Plea hearing set for suspect in recorded rape, strangulation of Columbus 5-year-old girl
Editor’s note: This story includes reporting on a graphic, violent crime.
The man accused of buying a five-year-old girl’s sexual favors from her mother before he used his cell phone to record himself raping and strangling the child will have a plea hearing Wednesday before a Russell County judge.
Charged in the death of Kamarie Holland, suspect Jeremy Tremaine Williams asked for the hearing in Circuit Judge David Johnson’s courtroom, said Russell County District Attorney Rick Chancey.
That does not mean Williams will plead guilty to any of the multiple felonies he faces, Chancey said. If he does not, he is set for trial in early April, the district attorney said.
Represented by attorney Charles Floyd III, Williams has pleaded both not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity or mental defect.
That means he has claimed that at the time of the crime, he was “unable to appreciate the nature and quality or wrongfulness of his acts.”
Chancey has said that were a jury to accept that defense, Williams would be sent to an institution for the criminally insane, and not to a state prison.
Besides Williams, Kamarie Holland’s mother Kristy Siple also is charged in the homicide, accused of trafficking her daughter to Williams for a so-far undisclosed amount of cash.
Siple, also known as Kristy Hoskins, faces three counts of felony murder based on rape, sodomy and first-degree kidnapping.
Both she and Williams were indicted for conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, the charge accusing Williams of agreeing to pay Siple “for the use of her daughter.”
Williams was indicted also for human trafficking, abusing a corpse and producing child pornography, plus capital murder for killing someone younger than 14, and three more counts of capital murder for causing a death in the course of kidnapping, rape and sodomy.
He allegedly recorded himself on a cell phone committing the crimes, authorities said.
Williams faces execution, if convicted, but prosecutors have not sought the death penalty in Siple’s case.
If convicted, she faces life in prison.
Siple reported her daughter missing from her Bowman Street home in Columbus on Dec. 13, 2021, the same day authorities searching for the missing girl found her slain in a vacant house Williams once occupied on 15th Avenue in Phenix City. Investigators captured Williams later that night.
They arrested Siple on Dec. 28, 2021, after further investigation revealed she had trafficked her daughter to Williams, said Sheriff Heath Taylor
Johnson has issued a gag order that prohibits authorities from disclosing details of the ongoing investigation, though attorneys are free to comment on court procedure and the status of the case.
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This story was originally published March 12, 2024 at 11:56 AM.