Texas car dealer Erik Charles Maund charged with murder-for-hire after allegedly paying hitman to kill mistress and her boyfriend
Months after an Austin car dealership executive was arrested for allegedly arranging the murder of his mistress and her boyfriend, federal prosecutors have charged him and three of his associates with murder-for-hire.
On Thursday, Erik Charles Maund, 47, Gilad Peled, 48, Bryon Brockway, 47, and Adam Carey, 31, were also charged with conspiracy to kidnap resulting in death, and kidnapping resulting in death, Mark H. Wildasin, the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, said in a news release.
In December, Maund, a partner at Maund Automotive Group in Austin, was accused in a federal indictment of paying Peled, Brockway and Carey to kidnap and kill his former mistress, Holly Williams, 33, and her boyfriend, William Lanway, 36, in Nashville, Tennessee, in March 2020.
According to the indictment, Maund, who would occasionally travel to Nashville to visit a relative, emailed Williams at the beginning of February 2020 to see her during a trip that month. The following month, Maund received a series of text messages from Lanway, Williams' boyfriend, demanding money to keep his relationship with Williams a secret, police said.
Maund then enlisted the services of Peled, who presented himself as a former member of the Israel Defense Forces, and Brockway, and Carey, two former active-duty Marines, authorities said.
According to prosecutors, on March 5, 2020, Maund withdrew $15,000 from his bank account, the same day a relative of Brockway who worked for an internet-based security company provided Peled with an "intelligence report." Carey and others travelled from out of state into Nashville to surveil Williams and Lanway and created a Pinger account to attempt to communicate with the couple. Then on March 11, 2020, Peled deposited $8,000 in cash into a business account and $7,000 in cash into his personal bank account.
Prosecutors said that on March 12, Brockway and Carey confronted Willilams and Lanway in the parking lot of Williams' apartment complex in Nashville, fatally shooting Lanway. The pair then allegedly kidnapped Williams, driving her and Lanway's body to a construction site before murdering Williams and discarding both the bodies.
That same day, they allege Maund wired $150,000 to a bank account controlled by Peled.
Months later, on December 10, 2021, police picked up all four of the alleged co-conspirators — arresting Maund following a traffic stop near Austin, Peled at the airport in Austin, Brockway in San Diego, and Carey at his home in North Carolina. All four remain in custody.
The Justice Department said that since March 11, 2020, Maund has transferred over $750,000 in funds to a bank account controlled by Peled to pay his three co-defendants for carrying out the plot.
Following their arrests, prosecutors say Peled told Maund that one of the co-conspirators wanted more money for their part in the alleged murders.
"Maund agreed to pay the co-conspirator an additional $25,000 and then offered Peled $50,000 to arrange to pay Brockway $100,000 for the murder of the co-conspirator, to cut off any future requests for payment for the original murders," the Justice Department said.
If convicted, all four men face up to life in prison.