Trans Man Murdered After Meeting Up With Online Suitor
Police discovered the body of 18-year-old Jacob Williamson days after he arranged to meet a man he'd met online.
A transgender man was murdered after leaving to go on a date with a person he met online.
Jacob Williamson, an 18-year-old from Laurens, South Carolina, was found dead on July 4, along the roadside in Pageland, South Carolina, about 7 to 10 miles from where deputies believe he was killed.
Williamson had been corresponding with a man from Monroe, North Carolina, whom he’d met online, for nearly a month-and-a-half. He told a close friend he was going to meet the person on June 30, but never returned from the date.
Following an “extensive” investigation by law enforcement authorities from Union County and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, law enforcement arrested two suspects in connection to the 18-year-old’s death — Joshua Newton, 25, and Victoria Smith, 22.
Newton has been charged with first-degree murder and obstruction of justice, while Smith, who has been identified as Newton’s live-in girlfriend, has been charged with obstruction of justice and accessory after the fact.
According to Greenville, South Carolina-based Fox affiliate WHNS, Promise Edwards, a family friend with whom Williamson had been living before his death, said that Williamson and Newton had chatted back and forth on Facebook for over a month before arranging to meet in person.
The two men arranged to meet, with Newton agreeing to pick up Williamson at a Waffle House restaurant before going to Carowinds, an amusement park straddling the North Carolina-South Carolina border.
According to the Union County Sheriff’s Office, Newton drove more than 100 miles from Monroe to Laurens — a roughly two-hour trip — to pick up Williamson for their date. But authorities say that Newton instead brought Williamson back to his residence in Monroe, where he had been living in a trailer, before killing the 18-year-old.
Edwards said Williamson agreed to download the family locator safety app Life 360 so she could track Williamson’s phone, but she became concerned after Williamson’s location was turned off. She called to express her concerns and advised Williamson to try turning on the location tracking feature again. That was the last time Edwards was able to reach him.
Edwards subsequently called police after Williamson failed to answer his phone or respond to her attempts to contact him.
Union County Sheriff’s Office officials have said that while there is no obvious motive for the murder, their investigation has not produced any evidence to support the assertion that Williamson had been targeted because of his gender identity.
“My thoughts and prayers go out to the family of the victim in this case as they begin to mourn this unimaginable loss,” Union County Sheriff Eddie Cathey said in a statement.
Edwards told Charlotte CBS affiliate WBTV that she hopes parents will learn a lesson from Williamson’s death and be vigilant when monitoring who their loved ones are talking to on the Internet.
“Please express to them how unsafe it is to go with people online, how unsafe it is to get in the car with anybody that you do not know,” she said. “Because this is our reality now. Our reality is missing somebody that never deserved to go away like this.”
Unfortunately, it has become more common in recent years for LGBTQ people, especially transgender individuals, to disappear after arranging to meet people online.
In 2019, Nikki Kuhnhausen, a 17-year-old girl from Washington State, went missing after chatting with a man she met on Snapchat. Six months later, her remains and belongings were found in a heavily wooded area near Larch Mountain, in the southwest portion of the state.
In 2021, Dominique Lucas, a 26-year-old transgender woman, was shot to death after arranging a meeting with someone she met on an online dating website.
Last year, a transgender woman was beaten, pistol-whipped, and stomped during a robbery in which a man she met via the gay dating app Grindr held a gun to her head.
So far in 2023, at least 14 transgender or gender-nonconforming people in the United States have been killed in an act of violence, with the latest victim, Chanell Perez Ortiz, of Carolina, Puerto Rico, shot to death.
Other members of the LGBTQ community have experienced violence from people they met online.
Three years ago, in Great Britain, an 18-year-old gay man was killed after being stabbed more than 100 times by a person with whom he’d been chatting online.
Similarly, a Louisiana 18-year-old gay man was nearly killed after being lured to the home of a 19-year-old man he’d met online, who subsequently stabbed and attempted to dismember him, leaving long-lasting physical and emotional injuries.
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