![]() ![]() “I would even trade places with Mercedes so that I wouldn’t have to go through all this that I’m having to go through now. “If there was one thing that I could take back, I wish that would be it,” he said. ![]() Vallum said he felt remorse for the killing. In a jailhouse interview with The Sun Herald, Mr. Vallum admitted that he had known her gender identity during their relationship and that he would not have decided to murder her had she not been transgender. Williamson in a state of panic and rage after learning for the first time that she was transgender, according to the Justice Department. Vallum also lied to law enforcement about the murder, telling the police at first that he had killed Ms. Williamson, he tried to dispose of the murder weapons and destroy other evidence linking him to the crime, the Justice Department said. He then drove her to his father’s home in Lucedale, Miss., where he attacked her with a stun gun, repeatedly stabbed her and beat her to death with a hammer. Williamson’s gender identity, he went to her home in Alabama and persuaded her to get in his car and ride with him to Mississippi, the Justice Department said. ![]() Vallum found out that a friend had learned Ms. They had no contact until the night of the murder. “Like something me and my husband do is what him and Josh do.”Īt some point, their relationship ended - the Justice Department did not say when - and Mr. “He bought him stuff he took him out to eat. “To me, I didn’t think that anything was wrong with him,” she said of Mr. Vallum and her daughter, to whom she referred using male pronouns, had lasted eight and a half months. Williamson’s mother, said the relationship between Mr. In an interview with The Sun Herald, a newspaper in Biloxi, Miss., Jenny Wilkins, Ms. “And yet today is the first time a perpetrator will be sentenced under federal hate crimes charges for killing a transgender person because that crime crossed a state line.” “There is an epidemic of violence against transgender people, and particularly women of color, across the country,” Mr. Mississippi is one of 20 states that do not have a hate crimes law covering crimes committed on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, according to the Human Rights Campaign. “The Justice Department will continue its efforts to vindicate the rights of those individuals who are affected by bias-motivated crimes.”īut Rob Hill, the Mississippi director for the Human Rights Campaign, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy group, said the case showed how much more work needed to be done at the state level. ![]() “Today’s sentencing reflects the importance of holding individuals accountable when they commit violent acts against transgender individuals,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in the statement. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a federal hate crime statute signed into law in 2009. Vallum pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. He pleaded guilty to a state-level murder charge and was sentenced to life in prison last July. Williamson because he “believed he would be in danger” if other gang members learned that he had once dated a woman he knew to be transgender, the Justice Department said in a statement. Vallum is a member of the Latin Kings gang and decided to kill Ms. Williamson was 17 at the time of her death. Vallum kept hidden from friends and family while they dated. The man, Joshua Vallum, 29, killed Mercedes Williamson in May 2015, after the end of their relationship, because a friend learned that she was transgender, a fact Mr. A Mississippi man was sentenced to 49 years in prison on Monday for killing his transgender former girlfriend, a case the Justice Department said was the first involving violence against a transgender person to be prosecuted under the federal Hate Crimes Act. ![]()
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