After Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (8 page)

“Over Hansford’s legs (and facing his head) was an upright chair, upholstered and of heavy antique wood construction.
One rear leg of this chair was firmly on top of the material of Hansford’s right trouser leg.
”
[Note: One of two things could have caused this: Either Jim or police at the scene could have inadvertently moved the chair.]

“On the desk, at the left-front and directly next to the right arm of the chair just mentioned, was an extinguished marijuana cigarette and a burn hole. The cigarette appeared to have been ground out on the leather desk top. A plastic bag of marijuana lay adjacent.

“Also on the desk, at the right arm of one seated there, was a stack of papers which had clearly been hit with a bullet, with papers and fragments strewn about the desk top, and on the floor behind and to the right of one seated there. And behind the desk, on the floor, was a damaged metal commemorative belt buckle which had evidently been in the stack of papers when it was hit. On top of the stack was an
undamaged
‘T.V. Guide’ which had obviously been put there after the stack itself had been shot.”
[Note: It appears as though Jim had altered the crime scene with the ‘T.V. Guide.’]

“Finally—also on top of the desk, directly in front of the seat—was a German Luger pistol. And
on top of the pistol, including the grip, were paper fragments
, indicating that the gun had been placed there
before
the adjacent pile of papers was hit.”
[Note: Jim said he had used this Luger to shoot Danny, but the gun had already been fired before Danny had supposedly fired into the pile of papers that had produced the fragments that landed on the pistol.]

“In the seat of the desk chair were found lead fragments, presumed to be from the bullet which had struck the pile of papers and the belt buckle—and indicating that no one was sitting in or obstructing the seat when the bullet was fired into the pile.”
[Note: Jim was supposedly sitting in that seat when Danny fired at him.]

“Accepting that at some point they were together in the study and arguing, as Williams claimed, and that the canceled trip was a point of contention, it’s plausible to imagine that Hansford, sitting in the chair across from Williams and to his left, in spiteful anger, snubbed out a marijuana cigarette on the leather desk top. Whereupon, Williams reached into a drawer at his right hand, pulled out a Luger and shot Hansford. As he saw that he was being shot, Hansford began to rise from the chair and move to Williams’ right, towards the exit from the room. As he moved, fatally shot in the heart (aorta), he brought his hands to his chest, turned, and fell face-down on the floor along the length of the desk. In his rising and falling, Hansford knocked over the chair. Williams then walked around or leaned over the desk and delivered
coup de grace
shots to the head and the back. He then put the gun down on the middle of the desk, went into another room, got another Luger, came back and stood at the right-front of the desk—by Hansford’s head—and shot at ‘himself,’ hitting the pile of papers with the buckle in it …

“The bullet tearing into the pile of papers scattered small paper fragments over the gun on the desk (the gun, according to Williams’ version, should not have been there when the papers were hit) and lead fragments in the seat of the chair (which, according to his version, should have been obstructed by his body when the papers/buckle were hit).

“Having missed ‘himself,’ he may have wiped the gun for prints. Then he reached into the bloody space under Hansford’s chest and with his finger and thumb around the wrist, pulled the right hand out, smearing the blood on the back of the hand as he so (while at the same time ‘cleaning’ the lighter area in the blood under his own finger, at the wrist), and placed the hand flat on the top of the grip of the pistol on the floor.

“Somewhere in here, he called his friend (Goodman) and his lawyer (Duffy).

“And, sometime during the course of contriving the scene in the study, putting things in order for Hansford to appear to have been shot while standing right-front, he placed upright the chair at left-front … but thoughtlessly failed to notice that a leg of the chair had come down on the victim’s trouser leg. (Williams emphatically denied this, saying he never even went near the chair or Hansford’s legs.)

“Presumably at the same time, he laid the ‘T.V. Guide’ on the top of the pile of bullet-wounded papers.

“He then set about ‘wrecking’ the house in the area of the foyer and living room, where he claimed the initial ‘attack’ and continued ‘rampage’ occurred. (Testimony and photographs of the entire scene indicate that the more valuable of the damaged items were very ‘carefully’ broken.)

“This done, he called the police.”

The Gunshot Residue

The lack of any gunshot powder on Danny’s hands was a major factor in the prosecution’s case because Jim tried to justify shooting Danny on the basis that Danny shot at him first. Police had supposedly wrapped Danny’s hands in brown paper bags at the scene, and then to protect the evidence, swabbed them for gunpowder and sent the samples to the state lab for analysis.”

Spencer Lawton called on several state experts to testify that even though the German Luger that Danny allegedly fired did produce significant residue, none was present on Danny’s hands.

Neither German Luger had fingerprints on them, which was not unusual.

9 mm Luger by Rama

An early-morning incident took place on April 3, 1981, a month before Jim shot Danny. Jim called the police, and Corporal Mike Anderson and his officers went to Mercer House. According to Lawton’s case summary: “They arrived to find Williams downstairs pointing out various items of damaged furniture which Williams said Hansford had broken in a rampage during which he had also threatened both himself and Williams, and had fired a pistol both outside and inside the house. There was an apparently dismantled German Luger pistol lying in two pieces on a table by the door; Williams said it had broken apart when Hansford threw it down. The pistol smelled of having recently been fired. Williams told the officers that Hansford was upstairs, armed, and probably wouldn’t be taken alive. The officers proceeded carefully up the stairs, where to their surprise, they found Hansford asleep—passed out on a bed, not armed. When they woke him and he heard the accusations against him, he became belligerent and uncooperative. He appeared to be heavily under the influence. Williams told the officers, according to Cpl. Anderson’s report, ‘that for some time now the suspect had been on drugs and becomes mentally unstable.’ In the bedroom, also according to the report, they ‘found a bullet marking in the floor.’ Williams said he wanted to prosecute. The officers arrested Hansford. Later that day, when Williams declined to prosecute him, Hansford was released from jail.”

