the ground. Cowboy helped me up. Cowboy had a log at his hand. I told Cowboy, I said he was either going to kill me or rape me or something. I was like, I don't fucking know. And he was like, man, I didn't do anything to that girl.

That girl came down here and she hit that stuff and she went to tripping on me and Cowboy says, you're alive because she doesn't have anything on her. I have her stuff. She doesn't take anything like that with her on a date. So he jumped on his bike and he took off. So we're coming up out the dead in. There's some white guy. I don't know who or where he was,

but he was the one that actually called the police. He heard me scream. Cassidy didn't actually want the police called that night. She had an outstanding warrant for her arrest on some comparatively trivial charge, but her explaining that to us serves as a stark reminder that this is a common reason, even really violent,

crimes go unreported by victims in these marginalized vulnerable communities. And predators, like the one she's talking about here, they know this too. It's a choice to target these victims, in part because it improves their chances of getting away with it. The cop told me, he said, Cassidy, he said, I'm not worried about your warrant. He said, I want you to think about Angel. This might be the same guy that did this to Angel. So they took me to where they stopped him at on the bicycle

and asked me if I could ID him, and I said, yeah, that's him. The man on the bicycle that night is Danny Williams Jr., the primary person of interest in the murder of Angel Harris. Cassidy tells us that on the night of her attack, Danny was wearing the same type of clothes as the man seen in the surveillance video, the night of Angel's murder. Danny Williams Jr. was dressed the same exact way

as that man was dressed in that video. We asked Cassidy if in the moment she is being attacked, Angel comes to mind at all. The only thing that came to my mind was, how am I going to get out of here? And it was all very, very quick. To this day, I owe my life to Cowboy because I honestly believe the man would have killed me

if he wouldn't have been there. The night of Cassidy's attack, Cassidy and Danny Williams Jr., are both interviewed at GPD's headquarters. They took us down to the station, and they questioned him in one room, question me in another room. Detective Benny Smith remembers being called in that night, too.

Another detective called me, goes, this is your guy, this is him. Less than 24 hours from when Cassidy is attacked, the Gainesville son runs an article about it, withholding Cassidy's name. The article states, quote, it is not clear if the attack is related to the murder of Angel's.

when Angel Lynn Harris on June 25th." When Detective Benny Smith attempts to interview Danny Williams about Angel Harris, Williams denies ever having had sex with Angel and says GPD would not find his DNA on her. A cheek swab is taken, but because tests are ultimately unable to identify any DNA profiles from Angel's crime scene, this swab reveals no connection. And with no more than a blurry surveillance tape,

Benny Smith has nowhere near enough to arrest Danny Williams for Angel's murder. However, for his attack on Cassidy, Danny Williams is still charged and convicted. He is sentenced to two years in prison for attempted sexual battery with a weapon. While Williams is in prison, the investigation into Angel's murder slows to a crawl.

On April 4, 2013, Danny Williams Jr. is released from prison on parole and is supervised via an ankle monitor. Cassidy describes the fear she had when he got out of prison that spring. Whenever he got out of prison, everybody kept telling me that, hey, there's this really good-looking guy,

he's got tribal tattoo on him, you know, not real dark skin, and I'm like, stay away from him. I said, that's Danny Williams, Jr., stay away from him. So in the process of him trying to find me, I guess he wanted to hurt me, you know what I'm? Because I sent him to prison. Cassidy can't let go of the idea that Danny Williams killed her friend.

But at the same time, she also does not feel optimistic that the whole truth will ever come to light. I really felt like we were never going to get any answers because people tend to throw prostitutes and drugs, drug addicts to the side. Like they don't matter. Yes, we do matter. We are walking, breathing, living human beings just like everybody else.

Just because we have an addiction and chose a different lifestyle and are stuck in a disease, doesn't mean that we're any less of a person than anybody else. But let it be the mayor's daughter or a judge's daughter. The whole force, they've got everybody, you know, searching, questioning, looking, You know, and I just didn't, I didn't see any of that for Angel. It's important to note that Detective Benny Smith tells us he never stopped caring. There just wasn't much he could do in those early years with what he had. Courtney agrees that sometimes you think you've got the guy,

but it's just not enough to move forward with a charge. Detectives 101 where it's what you know versus what you can prove, right? But even though it feels like it's stalling, Detective Smith's investigation continues over the next year. And at the end of 2014, someone new comes forward. Unwilling to speak previously, a witness now says he saw Angel Harris and Danny Williams together in the hours leading up to her murder.

