Episode 116-Mary Ann Willis and Dara Watson, Two Stories of Domestic Violence

October is the designated month for bringing awareness to Domestic Violence, but it is a topic I believe we should be talking about year round, as it still remains a prevalent issue in our society. I’ve discussed several cases tied to domestic violence in this podcast, including Nancy Cooper, from Episode 18, Missing runners in North Carolina, Patty Jo Pulley from Episode 45, Across State Lines, Maryann and Elaine Boczkowski in Episode 48, Two Wives, Two Deaths, and Shelby Wilkie from Episode 85. Many other missing persons cases likely have ties to domestic violence but just don’t have the solid evidence yet to back that up.

Marie “Mary Ann” Willis

On January 4, 1993, 30-year-old Marie “Mary Ann” Willis was in the legal affairs office at the Myrtle Beach Air Force Base in South Carolina. She was there waiting to testify in a military hearing that her husband, Jeromy J.J. Willis, had burned her with a propane torch and choked her on two separate incidents in August of 1992. Although he was under direct orders to stay away from his wife, J.J. Willis entered the office anyway. Wearing his uniform, he shot his wife twice in the chest and head, with nine other people present, before fleeing the base in a military truck. Mary Ann was pronounced dead a short time later at the Grand Strand General Hospital.

From there, J.J. drove an Air-Force owned truck through the woods for a mile before crashing through a fence and parking the vehicle behind a church. Then, he got into one of the two rental cars he had rented over that weekend and left at that location. Police distributed fliers with a description of the 23-year-old—he was five feet, ten inches tall, 162 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. They believed he was driving a white four-door Plymouth Acclaim with a North Carolina license tag and a Thrifty Rental Car sticker on the bumper. Originally from southern Ohio, J.J. was serving as a grounds technician on the Myrtle Beach Air Force Base at the time of the murder. He’d been in the Army before transferring to the Air Force in June of 1988.

With the help of the U.S. Marshal Service, local police also distributed posters to departments all across the country. The State Law Enforcement Division stated they could find no record of J.J. purchasing the murder weapon, a 9mm pistol. The air force base said they also didn’t have any records of J.J. owning such a gun, and personnel were required to register guns if they lived on base. J.J. had been living on the base since the previous August. His case was soon turned over to the Myrtle Beach Police Department, because the air force base did not believe J.J. was still in the area, and they needed additional assistance to help track him down.

When Mary Ann Met J.J.

Mary Ann Willis had first been married to an airman at the Myrtle Beach Air Force Base, Tommy Raffia. They had their son together, and she helped support the family by working as a waitress at an establishment called the Good Times Restaurant in Surfside Beach, and then, Damon’s The Place for Ribs over in Litchfield Beach. Her manager, Jan Moore, she said got along well with the other staff and customers and also worked behind the bar. But when Raffia received orders to go to Korea, Mary Ann hesitated. She told her husband she didn’t want to go with him, and they separated in 1991.

She hadn’t been dating Jeromy J.J. Willis, who was six years her junior, long when she took a vacation in March of 1992 and married him. Two weeks after the wedding she quit her job. When the manager called her to talk about it, Mary Ann said her new husband didn’t want her working around other men. She wasn’t even allowed to go back and pick up her final paycheck. Moore heard through the grapevine that J.J. wasn’t allowing Mary Ann to drive her own car anymore, either. Moore didn’t know how bad things had gotten until she got a visit from an officer from the Myrtle Beach Air Force Base. He asked what she knew about the couple’s relationship and told her Mary Ann Willis claimed J.J. had set the propane tank on fire near her during an argument.

A Questionable Home Accident

Lorna Rozelle lived next door to Mary Ann and J.J. in the Ammons Mobile Home Park off S.C. 544. She grew closer to the young woman after an accident where J.J. allegedly lit a match to a propane tank inside the couple’s trailer and Mary Ann’s legs were severely burned. At the time, Rozelle believed the burns were the result of an accident, especially because J.J. played the role of doting and concerned husband to Mary Ann afterwards.

But on August 27, 1992, the first night Mary Ann was back at home after her hospital stay, Rozelle was startled to hear screams coming from their next door neighbors. Rozelle and her boyfriend Junior Purcell saw J.J. strangling Mary Ann, while her six-year-old son Tommy struggled to get his stepfather to release his grip. Mary Ann later told her friend she had gone along with J.J.’s story about the propane lighter being an accident, because she was worried about her son staying with her husband while she recovered. She wanted to make sure her child was safe before she alerted authorities.

Rozelle later said J.J. did what a lot of abusers do, and turned himself into a victim. He told Rozelle he couldn’t understand why his wife had pressed charges against him, claiming that he really loved her. Rozelle told him, “J.J., you can’t just burn somebody.”