Lawton believed that the incident was likely a staged hoax. The rationale for calling police to Mercer House a month before the shooting was to establish a police record of Danny allegedly going on a destructive rampage, fueled by drugs and alcohol. Contributing to this belief was the fact that the gun that Jim said Danny had shot was downstairs on a table, whereas Danny and the bullet hole in the floor was upstairs. Also, Danny was either sleeping or passed out, but when awakened and asked about the incident, he denied it and became belligerent.

Lawton said that Jim characterized the relationship between him and Danny, 21, “generally as that of Henry Higgins to Liza Doolittle: He had taken Hansford off the street and under his wing, in an effort to ‘save him from himself.’” He also characterized Danny to police “as immature, undependable, and unstable—tormented by feelings of betrayal and rejection—even sporadically violent.”

A week later, on April 10, Jim made first-class reservations for Danny and himself on a Delta Airlines flight to London and then into Geneva, departing May 3.

Lawton found it curious that a week after the April 3 episode, Jim had made reservations for himself and Danny to go to Europe. Jim’s reason for having a companion on the trip was his hypoglycemia, which had led to fainting spells. Lawton reasoned that Danny had demonstrated himself to be an unreliable and unpredictable choice for a companion entrusted with Jim’s health.

Jim’s Version of the Shooting

The information in Jim’s version of the shooting is taken from Spencer Lawton’s
The Williams Case: The History: A Summary
.

In the early morning hours of May 2, 1981, Jim shot Danny three times with a 9mm Luger semi-automatic pistol, killing him. Danny was hit once in the chest, once in the back, and once behind the right ear. Jim, unscathed, claimed self-defense.

“On the night of the killing, according to Williams’ testimony, the two of them had been to a drive-in movie where Hansford smoked marijuana and drank Wild Turkey bourbon steadily. They returned around midnight. Hansford began to lament his friendlessness, difficulties with his girlfriend, his disappointing relationship with his mother, the hopelessness of his future,
et cetera
. He also complained about being bumped from the trip, saying ‘you gave my trip to Europe away.’ Meanwhile they’d completed a computer game and a round of backgammon in the living room. Suddenly Hansford ‘turned into a raging madman’ and attacked Williams, who broke away and retreated into his study across the hall to call police, ‘as I had thirty days before.’ Hansford followed him in there, so Williams called Joe Goodman instead, saying he was doing so to ‘tell him that the trip to Europe is off.’ That done, Hansford left the study in a fit of temper, and Williams sat down at his desk. Almost immediately, he heard the sound of crashing furniture out in the hall, and suddenly Hansford reappeared in the study across the desk, to the right and in front of Williams. Saying ‘I’m leaving this town tomorrow, but you’re leaving tonight,’ Hansford pointed a Luger pistol at Williams and fired, missing Williams but hitting a pile of papers on top of the desk just to the right of a person seated there. On his second shot, the cartridge jammed and the weapon misfired. As Williams was being fired upon, according to his testimony, he reached into an adjacent chest of drawers with his right hand, pulled out a loaded gun (another Luger) and rose from the seated position to standing, returning fire. Williams said he shot three rounds at Hansford, hitting him each time, even as he spun and fell to the floor—hitting him in the chest, in the back, and behind the right ear. Then, while in a state of emotional upheaval, Williams walked around the right side of the desk, looked at the body, returned to his position behind the desk, sat on the edge of it, [and] made three phone calls: to Goodman, to his lawyer, and then to the police.

“Jim met the police at the door. ‘I shot him. He’s in the other room,’ he said as he showed the police into his study.”

What Happened Next

Coincidentally, the police that arrived at Mercer House were led by the same Corporal Mike Anderson who had responded to the April 3 incident. Joe and his girlfriend (now wife) Nancy arrived at the same time as the police.

Joe and Nancy briefly saw Danny lying on the floor, but they were both quickly sent to one of the other drawing rooms in the house to wait.

Jim was taken to jail around 7
AM
. He called Joe and told him where to find $25,000 in cash that Jim had stashed around Mercer House. Joe took the cash in a paper bag to bail Jim out. With the court’s permission and Jim’s bond increased to $100,000, Jim and Joe flew to Europe on an antiques-buying trip on May 6, 1981.

A Chatham County Grand Jury indicted Jim for murder with malice aforethought on June 12, 1981.

On July 2, 1981, Emily Hansford Bannister, Danny’s mother, filed a $10 million lawsuit against Jim for the “execution-style” murder of her son. The lawsuit was put on hold until the criminal case against Jim came to conclusion.

The Defense in the First Trial

The defense brought in Dr. Joseph Burton, a respected medical examiner from Atlanta’s DeKalb and Cobb counties. Burton testified that gunshot residue tests were not reliable indicators of whether an individual fired a weapon and from his analysis of the scene that Jim was standing behind the desk when he shot Danny.