TEXAS – Authorities in two states are investigating how a former New Orleans area cop turned up stripped, bound and beaten in Texas last week after vanishing the day before from a Louisiana town some 800 miles away.
Wayne Williams, of Jefferson Parish, vanished at around 11:30 a.m. last Wednesday after calling his wife to tell her he was having car trouble on a trip to Baton Rouge, The Times-Picayune reported.
A tow truck arrived on Old Hammond Highway where Williams had told his wife he broke down, but found no sign of the 34-year-old or his car, the newspaper said.
One day later, deputies and firefighters in Texas responding to a car fire discovered the former Gretna police officer in his boxers and socks, dumped on a desolate highway near Tulia, Tex. — some 14 hours and around 800 miles away.
Williams’ hands were tied, and he had been beaten, burned and cut.
His torched car was nearby, according to local reports.
Authorities were investigating the incident as a kidnapping and arson.
Williams’ father told New Orleans’ WVUE-TV that his son was beaten and robbed by two men who stopped to help him after his car broke down in Louisiana.
Cops haven’t confirmed the father’s statements.
Williams was released from a Lubbock, Tex., hospital on Monday, but hasn’t made any statements about what happened to him.
A father of two, he worked for both the Gretna police department and the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, and recently was a security guard at an auto racing track, according to WVUE.
The FBI and the Texas Ranger Division are also investigating the case.