After the strangling incident. Mary Ann took her son and headed back to Rhode Island, where she had family members. She wrote to Rozelle, telling her that she was doing better with the support of her family. She explained that her husband was not facing any domestic violence charges with the local police, and they had dropped the investigation into the burning incident because there were no witnesses.

J.J. Willis Quietly Makes Plans

Air Force officials told the media that J.J. had become a model airman after he turned himself into his squadron commanders on August 28, 1992. He was given orders to stay on base and then sent to alcohol rehabilitation counseling at Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas on September 25. He returned on November 6, and again was given written orders that required him to stay on base. He was supposed to check with military police throughout each day and have an escort anytime he traveled off base. He also attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. He passed a series of mental health tests. He gave no one on the base any indication of what he was planning.

After the murder, one of J.J.’s aunts was interviewed by the Myrtle Beach Sun News. She said she preferred not to use her name in the article, and pointed out that J.J. Willis had always been a mild-mannered young man who didn’t even like to see an animal hurt or in pain. Administrators at his former high school in Ironton, Ohio said he was a run-of-the-mill student, but respectful. He had run on the track team and played football, although he was not a starter for the team. Because he lived in an area in Ohio where jobs were scarce, he planned early on to join the military after graduation for job security. He had served in the Persian Gulf war. His aunt said she could think of no other reason for J.J. to kill his wife in cold blood other than “he just snapped.”

The day after the shooting, a rental car J.J. was suspected to be driving was spotted in the parking lot of a townhouse in Murrell’s Inlet. A witness said he saw a man matching J.J.’s description loitering near the mailboxes. He’d also rented a motel room in Murrell’s Inlet. J.J. had gone to two different rental car agencies to rent vehicles prior to the shooting, one, Thrifty Rental, and the other was Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Employees said the man seemed calmed and discussed needing a car to take a trip home to Ohio. They had no idea the man was picking up a getaway car before planning to murder his wife.

Investigators later determined that in the days after Mary Ann was murdered, J.J. boarded a bus in Columbia, South Carolina. He then took another bus to Ashland, Kentucky, which was near his hometown in Ohio. From there, they weren’t sure what his movements were until he arrived in the border town of Brownsville, Texas around January 13. On January 19, he drove the white Plymouth Acclaim he had rented to a parking lot near a bridge that led from Brownsville into Mexico. He had swapped out the license plate from North Carolina to Louisiana. When local police patrolled the lot, which was often used by people stashing stolen cars, they spotted the Aclaim and impounded it.

When J.J returned from Mexico and found the car missing, he called the Brownsville police station to inquire about it. The officer who took his call said he was going to transfer J.J. to a supervisor, and he quickly hung up. He called back later that afternoon, and Sgt. Willie Kingsbury answered the call. He offered to send a police car to wherever J.J. was so he could get to the police station to pick up the car. J.J. declined, saying he would take a cab. Police interviewed local cab drivers, and found one that had seen J.J. They determined he was staying at a nearby Motel 6. They staked it out, and on January 19, they saw him get into a cab and head to a nearby topless nightclub. They arrested him in the parking lot. He had a 9mm pistol with him, but did not resist the arrest.

J.J. Willis Caught in Texas

After his capture, J.J. frankly discussed his time on the run and the murder in front of reporters while at the detention center in Texas. He said, “I was going to get away, but the Texas Rangers and the FBI got damn lucky. Three more days, and I would have been gone.”

He continued to deny the domestic violence charges against him, but admitted to the murder, saying, “I know what I did was wrong. It was morally and humanely wrong. But did you ever hear that song, “I Used to Love Her, But I Had to Kill Her?” by Guns n Roses? It’s like that. I loved her so much. She would leave me. I lost everything. My career. It was only a matter of time before I lost that.”

An article that ran in the same issue announcing J.J.’s capture featured the title, “Victim at base lived—and died—by the system.” It quoted several area experts who said the system cannot protect wives from husbands determined to kill them. A clinical psychologist with the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston at the time, Dr. Connie Best, said, “It’s very hard to predict future behavior, but the biggest predictor of future behavior is past behavior. His past was chock-full of violence and those who do have a much higher risk for violence and he did.” Mary Ann Willis went through all the proper channels. She obtained a restraining order from a court in Rhode Island after she left the Myrtle Beach area and her husband. She was sitting in the legal affairs office on a military base when she was murdered. It doesn’t get more blatant than that.

