Tommy Williams
Appearances
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
Everything's not what it appears on the outside. You know, Mr. Herndon fit that profile of being the millionaire, having all of these things, having his bills taken care of, having a nice home, nice cars. But in reality, it was debt.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
You're going to start looking at who did he owe money to. Maybe he had some paper notes written down somewhere that I owe yous. There may be other things that you have to look at that would have caused somebody to do this.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
We would go by and get out of our car and go do a specific home check, walk around the exterior of the home.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
That's one of the things that we weren't informed of. At the time, I was just a patrolman, not a supervisor. He would have told the supervisor that I'm having trouble with an ex-wife, I'm having trouble with a girlfriend, I'm having trouble with employees, I've had death threats, whatever it may be. So we would have to go by routinely and check on that home.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
I do know that she was a beneficiary of a very large life insurance policy.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
The medical examiner said that Lance died from blunt force trauma to his head.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
There was nothing visible. It's like he didn't know that this was coming.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
Yes, because he was laying on his side of the bed where he always slept. I believe that the first blow that was delivered to him would have been a blow that probably just would have kept you in that unconscious state.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
Our medical examiner had actually worked a case similar to this where an adjustable wrench or a crescent wrench had been used. So the detectives went back to the scene and searched his home.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
So they go down to the basement area, to his shed, and Lance was very meticulous. He was a very neat person. He had every single tool drawn on his pegboard. The only tool that was missing was a 16-inch adjustable crescent wrench.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
No. There was a mark on his forehead where the little adjustable part from the middle, the little spiral part, it left that imprint on his forehead.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
If I had to guess and was a betting man, I would bet that that wrench is still in the bottom of the Chattahoochee River.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
Ms. Collins showed up at the scene demanding all of her personal property from a crime scene. And she was, you know, didn't seem to care that Lance had been murdered.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
No, ma'am. She wasn't upset at all. She was more, you know, upset that she couldn't get her personal property back from a crime scene.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
As I was pulling onto Mr. Herndon Street, our dispatcher gave a call saying that someone was at the home banging on the door.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
and I happened to shine my flashlight in the car and I saw partial of a person's arm or leg sticking out from underneath a black coat on the back floorboard of this car. So I immediately stepped back, gave verbal commands to he or she, whoever it was, to display your hands.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
Absolutely. It's a huge puzzle. It's a thousand piece puzzle or more. And, you know, we put everything together the best that we could to try and solve this case. We just needed a little break.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
She made the statement to her husband that she was intimate with Mr. Herndon and that they had an argument and that they had a fight and that she said she would kill him, her husband, the same way she killed Lance.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
And the fight was on. I mean, it was, oh yes. Once we get her in the car, she's beating and banging and kicking the cage and the windows and stuff.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
Dion was peering into Lance's windows and she saw Kathy Collins walking through the home in a towel. And that's what had her upset.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
He had taken some serious trauma to his face and his head. Talking with one of the detectives, he said nobody could have survived what this man went through.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
Blood spatter was to the right and to the left, and it was all over the headboard, all over the bed, all over pillowcases.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
He was laying on his back. He was covered up with his comforter, and his hands were like crossed kind of on his stomach.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
Yes, like he's just got his hands crossed like he's laying in a casket.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
There was a pillowcase found in the toilet, but still had blood on it, which was collected.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
Yes. All of those things were collected as evidence and submitted to the crime lab for testing.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
We had no idea who it was. I've heard of that before in different cases where people go through the house and either remove photos completely or face them down or try to destroy them. Those are all clues. Those are all things that we need to look at.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
There were two digital alarm clocks and one old flip-style clock where the numbers click down. That one is frozen in time at 4.10 in the morning. 4.10 is when that clock was unplugged.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
There was no things missing throughout the home that were visible to us, like TVs or, you know, things of value, silverware, things that people can pawn pretty quickly to make a quick buck. All this stuff was there.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
It led us to believe that this was just strictly somebody taking care of business on Mr. Herndon.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
Yes, they found gum wrappers, a lot of silver foil, like rolled up and some were just crumpled up all around the driveway.
Dateline NBC
The Killer Among Them
We never found an object on the scene that would have or could have been used to cause the injuries to Mr. Herndon's head and face area.