In 2014, a man named Ron Reese comes from. forward to Detective Benny Smith with information about Danny Williams. By now, another investigator has joined the team, Detective Martin Honeycutt. Together on December 16, 2014, Detective Honeycutt and Detective Smith interview Ron Reese. Throughout some of this interview, you'll hear a rattle of sorts. This is from the original police audio we have. All right. Time is two. 12 p.m. on December 16th, 2014, on Detective Martin Honeycutt, Gainesville Police Department.

We're in the interview room at the Gainesville Police Department. Also present, Detective Benny Smith. Say hello. Hello. Introduce yourselves, Mr. Floyd. My name is John Floyd. I represent Ronald Reese in an unrelated case. And Mr. Reese, would you introduce yourself? My name is Ron Reese. At the time of the interview, Ron Reese is facing charges for.

possession of cocaine. Benny and Honeycutt make clear to him that he will not be getting any sort of a deal for whatever he shares. We just might want to go over on the record that we haven't promised you or threatened you or done any of those things to, we haven't made any promise to you in exchange for the information you're going to give us today. No, no sir. You said, Mr. Reese, that, you know, no matter if this is useful for your case or not, you made us, if you'd like to. If you'd like, to just put on the record how you feel about your reason for talking about this, one of your reasons. Me, put my reason why? Yeah, I mean, what you said about Danny Williams, I mean, it's up to you.

I mean, you know, back when I was doing them drugs and before I had a family, you know, I was just rid of crack addict out there selling drugs really to support my habit. I ain't twirking and look. So that's how I was able to make contact with a lot of people like Angel and a lot of those girls, a lot of officers that didn't know me, you know. So you were down in that. area. Y'all running in the same areas. Yes. Where was it?

I see, uh, porters. You know, I'm in porters, porters used to be my spot. Porter's in Spring Hill. Man, I'm out there all day, all night. Bordering downtown Gainesville and almost immediately behind the Sun Center sits the Porter's neighborhood. It's rich and fascinating history began in 1884 when Nova Scotia native and Civil War Surgeon Dr. Watson Porter, along with his wife, Olivia,

bought a 64-acre plot of land southwest of the downtown area. In the post-reconstruction deep south, it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, for black people to buy property. While federal law prohibited states from making it outright illegal, countless local statutes impeded it significantly. Disturbed by this, Dr. Portman,

Porter established the area as the Porter's Edition and began a practice of financing plot sales exclusively to black buyers, allowing for them to own land and homes without fear of persecution or prosecution. For decades, it was a self-sufficient community with its own farming, businesses, and churches. By the 1950s, redlining, and segregationist strategies had, isolated the community and cut it off from most city services. And Porter's quarters, as it had come to be known, went into a steep decline that left it with a

reputation for dilapidated properties and high crime rates. That was, unfortunately, the state of affairs and porters around Angel's time in the area. You know, back when the park was going, it was just the place to party at, the place where all the prostitutes at the place where you can find crack any time of night, you know, and it's just to a drug addict, it's fun. But I was speaking more to the, you know, you knowing possibly what the suspect's been involved in and you want to do the right thing. Angel, oh, yeah.

Well, with Danny, you know, I got, with me having a son now, like I said, I didn't have no family, so I didn't care. I would just want to get high, you know, but now that I have a son, a two-year-old, and, you know, my wife, I've been married in her five years. I would hate for somebody to do something to my two-year-old, like molesting myself to get away with it. You know, I think about that, you know. Jailhouse informants should always be taken with a grain of salt,

as there can be ulterior motives for both the informants and the officers. But we can say that Ron Reese did know, the people in question, and the detectives make the effort to demonstrate they are not seeking or directing any specific information. How long you known, Danny? I've known Danny probably 25 years, 25 years. Where did you know him from? Danny used to rap with my cousin, Charles Preston.

He used to be like a rapper. Charles. Charles. Charles. Yes. He used to, you know. I miss him. I hate my wife, and now, you know.

