“She liked to play with dolls, not trucks,” Jeanie Miller, 41, told the Sun Herald. She was born Michael Christopher Wilkins and grew up in the small coastal city of Gulf Shores, Alabama.Īt a young age, however, Williamson began to identify as a girl. Williamson was one of at least 21 transgender women killed in the United States last year, up from 12 such killings in 2014, according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs.Īt first, however, authorities in Mississippi did not identify Williamson as transgender. “The numbers that you just heard before are staggering, but they are the reality of what it is like to be trans today.” “They’re getting bullied, they’re getting beaten up, they’re getting murdered and they’re committing suicide,” Jenner said during the July 15, 2015, ceremony before mentioning Williamson’s murder just a weeks earlier. The case drew national attention last summer when Caitlyn Jenner mentioned Williamson during her ESPY Awards acceptance speech. The truth about the killing could determine whether Vallum faces an additional federal hate crime charge and, potentially, the death penalty. Vallum’s plea, meanwhile, avoided what promised to be an explosive trial in which prosecutors threatened to call other Latin Kings to the witness stand and expose the structure and finances of the gang. Instead of shock, it was self-preservation that motivated the murder as Vallum killed Williamson because she knew too much about his gang activities, Vallum’s brother and a friend testified, according to the Biloxi Sun Herald. The two had an active sex life, the roommate said, and Vallum even took his transgender girlfriend to a Latin Kings beach party. “I killed Mercedes Williamson, sir,” the 28-year-old told the judge, WLOX reported.Įven as Vallum’s sentencing seemed to close the murder case, however, questions remained about his account of the killing.Ī roommate claimed Vallum and Williamson were a couple and that Vallum knew his victim’s secret long before the murder. On Tuesday, more than 13 months later, Vallum was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to first-degree murder, according to the Associated Press. That, at least, is the story Vallum, a member of the Latin Kings street gang, told sheriff’s deputies in George County, Miss., after 17-year-old Williamson was discovered in a shallow grave last spring.
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