When J.J. was caught after the 15-day manhunt, members of Mary Ann’s family breathed a sigh of relief. They had been living in fear that J.J. would fine them, and Mary Ann’s son, and seek to hurt them as well. The same was true for Lorna Rozelle and her boyfriend Junior Purcell. They had been staying at a hotel while J.J. was missing, because they feared retaliation from him. Rozelle had been on her way to testify at Mary Ann’s legal hearing when she got blocked at the gate at the base’s entrance. She later learned it was because the shooting had happened and her friend had been murdered.

J.J. Willis Escapes Again

In early June of 1993, while awaiting his court martial, J.J. Willis escaped from a naval brig where he was being held in Charleston, South Carolina. A guard had taken a 30-minute cigarette break and left several doors in the brig unlocked. He had last been seen around 10 p.m. and was wearing a camouflauge uniform issued to prisoners and wearing tennis shoes. For forty days, authorities searched for J.J. But on July 14, 1993, he was arrested in Fort Worth, Texas, after attempting document forgery. He had been trying to forge identification documents at a local library, using the name Robert S. Thacker. When he tried to post bail, authorities figured out his real identity. He was transported back to Charleston, South Carolina.

A Premeditated Murder

More information was revealed about J.J.’s plans to murder his wife and how he planned to carry it out at a court martial hearing that was held in Sumter, South Carolina in early December of 1993. His stepaunt, Wilma Plybon, said that J.J. had called her while he was in the alcohol rehabilitation center in Texas, telling her he wanted to rent a car, drive to Rhode Island, sneak up behind Mary Ann, and choke her to death. After he got out of the treatment center and returned to South Carolina, he bought a gun from a North Myrtle Beach pawn shop and wen to an outdoor shooting range to practice. He pawned personal items to get the cash he used to rent the three hotel rooms and two getaway cars and planned to live on the remaining money during his escape. His stepaunt had been in the Air Force legal affairs office along with her husband during the shooting. They had planned to testify on Mary Ann’s behalf.

On the day of the murder, J.J. had entered the legal affairs office, where he was immediately told that he was not supposed to be there by an Air Force officer who was present. He responded, “Sir, I want to see my wife.” J.J. ignored the orders to leave and headed down the hall, where he found Mary Ann waiting alone in a conference room. A pathologist testified that Mary Ann had been trying to run from her husband when he fired the gun. She was shot once in the back and then on the side of her head.

J.J. then turned and ran back down the corridor to another office, where his stepaunt and uncle were being interviewed by an Air Force prosecutor. His uncle, Terry Plybon, acted quickly and blocked the door with his foot before J.J. could make it all the way in. J.J. managed to squeeze one arm through and fire off a shot, which hit a plaque on the wall. He attempted to pull the trigger three more times, but the gun didn’t fire. He exited the building after that.

J.J.’s defense team explained he had lived through a “dismal childhood” in Ironton, Ohio. His mother had abandoned him at the age of three, and he lived with his father and stepmother, who was abusive. Social services had intervened when J.J. was 15 and his stepmother got drunk and fired a gun inside their home. He lived in a series of foster homes before going to live with his stepaunt, Wilma Plybon. The defense team also said J.J. felt his wife and stepaunt had betrayed him by accusing him of domestic violence, and that factored into his state of mind when he planned the murder.

J.J. pleaded guilty to the charge of murder and after the two-week court martial, was given a life sentence, which he was ordered to serve at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He would be eligible for parole in ten years.

Was Mary Ann Willis Protected Enough?

Mary Ann’s father, Eugene Mello, expressed anger that the Air Force didn’t do a better job of protecting his daughter. He felt like she should have been given protection on the day she was scheduled to testify in the legal affairs office. In response, the wing commander of the Myrtle Beach Air Force Base, said they had followed proper procedure and couldn’t have predicted what J.J. was going to do. Although he did say about Mary Ann’s family, “If that happened to my daughter, I’d feel bitter, too. I supposed they will feel bitter for the rest of their lives.”

Mello also said he didn’t like the way J.J.’s defense portrayed Mary Ann as an alcoholic and drug addict during the court martial. He said, “My daughter was not an alcoholic. The prosecution could not put anyone on the stand that could testify to my daughter’s character. Everyone who knew her, loved her.”

As far as I can tell, Jeromy J.J. Willis is still incarcerated at Fort Leavenworth. He is now 54 years old and his release date is listed as January 26, 2061. However, I did find an article from 2022 that said J.J. had escaped the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth on April 30, 1998. He and another inmate left the grounds in a garbage truck and were captured about an hour later 25 miles east of Fort Leavenworth.

