Records: Willis taped admitting grisly killings

Posted 7:25PM on Wednesday 30th October 2002 ( 22 years ago )

JOHNSON CITY, TENN - A man charged in the slayings of two Georgia teenagers told his former wife that while free on bond in a federal drug case he cut off 17-year-old Adam Chrismer's head and hands, investigation records show. Howard Hawk Willis, 51, of Chickamauga, Ga., made the comments to his ex-wife in a taped jail conversation two weeks ago, according to search warrants filed in the case. The records say Willis told Wilda Willis, whom he divorced in July, that he fatally shot Chrismer and the teen's newlywed wife, Samantha Leming, 16, and threw Chrismer's head and hands in Boone Lake. Leming's body and Chrismer's other remains were recovered from a storage building in Johnson City. A Washington County grand jury on Oct. 23 indicted him on two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of abuse of a corpse. Meanwhile, investigators said Wednesday that Willis was transferred from the Washington County Jail to federal custody in New York, for a Dec. 13 sentencing hearing on drug charges. Willis was arrested Oct. 11 while free on a $200,000 personal recognizance bond. Willis, convicted of transporting 2,600 pounds of cocaine in April, was arrested when federal agents learned he was using credit cards belonging to his missing stepfather. William J. Muller, spokesman for the Eastern District Court in New York, said Tuesday that the maximum possible sentence is life in prison. Washington County Sheriff Fred Phillips has said Willis was involved in a cocaine-for-sex relationship with the Georgia couple. Investigators in Walker County, Ga., 200 miles from Johnson City, believe the couple met Willis sometime after they married in August. The teens, missing since Sept. 11, were last seen traveling with Willis from Georgia to Tennessee. Investigators suspect the teens knew something about the murder of Willis' stepfather, 73-year-old Samuel Thomas of Bradley County. A decomposed body believed to be Thomas was recovered near an abandoned trailer in Walker County, about 40 miles from his Bradley County residence. The man had been shot, with the arms severed at the elbows. Bradley County investigators have identified Willis as a suspect in the slaying of Thomas. The investigations have focused new attention on the 1987 disappearance of Willis' wife, Nancy Debra Willis, who was last seen in Catoosa County, Ga. Search warrants examined by the Johnson City Press also provide new information about what Willis' mother and aunt knew about the case. On Oct. 16, when investigators recovered the bodies, a conversation between his mother and her sister, Marie Hawk Holmes, was recorded by an unidentified person. A television was turned on, and a news broadcaster reported a ``foul odor had led investigators'' to the storage facility. On hearing that, Holmes said, ``They've found the bodies,'' according to a search warrant. Hawk, 71, and Holmes, 74, are charged with solicitation to tamper with evidence. The records show Willis contacted his former wife and asked her to come there ``with a tape recorder, pad of paper and pen.'' Wilda Willis told the newspaper that her ex-husband ``tapes everything.'' She went to the jail on Oct. 16 and Willis told her about killing the teens and dismembering the boy, according to the search warrant. He dismembered Chrismer, ``because Adam had allegedly told Howard Hawk Willis that he had cut Samuel Thomas head and hands off.'' The same day she visited Willis at the jail, Wilda Willis made a recorded call to his mother's house at the direction of investigators. The sisters told her to destroy the tape of her conversation with Willis, according to records.

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