Jeremy Williams EXECUTED: The Murder of 5-Year-Old Kamarie Holland | Last Meal & Words| Alabama
Jeremy Williams EXECUTED: The Murder of 5-Year-Old Kamarie Holland | Last Meal & Words| Alabama
On a quiet December night in Phenix City, Alabama, a 5-year-old girl named Kamarie Holland was taken from her home. She would not survive until morning. Nearly 5 years later, the man responsible has been executed, but the story behind his crime and the way his case ended raises questions that will not go away quietly.
Phenix City, Alabama, sits just across the Chattahoochee River from Columbus, Georgia. It’s a quiet border town, the kind of place where everyone more or less knows everyone. On December 12th, 2021, a 5-year-old girl named Kamarie Holland was living an ordinary life in Columbus. She was in preschool. She had a big sister. She had a birthday coming up. That night, her mother, Kristy Siple, made a decision that would end her daughter’s life. Siple was in a relationship with a man named Jeremy Williams. According to prosecutors, Siple agreed to let Williams sexually abuse her daughter in exchange for money. Reports at trial put the number at $2,500, later negotiated down to $1,300. Williams never paid it.
That night, Kamarie was taken from her home in Georgia and brought across the river to an abandoned house in Phenix City, a home that used to belong to Williams. She would not leave that house alive.
Before this becomes a story about a courtroom, it needs to be a story about a little girl. Kamarie Holland was born on November 23rd, 2016. She was a preschool student. People who knew her described a child who smiled constantly. Her cousin later said in court that he had never met a kid who smiled as much as she did. She had a big sister. She had a father who loved her. She would have turned nine this past November. None of what happens next changes who she was before it happened. That’s worth remembering as this story moves forward.
The next morning, Kristy Siple called the police. She said she woke up and her daughter was gone, that she’d last seen Kamarie around midnight, and the front door was open. An extensive search began across the area. That same night, Kamarie’s body was found inside the same abandoned house Williams had once owned. Investigators would later determine what happened inside that house. Williams raped the child. He filmed it. He forced her to consume methamphetamine, and then, using a ligature, he strangled her to death. Court records confirmed that Williams continued to assault her body after her death, and recorded that as well.
Police identified Williams almost immediately. He was arrested within days. This wasn’t a case built on circumstantial evidence. Investigators recovered video. Williams had filmed his own crimes on his phone. DNA evidence tied him to the scene. His car was found at the house. Russell County District Attorney Rick Chancey would later say it plainly, “We had DNA. We had his confession. We had his car there at his house. It was a good case. The video slammed the door on it.”
Kristy Siple was arrested weeks later on December 28th, 2021, after her involvement in the crime came to light. Before her arrest, she had given a tearful television interview claiming her daughter was the essence of her life. She was later charged with felony murder and human sex trafficking. In March 2024, prosecutors dropped the murder charge against her. She pleaded guilty to sex trafficking instead. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison and will not face the death penalty.
Williams’ arrest in Alabama reopened a case more than 4,000 miles away. In January 2005 in North Pole, Alaska, Williams’ 1-month-old daughter, Nadia, died. At the time, investigators found signs of blunt force injury but ruled her manner of death undetermined. Williams had refused to take a polygraph or sit for police interviews. After his arrest for Kamarie’s murder, Alaska authorities reopened that case. In December 2022, a Fairbanks grand jury indicted Williams for second-degree murder in his daughter’s death. He also faced prior allegations of child abuse dating back to 2009. A case where a jury acquitted him in 2012. At his sentencing for Kamarie’s murder, a woman testified that Williams had molested her when she was 4 years old. She called him, in her words, a monster. None of these additional cases were part of the Alabama capital trial. They are presented here as documented public record. Not as part of a legal case against him for Kamarie’s death.
