Bond reduction hearing set for Friday in Columbia murder case
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The attorney for a man accused of taking part in a robbery that killed someone in 2017 wants a judge to give him the chance to post bond.
Stephen Wyse, the attorney for 28-year-old Jeffrey McWilliams, asked Judge Jeff Harris to set a $50,000 cash or surety bond in the case. Such a bond would allow McWilliams to pay 10 percent of it to be released from jail, as well as face several conditions to remain out of custody. McWilliams is currently held in the Boone County Jail without bond. A hearing is set for Friday at 9 a.m.
Columbia police believe McWilliams was at least present when someone shot and killed Augustus "Gus" Roberts on Dec. 11, 2017 in the 1900 block of Lasso Circle. Investigators have said Roberts sold large amounts of high-grade marijuana, and that the people involved may have tried to rob him. Police said a person implicated someone named "Jeff" as one of three people that robbed Roberts, with a different member of the group shooting Roberts.
CPD took a saliva swab of McWilliams in April and said the sample matched with DNA found on a pullover at the crime scene. Police arrested McWilliams on May 10.
Wyse pointed out that McWilliams never left the area after police took his DNA. He noted McWilliams' ties to Boone County, including his family's ownership of McLanks Restaurant.
"As an innocent man Jeffrey McWilliams did not flee the jurisdiction or otherwise conceal himself after providing a DNA sample to the government," Wyse wrote.
McWilliams and his family opened McLanks on Paris Road just four days before Roberts' death. A letter sent by his mother, Sheila Lankford, said McWilliams would be in the store by 5 a.m. to open it. Another letter from one of the wait staff that worked with him in 2017 said she would often see McWilliams working in the kitchen when she got in at 6 a.m. Lankford said she would continue to look into the restaurants security and point of sale system to provide more information.
"Jeffrey McWilliams was and is the heart and soul of my operation," Lankford wrote.
A CPD news release said officers were called to the scene around 3:30 a.m. that night. Phone records allegedly show McWilliams calling one of the people implicated by the informant several times between 4 and 5 a.m.
Roberts' death kicked off a multistate drug investigation that has so far indicted 40 people across the U.S. McWilliams' name, though, has never come up in the course of those cases.
