Spooky Saturday #4: The Kidnapping and Murder of Christina Marie Williams.
So, I had a friend on Twitter recommend this story to me because she had never seen it been covered by a blog or podcast before and thought the story needed to be told. Once I started reading, i was hooked, so here it is....
Christina Marie Williams was born on May 1st, 1985 in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan to a Filipino mother named Alice Williams, and an American father, named Michael Williams. Her father was chief petty officer in the United States Navy. They had moved to Seaside California, to the Fort Ord, area, a year earlier where Christina was in the seventh grade at Fitch Middle School. She had good grades, maintained a "B" average, and she sung in the school choir. She was described as kind, helpful, courteous, conscientious, and punctual. She loved pop music, animals, and downloading pictures off of the internet of horses and dogs, and loved using them to make artwork for her room.
The day of June 12, 1998, was a normal day in the Williams household. Thirteen year old Christina spent her day making Filipino rice cakes with her mother and playing with her dog, Greg, an Australian Shepard/Collie mix, who the family had adopted from a local shelter less than two months earlier to celebrate Christina's birthday and coming into "teenagehood." They spent the whole day together as a family and that night just so happened to also be the NBA finals where the Utah Jazz were up against the Chicago Bulls. Michael Williams wasn't home that night, he was off representing the Navy at the National Oceans Conference where Bill Clinton had delivered a speech earlier. At around 7:30pm, Christina decided to take Greg for a walk even though it was starting to get dark out, it was still a nice evening so it wasn't a big deal. She put on her brothers black Raiders jacket, her blue jeans, a striped shirt, and Adidas sandals and told her mother and brother "goodbye." Outside was loud and the "ruckus" from nearby houses was overwhelming because of the game on TV that it seemed like EVERYONE was watching. The neighborhood itself was so loud that it upset the dogs around town and they continuously barked making it impossible to hear someone talking, or hear someone scream for help if they needed it.
Christina typically went on walks around that time, and took the same route so it wasn't an unusual thing for her to be gone twenty minutes every night. At around eight o'clock, Michael came home and the family was getting ready to sit down for dinner, and Christina still hadn't returned home, though it had been thirty minutes. Her family worried something happened to her because they knew it was completely out of character for her to be gone this long, and they highly doubted that she had taken a different route or detour without letting them know her plans. Their speculations were confirmed when they saw Greg walking down the road at approx 8:20pm dragging his leash behind him and Christina was no where to be found.
From the very beginning volunteers where assembled to search the 10,000 acre area of rugged forest that surrounded the Williams home. The family lived on a former Army post, and a lot of the area had limited access so that meant that non-military volunteers could not search the full area and were only granted access to certain areas. When the initial search gave them no clues, the FBI were called in with their specially trained bloodhounds, infrared cameras, and helicopters. The dogs were able to track Christina's scent only a few blocks away from her home to a road called, Nijmegan Rd and from there, the scent dropped off. Michael suggested that maybe she had ran away from home because with the constant moving done with a military family takes a tole on the children and it's possible maybe she wanted to go back "home." Deep down, I think they all knew that she hadn't run away, she was no where near a rebellious child and Michael stated that he couldn't even remember an incident where he had to actually punish her for any misbehavior. Plus, he knew she would have never in a million years left Greg behind, she loved him too much.
From there, her family wasted little to no time creating a website that included a synopsis on Christina's disappearance, along with any articles being written about Christina, including those with updates. There had been reports from one of Christina's classmates saying that Christina was talking to a boy online and that he had sent her flowers before, but she didn't know anything about this boy though because she denied Christina's offer to see a picture of him. Michael said that he had never heard of her talking to boys online and as far as he knew she only got online for researching school projects, reading about Beanie Babies, or looking at pictures of animals, not talking to boys. So, who knows if this is even true.
The following week on June 20th, the FBI announce that the case is officially an "abduction." They had received not one, but two suspicious reports about Christina, one on the 15th and one on the 19th. The first one was a report from a jogger stating that she had been harassed by two men on the evening Christina went missing. The were driving either a blue or gray Mercury Monarch or a Ford Grenada and they both appeared to be of either Pacific Islander or Asian descent. They followed her down the road shouting obscenities at her while she kept jogging, until one of the men made the remark that she wasn't the type of girl they were "looking for." The witness said that the driver was the older and chubbier of the two and was probably in his mid-20's with dark brown hair. The other man was in his late teens, early 20's and had dark hair and a mustache.
A composite sketch was made of the two men along with their vehicle and tips began to pour in, none of which helped lead the police to an arrest and none that could be confirmed. A week had passed and by now over 15,000 missing posters had been distributed throughout the Monterey area and Northern California regions. Many missing children's organizations, including the Polly Klaas Foundation offered assistance and joined the search. While the Saturday after Christina disappeared, America's Most Wanted did a feature on Christina and her disappearance. The airing got a TON of leads but Christina's family felt like it was going no where and that it just "keeps getting more and more frustrating, especially when the FBI comes back with nothing." Several psychics had called the police with a general result was that Christina was alive but scared, and they even had an animal specialist come forward and offer to "interview" Christina's dog, Greg. Shortly after the America's Most Wanted episode had aired, the police received an alarming "tip" from a new witness who told them that on the night Christina disappeared, she had seen a "frightened" Asian girl in a car in Fort Ord. This girl was accompanied by two men who matched the description in the composite sketches. While police had wanted to believe the jogger, this information just solidified their speculations.
