To watch Video

Copy the short URL in each article and paste it new tab

Saturday, April 18, 2015

Three Women Found Held; Local Couple Charged With Human Trafficking 3 Different Women

UPDATED :REYNOLDSBURG, Ohio - A local couple faces serious charges for what officials call human trafficking of at least three young women - all allegedly held captive in a Reynoldsburg apartment. Thomas Michael Williamson, age 32, and his fianc'ee Michelle Nicole Feldman, age 29, are in jail charged with 10 counts of trafficking, extortion, sexual battery, grand theft and theft. The Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien said the two were preying on sympathy over disabled veterans. He said the couple lured young women to their Eden of Reynoldsburg apartment for sexual, financial and emotional needs. Next door neighbors of the two said they heard repeated pounding on their first-floor and basement walls. They said they reported it, but Williamson and Feldman told them and the leasing office it was their Autistic child. "The sound on the walls just sounded like boom, boom, boom, all the time," said neighbor Lisa Vickery. Vickery and her niece Jaimie Stover live next door and said they were badly shaken when they heard the accusations about three women being held captive next door. "Oh my God I wish I would have complained a little bit more and listened more," said Vickery. "We could also hear screaming, but it was the man and we thought he was screaming at the little boy." "It would be three o'clock in the morning and we would hear the knocking," said Vickery's niece Jaimie Stover. "Everybody in our apartment building would complain, but we just took the Feldman at here word that it was her little boy," said Vickery. The neighbor showed NBC4 the surveillance camera above the Williamson and Feldman's door. They suspect it was used to keep an eye on the women. "We thought the other woman in the apartment was their housekeeper," said Stover. "She would never go far, either playing with the kids on the porch or walking the dog, but never without a child or adult with her," the neighbors said. The Franklin County Prosecutor said the couple used the MeetMe.com web site to lure the women held at different times from April 2013 through last month. "Luckily one of them escaped in March," said O'Brien. He said Reynoldsburg Police and human trafficking investigators helped in indicting the couple. "This disabled vet is a very sympathetic person as created by the two but, is totally fictitious," he said. The neighbors asked for the captive women's forgiveness for not doing more. "That is so sad Jay (the two women hugged) we complained all the time," Vickery said. "Tell the women we are so sorry for not complaining more." Williamson and Feldman are being held in the Franklin County Jail. Their next court appearance is on Monday. If convicted on all these felony counts O'Brien said the two could face as much as 40 years behind bars.



from Liveleak.com Rss Feed - Items in channel 'News' http://ift.tt/1FUYLny

via IFTTT

No comments:

Post a Comment