Bradley Williams has been declared dead. A judged made the ruling concerning the 31-year-old, who vanished June 7, 2001, after he was last seeing enjoying himself at the now-closed Metropolis night club.
His parents, Judy and Danny Williams, requested a petition to declare Bradley dead after several attempts to find him or link him to a string of disappearances failed.
“It was like putting an to his life,” Judy Williams told the Tampa Tribune after a brief telephone hearing over the phone from their home in Michigan.
The young man—who would have turned 41 this past June—has had no activity on his credit report and savings he had in his bank account have never been touched, other than by the bank collecting fees, according to Tampa police Detective Charles Massucci. Massucci testified during the hearing that he and other investigators have continually searched for evidence that Williams might be alive.
Hillsborough Circuit Judge Claudia Isom’s ruling allows the family to close the account and will pave the way for a death certificate for their son. That will allow the couple to accept a $5,000 life insurance policy on their son.
Police have suspected that Williams’ disappearance was related to those of other gay men who vanished between 2001 and 2003 at the hands of Steven Lorenzo and Scott Schweickert.
Lorenzo is serving 200 years in federal prison after being convicted of federal drug and conspiracy charges in the drugging and sexual torture of nine other men, two of whom died, Jason Galehouse and Michael Wachholtz.
According to evidence in Lorenzo’s trial, including testimony from the seven men who survived the attacks, he lured gay men to his Seminole Heights home, where he slipped them the drug GHB and tortured them. No forensic evidence ever linked the two to Williams, however.
Galehouse’s body was never recovered, but investigators found his DNA in blood stains on the cobblestone floor of Lorenzo’s garage. Waccholtz’s body was discovered in the back of his Jeep Cherokee.
Lorenzo’s co-defendant, Schweickert, told investigators Lorenzo killed Galehouse and then dismembered him in the garage, throwing body parts in trash containers around the area.
Schewickert is serving 40 years in federal prison for conspiring with Lorenzo. Neither has been officially charged with the murders of Galehouse or Waccholtz.