On June 24th, the news just went from bad to worst for the Williams family when they received the news that a body had been found in a wooded area near Panoche Road, about an hour away from Seaside. The police couldn't immediately confirm if the body was Christina, but they did say that the body had a resemblance to hers and had been stabbed to death. After being sent to get an autopsy, dental records confirmed that this body was NOT in fact Christina's but it was a 27 year old woman named Candelaria Marie Elemen from San Jose. Meanwhile, special agent, George Grotz urged the two men in the composite sketch to come forward if they were not involved in the disappearance of Christina so that they could be eliminated as suspects.
The Williams emotions were being thrown for a loop during this time, and then what can only be described as a "dream come true" for Christina, her father and sister were flown to Los Angeles in July to meet up with Christina's idol, Mariah Carey. Christina had admired Mariah and her room was covered in posters of the singer. This meeting wasn't exactly how it "should" have went and it was a somber meeting, but they asked for the singers help. Mariah agreed and made a PSA pleading for Christina's safe return. Mariah also wasn't the only celebrity to be touched by Christina's disappearance, Reggie Jackson a Baseball Hall of Famer donated $5,000 to the reward fund and the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A's made announcements before each of their games urging the fans to become part of the search effort or come forward with any info they may have.
On July 31st police in Greensboro, North Carolina received a report of a girl matching Christina's description in a Sam's Club. They said the girl and the man she was with (who looked like the younger suspect) became spooked when they noticed the employee watching them. The girl looked sullen, disoriented, and didn't seem to know where she was but the reports went no where, and the people in the report were never found or questioned so the lead went cold. After this report, the case pretty much went cold, they had nothing else to go off of and no more leads. That is until, the badly decomposed remains of a human body were found in a secluded wooded area belonging to the University of California Natural Reserve System approximately two miles from where Christina lived. The body was found January 12, 1999, exactly seven months after Christina disappeared. The gut wrenching find was discovered at 3:15pm by a plant surveyor who had been working the area that had been previously used for military training before being turned into a reserve. Given the previous false alarm with Candelaria Elemen, Police Chief Alex Kerekes was careful to not initially link the remains with Christina to avoid any unnecessary heartache with the Williams family just in case it was not Christina. He however did confirm that the FBI agents who were in charge of the Christina Williams case were brought in and they taped off the area where the remains were discovered while investigators looked over the area for evidence. The remains were in such a far state of decomposition that the gender could not be identified by sight and would have to be determined by autopsy.
The Williams family unfortunately were at a concert to commemorate the seven months since Christina's disappearance when they received the call that another body had been found. The FBI admitted that when the investigators had searched the area back in June, the preserve had NOT been included in the search for whatever reason. Unfortunately the wildlife in California is incredibly vast and full of all sorts of animals such as cougars, wolves, wild dogs,and coyotes which are all native to the area. It's no surprise based solely off of that, that the remains were scattered, making it incredibly difficult to retrieve all of the body. Once they were able to do so, the body was taken to the Monterey County coroners office for identification. Because the remains had been out for so long, it took the coroner three days to come up with answers and on January 15th the family received the news they had been dreading. It was Alice's 47th birthday, and Coroner's investigator, Jim Miller and FBI Special Agent Bruce Gebardt knocked on their door and confirmed, based off of the previously submitted dental records, that the body that they had found was indeed 13 year old Christina Williams. They didn't know how she had been murdered because of the bad state of the body, but what they did know based off of her clothes and underwear that she had likely been assaulted. At that time, while DNA evidence could be collected, they didn't have the means to run an actual "profile" on the DNA in the underwear. Without actual evidence, no suspects, no more leads, with that, the case went "cold."
It wasn't until April 6th 2017, almost 20 years later, that an arrest was made in Christina's case. A man by the name of Charles Holifield was arrested and charged with the murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault of Christina Williams. Thanks to advanced forensics, his DNA was able to be ran into the system and it came up a match for the DNA found on Christina's clothing. Holifield as of now is a 58 year old convicted rapist and kidnapper who was already serving time behind bars in Chowchilla, California for assualts against women. In the early 1980's Holifield was convicted of raping a 14 year old Monterey girl and attempting to abduct an 18 year old woman. For a long time he was considered a suspect in the Christina Williams case, but because they had no evidence, there was nothing that could be done about it. But that all changed on April 6th, the District Attorney's office said that the Monterey Peninsula cold case review team worked together for years to identify possible new leads in Christina's murder and reexamine the evidence from the crime scene. The cold case team requested that items of physical evidence be retested for DNA evidence. The scientific testing, along with the evidence collected during the 19-year investigation, showed sufficient evidence to charge Holifield with Christina's murder. As of January 2018, Charles Holifield was charged for Christina's murder with special allegations for kidnapping, and lewd acts on a child, as well as a second charge of kidnapping for purpose of sexual assault. He originally had a Death Penalty trial set for October 2019, but it was moved to March 2020.
There is a plaque in Seaside, California where Christina's remains were found and it reads;
"A gift from God, Christina will always be remembered as a loving daughter to her parents and a compassionate sister to our community. May each of us do everything possible to prevent this from happening to any of our children, ever again."
I tried to do this blog post and this case as much justice as I could and I tried to be as respectful as possible. This one hit me a little harder than the others I've done, I'm not sure if its because it's recently been "closed," the fact its the first true crime I've done, the fact that she was so close to my age, or because I actually had to delve deep into all of this, got immersed, and became super dedicated to it. I'm not sure, it could be all of those reasons, but I do know as I'm closing this out, I'm so relieved her family has closure that that this horrible man is behind bars. Regardless, I hope i did this story justice and I hope you enjoyed it even though its a devastating case, and I seriously hope all of this info is correct. Haha
Xx,
Autumn
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