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6/5/05 - DR inmate admits to a another murder during escape
An inmate sentenced to death for a killing committed during a 1999 escape has written a letter to a newspaper confessing to another killing. The slaying to which Kenneth D. Williams confessed would make him responsible for the deaths of four people, including a Springfield, Mo., man killed after Williams escaped in 1999. Williams, 26, says in a 5 1/2-page letter to the Pine Bluff Commercial newspaper that he shot and killed Jerrell Jenkins, 36, of Pine Bluff on Dec. 13, 1998, the same day that he fatally shot Dominique Hurd, a cheerleader at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. Police had listed Jenkins' death as unsolved. "I take full responsibility for my actions and whatever consequences my peers see fit," Williams wrote. Williams said he was a born-again Christian and wanted to confess his sins. He was convicted of kidnapping and killing Hurd and of kidnapping and assaulting her date. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole. He escaped on Oct. 3, 1999, while serving that sentence at the Cummins Unit of the state prison system in Lincoln County, Ark. After 57-year-old farmer Cecil Boren was slain at his home near the prison, Williams fled to Missouri in Boren's truck. He was captured near Urbana after an accident that killed Culligan delivery driver Michael Greenwood, 24, of Springfield, Mo. Williams was convicted for Boren's slaying and sentenced to death. He has appealed that verdict. "For a long time I was in denial of the things I had done," Williams wrote. "I couldn't believe it myself. How can someone go five years in denial of something that they obviously did. I have killed or caused the death of four people in my life." The Commercial provided a copy of Williams' letter to police detectives. Police Lt. Terry Hopson and Sgt. Danny Belvedresi met with Williams on Tuesday at the prison system's Varner Supermax Unit near the Cummins unit. Hopson said the inmate declined to make a formal statement in the death of Jenkins, saying only that "the letter to the newspaper spoke for itself." "I wish we would have more people write letters confessing to some of our unsolved homicides," Hopson said, indicating he believed that Williams killed Jenkins. "The bottom line is, I don't think we will have to go looking for a suspect in the Jenkins killing." Hopson said he would discuss with prosecutors whether Williams would be charged in Jenkins' death. Larry A. Sullivan, editor of The Commercial, said it was gratifying that the newspaper "can help solve a homicide, and it appears that may be the case in this instance." Jenkins, whose body was found in a ditch by a youngster walking to school, had been shot to death. Williams claimed in his letter that he killed Jenkins with two shots from a .357-caliber
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