The man accused of killing four members of a family and abandoning an infant in West Tennessee last month told a Nashville television station that he is innocent and had no reason to kill the victims.
Austin Drummond, 28, told WTVF that he had been working as a confidential informant. He said he was told his cover was blown, and when Adriana Williams, James Matthew Wilson, Cortney Rose, and Braydon Williams were murdered, he ran.
He allegedly admitted that was the wrong thing to do, but he told the station he was scared.
Drummond was captured in Jackson, Tennessee — about 75 miles from where the murders took place — after week long manhunt. Several people were arrested and charged with assisting the fugitive while he was on the run.
The four family members — the Williamses children of Rose and Wilson Adrianna Williams’ boyfriend — were found dead in Lake County on July 29, just hours after Adriana Williams’ and Wilson’s infant daughter was found abandoned in Dyer County in a car seat on a stretch of road. Authorities named Drummond, who had been dating Rose’s sister, as the suspect in the murders.
Drummond told WTVF that prosecutors approached him in prison to help them with a crackdown on drug smuggling into jails and to assist in arresting dealers, crooked cops, and gang leadership. He said he had joined the Vice Lords gang during a previous prison term.
“But they found out I was an informant, and I didn’t know … I was afraid because I knew that bad things happened,” he said. “I was afraid that because I was an informant things would go wrong … things would happen to me.”
He told the station he considers all the victims of the murders family and — while insisting on his innocence — said he was somehow directly involved in the murders. But he said he wasn’t ready to answer questions about that, who killed the victims, or how the baby came to be abandoned in Dyer County.
Lake County District Attorney Danny Goodman Jr. told the station he was aware of the phone conversation with the suspect since all jail phone calls are recorded. He would not comment on Drummond’s statements but said he had no doubt that Drummond was the killer and that there was a clear motive.
Drummond has a preliminary hearing set for early September, and WTVF said they would be speaking with the suspect again.
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[Featured image: Austin Drummond/Obion County Sheriff’s Office]
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Author: KC Wildmoon
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