Skip to content
Advertisement

Iowa man guilty of murdering Black man whose body was found burning in ditch

Advertisement
Steven Vogel, 31, Julia Cox, 55; Roy Garner, 57; and Cody Johnson, 29

By: Carol Ozemhoya | Across Black America

A jury convicted an Iowa man of first-degree murder Tuesday in the killing of Michael Williams, a Black man whose body was found burning in a ditch last year, reports NBC News.

Steven Vogel, 32, who is wWhite, was also found guilty of abuse of a corpse in a case that Williams’ relatives see as a possible hate crime but authorities described as a relationship dispute that turned lethal.

Three other people, including Vogel’s mother, were charged with abuse of a corpse and accessory after the fact. Each pleaded not guilty, and their cases are pending, court records show.

“I’m very thankful the jury verdict came out the way it did,” Adam DeCamp, special agent in charge at the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, said Tuesday.

“It gives peace to the Williams family and the Grinnell community,” he said, referring to the small town where Williams lived.

Paula Dee Terrell, Williams’ aunt, said Williams’ relatives — several of whom traveled to Iowa for the trial from Syracuse, New York, where Williams, 44, grew up — were overjoyed with the verdict. But they also said authorities minimized the role that race may have played in the murder.

Before Williams’ body was set on fire, authorities said he was most likely strangled. But in court, Terrell said, a pathologist from the medical examiner’s office described a rope tied around Williams’ neck — a method that Terrell said recalled a lynching. NBC News has not independently verified Terrell’s claim in the autopsy report.

And during a family meeting at the Grinnell Police Department with the assistant attorney general and other officials in October 2020, Terrell said, her family pushed authorities to pursue the case as a possible hate crime. But the officials said a first-degree murder conviction carried a greater maximum sentence, she recalled them saying.

Advertisement

Latest