Not all car dealers are scum, but this one certainly is; a former Austin Volkswagen and Toyota dealer financed a million-dollar plot that ended with two people dead in Tennessee.
Erik Maund met Holly Williams—who worked as an escort—while visiting his son at college, and pursued a relationship. Her occasional boyfriend and abuser William Lanway caught wind of the tryst and tracked Maund down, demanding $25,000 from the wealthy Texan in exchange for not telling his family about his time with Williams. Maund then enlisted a private security firm to facilitate the surveillance and eventual kidnapping and murder of Williams and Lanway.
A federal jury in Nashville found Maund, as well as former U.S. Marines special forces Bryon Brockway and Adam Carey, guilty in the murder of Williams and Lanway, sentencing will occur some time in 2024, but the trio face potential life in prison. A fourth co-conspirator, formal Israel Defense Force agent Gilad Peled, pleaded guilty last year and cooperated with the investigation for a reduced sentence.
A few weeks following Maund’s last visit with Williams in February of 2020, Lanway tracked him down by his cell phone number (he was using a fake name), and threatened to unveil his affair to Maund’s wife. That was when Maund contacted Peled to have his blackmailer investigated. After the information gathering portion of the mission hadn’t turned up anything interesting over the course of several days, Brockway proposed that he and Carey could kill Lanway in exchange for $100,000 each. Maund was all too happy to jump at the proposal, according to Peled’s testimony.
On March 13, Brockway and Carey killed Lanway at Williams’ apartment, then drove the body and Williams to a construction site. Police say Williams was shot at the construction site, and both bodies were placed in an Acura TL and pushed into a ditch off the gravel construction site road. Maund left a five-star review for the company, SpearTip Security, on Google. “Speartip is very professional and on top of it. They get the job done in an expedited time. Couldn’t imagine using anyone else!!” Good job on the murder!
“It’s not going to bring Holly and William back, but they now know that the people who murdered them are going to be held accountable for what they’ve done,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Rob McGuire.
Maund is clearly the kind of man who thought enough money could make his problems go away. At the time of her murder, Williams was 33 years old and working as a medical aesthetician. This plot was brought upon her by five men who deemed her life insignificant. The man who’d spent a night with her just a month prior paid $955,000 to end her life. Two men who pledged an oath to support and defend the constitution accepted $100,000 each to deprive two people of life without due process of law.
Erik Maund’s grandfather Charles Maund started the dealership network in 1957, and all remaining members of the network were sold last year by Charles Maund’s son Doug. Charles Maund Volkswagen sold last year to Vanguard Automotive Group, and Charles Maund Toyota has been renamed Toyota of North Austin, now a member of the Group 1 Automotive Inc.