A Texas businessman accused of hiring hitmen to kill his mistress and her boyfriend after they attempted to blackmail him appears to have left a glowing review. On Monday, Erik Charles Maund, along with three others, was charged in the murder of Holly Williams, 33, and William Lanway, 36, whose bodies were discovered shot dead in a crashed car in Nashville almost 21 months ago. Prosecutors believe all four were involved in an elaborate murder-for-hire scheme that involved an affair, attempted extortion, kidnapping The bizarre case kicked off on March 12, , when a construction worker came across a white Acura sedan that had crashed on a dirt road off Old Hickory Boulevard: the car had gone off the construction road, traveled down an embankment and struck a tree.
Both airbags had deployed:. But both deceased occupants had been shot dead: investigators determined they were an estranged couple, who had been involved in a number of domestic violence incidents.
Lanway had been arrested for aggravated assault and false imprisonment for attacking Williams just eight days earlier; Williams also had an order of protection against him, after he was arrested for punching her the December previous.
For almost two years the double homicide remained unsolved — but on Monday, a federal indictment was unsealed, claiming the former couple had been killed by members of SpearTip, a security company based in Austin, Texas, and hired to do so by Maund after the pair threatened to expose his affair.
According to the indictment Maund, a partner in Austin's Maund Automotive Group and grandson of founder Charles Maund, sometimes travelled to Nashville to visit a relative. In early February , he emailed Holly Williams, with whom he had had a prior relationship, asking to meet up when he visited on February But on March 1 after returning home, Maund, who is married, began receiving a series of text messages from a man — later identified as William Lanway — who also had a personal romantic relationship with Williams; he demanded payment and threatened to expose Maund's relationship with Williams if he did not receive it.
