Two weeks later, with the approval of the FBI, I met Charles Newcomb on his property. He and Jim Heart were doing some yard work when I arrived, and Newcomb took off his gloves and stowed his tools to walk to one of the few shady spots his property offered.
“You got an update for me on where we stand with this thing, Brother Joe?”
“I do, but I still can’t make hide or hair of all that surveillance around Williams’s house.”
“Looked like they were waiting for us,” he said, but I didn’t detect any suspicion aimed at me in his tone.
In point of fact, all that police surveillance had inadvertently served up a plan I could go forward with that would implicate our targets without involving them in the actual murder. That unmarked police car gave me the excuse to get things handled on my own, cutting the three amigos out of the process.
“No, sir,” I said. “If that were the case, they would’ve scooped us up. They were waiting for somebody. Could be Brother Thomas isn’t the only enemy Williams made on the inside.”
I could see Newcomb’s eyes flashing as he considered that. “Makes a good deal of sense, Brother Joe. So where’s that leave us?”
“Well, Brother Charles, it’s too dangerous for this to have Klan fingerprints on it, so I’m gonna be handling it myself through a certain hit man I’m familiar with,” I said, hinting that the hit man might be me. “I need for you to keep Brother David and Brother Thomas patient. I’ll be informing all of you when the deed is done.”
Newcomb nodded approvingly. The FBI had blessed this notion because it was the surest way to keep the three amigos from acting on their own. Instead, they were waiting for me to do so.
Newcomb, Moran, and Driver needed to know Williams was dead, without participating in the act themselves. The solution to that problem was to make it appear that the deed had been done when, in fact, Williams remained very much alive, by staging his murder. Thankfully, it was actually the FBI, in conjunction with local and state authorities, who ended up handling that staging, not me.
Two weeks after my meeting with Newcomb, Vaughn and Campbell arranged to meet me outside the Jacksonville field office to give me an old-fashioned snapshot of Williams lying (apparently) dead on the floor in his underwear, having been murdered. He had been positioned with what appeared to be gunshot wounds to his chest visible. Then they moved Williams and his mother into protective custody in a nearby hotel under guard.
“You need to get them on tape blessing the action, Joe,” Vaughn told me, clearly aware of what a heavy lift that was. “You need to get them to tell you they’re satisfied in order to make their culpability clear. And you need to get them to admit this was what they intended, what they wanted to happen. Otherwise, we haven’t got enough to arrest them. That comes straight from the attorney general’s office.”
I had to show three men who’d been fully prepared to commit murder a picture of their intended victim, with a story that I’d gone ahead and set it up on my own to keep them out of harm’s way. I wasn’t as worried about them buying the second part of the story as the first. What if they realized the photo was a fake? What if they realized I’d set them up? One thing was for sure: I needed to meet each of them separately, get them to say what I needed them to say, and then get gone.
When that time came, the FBI would rig my vehicle with a video camera for the three meetings. My life would be in danger during all three, four including the stop at Jamie Ward’s to implicate him for illegal possession of a firearm. These men had already proven their desire and intention to kill. If any of them suspected the truth, if they spotted the camera or wire I was wearing, it was going to get ugly in a hurry. I wrote out a note to Shannon and the kids and placed it inside our bedside safe, saying how much I loved them, in case anything happened to me.
If everything went according to plan and my work secured the evidence needed to obtain indictments, Ward would be arrested on a federal firearms charge and local felony fugitive charges. Newcomb, Moran, and Driver would be subject to state charges on conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
I knew I needed an excuse for the anxiety I’d be unable to totally hide, just as I knew I needed to direct their attention away from the photo, so they wouldn’t notice anything awry or pose questions I wouldn’t be able to answer. So to throw the three men off their normal thought process, I smeared some powder on my face to make me look pale and sick, a distraction I hoped would lead them to pay more attention to me and less to worrying about what they were looking at and get them to accept the photo at face value. I wanted to look tired and exhausted as I handed each of them the picture. I even rigged an intravenous port of red Kool-Aid to make it look like an IV infusion going into a vein to pump me full of medications to ward off whatever sickness I was suffering from.
The morning in mid-March that I was to pick up the rifle from Jamie Ward and then show that picture of the “murdered” Warren Williams to the three amigos was cool and crisp. Before leaving the house to first have my car wired with that surveillance camera, I gave Shannon my customary three kisses on the lips, at which point she couldn’t help but notice my makeshift disguise.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” she asked, clearly more concerned than she normally was.
“Not really, but I’m doing the best I can.”
“I’m afraid for you. Be careful out there, babe,” she said, patting me on the back.
As I got in the car and pulled out of our drive, I thought to myself, That’s the woman I want to come back to.
The comfortable temperatures and low humidity didn’t last long. The heat—along with the tension—built throughout the day as I met with all four of our targets to implicate them in their respective crimes beneath a cloudless sky that allowed the sun to roast me through my windshield.
With my car now wired, I arrived at Jamie Ward’s mobile home at ten o’clock in the morning. It was located in a nice neighborhood dominated by families and within view of Bronson Elementary School. The school was set behind a fence line maybe two hundred yards from his property. All I could think of was Ward fleeing the FBI and taking refuge in that school full of potential hostages. And that made me think, What if my own kids were in that building at the time?, which strengthened my resolve to see this through.
