GRAHAM — Four people face felony charges related to the human trafficking and forced prostitution of two women, so far, at a Burlington hotel.

“Right now we are still investigating, but the arrests — we felt we needed to go on and get some people in custody,” Sheriff Terry Johnson said Thursday morning at a news conference. “But we know of two girls already, and there’s more, but we haven’t had a chance to follow up.”

Johnson did not identify the victims other than to say they were 32 and 27 years old, have local addresses and were being prostituted at the Econo Lodge on West Hanford Road in Burlington. He would not comment about whether the woman profiled in Sunday's Times-News was one of the victims in this case.

About 11:45 a.m. Wednesday, the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Taskforce, including an officer with the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office, arrested William Lee Reynolds, 39, of 833 Sarah Williams Ave., Graham, charging him with 14 counts each of human trafficking and sexual servitude of an adult, and one count of promoting prostitution and profiting prostitution; and Briana Lashera Morrison, 30, of 605 W. Webb Ave., Burlington, charging her with promoting prostitution.

It took a search warrant to get into the room Reynold and Morrison were renting, but when they got in, they found another man and woman — Joseph Herman Daniel, 34, of 1002 Ben Wilson Road, Mebane, and Carla Jo Bailey, 22, of 14 Shelton Lane, Siler City — inside. Both were charged with felony possession of cocaine, misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia, and obstructing public officers by giving a false name. Daniel was held also on unrelated outstanding warrants including common law robbery, assault inflicting serious injury, obtaining property by false pretense and failure to appear in court.

JOHNSON SAID THE investigation started several months ago when a man came to the sheriff’s office wanting help getting his granddaughter out of a hotel where she was caught up in drugs and prostitution. Johnson knew the woman’s face from postings on websites like backpage.com, where prostitutes are often advertised. That woman was not one of the victims in this case but helped lead investigators to this group of people.

Johnson said Reynolds is the pimp and there are other women he “is working.” He was held on an exceptionally high bond of more than $3 million partly because he has a history of failure to appear in court and, with his criminal record, District Attorney Pat Nadolski said, could be charged as a habitual offender and, if convicted, could spend the rest of his life in prison.

Reynolds has a long criminal record going back to the mid-1990s. It's mostly misdemeanors, but convictions from several counties include common-law robbery, felony larceny, breaking and entering, and assault on a female.

Morrison was held on $10,000 bond. Johnson said she is pregnant, seems intellectually or psychologically disabled, and is likely to be moved to a women’s prison in Raleigh where she can get medical treatment for her pregnancy and would be out of reach of her co-defendants.

Daniel is already classified as a habitual felon, according to court records, with a criminal record that includes felony larceny and breaking and entering. He had outstanding warrants for an incident March 26 in Mebane.

“He took $350 from a woman and ran her over with a motor vehicle,” Johnson said.

Bailey was convicted in April of second-degree kidnapping in a plea agreement in which charges of indecent liberties with a minor, contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile and sexual exploitation were dismissed.

THE FOCUS ON human trafficking, Nadolski said, shows a change in how law enforcement thinks about prostitution, treating the prostitutes as victims.

“So it is a change — it’s a change in looking at it, it’s a change in how we are focusing on the people we think are truly responsible for this, and that is the people who are running these women,” Nadolski said. “The perpetrators often prey on individuals who are without resources or who have nothing to lose, forcing them to survive by any means available.”

Nadolski's office won the second year of an $85,000 grant from the Governor’s Crime Commission to prosecute sex crimes and human trafficking last year, allowing Assistant District Attorney Jenna Earley to dedicate a lot of time to this investigation.

Johnson said investigators hope to turn up more victims and more suspects in the upcoming weeks because the local problem of human trafficking and prostitution is much worse than he thought.

“Apparently law enforcement has not paid attention maybe to what we should be paying attention to,” Johnson said.

Indeed, there were at least four postings on backpage.com dated Thursday apparently offering prostitution in Burlington and Alamance County.

Reporter Isaac Groves can be reached at igroves@thetimesnews.com or 336-506-3045. Follow him on Twitter at @tnigroves.