Third lawsuit filed alleging Johnson City police covered up for serial rapist • Tennessee Lookout

A third lawsuit has been filed against Johnson City, its police department and more than two dozen officers by a woman who claims police officers accepted bribes to protect a serial rapist who drugged her during an attempted sexual assault and then pushed her out of a fifth-story window.

Mikayla Evans suffered life-threatening injuries that left her bedridden for two years after she fell from the apartment of Johnson City businessman Sean Williams in September 2020.

Johnson City police did not investigate, arrest or charge Williams, but intentionally destroyed evidence – and allowed Williams to do so in exchange for cash, the lawsuit says. The suit was filed last week in federal court in Greeneville, Tennessee.

The actions and omissions of the Johnson City Police Department following Evans’ fall “shock the conscience,” the lawsuit says.

The officers’ behavior was “extreme, outrageous and not tolerated by civilized society,” it says.

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The lawsuit, first reported by WJHL-TV, is the latest development in an ongoing corruption scandal centering on allegations that Johnson City police accepted bribes to protect Williams, who is now linked to the sexual assault of more than 50 women and the sexual exploitation of children, all of which he documented on video and photographs.

The allegations of police corruption first came to light in 2022, when former special assistant U.S. attorney Kateri Dahl filed a whistleblower lawsuit against then-Johnson City Police Chief Karl Turner and the city, claiming her efforts to investigate sexual assault allegations against Williams were thwarted.

Last year, a lawsuit filed by nine women alleged that Johnson City police officers engaged in an even broader corrupt conspiracy to protect Williams after he was accused of sexual assault by multiple women.

The lawsuit has now become a class action on behalf of everyone sexually harassed by Williams — and all victims whose sexual harassment reports were mishandled by Johnson City police over a five-year period. The latest filings presented bank records as evidence of $2,000 weekly extortion payments from Johnson’s company to police and noted that attorneys in the case are cooperating with the Justice Department in a possible criminal investigation of the police department.

Williams, 52, is currently in federal custody awaiting trial on federal and state charges related to the sexual exploitation of children and a previous prison escape.

Attorneys for Williams and Evans did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

“These claims relate to incidents that occurred nearly four years ago and the allegations are largely the same ones we continue to deny in other litigation,” Johnson City said in an emailed statement.

“We have not seen any evidence to date to support allegations of corruption against the Johnson City Police Department and continue to welcome any investigation that could dispel such allegations,” it said.

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A night in Johnson City escalates into violence

The latest lawsuit describes this sequence of events in the early morning hours of September 19, 2020:

Evans had been drinking a few beers with friends in downtown Johnson City before heading out to meet a friend at a nearby bar.

But instead of finding her boyfriend there, he found himself in front of a garage downtown that belonged to Williams. Loud music and lights were coming from the garage. Inside, they saw Williams “partying” with two other people. Evans heard a voice from the garage saying, “Come in.” She and her friend went inside.

Within 20 minutes, Evans noticed her speech becoming slurred, which she later suspected was the effect of the drugs. She did not remember being taken to Williams’ apartment across the street, but later security camera footage showed Evans, her friend and Williams entering.

Shortly after 2:30 a.m., she was attacked by Williams. “Williams attempted to sexually assault (Evans) and during this altercation, pushed (Evans) out the window of his five-story apartment building,” the lawsuit states.

The friend fled. No further details about the friend are given in the complaint.

Once at the hospital, Evans was intubated and underwent multiple surgeries for pelvic, neck, skull and other fractures.

Evans’ mother repeatedly asked a Johnson City police officer who came to the hospital to test her daughter for date rape drugs, but “the JCPD did not allow (Evans) to be tested.” The lawsuit also alleges that Evans’ rape kit was “improperly administered.”

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Half a million dollars and a duffel bag full of weapons

While Evans was receiving emergency medical treatment, two Johnson City police officers arrived at Williams’ apartment. Once inside, they saw video surveillance cameras placed around the apartment, including a camera pointed at the window from which Evans fell. Williams told officers the camera did not record anything.

According to the lawsuit, officers took a safe containing $500,000 in cash from the apartment. When the safe was returned to Williams much later, it contained only $81,000 – missing funds that the lawsuit says were likely taken as payment for Williams not investigating Evans’ attempted murder.

At Williams’ request, the officers then left the apartment, but left the cameras and all other evidence unsecured.

A short time later – about an hour and a half after Evans’ fall – officers returned to take Williams away for police questioning, but allowed him to keep his phone, which was connected to the video cameras in his apartment.

At the station, Williams “tampered with data on his cell phone” while an officer watched and did nothing, the lawsuit says. Williams was also allowed to keep his cell phone when he was alone in an interrogation room. Then the police let him go home.

When police returned to the apartment at 10 a.m. with the search warrant, all of the video cameras officers had previously seen had been removed. Police found them hidden in a closet under paper towels.

Williams and an accomplice also used the time since his release to hide “firearms and illegal drugs found throughout the apartment” in a travel bag on the roof.

During the search, officers found a handwritten list on Williams’ nightstand with the first names of 23 women. Under the word “raped” was a detail that is not mentioned in Evans’ lawsuit but is described in the other two pending lawsuits.

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“Had JCPD officers properly secured, seized and searched the digital evidence in Williams’ apartment that night, they would have found evidence that Williams drugged (Evans) and caused her fall,” the lawsuit states.

The video evidence seized by officers – four phones, four computers, three memory cards – was not forensically searched for evidence.

It took another seven months for Williams to face charges related to the police search of his home that night, but these charges had no direct connection with what had happened to Evans.

They were tied to the ammunition that the police found on the roof.

Dahl, the federal prosecutor who later filed the whistleblower lawsuit against Johnson City, obtained an indictment against Williams for illegal possession of ammunition in April 2021.

Police botched their subsequent efforts to arrest Williams on those charges, allowing him to escape, Dahl claims.

Williams was arrested two years later by campus police in North Carolina. The digital devices he had with him contained video and photographic recordings of Williams’ assaults on 52 women, as well as three recordings of sexual assaults on children. Among the women in the images are those who had previously reported their sexual assaults to Johnson City police, who took no action, according to court records in other cases.

Williams’ next hearing in federal court is scheduled for July 16. He is charged with escape and attempted escape from custody.

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