![]() ![]() In a jailhouse interview with The Sun Herald, Vallum said he felt remorse for the killing. As part of his guilty plea, Vallum admitted that he had known her gender identity during their relationship and that he would not have decided to murder her had she not been transgender. Vallum also lied to law enforcement about the murder, telling the police at first that he had killed Ms Williamson in a state of panic and rage after learning for the first time that she was transgender, according to the Justice Department. After he killed Ms Williamson he tried to dispose of the murder weapons and destroy other evidence linking him to the crime, the Justice Department said. He then drove her to his father's home in Lucedale, Mississippi, where he attacked her with a stun gun, repeatedly stabbed her and beat her to death with a hammer. When Vallum found out that a friend had learned Ms Williamson's gender identity, he went to her home in Alabama and persuaded her to get in his car and ride with him to Mississippi, the Justice Department said. ![]() There had been no contact between them until the night of the murder. "Like something me and my husband do is what him and Josh do."Īt some point their relationship ended - the Justice Department on Monday did not say when - and Vallum and Ms Williamson fell out of touch. "He bought him stuff he took him out to eat. A George County grand jury indicted Joshua Josh Vallum on a charge of murder in the killing of Mercedes Williamson, a 17-year-old Theodore, Ala., resident whose birth name was Michael Christopher. "To me, I didn't think that anything was wrong with him," she said of Vallum. In an interview with The Sun Herald, a newspaper in Biloxi, Mississippi, Jenny Wilkins, Ms Williamson's mother, said the relationship between Vallum and her daughter, to whom she referred using male pronouns, lasted 8 1/2 months. "And yet today is the first time a perpetrator will be sentenced under federal hate crimes charges for killing a transgender person because that crime crossed a state line." "There is an epidemic of violence against transgender people, and particularly women of colour, across the country," Mr Hill said. ![]() Mississippi is one of 20 states that do not have a hate crime law covering crimes committed on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, according to the Human Rights Campaign. "The Justice Department will continue its efforts to vindicate the rights of those individuals who are affected by bias-motivated crimes."īut Rob Hill, Mississippi state director for the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT advocacy group, said the case showed how much more work needed to be done at the state level. "Today's sentencing reflects the importance of holding individuals accountable when they commit violent acts against transgender individuals," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in the statement. US District Judge Louis Guirola Jr could have ordered life in prison without parole for Joshua Vallum, 29, who pleaded guilty in December to hate crimes charges for murdering 17-year-old Mercedes. ![]()
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