OPEN SECRET

Why did police let one of America's most prolific predators get away for so long?

- BY RONAN FARROW

MiKayla Evans fell from a window in Sean Williams's apartment. He is accused of sex crimes against more than sixty people.

In the middle of November, 2020, Kat Dahl, a federal prosecutor in Johnson City, Tennessee, received an unusual assignment. Dahl had been appointed by the Department of Justice to work with the Johnson City police. Almost all her cases involved "runof-the-mill" federal charges related to the possession of drugs or firearms, Dahl told me. She had little experience with the detectives in the Criminal Investigations Division who usually handled state charges related to crimes like robbery and assault.

That day, Investigator Toma Sparks summoned her into the four-desk bullpen of C.I.D. Sparks and another officer, David Hilton, told Dahl that they wanted her to look into the case of a local businessman named Sean Williams. Williams, who was forty-nine, owned Glass & Concrete Contracting, which specialized in restoring historical buildings; he and his workers rappelled down their façades, limiting the need for scaffolding and earning him the nickname Spider-Man. Williams was well known in Johnson City, a community of some seventy-five thousand people in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. On a busy street downtown, he had a glass-fronted garage that housed a red Ultima GTR sports car and a rope swing. On one wall was a neon-hued mural showing Williams surrounded by gigantic cartoon breasts. Johnson City is a college town, home to East Tennessee State University, and many locals told me that they knew Williams as the host of wild parties at his fifth-story, three-thousand-square-foot condo, a block from the garage. After nearby bars closed, people would head to Williams's apartment, where he kept such curiosities as drones and exotic reptiles, as well as a seemingly endless supply of alcohol and cocaine, which he served from a large pepper grinder.