Texas Automobile Dealer & Former IDF Member Charged In Kidnapping & Murder Conspiracy

(TJVNEWS) Seems like murder-for-hire plots are getting more frightening every day. The New York Post reported that according to federal prosecutors, a married automobile dealer in Texas forked over $750,000 to kill his mistress and her boyfriend after they issued threats to expose his infidelity.

On Friday, Erik Charles Maund was arrested in association with the murders of Holly Williams, 33, and her boyfriend William Lanway in Nashville, Tennessee. In March 2020, the pair were discovered dead and their bodies riddled with bullets.

Maund was a partner in his family’s auto dealership in Austin, Texas. According to the indictment, Maund had made arrangements to see Williams during a trip to Nashville in February 2020. Maund and Williams had a previous relationship. He texted Williams: “Good morning beautiful! … I will meet you in the bar like last time.”

According to the indictment, after his visit to Nashville, Maund began receiving a series of text messages from Williams’ boyfriend, William Lanway in which he demanded payment from Maund and threatened to expose his relationship with Williams if he did not receive it.  Maund then enlisted the services of Gilad Peled, 47, of Austin, Texas, who held himself out to be a former member of the Israeli Defense Forces and owner of Speartip Security in Austin, Texas. Maund also contacted Bryon Brockway, 46, of Austin, Texas, a former active-duty United States Marine who previously served in Force Recon, a Special Operations Capable unit, and owner of Ink Force LLC, also a security company in Austin as well as Adam Carey, 30, of Richlands, North Carolina, a former active duty United States Marine who had previously served in the Marine Corps’ Special Operations Group.

Maund wanted Peled, Brockway and Carey to assist with dealing with the threats to expose his relationship with Williams and the extortion demands.

The indictment further alleges that on March 5, 2020, Maund withdrew $15,000 from his bank account and on that same day an “intelligence report” was prepared and provided to Peled by a relative of Brockway who worked for an internet-based security company.

A series of actions were then undertaken by Carey and others, including travelling from out of state to Nashville to surveil Williams and Lanway and creating and using a Pinger account to attempt to communicate with the pair.  On March 9, 2020, Peled received a document entitled “Tennessee Sitrep,” which stated that Carey and others had surveilled Williams, confirmed her address and vehicle; confirmed that Lanway. had been staying at the same address; and advised that Carey and others would use everything at their disposal to stop the attempted extortion of Maund.

On March 11, 2020, Peled deposited $8,000 in cash into Speartip Security’s business account and $7,000 in cash into his personal bank account, according to the indictment. The following day, Maund transferred $150,000, via wire, from his bank account to a bank account controlled by Peled.  On that same day, Brockway and Carey, while armed with firearms, confronted Williams and Lanway in the parking lot of Williams’ apartment complex in Nashville and murdered Lanway by shooting him multiple times.  They then kidnapped Willaims and drove her and the body of Lanway to a construction site on Old Hickory Boulevard in Nashville, where they murdered Williams by shooting her several times.  The bodies were then discarded at the construction site and within hours of the murders, the Pinger account used to communicate was deleted and a rental car rented by Brockway was returned.

Carey then drove Brockway to Memphis, Tennessee, and Brockway caught a flight to Austin, Texas.  Carey then drove to Austin from Memphis.

An unsealed federal indictment on Monday charged Maund and the men he hired with a kidnapping conspiracy which resulted in the murder of Williams and Lanway on March 12, 2020, in Nashville, Tennessee.  The three-count indictment charges the aforementioned individuals with conspiracy to commit kidnapping, kidnapping resulting in death, and carrying, brandishing, and discharging a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence.

Nashville police said that the bodies were found in a white Acura at the construction site on Good Friday last year. The Post reported that the police called it an “elaborate murder-for-hire scheme.”

The Austin American-Statesman newspaper reported that Maund’s attorneys, Perry Minton and Sam Bassett, said on Monday that they had “only briefly” spoken to their client about the allegations.

In making the Monday announcement, Acting U.S. Attorney Mark H. Wildasin for the Middle District of Tennessee, Douglas M. Korneski, Special Agent in Charge of the Memphis Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake commended the tremendous collaborative efforts of the agents, detectives, and prosecutors which led to the indictment.