But, uh. Wait a minute. Charles that passed, that sold clothes and stuff like that? Yeah, you know, child. Did y'all go to school together or anything like that? No, I just been knowing him from my cousin Charles and, you know, the clubs and the drugs. You know, just knowing, but we were close because of Charles. We just, we're just cool.

Danny Williams being a rapper is news to us. Our researchers have been diligently searching for anything that might exist from his rap battle days, but have thus far come up short. The closest remnant we can find of this career is a lawsuit filed by Williams against a concert and festival production company. The detectives continue asking Ron Reese what he knows related to their investigation

into Angel's murder. When that happened, you know, you ever heard of trying to keep it loyal to the streets or whatever? And then I guess this is supposed to be like a white girl nobody's really supposed to care for, so I'm supposed to take dent inside and keep it true to the speech and not tell. You know, but baldhead was my friend, the angel was my friend. You know what I mean? We were friends.

So it kind of bothered me in a way because this is somebody that was around every day. But then I was like, well, man, I ain't going, you know, I just, I'm going to stay out of it because I was selling drugs at the time, using drugs at the time. And I didn't want to be implicated in that any type of way. And see, that's how you guys were able to, like, come to my house. We were trying to talk to you. I remember back at the time because we were making contact with anyone that was out in that area that was either, you know, that had information on the case. Yeah. And I remember.

Yeah, you came to my house. Okay. You came to my house. I was living in Oak Glade then. Okay. And you came to my house and he was showing me the video on film. What do you remember seeing on the video? Danny coming back from, she walking ahead of Danny and he's behind him on the video.

What? know that was then. Because I know his body, his body structure and his walk, just like me, you ever saw me walk? You ever saw, you said, man, that's Ron Reese there. You know what I mean? It's just when you had time around a person. This is exactly the kind of recognition

Benny Smith told us he was hoping for in 2011 when he released the video footage to the public right after Angel's murder. someone who recognized the man on the tape for specific characteristics. I think I know the answer to this, but why you did, why didn't you tell us back then? Because I didn't want to, I didn't want to be, you know, you said, man, you're so, you're so crack. Well, that's the reason. You know, I just didn't want to be caught up in that shit.

I'd be watching First 48 type shit, and you say the wrong shit, you know. You put yourself at a scene of a crime. or something, and I wasn't there. I walked to the store, to that little store on that corner. For context on Ron Reese's statement about the store. At the corner of Fourth Avenue and South Main Street is a bright, gator-orange-and-blue convenience store. It's been there as long as I can remember,

and I don't know if it's ever even had a name. It's not a recognizable chain, like 7-Eleven or Wawa. It's not terribly inviting-looking. But it is heavily patronized by the folks spending time around Lynch Park, the St. Francis House, and Tent City. It's just that little corner store, as Ron Reese puts it. Now, this is important in Ron's statement because what he tells investigators later in the interview is that he saw both Danny and Angel at that store, sometime shortly before Angel is believed to have been murdered.

They called me. I was like, where are you? Okay, who called you? Angel, and I walk up to the store. And I got up there, Daniel was pushing a bike. I think he was pushing a bike store. He's pushing a bike earlier. He was pushing a bike. But now he was like walking.

Usually he'll come through there on a bike later or whatever. But earlier, you know, what I'm going to mean about early is probably an hour, hour and a half before I met him up there. So I guess they had already been walking around, smoking, tricking, or whatever. Whatever it is they were doing, you know what I mean. But when I went to the store, I gave them, you know, whatever, and they went down this way. The interview we have with Ron Reese is only audio,

but from what we can tell, the detectives and Ron Reese are walking through everything step by step with a picture of the area serving as a map. You saw... They went down this way. They saw it to Danny or to her? You know. Well, her, you know what I'm saying?

He's mine at four. He buys it for her. You handed it to her. Yes. But he's standing right there giving you the money. She had the money. There's no doubt in your mind it was Danny Williams. Yes.

