Iowa police have arrested four people in the brutal slaying of a Black man whose body was found burning in a ditch a week ago, according to reports.
Michael Williams was 44.
Police said Williams was acquainted with those charged in his death but that the attack appeared to be random, adding there was no immediate evidence to suggest race was a motive for the crime although all four suspects are white.
Only one of the accused — 31-year-old Steven Vogel — is charged with first-degree murder. The others — Julia Cox, 55; Roy Garner, 57; and Cody Johnson, 29 — face charges ranging from abuse of a corpse, destruction of evidence and accessory after the fact.
Their arrests came Tuesday after the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation ruled Williams' death a homicide, according to reports.
Authorities didn’t have to look far for Vogel — he was already locked up at the Marshall County Jail on unrelated charges when the warrant was served. His alleged accomplices are being held at the Poweshiek County Jail, according to KCCI News 8 in Des Moines.
The crime happened as racial tensions continue to fester in the wake of George Floyd’s police custody death. Several hate crime investigations have cropped up around the nation over the last several months involving the public display of nooses and even an alleged attempted lynching in Indiana on July 4.
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Iowa-Nebraska NAACP President Betty Andrews, however, said at a news conference Tuesday that the NAACP sees no evidence that Williams was killed because of his race.
Williams, of Grinnell, was strangled to death Sept. 12 and his body wrapped in several layers of plastic, carpet and duct tape, investigators said. After four days, Williams' body was loaded into a truck, driven to rural Kellogg and set on fire, according to reports. Afterward, the suspects tried but failed to destroy the evidence, police said.
Witnesses also reported seeing the truck parked at the scene of the crime, court documents show.
“The circumstances surrounding Mr. Williams’s death and the limited facts revealed about the discovery of this crime have, understandably, caused concern within the Grinnell community and beyond,” said Special Agent Adam DeCamp of the Iowa Department of Public Safety. “Evidence and statements gathered during this investigation have shown that Mr. Williams and Vogel were known acquaintances who often socialized within the same circle of friends.”
The case remains under investigation.
Williams was a native of Syracuse, N.Y., and moved to Grinnell about 12 years ago, reports said. He worked at several fast food restaurants in the area before worsening health forced him into unemployment, according to the Des Moines Register.
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