Georgia man returns to court after being charged in killing spree

NEW YORK - When Howard Hawk Willis was arrested in a cocaine-smuggling case in New York, federal authorities released him on bail and drafted him as a cooperating witness. <br> <br> They never envisioned the horror to come. <br> <br> After the drug case ended in July, Willis -- while still under government supervision -- allegedly went on a killing spree that left a trail of body parts across Tennessee and Georgia. The murder defendant was ordered held without bail today in the same Brooklyn courthouse where he cut a plea deal with prosecutors. <br> <br> Willis became a government witness despite questions about his past, including the mysterious disappearance of his wife in 1987. <br> <br> Federal prosecutors declined to discuss Willis, a 51-year-old truck driver from Chickamauga, Georgia. A call to his attorney was not immediately returned. <br> <br> Willis was free on $200,000 bond and awaiting sentencing in the drug case when he allegedly killed Georgia newlyweds, 17-year-old Adam Ray Chrismer and 16-year-old Samantha Foster Leming over what one police official described as a cocaine-for-sex scheme. <br> <br> The bodies of the couple were found rotting in a storage unit. In a taped jail conversation, Willis allegedly admitted he fatally shot Chrismer, then cut off his head and hands and threw them into a lake in Tennessee. <br> <br> Investigators have also identified Willis as a suspect in the slaying of his 73-year-old stepfather, Samuel Thomas, whose headless body turned up in the Georgia wilderness, and are investigating the disappearance of his first wife, Deborah Willis.