By Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje Published 8 a.m. Dec. 7, 2018



When the black Cadillac with chrome wheels pulled into Lion's Gate Park in Killeen, she was waiting.

Behind the wheel was Issac Lynn Williams. For months, he and the teenage girl had been trading messages over Facebook, their tone increasingly flirtatious. When she confessed to him one day that she had run away from home, he told her to meet him at the park.

Inside the Cadillac, Williams spoke to her in a way she'd never been spoken to before. I can take care of you, he said. Buy you things. Love you.

They'd been talking for an hour when he suggested they slide into the back seat and have sex.

Afterward, Williams told her she was going to become an "escort" and that they were "going to make a lot of money together."

He was 28. She was 16.

For the next eight months, Williams controlled everything in her life. He gave her the name Amber and arranged for her to be sold for sex through Backpage.com.

He would do the same to his 19-year-old girlfriend, Deborah Ameia Cooper. On Backpage, her name was Kandy.

Amber had sex with men 10 to 15 times a day on average. She and Cooper worked six days a week, seven if they hadn't reached the weekly quotas he set.

He booked them into mid-priced motels in Killeen, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio, wherever the money and customers were. Each week, they turned over thousands of dollars to him.

He kept all of it, except for what he spent on fast food, cigarettes, marijuana, condoms and lubricant, the necessities to keep his business going.

On some Sundays, if the two had met their quota, Williams would take them to church in Killeen, where he knew the preachers — his father and stepmother.

Code words, price lists

Sex traffickers like Williams have long preyed on vulnerable girls and women. What's changed in recent times is how the internet has amplified the sex trade. Customers have round-the-clock access to an inexhaustible market of online ads where with a simple click, they can order up young girls delivered to their door. Pimps tap special websites and social networks to find prospects and lure them with promises of love and excitement, only to trap them in a sordid world of drug addiction, shame and sometimes violence or threats of violence.

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Until fairly recently, underage youth caught up in sex-trafficking were considered prostitutes. Now, laws in Texas cast them in a new light — as victims needing help, not prosecution.

One study done by the University of Texas estimated that 79,000 young people in Texas are ensnared in sex trafficking. Few go to police or other authorities for help.

Amber never reached out for rescue.

She spent much of her life in poverty, with a struggling single mother. When she was 13 and living in Maryland, she had sex a few times with strangers, men she met on the streets, to pay for food for herself and her nephew, she later testified. She was arrested for breaking into an abandoned apartment. Removed from her mother's care, she was placed for a short time in a foster home, then sent to Killeen to live with her sister. Her mother followed later.

The first time Williams saw Amber, she was walking by his apartment complex in Killeen, on her way to her middle school down the block.

Signs a minor may be a victim of sex-trafficking

* Lying about age or giving false identification

* Unwillingness or inability to give an address

* Story inconsistencies

* Fear of another person or social interaction with others

* History of sexual abuse

* History of substance abuse

* Previous runaway history

* Excessive school absences

* Pre-paid or multiple cell phones

* Possessing multiple motel room keys

* Accompanied by a seemingly controlling friend

* Provocative clothing

* Signs of physical assault or abuse

Source: Bexar County Juvenile Probation Department

"You look cute," he told her.

The second time he noticed her was in the hair braid aisle at a beauty supply store, where he was shopping with Cooper. The girl and Cooper struck up a friendship. Soon after, Williams began sending her messages on Facebook. He came across as friendly and genuinely interested in her.

At the time, Amber was on probation for breaking into a car and her previous attempts to run away.

Williams had a rap sheet too, but it was sparse — a theft at a Dollar Store when he was 14, for which he received nine months' probation. Born overseas, he moved as a baby to Killeen, where his father was stationed at Fort Hood. After a series of low-level jobs, Williams tried to get into the Air Force, but was rejected. He worked in Afghanistan for KBR, a global engineering and construction firm. He was laid off after six months.

After that, he worked for a time at a propane gas company in Pittsburgh, where he met Cooper. She was 18. He was laid off again, and in 2013 they moved to Killeen, living on his unemployment checks. That's when Amber came into the picture.

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Williams presented Cooper as his girlfriend. But by then, he'd been pimping her on Backpage for months.

After seducing Amber in the park, Williams took her and Cooper to a Walmart, where he bought a cache of skimpy lingerie for them to wear in photos posted on Backpage.com.

Williams ran his sex-trafficking enterprise with an eye on the bottom line.

He assiduously kept track of how many men bought Amber and Kandy's services, recording dates, times and prices in a spiral-bound ledger. While the women did their work, he hung out in his Cadillac, or in a different room of the same hotel, or in the apartment in Killeen the three of them shared. He'd often troll the web in search of other young women.

He guarded his anonymity carefully, using gift cards to pay for ads on Backpage.They cost just $12 apiece but had to be reposted over and over to stay at the top of the listings; clients tended to scroll no further than the first three pages.