And they were together. Yes. Danny Williams, Angel Harris. Together. The night she died. It's the first time any witness has come forward to the Gainesville Police Department and made this concrete connection. When we speak with Detective Smith,

it's been a dozen years since his interview. with Ron Reese. Understandably, he can't remember too many specifics from the conversation itself, but we do ask him if he recalls the conversation propelling the case forward in any way. It's like in 14, you did an interview with Ron Reese, who exactly, to your point, watched the video and said, oh, I know him, that's him. I don't remember the specifics of an interview, but I know as generally with cold cases, anytime you get any glimpse or any hint of somebody may know something you meet with them and try to get all the information you can.

You also have to weigh the credibility of your witnesses. Ron Reese has had credible testimony and information in the past, but he's also had information that was self-serving and not credible. So that on its own wouldn't be enough to make an arrest. Following Ron Reese's interview, Danny Williams is not arrested for Angel's murder. I've spent almost 30 years working in and around law enforcement, and even as an insider, this is frustrating to listen to. The detectives seem to have their guy,

but with nothing more to go on than people's words, they can't charge him, not ethically, and not if they want the charges to actually result in a prosecution and conviction. I've been there. This is one more way that Angel's case reminds me so much of the Renee Bergeron investigation, the unsolved case at the center of season one of this podcast. There's no way to frame that frustration nicely.

It just sucks. In the years following his release from prison on parole, as well as the detective's conversation with Ron Reese, Danny's name will continue to pop up repeatedly. Following his release from prison for attacking Cassidy Dudley in 2011, Danny Williams is investigated and ultimately charged in seven more rapes. One of these incidents dates back to even before Cassidy's attack. Ron Reese is a witness in one of those cases.

So now on this latest case, what happened? Well, sitting out there drinking when I'm going to hear somebody screaming. So we walk up Waldo Road, walk up 4th Avenue, we cross over. I'm saying, hey, hey, it is. I'm getting closer and I'm getting closer. Danny shoots out on the bicycle. He shoots out, he's got no shirt on, he's sweating and shit. Repeat offenders are often creatures of habit and routine.

Those habits can be part of the logistics of the crime or part of the thrill of it, or both. As horrific as these are, they do afford investigators an opportunity to learn from his attacks, to see his very specific patterns and how they play out at his crime scenes. We learned that in every one of these cases, Danny Williams wielded some sort of bladed instrument,

knives, box cutters, even an ice pick once. There was always a deadly weapon incorporated into his attacks. The state outlines this detail on March 6th, 16th, 2017, during a hearing for Danny Williams. Sudden drops in sound or bleeps can be heard in this next piece of audio. Because of laws and ethical practices in place to protect victims of sexual battery, their names have been redacted. It is only because Cassidy shared her story with us and gave us her complete consent to share her name

that we felt comfortable doing so in discussions of her attack. Additionally, in 2014, CS-3974, the state was prepared to show beyond a reasonable doubt that on her about October 27, 2013, the defendant used his penis to penetrate the mouth, vagina, and or anus of and he did so by threatening violence and force and by using a deadly weapon to wit a knife. In 2014, CS-3975, the state was prepared to show

beyond a reasonable doubt and honor about May 17, 2014, defendant used his penis to penetrate the mouth, vagina, and or anus of he did so with the use of a threat of violence and also with the use of deadly weapon to wit a knife. Something we learned about Danny Williams while doing our work was that he was often employed as a cook at various restaurants in and around Gainesville. Detective Benny Smith explains his theory on why Danny always had a knife, and it had to do with that fact that he consistently worked in local restaurants. It was believed that he was taking knives from the restaurant because they were missing a lot of

knives, and he would take him. The theory on that, he didn't want to carry knives around because he'd get in trouble. So he would take the knife from the restaurant, take it, and do whatever he's going to do that knife with it, and then discard it. Just to reiterate, the post-mortem examination for Angel Harris did not find any stuff. stab or slash wounds. But that doesn't mean that whoever her assailant was couldn't have threatened her with such a deadly weapon

before she died of other causes. The victims of his known sexual batteries did not get stabbed or cut by Williams. It was wielded as a means of controlling the victim. Although he didn't use a knife when he attacked Cassidy back in 2011, he did wield another sharp object, a box cutter.

for the same purpose. On April 4th, 2017, exactly four years from the day he is released following Cassidy's attack, Danny Williams and his attorneys are scheduled to be in court to begin the trial process for these seven additional attacks.

