MUG SHOT Woman fakes her own kidnapping on Facebook, then gets arrested
38-year-old Thelma Williams, of Middletown OH, was arrested and charged with “making false alarms” after filming a pair of Facebook videos in which she claimed she’d been kidnapped by a mysterious masked assailant.
According to WKRC Cincinnati, Williams accused “a masked man, maybe named Tony,” of breaking into her house, tying her up, and cutting her clothes off. Her story then gets–as you might have guessed from the headline–a little erratic. From WKRC:
[Williams] told [authorities] the intruder used her phone to record this happening, then posted the videos to her Facebook account. She allegedly went on to say that the intruder called a contact in her phone and left the phone with her. That person called 911. When deputies arrived, they found Williams in the basement. She was loosely tied up with her ripped clothing and gagged with women’s underwear.
As it turns out, none of those things were true. But the police didn’t know that until, said Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones, they had already blocked off the nearby highway and “scrambled a helicopter” to look for a suspect. It was only while police were being deployed that Williams’ story began to unravel; before long, she admitted that she’d recently split from her boyfriend and concocted the kidnapping “for attention.”
Though the original videos and photos have since been deleted, screengrabs live forever. Here’s a pair of them:
Sheriff Jones told WKRC that he believes people who fake crimes like this–and thus strain the emergency services necessary for fighting actual, real crime–are “the lowest of the low.”
Williams is being held in the Middletown Jail on a $10,000 bond, and will appear in court on October 6th.
(Photo credits: Woman fakes her own kidnapping on Facebook via Thelma Williams, Middletown Jail; h/t to Bossip)