In March 2024, Williams pleaded guilty to all four capital murder charges. When a judge asked why, given that he knew a guilty plea could still lead to a death sentence, Williams said he simply wanted to, in his words, expedite the process. Under Alabama law, a guilty plea in a capital case still requires a jury trial to formally determine guilt. That trial began April 8th, 2024. Jurors were shown video evidence recorded by Williams himself. Reporting at the time indicated Williams told the court he confessed because he wanted to get right with God before what he expected would eventually be his execution. On April 12th, 2024, after 3 days of trial, the jury convicted him on four counts of capital murder along with sodomy, sexual abuse of a child, production of child sexual abuse material, human trafficking, and abuse of a corpse. Three days later, Judge David Johnson sentenced him to death on all four capital counts.
At sentencing, the court heard from the people Kamarie left behind. Her father told the court Williams did not deserve to live. He later told a local newspaper, “Kamarie was too precious for what happened to her.” Her sister, in a letter read aloud, remembered Kamarie as sweet and caring. Her grandmother told the court her granddaughter would never have a prom, a graduation, or a wedding. She called Williams immature, demonic, selfish, and godless. Even Williams’ own ex-wife took the stand condemning him for the death of their infant daughter in Alaska and now for Kamarie.
Most death row inmates spend decades fighting their sentence. Williams didn’t. In May 2025, just over a year after his sentencing, Williams asked the judge to let him waive his right to appeal entirely. A hearing was held to determine whether he was mentally competent to make that decision. The judge ruled that he was. His case still required one mandatory review. In March 2026, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals upheld his conviction and death sentence. Williams represented himself during that process and did not file a legal brief challenging it.
This is where the case draws criticism from opponents of the death penalty. The Equal Justice Initiative, an organization that opposes capital punishment, has pointed out that because Williams waived his jury sentencing hearing, no evidence about his background or mental health was ever formally presented to the court. And the Alabama Supreme Court authorized his execution without hearing that evidence. Supporters of the outcome, including prosecutors, have pointed to the strength of the evidence and Williams’ own repeated, competency-confirmed insistence on moving forward.
On June 16th, 2026, the Alabama Supreme Court authorized his execution. Two days later, Governor Kay Ivey set the date, August 13th, 2026. In his final 24 hours, Jeremy Williams was not alone. His wife visited him. So did his mother, father, stepmother, and brother. He spoke by phone with his grandmother and his aunt. He ate grits and gravy for breakfast on his second to last day, a hamburger and fries for lunch, beef and rice for dinner, vending machine snacks throughout the day, chips, candy, soda. On the morning of his execution, he declined breakfast entirely. For his final meal, he requested something simple: cheese pizza.
At 5:53 p.m., the curtain to the execution chamber opened. Williams was already strapped to the gurney, covered mostly by a white sheet. Three witnesses sat in the room. One woman, wearing a shirt that read “Mama loves you”, began to cry. Williams’ death warrant was read aloud. Then he was asked if he had any final words. A member of the execution team held a microphone to his mouth. “I want to thank God for forgiving me for my sins so I can meet him in peace. Good night.”
The lethal injection began at 5:56 p.m. By 6:05, his body had stopped moving. At 6:16 p.m. Central Time, the state of Alabama declared Jeremy Williams dead. Governor Kay Ivey released a statement that night. “There are few words to adequately describe the depth and depravity of Jeremy Williams’ evil act. Kamarie Holland is an innocent girl who is no longer with us, but she finally received justice tonight.”
District Attorney Rick Chancey, who prosecuted the case from the beginning, gave a longer, more personal reaction. He said, “Kamarie’s last seconds were horrific. That baby didn’t die in peace. I’m glad Jeremy died in peace because that baby didn’t. That’s what I remember, and this is for you, Kamarie.”
One detail from that night stood apart from the rest. Kamarie’s father was barred from witnessing the execution, not because of anything related to Kamarie’s death, but because of a separate 2022 charge against him for violating a custody order years earlier. The Alabama Attorney General’s Office, which controls witness lists, did not comment on the decision. A man who wanted, more than almost anyone, to see this case reach its end, could not be there for it.
Jeremy Williams asked the state of Alabama to kill him and on August 13th, 2026, it did. He said he found peace. Kamarie Holland never got the chance to. When someone waives every right the law gives them and asks to die, is that justice moving faster, or justice moving without the scrutiny it’s supposed to have?