For obvious reasons, I made a mental note to include that in the schematics of the surrounding area I was assembling for the FBI for his coming takedown. Jamie Ward was expecting me, and I saw him waiting outside his mobile home when I turned the corner onto the street. I pulled up to where he was standing and rolled down the window; I needed to remain in the car in order to capture him on video and audio giving me the gun. And by not getting out he was far less likely to notice my makeshift disguise.
“KIGY, Brother,” I greeted.
“KIGY, Brother,” he answered, and handed me the weapon.
He thanked me for making the arrangements to convert the assault rifle to full auto, and I drove off to deliver it to the drop point where Rich Vaughn was waiting. To preserve operational integrity and properly secure the evidence needed to obtain indictments, I would return to that drop point for debriefing after each of the three successive meetings, spaced hours apart, at around noon, two o’clock, and five o’clock. At the initial meeting, I handed over the gun to Vaughn, who took hold of it while wearing plastic gloves so as not to disturb the chain of evidence. That way, the only fingerprints on it would be Ward’s and mine. Any other latent prints would be dismissed in court as moot.
David Moran was next on the list, right around noontime. That left me some time to get into character, think about what I had to do. I knew Moran was an extremely dangerous man known for beating prisoners within an inch of their lives. I met him in a Lake Butler parking lot that housed a barbecue restaurant and watched him approach my Kia with my heart trying to pound its way out of my chest.
“Okay, good Brother,” I said when he opened the passenger-side door, “have a seat.”
Moran climbed in and closed the door behind him. “How you doing, Brother Joe?”
“I want you to see this to make sure it’s all clear.”
I had no idea how he was going to react when I held the picture out for him to see. I didn’t bother explaining the manner in which I’d handled this, because that would have led to more questions. Keeping it simple was definitely the best strategy, but I wondered if he could hear my heart.
His expression as he regarded the photo was one of glee, pure delight. I tried not to let the disgust I felt show, and to maintain my composure and stay in character.
“Is that what y’all were wanting?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he said, beaming. “Yeah.”
“Okay. Call Brother Thomas and make sure he knows I’m gonna meet him next.”
“Yeah, I know. I will call him as soon as I . . .” His voice trailed off, and his smile broadened. “Do you know how happy this makes me? Love you, Brother!”
“KLASP,” I said, realizing he’d bought it.
“KLASP, Brother!”
He climbed out of my car and walked away with a spring in his step, freeing me to collect myself while he called Driver and confirmed my next meeting.
After meeting with Rich Vaughn at a second drop point, I headed to my meeting with Thomas Driver. I set it up in the parking lot of a shopping mall in Lake City, forty-five minutes from Lake Butler. Since the whole case had started with Driver, getting his stamp of approval was the most important task of all. If Driver had said something to the effect that he hadn’t really wanted Williams dead, the whole case would fall apart then and there.
“KIGY, Brother,” I said when he came up to my window.
“How you doing?”
“All right. Have a seat in the car. I don’t want anybody noticing us.” I watched him come around the front of the vehicle and climb into the passenger seat, just as Moran had. “I know how emotional this all was to you, what that guy did to you and all, and I thought you might want some closure.”
I handed him the photo.
“Let me know what you think.”
His eyes widened. “That works.”
“That what you wanted?”
“Oh, yes.”
“That’s what you wanted to see.”
“Yes, sir.” He gave the photo back to me and opened the door. “Take care, Brother.”
He smiled the way a man might in the company of his best friend, and I suppose that’s what I was to him, at least for today.
When I drove off, a huge wave of relief spread through me. It didn’t last long, though. I still had one more meeting ahead of me, and Charles Newcomb was not only the ringleader but the most dangerous of the conspirators.
I called him when I reached our meeting spot. “KIGY, Brother. I just wanted to see if you’re on Southside Boulevard yet.”
“Almost there now.”
“I’ll wait for you here, Brother.”
He arrived five minutes later. Newcomb used to be a cop, so I knew he’d be the most likely of the three to ask questions, maybe not take the photo at face value, and maybe challenge me on who else I had involved in the effort. I was standing outside my car to meet him, in the hopes of looking more welcoming and inviting.
“KIGY, Brother,” I greeted him.
He stopped before me and gave me a long look, appearing concerned. “You all right?” he asked, giving the fake IV tube in my arm a long look. “That don’t look too good.”
Neither Moran nor Driver had noticed my sickly looking complexion or the fake IV, or if they had, they didn’t say anything, maybe out of deference. But I knew that wouldn’t be the case with Newcomb, and I had donned this whole getup specifically to throw him off.
“I’m fine. Just a little under the weather. Get into the car. I don’t want anybody else to see this.”
I was afraid he was going to ask me where the body was, or why there wasn’t anything about a guy getting murdered on the news. Because of his police training, he was more likely to ascertain any inconsistencies in the scenario that had been concocted to get him to implicate himself, as Moran and Driver had done.
“You all right?” he asked again, taking it.
Breathe, focus, listen . . .
“’Cause you look kinda weak, Brother Joe.”
Breathe, focus, listen . . .
He was studying the picture. “Is it all right?” I asked him.
“Yeah.” He chuckled and handed the photo back to me. “N——even pissed himself. Hey, good job, Joe.”
And then he climbed out of my vehicle and cast me a smile. Solace like nothing I’d ever felt before washed over me. Newcomb had bought the story; all three of them had. The plan had worked.
But we still needed to arrest them.