Dara Watson

By all accounts, 30-year-old Dara Watson been dating her fiancé for several years and it doesn’t seem like anyone believed her life was in danger. Watson grew up in Boone, North Carolina, and her parents owned Watsonatta Western World on King Street. She graduated from Appalachian State University and then worked in finance at the nearby Tweetsie Railroad attraction. She was described by her friends and family as joyful, adventurous, and an environmentalist. She had climbed part of Mount Everest, traveled to Australia to see kangaroos, hiked the mountains of Peru.

A Whirlwind Romance

Mutual friends introduced her to a young man named David Hedrick, and they met in person for the first time at a golf tournament on Hilton Head Island in April of 2008. After a few months of dating, Watson decided to make the move to be with him in the Charleston area of South Carolina. She soon found a job working as a controller for a local company. In 2010 they moved into a stylish townhome in Mount Pleasant. They traveled together to places like Egypt, and in January 2012, Watson was excited when Hedrick proposed to her with a ring from Tiffany’s on a balcony at The Biltmore Inn in Asheville. They talked of having a small ceremony in Charleston and then chartering a catamaran in Fiji. One of their friends, a real estate agent, was helping them look for a new house closer to the city.

David Hedrick was from Moncks Corner and went to college on a basketball scholarship. He’d graduated from the College of Charleston with a business degree. While working at the Carolina Yacht Club, he met someone from Palmetto Surety Corporation who offered him a marketing job. The company insured bail bondsmen. Hedrick worked his way up the ranks and by 2012, was serving as Palmetto Surety’s president and CEO.

Was David Hedrick’s Work Causing a Strain on the Relationship?

However, according to an article that in the Post and Courier on February 15, 2012, David was struggling with some issues at his job. He was worried about the finances at his company and seemed concerned he would be held personally liable for some decisions that had been made there. Watson asked a mutual friend for some attorney recommendations and once he consulted one, he seemed relieved. The couple went to Boone on the weekend of February 4, 2012 to attend the baby shower for Watson’s sister. They left that Monday, and got back in time for Watson to pick up her Jack Russell terrier from a local boarding center around 6 p.m. She went home, sent some work e-mails, and then ceased communication with anyone.

The real estate agent friend tried to reach out to her with some listings and to see how the shower went and didn’t hear back from Watson. The next day, she failed to show up for work, prompting her boss to message her with no reply. Her boss then reached out to Hedrick, who seemed surprised Dara hadn’t gone to work. But he later texted back and said he’d heard from her. Then “Dara” supposedly texted from her own phone, telling her boss that she was fine and would return to work the next day. Watson’s sister also received similar texts.

Meanwhile, Hedrick was telling people that he and Watson were working through some things and that she’d probably gone off to stay with a friend. But when Watson missed going in to work when payroll was due, that was the final straw. She’d never done anything like that before and it was out of character. Her boss went to the local police station to report her missing on February 10.

Friends Notice a Change in David Hedrick

Around the same time, Hedrick told a close friend that Watson had called off the wedding and was breaking up with him. His friend was concerned because Hedrick had been engaged before and when that had ended, he hadn’t taken the breakup well. In fact, he’d told friends he never wanted to get married after that experience. When the friend found out Watson’s boss had filed a missing person’s report, he called Hedrick and told him that the matter was serious. He questioned why Hedrick hadn’t filed the report. The man replied with, “I guess they got to do what they got to do.” The friend called another acquaintance, and they headed over to Hedrick’s house to do a welfare check.

As they were walking up the front steps they heard a gunshot. They broke a window to get into the house and discovered David Hedrick had shot himself in the head, killing himself. He was in the master bedroom. He didn’t leave behind a note about Watson, but there was a resignation letter to his employer. His car in the garage was full of his belongings and financial records and checkbooks, like he had been planning to leave town.

Dara Watson’s Car Discovered

Investigators soon learned that Watson’s vehicle, a silver GMC Envoy, had been discovered burned out in the Francis Marion National Forest on February 7. Witnesses had seen a man matching Hedrick’s description walking out of the forest with a shovel. They found Watson’s cell phone in a retention pond near the townhouse they shared. It appeared Hedrick had been sending messages from her phone pretending to be Watson after she went missing.

When police went back to the national forest on February 17, they located Dara Watson’s body in a shallow grave about 60 yards from where her SUV had been found. She had died of a gunshot wound to the head.

Watson’s close friends didn’t believe Hedrick’s story that she had ended their relationship. She had been shopping for a wedding dress just days before she went missing and showed no signs of her relationship being in trouble. No one will ever know what happened on the night Dara Watson died, other than her life was taken by the person she trusted the most.

Show Sources:

Mary Ann Willis

Myrtle Beach Sun News

January 6, 1993

MB police take charge of manhunt

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https://www.newspapers.com/image/808480204

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https://www.newspapers.com/image/808480220

Myrtle Beach Sun News

January 10, 1993

Something had to snap