He told the police that he had killed Williamson in a state of panic and rage after learning for the first time that she was a transgender person, the Justice Department said.Īs part of his guilty plea, Vallum accepted that he knew Williamson's gender identity during their relationship and that he would not have decided to murder her had she not been a transgender woman. Vallum had also reportedly lied to law enforcement about the murder. Vallum reportedly went to Williamson's home in Alabama and persuaded her to get into his car and ride with him to Mississippi. The Justice Department said Vallum and Williamson fell out of touch after dating for a while and had no contact until the night of the murder. Hate Crimes Prevention Act also called the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a federal hate crime statute signed into law in 2009. In December 2016, Vallum pleaded guilty of violating the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Gang rules barred homosexual activity and declared it punishable by death. He reportedly killed her to prevent Latin Kings gang members from discovering the two were having sex. He then struck blows on her head with a hammer after she tried running away. Vallum is said to have shocked Williamson with a stun gun before stabbing her repeatedly with a pocket knife. He secretly dated Williamson during the summer of 2014, according to prosecutors. Vallum was also a member of the Latin Kings street gang, which is believed to be the largest Hispanic gang in the US. Vallum had previously been sentenced to life in prison without parole in a state court for the same murder.īut federal prosecutors brought an additional lawsuit for hate crime because Mississippi lacks a statute protecting people against hate crimes based on their gender identity, the Department of Justice said. He is also said to have tried to take his life when he was around seven or eight years old. When he was only two or three he was reportedly locked in a room by his mother for hours on end while the adults in the house "did drugs", prosecutors said. Jousha Vallum, 29, is said to have had a neglected childhood. The 29-year-old appeared in Gulfport, Mississippi before a federal judge who could have imposed a maximum sentence of life without parole. Though his mother disputed this and said that the lawyer explained that there were also other heterosexual images on his phone, from the same sites.London man jailed after raping transgender women However, prosecutors in the case say that an FBI data analysis of Josh’s cell phone cache turned close to 100 images of naked men and that this could be the reason he pleaded guilty to the hate crime in addition to the murder, since homosexuality is forbidden in the Latin Kings and those breaking the rules are sometimes issued with a kill on sight order. He had been in a relationship with what he thought was a girl but in the act of making out he found male genitals.” Josh Vallum’s mother Kelly Wilkins, posted this on Facebook at the timeĪt the time his mother was very defensive of her son, posting on Facebook: “He is not gay. He then attacked her with a stun gun before stabbing Mercedes repeatedly with a military knife and then smashing her with a hammer until she stopped screaming and pleading for her life. Vallum admitted planning to kill Mercedes for two days after he found out she was transgender. In December 2016, 29-year-old Vallum pleaded guilty to the additional charge of murder as a federal hate crime, saying that he was fearful over what other members of the Latin Kings would think about him seeing the teenager. Latin Kings gang member Vallum pleaded guilty to killing the teenager and was given a life sentence by the judge, it is thought to he was quick to enter a plea to avoid fellow gang member having to testify. Her partially decomposed body was eventually found after Vallum’s dad reported to police that his son had possibly killed someone, it was discovered by police under some bushes in backyard of Vallum senior’s home. May 2015, George County, Mississippi, and 17-year-old Williamson went missing from the trailer she shared with a friend. This week on Love and Hate Crime, the show interviews gang-member Josh Vallum who killed teenage transsexual Mercedes Williamson. Mercedes Williamson was brutally murdered using a stun gun, a military knife and a claw hammer
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