"Vallum admitted, as part of his guilty plea, that on May 28, 2015, he decided to kill Williamson after learning that a friend had discovered Williamson was transgender. After Vallum terminated his romantic and sexual relationship with Williamson, he had no contact with her until May 2015. During his romantic relationship with Williamson, Vallum kept the sexual nature of the relationship, as well as that Williamson was transgender, secret from his family, friends, and other members of the Latin Kings and Queens Nation gang to which he belonged. "During his plea hearing, Vallum admitted that he had a consensual sexual relationship with Williamson and that he knew Williamson was transgender. Here is how the Justice Department lays out Vallum's crime: Pleaded guilty to murder last July in a case brought by the state of Mississippi.īuzzFeed News reports the state does not have its own hate crimes law on the books. Vallum is already serving a life sentence for the same incident, having "heeded a lesser sentence suggested in a plea agreement between defense attorneys and prosecutors, citing Vallum's neglected childhood and other issues," He faced a sentence of up to life in prison, though U.S. 14, 2016, Vallum pleaded guilty just one week later. Hate Crimes Prevention Act - a law that wasĮxpanded in 2009 to cover victims attacked because of their gender identity, sexual orientation or disability.Ĭharged on Dec. The Justice Department says it's the first case "involving a victim targeted because of gender identity" prosecuted under the "Crimes motivated by hate have devastating effects on the victims, their families and community but also leave a blemish on our society as a whole," Christopher Freeze, special agent in charge of the FBI's Jackson Division, Vallum had pleaded guilty last year to the 2015 assault and murder of Mercedes Williamson, a 17-year-old transgender girl whom he says he once dated. Love and Hate Crime airs on Sundays at 8:00 PM on Investigation Discovery.A federal court in Mississippi handed down a 49-year prison sentence on Monday to Joshua Brandon Vallum, the first person prosecuted under the Hate Crimes Prevention Act for targeting a victim because of gender identity. The case was groundbreaking as it marked the first time in American history that a federal hate crime charge had been filed against the murderer of a transgender person. 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. 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.” Sign up for our newsletter! 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.
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