ABDUCTION STORY: Four (or five) boxes method
(Focus on individual. First 3 paragraphs -- creative device)
TYLER, Texas -- Two hours of grainy surveillance video captures every chilling detail. A man with a gym bag lurks for hours, eyeing the dwindling parade of late-night Wal-Mart shoppers, waiting for just the right victim.
Just before midnight Wednesday, a smaller figure walks toward a truck at the edge of the parking lot.
Megan Holden, a new clerk at Tyler's newest Wal-Mart Super-Center, has just clocked out from the late shift, apparently unaware of the man sprinting toward her from behind.
(Transition to larger issue(s) -- the turn) By the time the story spun to its end on Friday morning, the video was the latest random horror endlessly looping on national television.
(The lede or nut graph) The 19-year-old store clerk was dead from a gunshot in the head, her body dumped along Interstate 20 near Midland, Texas. A 24-year-old Iraq war veteran and disgraced Marine, Johnny Lee Williams Jr., was in an Arizona jail, nursing a gunshot wound from a botched pre-dawn holdup that police say was the last act in a 36-hour crime spree.
(Report on larger issue. Expansion upon the lede)
``There's no doubt this was a total stranger abduction,'' said Tyler Police Chief Gary Swindle.
``We did everything possible,'' Swindle said of his department's two-day scramble to find Megan and her captor. ``We felt like we had lost one of our kids.''
Williams remained jailed Friday night in Willcox, Ariz., on aggravated kidnapping charges. Police in Tyler said he has refused to answer questions.
(background on victim)
Holden's relatives in Chandler, outside Tyler, were too distraught to talk Friday about the horror that took away the 2004 Henderson High School graduate who took the Wal-Mart job last month to try to get past an earlier tragedy.
Leslie Thomas, owner of a Henderson bakery where Holden started working in her final year of high school, said the teenager's boyfriend died unexpectedly in October.
The two had met as co-workers at the Snowflake Bakery and Deli in Henderson, and Holden finally said she couldn't stand the fact that ``everywhere she went, she saw him,'' Thomas said.
``She decided to go to Tyler, to TJC (Tyler Junior College). I think she was wanting to go into respiratory therapy, because he had passed away from an asthma attack,'' Thomas said.
Authorities said Holden started classes only a day before the abduction.
Thomas and the principal at Henderson High School said Holden was a friendly, easy-going girl who made a point of saying hello to people by name. They said the town and school were grief-stricken Friday.
``Megan was just one of those students who you instantly liked,'' said principal Stacey Sullivan. ``Everyone is so upset because it was such a senseless tragedy. Why did this have to happen to her?''
(background on suspect)
Williams was a preacher's son who graduated from John Tyler High School in Tyler and joined the Marines a year later despite having had some trouble with the law. He was arrested in 1999 on a charge of criminal trespass and twice more in 2000 for a series of traffic violations, authorities said.
His parents secluded themselves after news of his arrest broke on Friday. Police said they were cooperating in the case. Investigators searched their home, northwest of Tyler, on Friday afternoon. Calls to the residence went unanswered.
The Rev. Johnny Williams Sr. and his wife went on a local television station, KLTV-TV, just before the United States invaded Iraq to talk about her faith that God would protect him and return him ``better and whole.''
His mother, Patricia Williams, told KLTV on Friday that her son had served 3 ½ years, much of it in Baghdad, and came home haunted by nightmares and unable to adjust. She told the station Williams couldn't find a job, slept in his clothes and tried unsuccessfully to get help from Veterans Affairs.
Authorities in Tyler said Williams was arrested once in November on a charge of driving off without paying for gasoline and again in December on a charge of cocaine possession.
He was given a bad-conduct discharge last February after being caught using marijuana and was awaiting his appeal, according to the military.
