Winters Murder Suspect Will Face Charges In Yolo County After Las Vegas Arrest
LAS VEGAS (CBS13) — William Gardner III will face murder charges in Yolo County after his arrest in Las Vegas early Tuesday morning after calling the CBS13 newsroom.
Gardner is accused of shooting and killing his ex-girlfriend Leslie Pinkston on Nov. 18 as she sat in her car in Winters. He's been on the run since then
He was holed up in a Las Vegas apartment as police are saying he held a man, woman and toddler hostage. Gardner called the CBS13 newsroom on Monday night, asking to talk to someone at our station.
"I regret, I regret just a lot of things, just as far as being in a lot of situations," he said.
But that's as close to a confession as Gardner would come, with the suspected killer speaking from the apartment surrounded by police.
"Right now there are various different police; I don't know from how many agencies," he said. "They are actually surrounding this area that I'm in. I can hear them through the walls actually."
Gardner run ended on Monday at that Vegas apartment, but he wasn't alone.
"Right now there are people inside the house with me, present right now as well," he said. "I had those people speak out through the door, so they know that I'm not in here by myself."
A man, woman and her 3-year-old daughter were inside. They told CBS13's Derek Shore over the phone that they weren't being held hostage. They would eventually be released.
While Gardner said he wanted to get his side of the story out, he wouldn't talk about the murder, only his tumultuous relationship with Pinkston. Gardner had recently been arrested for a domestic dispute.
"She actually came to visit me, and over the recorded phone call visit, she also stated that she did all this just to prove a lesson to me, to show me a lesson to prove to me," he said. "I would definitely say she loved the control aspect of everything, you know."
By the time the CBS13 News at 10 went on the air on Monday, investigators from the Yolo County Sheriff's Department and the U.S. Marshals were in our newsroom.
Gardner would call back after our 11 p.m. newscast on CW31, when a detective would talk him into surrendering. He was in custody at 12:40 a.m. on Tuesday.