But just days ahead of that, at the same hearing we heard from just a few moments ago, he instead pleads no contest on four of his seven rape charges, In exchange for his plea, the remaining rape charges are dropped. As a result, Danny Williams receives four 20-year sentences and one 15-year sentence for violating his parole following the attack on Cassidy. But as these will run concurrently, he will be eligible for release in 2013.

For now, there's something worth highlighting, which is a highlighting, which is how big a role Cassidy played when she came forward in 2011. She didn't want to do it. She had a warrant out for her arrest, on top of the fear nearly all victims of sexual assault have of not being believed or even being blamed. But she did tell the police,

in part with the hopes that it might help Angel. At the time, Cassidy couldn't possibly have known that her coming forward would lead to justice for at least seven other women. The detectives had collected DNA in all of those cases, and that would have been enough for a strong prosecution for sure. But it's likely that the reason Williams ultimately realized a plea was his best chance of ever stepping foot outside a prison again was the most airtight evidence they had linking the additional.

attacks to him. Following his parole for Cassidy's attack, Williams was made to wear an ankle monitor, and investigators were able to place Danny Williams at all of the attacks he carried out subsequent to Cassidy's through data pings from that ankle monitor. Courtney and I both feel strongly that this is something Cassidy should hear in case she didn't know how important her own bravery was

to a lot of other women. Some of them she may not have known, but some she definitely did. Your event that night and the fact that you didn't want the police to be called, but the fact that you talked to them, that set off a series of events that led to Danny Williams going to prison,

and that started with you. So, I mean, that's a very important part of this, and it's a very important part of getting someone like him off the streets for whatever period of time. and it's not outside the realm of possibility that he's also a murderer in addition to being a violent attack or a violent rapist. So certainly giving you just a ton of credit for kind of, you know, cooperating, coming forward. One thing about me, if I had to live my life all over again for my story,

my testimony to help somebody else, I would do it all over again. Following Danny's most recent conviction, Gainesville Police Department detectives have requested further forensic testing be done on items connected to Angel's scene. But between then and now, 26, there are no significant test results that propel Angel's case forward. Sometimes I can feel a little stir-crazy sitting in the war room for hours on end. When I get stuck like that, I take a walk around the GPD complex to stretch out and clear my mind. throughout the halls of the interconnected buildings, the walls are lined with photos of chiefs, captains, detectives,

retired patrol officers and support staff. I remember Courtney's dad, Mr. Roberts, vividly. Mostly, I remember having to crane my neck to look up at him. He was a giant too. But even as a kid, that was both literal and figurative to me. He was always kind and welcoming. and with his photos actually hanging in a number of different places in these halls, it's like he's watching over us.

I encounter someone new while roaming in the halls very early into my time at GPD, a corporal named La Jarvis Cook. I know I sound like a broken record here, and yes, almost everyone is objectively tall compared to me, but La Jarvis is huge. I mean, he makes court. and his dad both seem diminutive. All right, maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but not a lot.

He's younger than Courtney and I are. He came to GPD in 2013 about five years before Courtney left the department. In spite of his intimidating stature, he's got a really sweet face and a very easy-going demeanor. There have been a lot of whispers about what Courtney is doing back here, and who is this tiny person lurking behind him. So La Jervis just asks, why are you here? A lot of people seem to know

that we are working on a cold case, but not everyone knows which case we are focused on. So I tell him, we are looking at the Angel Harris homicide. Though he wasn't with GPD at the time, even he is familiar with the case, but for a very different reason. He quizzes me a little about suspects, says he doesn't want to tell me who he believes is responsible because he doesn't want to taint the investigation process.

