A cognitively impaired North Carolina woman, last seen alive on a doorbell camera getting into a stranger’s car last week, was found dead in the woods just miles away from where she disappeared.
Heather Williams, 25, was captured on Ring doorbell leaving her family’s Fayetteville home and getting into a “light-colored sedan with a sunroof” at around 10 p.m. on Jan. 4, according to local law enforcement.
The Fayetteville Police Department launched a missing persons investigation into Williams’ disappearance and issued an endangered person alert on Jan. 7 “due to cognitive impairment.”
However, the 25-year-old’s body was found by police officers in a wooded area at around 5 p.m. on Friday, about 5 miles from where she was last seen alive, the department said in a statement Saturday.
Williams’ death is being investigated as a homicide, the department revealed.
“It is with a heavy and broken heart that our family confirms the horrific news,” her sister, Mary Williams, wrote on Facebook Saturday.
“I pray whoever is responsible for this is held accountable and there is justice for Heather.”
Mary told WRAL that the family did not know the person driving the vehicle and speculated that Williams — who suffered cognitive impairment and had limited speech and limited use of her right leg and right arm after she was struck by a car in 2015 — may have met the individual online.
“She was just so trusting and naive to what the dangers were out there,” she said.
The same day Williams’s body was found, police also located the suspect’s vehicle.
“I just ask that people out there, if they hear anything or if they see something, you know, somebody knows something, somebody’s talked to somebody, somebody has, you know, they slip up along the way,” Mary told WRAL.
“So somebody’s got to know something.”
Investigators confirmed to CBS 17 that they have some leads they are looking into but have yet to identify a person of interest in the case.
“What happened to Heather is awful and I wouldn’t want it to happen to anybody else, and so with that person still out there, still able to harm other people, it’s horrific to think about,” Mary told CBS 17.
Mary said her family has found “comfort in the love that Heather had for God and through all her trials and tribulations, she has never lost her faith and I know we won’t lose ours either.”
“I thank God for the years we had with her,” she said.
Investigators have asked anyone with information about Williams’s case to contact Fayetteville Police Detective E. Alrafai at (910) 723-0327 or Crimestoppers at (910) 483-TIPS (8477).
