Family of slain Georgia newlywed wants action on case

Posted 7:30AM on Thursday 19th December 2002 ( 21 years ago )

ROSSVILLE - Two teen brothers of slain Georgia newlywed Samantha Foster Leming said Wednesday they were all chummy with Howard Hawk Willis before a trail of body parts led to his arrest in Tennessee. Daniel Foster, 17, and Richard Foster, 19, of Walker County, Ga., both said Wednesday that they partied with Willis, 51, in the months before the killings of their 16-year-old sister and her husband, Adam Ray Chrismer, 17. Daniel Foster said Willis, a truck driver, once helped get him out of trouble with a probation officer. ``There's not too many people 50-something years old who would go out and buy alcohol and come back and let them throw a party,'' Daniel Foster said. ``He (Willis) had a whole bottle full of different kinds of pills.'' Willis was generous and partied with friends of his teenage daughter, Foster said. Daniel Foster said investigators in Georgia and Tennessee are ``acting like nothing happened.'' The brothers and their stepfather, John Leming, 39, want to know what is happening with the murder investigation. Pacing on the front porch of his mother's house, John Leming asked Wednesday why almost two months after Willis was indicted on murder charges he is in federal custody in New York, awaiting sentencing in a cocaine case. ``I just want Howard back down here to stand trial for murder,'' John Leming said. ``I don't know why the government is letting him stay'' in New York. Willis was free on a $200,000 bond, awaiting a plea-bargain sentence, when the couple, then married for two months, left Georgia with him for Tennessee in October. Her relatives never saw them alive again. ``Why weren't they checking up on him?'' John Leming said. Chrismer's head and hands were recovered from a lake in Johnson City. His other remains and his wife's body were located in a storage building. Samantha Leming had been shot in the back, her father said. With Willis' scheduled Dec. 13 sentencing in the federal drug case delayed to mid-February, he remains in a New York jail. District Attorney Joe Crumley said Wednesday that no member of the slain teenager's family has ever requested information about the case. ``We've been working on it today,'' Crumley said. ``I've been assured from the highest levels that we will have cooperation from the federal government.'' Leming's parents declined a request for an interview. Richard Foster's wife, Julie Lanham Foster, 19, said she was pregnant and provided a urine sample that Samantha, a ninth-grader, needed to get a marriage license in Georgia. Willis accompanied the couple to get the license and paid the $26 fee, the same day his daughter was married, Julie Foster said. ``I threatened to kill him because he went and got my daughter married,'' John Leming said. Julie Foster said Willis talked about trying to change his identity and running away to Costa Rica. Richard Foster said Willis asked him ``to get picture IDs ... with his face on them.'' In a taped jail conversation in Johnson City, Willis allegedly admitted he fatally shot Chrismer, then cut off his head and hands and threw them in the lake. Investigators also have identified Willis as a suspect in the slaying of his 73-year-old stepfather, Samuel Thomas of Bradley County, whose headless body turned up in a mountainous area of Walker County. The disappearance of his first wife, Deborah Willis, also is being investigated. Court records in New York show Willis was charged in 2000 with using his tractor-trailer to haul 700 kilograms of cocaine from Texas to New York. He surrendered, volunteered information about the alleged supplier and pleaded guilty to conspiracy. Willis was arrested Oct. 11 in Tennessee when federal agents learned he was using credit cards belonging to his missing stepfather.

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