I tell him that while we're certainly looking at a number of possibilities, there is one key individual in clear focus. He asks me to describe this man, so I describe to him what Danny Williams looks like based on his current inmate photo. He is around six feet tall. he has a clean-shaven head and a youngish-looking face for his age. It looks like he has a neck tattoo as well. Corporal Cook is leaning back on a desk,

his arms folded across his chest, just smiling. The next thing he says to me makes my eyes widen like a kid in a candy shop. Corporal Lajarvis Cook knows Danny Williams, Jr., and knows him well, and I don't mean knows of him as a police officer. officer. La Jarvis Cook grew up in Danny's orbit. There were whole periods when he grew up in Danny's house. When I asked Corporal Cook if he'll sit and talk with Courtney and me, he doesn't

hesitate. And he's clearly got a story to tell. When you start doing this job before, you start picking up on things about people, but you just can't really, you don't want to accuse anybody of anything. But when got pinched for a couple of these, when I just thought back to some of the earlier cases, I'm like, wait a minute. La Jarvis Cook meets Danny Williams when he is very young, only seven or eight years old, and Danny is in his early 20s. When La Jarvis meets him, Danny Williams is dating La Javis' mother's best friend since childhood. They will go on to get married.

I can't tell you what it means to meet someone who knows a suspect intimately and is willing to speak about it so openly. Knowing who we are looking at beyond what he's suspected of, gives me a much fuller picture of that person and a much better understanding of what drives him criminally. When Courtney and I sit down with La Jarvis Cook, we pretty much dive right in. I guess you've got being a Gainesville native,

have some connection a little bit to Danny. Yeah, let's start from the beginning. I've heard some of it, but Courtney hasn't really heard it because I felt like it was better to let you tell your own story. So he, I've been knowing him since I was probably 70. eight years old. Okay.

He was married to me now, my mom's best friend for... Oh, no kidding. I don't know how long. He's been with Tracy since the 90s. Really? Yeah, they've been together since mid-90s, maybe early 90s. Wow. As we speak, La Jarvis isn't sure if the couple are still together

or if Danny and Tracy divorced since his last trip to prison. For the moment, it's not important. What is her connection to him now? So I'm almost certain that she, if they're not divorced, I think she filed for one. Okay. So she's not like standing by her man until, like. No, no. Not to my knowledge.

What was her reaction to all of that? Like, obviously the- She was devastated. Yeah. So zero expectation. She had no idea that she- I think she knew. She kind of knew, but this was-

I think she kind of knew, but I don't think that she knew to what level. stand of what was happening. I think she knew. I mean... She probably thought he was out stepping around, not realizing he was doing violent rapes. Probably, my guess. I mean, I remember talking to her.

She was distraught. She just couldn't believe it. That, that... I mean, you have that... You know, but you don't know until the ex-off comes out and just like... Now you've got to face the reality of, like,

what was really happening. I mean, that tends to be the case with a lot of the wives and girlfriends of serial rapists and serial killers is it's like they always knew something was off but they didn't want to admit it to themselves. And then when it comes out, they're like devastated, like you said. I mean, that's the ultimate betrayal.

La Jarvis tells us more about the Danny he knew growing up, the Danny who he was around all the time. I really can't stress enough how tight the families were. We would have cookouts, of course, and they would cook, like, you know, ribs and, you know, like the good stuff, right? And for the kids, we'd always get, like, hot dogs. That's it. Yeah.

Hot dogs. And so my mom would always feed, like, my mom's like, my kids eat what I eat. Yeah. So he had a problem with that. So he got upset because my mom brought her food over to some ribs, and we ate ribs. While everybody, all the other kids ate hot dogs. You guys are eating good food. We eating good food, right?

And he got upset with it. He got mad about that. This may seem like a small thing to zero in on, but it's, It tells me a lot about Danny as a person, his intense need for control over everything, but especially over those he sees as weaker or less than. He has a deep sense of superiority, of feeling above other people. There's another story that La Jarvis shares with us that's even more disturbing.

And with time, it will become very telling. Can you say more about the extent of the temper, or perhaps like times you saw it in action? So it was always a lot of us kids at the house. It was me and my siblings. Of course, Tracy's kids and then Danny's kids that they had. They didn't have any kids in common. But he had kids outside of that.

And, you know, we'd always, you know, play, horseplay and all those things. And it was one day. I could remember him and what I call him family, one of my cousins. He essentially put him in like a sleeper hole. It took him to the ground. He was, and we had to have been, oh man, maybe preteen, so maybe 11, 12-ish. But, yeah, I can remember that happening. I was there.