(Scanlan’s fourth box? Transition to present; chronology of murder case and arrest)
And about 10:14 p.m. CST Wednesday, a man later identified by witnesses as Williams was seen walking from State Highway 64 onto the Wal-Mart property. Surveillance cameras captured a beefy man in a dark, hooded jacket and black baseball cap strolling the store, once being questioned by a security guard as he hovered near its entrance.
Police said Friday that they believed Holden was chosen at random after her assailant spotted her and then turned away from other potential victims. ``He did make several other attempts before he did pick out Megan,'' the Tyler police chief said.
After Holden clocked out, a video surveillance camera mounted outside the store captured her striding across the parking lot toward her pickup truck. The video showed a second figure forcing her into the driver's side of the truck and then sitting in the parking lot for several moments before wheeling out, headed to the west on Highway 64.
``This was well-planned,'' said FBI Agent Jeff Millslagle, head of the bureau's East Texas operations.
Holden's relatives called Tyler police about 4 a.m. CST Thursday and reported that she hadn't come home from work. Tyler police immediately launched an investigation and called in the FBI after Wal-Mart representatives found what appeared to be her abduction on surveillance videos.
Police and FBI officials dispatched bulletins across Texas and put helicopters in the air in Smith County, flying at one point over the area where Williams lived Thursday as they searched for Holden's truck.
A cellphone tower picked up signals from Holden's telephone at some point after the abduction, investigators said.
But from there, the trail went cold until sheriff's deputies in Martin County, between Big Spring and Odessa, found Holden, in a ditch near I-20, dead from at least one gunshot wound.
Evidence at the scene indicated that she was shot and killed where her body was dumped near the town of Stanton, about 400 miles west of where she had been kidnapped. One investigator said she was partially clothed.
Tyler police said surveillance cameras in nearby Odessa captured images of Williams robbing a convenience store near I-20 at 8:19 p.m. CST Thursday.
An Odessa police spokesman said a black man wearing a T-shirt and shorts walked into Uncle's convenience store near I-20 at 8:18 p.m. CST Thursday, drew a handgun and demanded money from the cash register. He then left on foot, the spokesman said.
And just before dawn on Friday, a man wearing a hooded jacket and shorts strode into the Mountain View RV park store near Bowie, Ariz., and pulled an automatic handgun.
A former New York City firefighter was just opening the store when the man walked in. The firefighter, who said his first name was Ritchie but declined to give his last name, said he'd noticed the same man cruising past the store and abruptly wheeling around minutes before.
Ritchie said he was checking something on the store's computer when the man walked in and approached the counter just before 6 a.m. Ritchie said he stood to help him and the man abruptly raised his jacket.
``He said, `This is a robbery. Give me your money out of the register,‘ '' the retiree said. ``All I see was this automatic coming out of his sweatshirt, coming up toward me, and I drew mine and fired.''
Ritchie and the store's owner, Bruce Austin, said they both have worn pistols on their hips while at the store for several years because of several attempted robberies.
Usually, the sight of a 45-caliber Sig-Sauer is enough to scare off trouble, Ritchie said. ``It's an attitude-adjustment tool.''
The retired firefighter said he initially thought he hadn't hit the would-be robber because the man yelled a profanity, spun around, and ran out the door.
``And he was only three feet away when I fired,'' the man said. ``The police told me he got powder burns on his face.''
Within a half hour, the sheriff's department in surrounding Cochise County got reports that a man in a Ford pickup truck was trying to flag down motorists on I-10, asking where he could go to get medical treatment.
Twenty-four miles west of Bowie, Cochise county sheriff's deputies found the same man in a red pickup pulling up to a hospital. Deputies ran a license check that confirmed the truck was Holden's.
A handgun and a blue gym bag were in the truck, investigators said.
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Agent Millslagle said the incident was particularly disturbing because it is such a rarity in East Texas. Few kidnappings anywhere involve strangers, and the area has not had a stranger abduction since 1987, he said.
``Usually it doesn't happen in East Texas, and very rarely is it captured on videotape,'' he said.