Alabama set to execute Jeremy Williams in killing of 5-year-old Kamarie Holland, sold by her mother for $2,500

Five years after a 5-year-old Georgia girl was raped and killed in a case that began with her mother selling her for $2,500, Alabama is preparing to execute the man convicted in her death.

Jeremy Tremaine Williams is scheduled to die by lethal injection Thursday, Aug. 13, at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Ala. A jury convicted Williams in 2024 of murder, sodomy, sexual abuse of a child, production of obscene material involving a child, human trafficking and abuse of a corpse. The judge in the case handed down a death sentence.

For Jane Edenfield, a sergeant in the Columbus Police Department’s property crimes unit who helped find Kamarie Holland’s body, the execution is a chance at a measure of closure. “I think she should probably be right there next to him,” Edenfield told USA TODAY this week. “It’s just sickening.”

The case began Dec. 13, 2021, just before Christmas. Kamarie’s mother reported the girl missing from her bed shortly after 6 a.m. The Columbus Police Department sent every available officer to search. Edenfield and another property crime detective, Braden Dobbins, joined the hunt.

Police said Williams took Kamarie from her Columbus home after agreeing to pay her mother, Kristy Siple, to sexually abuse the 5-year-old. Siple wanted money for drugs, investigators said. She later pleaded guilty to human sex trafficking of her daughter and is serving 20 years in prison.

According to police, Williams made Kamarie smoke meth, raped her while filming it, strangled her and then continued to sexually abuse her after she was dead. He was arrested the same day, before officers knew what had happened to her, and he was not talking.

Desperate for answers, Edenfield and Dobbins interviewed people who knew Williams. One person’s comment stuck with Dobbins: If something happened to the little girl, she would be at a house in Phenix City, Ala., that belonged to Williams’ family but was sitting empty.

It was 10 p.m., the house was in another jurisdiction, and the tip felt like a longshot. But Dobbins had a feeling. “Braden looked at me and he says, ‘Sarge, I tell ya, if you seen the look on this lady’s face,’” Edenfield recalled. “Everyone else was tied up. His heart felt it, and me knowing and trusting in him, the two of us said, ‘Let’s go.’”

The two detectives drove to the abandoned house, still hoping Kamarie might be alive. “You see TV shows and movies where it’s, ‘We’ve got him in custody. What if she’s tied up somewhere and locked in a room or a cage and can’t get out?’” Edenfield said.

They found Kamarie in an outdoor cellar, her battered body left up against a wall. Edenfield at first thought she was a doll. The image has never left either detective. Dobbins had a 5-year-old daughter of his own at the time.

“For a long time it just ate Braden and I up,” Edenfield said. “Could we have done more? Could we have gotten there sooner? The assistant district attorney told me that by the time we got to the house she had already passed but it’s still in your mind. You ‘What if?’ yourself to death.”

Unlike most capital defendants, Williams directed his attorneys to provide no defense at his trial, Edenfield said. After the judge sentenced him to death, Williams ordered his attorneys not to appeal. That decision is why he is scheduled to be executed five years after the crime, while many death row inmates wait years or decades through drawn-out appeals.

Edenfield said Williams has never expressed remorse or offered much explanation. “His words were that he was just sick, and that’s it,” she said. “He didn’t elaborate.”

At the time of his arrest, police said Williams had been charged but not convicted in a 2009 child sex abuse case in Phenix City, faced another child abuse charge in Columbus, and was a suspect in the death of a 1-year-old in Alaska. USA TODAY was not immediately able to obtain more information about those cases.

Those who knew Kamarie describe a little girl who was loved deeply. Her father, Corey Holland, had full custody but sometimes let her stay with her mother — a decision Edenfield said he testified was the biggest regret of his life. At Williams’ trial, Holland sobbed on the witness stand. “You took my little girl from me,” he told Williams, who sat emotionless and stone-faced throughout the trial.

Kamarie’s older sister, then about 9, brought many in the courtroom to tears as she talked about how sweet her little sister was and how much she loved and missed her, Edenfield said.

Kamarie’s father has often posted about his grief on Facebook. In 2022 he wrote: “You made life seem so much better with all your charisma and love you showed for me and everyone else around you.” Last month he wrote: “I miss you painfully PRINCESS.”

Kamarie’s aunt, Tamrah Holland, told the Montgomery Advertiser, part of the USA TODAY Network, that Kamarie was only 5 but made a big impact on the world around her. She liked dancing in the living room, going down slides on the playground, had a larger-than-life personality and always commandeered family video chats. “Kamarie was special, and especially to her father, to my brother,” Tamrah said. “My niece didn’t deserve what happened to her. She didn’t deserve for her life to be cut short as it did.”

Williams is set to be executed at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore on Thursday. If the execution proceeds, he will be the first inmate executed in Alabama this year and the 22nd in the United States. He is also one of three men scheduled to die in the U.S. on the same day: Tennessee plans to execute Anthony Hines for the 1985 robbery and murder of motel maid Catherine Jean Jenkins, and Oklahoma plans to execute Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez for the 2003 murder of his common-law wife, Olimpia Fisher. There have been growing calls for Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to halt Hines’ execution after a botched execution in that state in May.

The case has become a stark example of how fast the system can move when a defendant chooses not to fight a death sentence. It has also left a lasting mark on the investigators and family who still carry Kamarie’s memory. For Edenfield, the looming execution is not a moment of celebration, but she hopes it brings a final accounting for the little girl who, as her father wrote, was always his Princess.