And I was like, what hell is this? It was pretty bad. And it was one of those things. I think, I want to say he was being, quote, like, disrespectful to his mom or sense. It was something on those lines about either cleaning up or, Just doing something on those lines. And he was kind of talking out of line, and that's when Danny stepped in.

When La Jarvis says Danny put a child in a sleeper hold, my jaw actually drops. We don't know why La Jarvis chose that specific phrase. But it is interesting because this is the exact way we told Debbie, Angel's sister, it's possible Angel had died. Because Angel died from asphyxiation and blunt force. not strangulation. And there were some other indicators in the autopsy

that made the sleeper hold a possibility that jumped out at Courtney and Me from day one. We bring things back to Angel at this moment. Again, La Jarvis wasn't with the department yet in 2011, but knowing Danny incredibly well, we're curious to see what his opinion is of the man on the surveillance footage following Angel. We show him a screen grab from the video,

video. They're going in the sun center. That's Angel and that's the guy right there. Yeah, likely. Dark. So, shorts. Yeah. Wife beater.

Yeah. That was him. That's wife beat all the time. Like, wife beat her always had a wife beat on. Even if he had on an overshirt, he would, like, walk around the house or in the yard, like, wife beat her. Like, that was just, that was just, that was just. And like some Dickie shorts.

For those who may not be familiar, Dickies started as a brand that made primarily workwear, but eventually made their way into fashion. Dickie's shorts are long, very long, and made of a pretty thick fabric. We can't say for certain that the shorts the man is wearing on the surveillance video are actually Dickie's brand, but they are very similar if they aren't the real deal. La Jarvis tells us Dickies were pretty popular at that time period here in Gainesville, but it's the combo of the long tank top and the shorts paired together

that he doesn't recall being a trend. So Dickens was pretty popular, but not a lot of guys would wear tank tops around because a lot of guys had a physique to wear, right? So it's like Dickie's in a t-shirt where you have Dickie shorts with the dicky. The top is well, right? But now he was like Dickies.

Tank top, rebarks. Corporal Cook pulls out his phone. After scrolling a bit, he starts sending me texts with photos attached. Danny Williams in dark brown Dickies with a long sky blue tank top. Danny in maroon Dickies with a long crisp white tank top. Danny, again, in a brown and blue combo. He definitely has a distinct style. See, told you.

Digges in tank top again. different day. That's his uniform. That was 2011. That was June 2011, actually. No shit. Mm-hmm. Corporal Cook has just shown Courtney and me a picture of Danny Williams, wearing his white tank and Dickies-like shorts in June of 2011. The specificity of that date is not lost on us. That is the month and year Angel Harris is murdered. When we ask if he's been in touch with Danny at all, Lajarvis tells us he hasn't spoken to Danny since the last time he was arrested. At this point, we want to wrap up and let Lajarvis get back to work.

He's been so generous with his time, and he promises to be at our disposal as we encounter any new questions about Danny Williams that he might be able to help answer. But even though he didn't ask, I think it's also important to let him tap out of a conversation like this. We're asking him to talk about some difficult childhood memories, things that clearly left a mark for him to remember them so vividly decades later. I don't want to keep prodding without letting him have some time and space

to process what we've already gone into. I do talk to La Jarvis several times during my visits to Gainesville, But as I dig further into Angel's case, there's something he said to me during our very first conversation that jumped up and grabbed me and will not let go. In our initial encounter, I asked La Jarvis, do you think Danny could have killed Angel? Do you think he did this? La Jarvis, very matter-of-factly, responds to me, I think he did them all. Next time on Who Killed Angel Harris? I mean, it takes a complete psychopath, you know, to sort of victimize people in a certain way. I pulled up Angels' photos.

I pulled up Shelly Gatlin's photos and looked at them together. I just went, holy shit. You know, people don't just fall and die in the exact same position. I'm not sure how I found out Shelly died. Just heard that she was, like, mutilated. I've never seen pictures. It's not my bit, but that's all I heard. It was a gruesome way to do it.

die. It's 0200 hours on 320, 2007, this interview with James Smith, a.k. Smitty. Anytime anybody ever spoke about Smitty, it was don't go anywhere with him. Who Killed Angel Harris is produced by Arc Media for ID. You can follow our show wherever you get your podcasts. We'd love it if you could take a second to leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts.