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Texas Auto Exec Indicted in Murder-for-Hire Plot Targeting Ex-Girlfriend, Her Ex-Boyfriend: Feds

Investigators say Erik Charles Maund hired three men to shoot his ex-girlfriend and her ex-boyfriend after the latter tried to blackmail him.

A Texas auto executive has been indicted in the contract killing of his ex-girlfriend and her former boyfriend, the Justice Department said. Three other men were also arrested over the murder-for-hire kidnapping plot. Erik Charles Maund, a businessman with his family’s Maund Auto Group, allegedly hired the trio—an Austin security specialist, a purported member of the Israeli Defense Force, and a special operations U.S. Marine—to kill the pair, identified as Holly Williams and William Lanway. Their bodies were discovered at a Tennessee construction site in March 2020, according to a federal indictment unsealed earlier this week.

Federal prosecutors say Maund put out a hit on the two after Lanway threatened to expose the married mogul’s affair with Williams unless he received “some kind of monetary payment.” Maund then “set events in motion to kidnap, threaten and intimidate” Williams and Lanway, the indictment said. He allegedly hired Adam Carey, Gilad Peled, and Byron Brockway to carry out the double murder, promising them more than $750,000, according to court records. The men face up to life in prison if convicted.