A married Texas businessman paid special forces-trained hitmen $750,000 to murder his mistress and her new boyfriend after they threatened to expose his cheating, according to federal prosecutors.
Erik Charles Maund was busted Friday in connection to the murders of Holly Williams, 33, and her partner William Lanway, who were found riddled with bullets in Nashville, Tenn., in March 2020.
Maund — a partner in his family’s auto dealership in Austin — had arranged to see Williams, with whom he “had a prior relationship,” during a trip to Nashville in February 2020, the indictment said.
“Good morning beautiful! … I will meet you in the bar like last time,” he texted her, according to the charging documents.
After the rendezvous, Williams’ new man, Lanway, 36, started sending texts “demanding payment from Maund and threatened to expose his relationship with [Williams] if he did not receive it,” the feds said.
Holly A. Williams and Willam Lanway threatened to expose businessman Erik Maund’s infidelities unless they were paid off. Maund hired a hitman to kill them. Nashville police departmen
Maund immediately hired Gilad Peled, a 47-year-old former member of the Israeli Defense Forces and Mossad, according to the indictment.
Peled allegedly worked with two ex-active duty Marines with special ops backgrounds: Bryon Brockway, 46, from Austin, and Adam Carey, 30, of North Carolina.
Maund, 46, eventually paid more than $750,000 to the trio, who “agreed to kidnap, threaten, intimidate, and murder” the couple “in retaliation” for the “attempted extortion,” the indictment claimed.
Erik Maund (left) hired ex-IDF and Mossad agent Gilad Peled (right) to murder his mistress and her new boyfriend when they attempted to blackmail him, feds say.
Nashville police department
Brockway and Carey ultimately snatched the couple outside their apartment building in Nashville — murdering Lanway on the spot, “shooting him multiple times including two shots to his head one of which was near his right temple,” the indictment said.
After stuffing Lanway’s body in a car, they kidnapped Williams and drove her to a construction site, the feds said.
There, they murdered her “by shooting her multiple times including a shot to the head near her right temple,” the indictment alleged.
Holly Williams and William Lanway were kidnapped outside their apartment, where Lanway was killed immediately. Williams was driven to a construction site where she was shot multiple times, feds say. Nashville Police Department
The bodies were found in a white Acura at the construction site on Good Friday last year, Nashville police said, calling it an “elaborate murder-for-hire scheme.”
All four suspects were arrested Friday on charges of conspiracy to commit kidnapping, kidnapping resulting in death, and carrying, brandishing and discharging a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence.
Maund’s attorneys, Perry Minton and Sam Bassett, told the Austin American-Statesman on Monday that they had “only briefly” spoken to their client about the allegations.
“The entire Maund family loves and supports their son,” they insisted of the Texas auto-dealership dynasty.
Ex-IDF soldier Gilad Peled worked with former Marines Bryon Brockway (left) and Adam Carey (right) to carry out the murders.
