Alabama is set to execute Jeremy Williams tonight by lethal injection for the 2021 rape and murder of 5 year-old Kamarie Holland - a crime he recorded on his cell phone.
The 41-year-old death row inmate pleaded guilty, and though the death penalty case still had to go to trial, he prohibited his attorneys from presenting any evidence that could help spare his life.
The execution is set to take place beginning at 6 p.m. at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.
Update 11:45 a.m.: Corey Holland, Kamarie’s father, told the Associated Press that his daughter was an exuberant 5-year-old who loved princesses and made people laugh.
“She loved playing dress-up, all her little Halloween costumes and her princess stuff I got her. She liked anything girly,” Corey Holland said.
Update 11:50 a.m.: Holland told WTVM TV news in Columbus, GA, that he has been barred from viewing tonight’s execution because he was charged in 2022 with violating a custody order by allowing Kamarie to go with her mother, who did not have custody at the time. A prison spokesperson told AL.com that it is the Alabama Attorney General’s Office that decides who is allowed to view an execution. The attorney general’s office has not responded to a request for comment.
Tennessee and Oklahoma also plan to execute inmates Thursday, making it the first time since 2010 that three people are put to death on the same day in the U.S., the Associated Press reports.
Williams’ conviction and death sentence automatically underwent an appeals review, but both were upheld by the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals.
A competency evaluation determined, “he knew his life was at stake,” the appeals court judges found.
Williams has been on death row for two years and has sought a speedy execution. Inmates in Alabama spend an average of 16 years on death row awaiting either execution or exoneration, according to the United States Department of Justice.
Williams began writing letters to the Alabama Attorney General’s Office and Gov. Kay Ivey in 2025 asking to waive any further appeals and for an execution date to be set, which Ivey did on June 18.
Rick Chancey, the district attorney in Russell County, previously told AL.com that he was “doing everything I can to move this along to the end.”
“This is a terrible human being, and he did a tremendous amount of damage over the years,” Chancey said. “What he did to this little girl, and he’s raped others, killed her on video and then raped her dead body is one of the most horrific things I’ve ever seen.”
The crime
Five-year-old Kamarie was reported missing from her home in Columbus, Georgia by her mother, Kristy Marie Siple, in December of 2021.
Siple told authorities she went to sleep about midnight and awoke to find her daughter gone and the front door open.
Columbus police quickly identified Williams as a potential suspect. Williams and Siple, according to court records, had a sexual relationship and Siple would sometimes leave her children in Williams’ care.
Back across the state line in Alabama, investigators executed a search warrant at Williams’ address in Phenix City, a vacant house where they found Kamarie’s naked body in the basement, covered by a tarp.
Investigators also tied Kamarie’s mother to the crime.
Siple agreed to let Williams sexually abuse her daughter for $2,500, but the amount was reduced to $1,300 after negotiations. In March 2024, she pled guilty to sex trafficking and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. A murder charge was dismissed under the plea agreement.
Williams never paid Siple the money. He told investigators he smoked meth and forced Kamarie to smoke meth as well.
He then sexually abused her before he strangled her to death.
The appeals court noted that Williams used his cell phone to record him raping Kamarie both before and after her death.
Williams has been charged with crimes against children before.
In 2009, a jury in Alabama acquitted him after he was charged with putting a boy he was babysitting in scalding hot water, causing severe burns, according to the charging document
While he was being interviewed by police for the murder of Kamarie, Williams admitted to killing his 1-month-old daughter Naudia Trenice Williams in Alaska in 2005.
His confession prompted law enforcement in Alaska to reopen Naudia’s case. An autopsy originally determined her cause of death to be “undetermined,” but Williams told investigators he killed her by hitting her and throwing her down stairs because she was crying.
In 2022, Alaska authorities charged him with second-degree murder.
Execution record
Williams’ execution will be the 26th overseen by Gov. Kay Ivey, setting a record among Alabama governors since the moratorium on capital punishment was officially lifted in 1977.
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