BRADENTON, Fla. (AP) — Three brothers have been charged in Florida with involvement in the 2006 slaying of a 16-year-old girl.
Manatee County Sheriff Rick Wells said at a news conference Monday that the case was solved using cellphone tracking analysis unavailable when Amber Woods was fatally shot 14 years ago.
Second-degree murder charges have been filed against Ralph Williams, 35, and Tyjuan Williams, 32. Both are jailed on unrelated charges in different counties. It’s not clear if they have lawyers to represent them on these new charges.
Their half-brother, Jamaine Brown, pleaded no contest last week to being an accessory to murder after the fact, the Bradenton Herald reported. Authorities say Brown provided detectives with details about Woods’ kidnapping and killing as part of a plea deal.
Wells said Ralph Williams, who was Woods’s boyfriend at the time, suspected she was pregnant and feared he would face criminal charges because of her age. An autopsy later determined the girl, who lived in Hardee County, was not pregnant.
“We always believed that these three murderers were in cahoots together and were trying to do everything they could to conceal the fact that they had murdered Amber and they went the last several years like nothing ever happened,” Wells said.
