Texas town mourns slain teenager

updated 12:06 a.m. ET Jan. 23, 2005

TYLER, Texas - Shoppers on Saturday placed flower bouquets and teddy bears on a table inside a Wal-Mart store where a 19-year-old employee was abducted earlier this week and later found dead.

Police, meanwhile, tried to piece together what happened between the time a surveillance camera captured Megan Leann Holden’s abduction late Wednesday and the discovery of her body Friday in a ditch about 380 miles away.

Authorities said Holden was shot to death by a man who went on a multistate crime spree before turning up Friday at an Arizona hospital with a gunshot wound.

The suspect, Johnny Lee Williams, 24, was jailed in Arizona on $1 million bond on an aggravated kidnapping charge from Texas, authorities said.

Don Martin, a Tyler police spokesman, said Williams requested an attorney and was not talking to authorities. He is expected to have an extradition hearing within a few days.

An autopsy was performed on Holden’s body Saturday, but officials would not release details until next week.

Shoppers pay tribute
At the Wal-Mart, shoppers paused Saturday to look at dozens of flower arrangements left in Holden’s memory.

“You hate that it happened. I hate that for the family,” Anthony Johnson said as he loaded groceries into his car, adding that he was now more concerned about his wife going to the store alone at night. “I’m telling her to be more careful.”

Wal-Mart declined to discuss security measures or how it monitors surveillance tapes, company spokeswoman Andrea Rader said Saturday.

The surveillance tape showed a man police identified as Williams standing outside the store for about two hours before Holden was abducted.

Tapes show Williams walking into the store a couple of times and then standing outside smoking, chatting at times with some customers, police said.

Williams followed two women at different times, but as other people approached, walked back to the entrance before following Holden to her pickup truck in a parking lot beside the store, police said.

“I think he was just looking for an opportunity to get a vehicle, and I don’t know if a woman was part of that or not,” Martin said.

Suspect's crime spree
After the abduction, Williams began heading west, robbing a convenience store in the West Texas town of Odessa on Thursday before attempting a robbery at an Arizona RV park early Friday morning. A store worker at the RV park fired the shot that sent Williams to the hospital where he was taken into custody, authorities said.

Because Holden was kidnapped in Tyler, Smith County District Attorney Matt Bingham said he would seek capital murder charges.

Police said Williams, who was discharged last year after four years as a Marine and serving in Iraq, was arrested last month in Tyler on a cocaine possession charge. He was released the same day on $2,000 bond.

Williams’ parents in Tyler declined to comment Saturday.

The suspect’s aunt, Linda Williams, told the Tyler Morning Telegraph that her nephew seemed angrier and not as talkative since he returned from Iraq.

“All you can do is sit here and wonder, you know, what happened,” she told the newspaper. “I guess he just snapped. I don’t know. He’s been asking for help ever since he came home from the military.”

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