29, killed Mercedes Williamson in May 2015, after the end of their relationship, because a friend learned that she was transgender, a fact Mr. Vallum kept hidden from friends and family while they dated. Local news reports said that Ms. Williamson was 17 at the time of her death.
Mr.
Vallum is a member of the Latin Kings gang and decided to kill Ms.
Williamson because he “believed he would be in danger” if other gang
members learned that he had once dated a woman he knew to be
transgender, the Justice Department said in a statement. He pleaded guilty to a state-level murder charge and was sentenced to life in prison last July.
In December, Mr. Vallum pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a federal hate crime statute signed into law in 2009.
“Today’s
sentencing reflects the importance of holding individuals accountable
when they commit violent acts against transgender individuals,” Attorney
General Jeff Sessions said in the statement. “The Justice Department
will continue its efforts to vindicate the rights of those individuals
who are affected by bias motivated crimes.”
But
Rob Hill, the Mississippi state director for the Human Rights Campaign,
a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy group, said the case
showed how much more work needed to be done at the state level.
Mississippi
is one of 20 states that do not have a hate crime law covering crimes
committed on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity,
according to the Human Rights Campaign.
“There
is an epidemic of violence against transgender people, and particularly
women of color, across the country,” Mr. Hill said. “And yet today is
the first time a perpetrator will be sentenced under federal hate crimes
charges for killing a transgender person because that crime crossed a
state line.”
In an interview
with The Sun Herald, a newspaper in Biloxi, Miss., Jenny Wilkins, Ms.
Williamson’s mother, said the relationship between Mr. Vallum and her
daughter, to whom she referred using male pronouns, lasted eight and a
half months. “To me, I didn’t think that anything was wrong with him,”
she said of Mr. Vallum. “He was so nice.”
“He
bought him stuff; he took him out to eat. The whole nine yards,” Ms.
Wilkins said. “Like something me and my husband do is what him and Josh
do.”
At
some point their relationship ended — the Justice Department on Monday
did not say when — and Mr. Vallum and Ms. Williamson fell out of touch.
There had been no contact between them until the night of the murder.
When Mr. Vallum found out that a friend had learned Ms. Williamson’s
gender identity, he went to her home in Alabama and persuaded her to get
in his car and ride with him to Mississippi, the Justice Department
said.
He then drove her to his father’s home in Lucedale, Miss., where he attacked her with a stun gun,
repeatedly stabbed her and beat her to death with a hammer. After he
killed Ms. Williamson he tried to dispose of the murder weapons and
destroy other evidence linking him to the crime, the Justice Department
said.
Mr.
Vallum also lied to law enforcement about the murder, telling the
police at first that he had killed Ms. Williamson in a state of panic
and rage after learning for the first time that she was transgender,
according to the Justice Department. As part of his guilty plea, Mr.
Vallum admitted that he had known her gender identity during their
relationship and that he would not have decided to murder her had she
not been transgender.
In a jailhouse interview with The Sun Herald, Mr. Vallum said he felt remorse for the killing.
“If
there was one thing that I could take back I wish that would be it,” he
said. “I would even trade places with Mercedes so that I wouldn’t have
to go through all this that I’m having to go through now. It’s just not
worth it.”
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