The ads bore labels such as "sexy girl" or "cute girl" or "funny girl" — code for underage females. Some ads offered Amber and Cooper alone; others offered them together in special "party girl" deals.

Cooper and Amber used cellphones to negotiate times and prices with customers by text. They received as many as 50 calls a day. Williams never took or received calls directly.

He taught Amber that clients had to say they were calling about a Backpage ad. Her script was, "How much time would you like to spend with me?"

There were two kinds of calls — "in-calls," where the buyers came to them, usually a motel room, and "out calls," where Williams drove Cooper and Amber to buyers at their motels or homes. For out-calls, Williams charged customers $20 extra, to cover gas.

They used a shorthand. QK meant a quickie, $50. HH — a half-hour — cost $80, and FH was $100, but prices depended on what city they were in. They'd charge more for clients they knew to be wealthy. The prices listed were for oral or vaginal sex; anal sex cost $200 to $500 extra.

Williams told Amber that if a caller took too long to answer questions or wanted to talk about something other than prices and times, she should hang up and put the number on the blocked list — it could be "the feds."

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He was always absent when business was being conducted. He instructed them to tell clients they were their own bosses. He showed up at the end of a shift to collect money and make sure it lined up with what Cooper and Amber had texted about the clients. He kept an eye out to ensure they weren't skimming.

Williams had another rule: Cooper and Amber could not allow clients to bite or scratch. He didn't want marks on his property. Sometimes clients would get angry because they didn't get what they wanted or they wanted more time. Williams taught her to "sweet talk" them, to offer to let them pay for extra time.

The motels they worked in were nice enough, recognizable to vacation travelers — Holiday Inn, Red Roof Inn, Days Inn — but that was mostly for the clients' comfort. Sometimes, if they were making money, they'd stay for a week at the same motel. Otherwise, they'd move around.

In the eight months Amber toiled for Williams, the three lived like nomads, hopping from hotel to hotel, wherever the johns were, rarely eating a proper meal, riding the libidinal currents of the internet.

Williams made the two women work even when they were menstruating.

And he maintained sales quotas. Each woman was supposed to bring in about $600 a day. Bigger cities like Dallas and San Antonio delivered bigger hauls, compared to Killeen or Waco. Cooper brought in more money because "she had the better body," Amber said. At the end of busy days, the two women would hand Williams several thousand dollars.

Amber soon realized she'd see none of this bounty, though she dreamed of having enough money to move herself and her mother and her nephew to a better neighborhood. That way, she could return to school.

Despite Williams' monitoring, she and Cooper would sometimes skim, texting him they had a half-hour client when it was really a full hour. Then they could keep the extra money.

They did so at their peril: Williams was hot-tempered and always yelling at them for one reason or another, Amber testified. He sometimes threatened to hurt her if she tried to leave. He belittled and shamed her, common pimp tactics.

Amber had virtually no freedom. Cooper was with her everywhere she went. If the three of them were in a restaurant and she happened to get out of her chair, Williams would demand, "Where are you going?" She was dependent on him for everything — food, shelter, even cigarettes, which she and Cooper chain-smoked. He wouldn't let her call her mother or friends.

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Since Amber had stopped checking in with her probation officer, a warrant had been issued for her arrest. Williams told her to "deny everything" if the police ever showed up.

"He said I would only be charged with a misdemeanor, for probation violation," she said. "He told me. 'I'll bail you out and we'll just keep going.'"

Amber and Cooper were always sick.

"Sometimes, it was just exhaustion," she said. "We just wanted to sleep, and we wanted to get a good meal, and it was just really exhausting. And so sometimes we would get really sick, where we couldn't work. But we would still have to work."

An undercover sting

As Williams kept track of earnings in his ledger, he didn't know two detectives in Victoria, 145 miles from Killeen, were keeping track of him.

Special Agent Shawn Hallett of the Texas Department of Public Safety Investigation Division testified later that he first became aware of Amber when he saw her photo on Backpage. She looked underage, so Hallett crosschecked her name with Facebook and Bell County Juvenile Probation records.

Sure enough, there she was, along with her probation history and confirmation that she was still a minor. Hallett subpoenaed payment history from Backpage, which had made a practice of complying with such requests, hoping to stay on the law's good side. The records implicated Williams.

Hallett and other detectives began amassing Backpage ads and phone and motel records, a trove of documents that eventually grew to more than 3,000 pages. Hallett also started tracking the location of Amber's cellphone.

The plan was for Hallett to respond to a Backpage ad for a "two-girl special" with Amber and Kandy at a San Antonio motel. Via text, Cooper and Hallett arranged for a one-hour session, but before he could show up at the motel, Cooper — for reasons unknown — stopped responding to his texts.

The sting was called off.

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Two days later, on Aug. 19, 2014, Cooper again responded to Hallett's text, setting a date for the two-girl special at a Sleep Inn motel in Killeen. She texted Hallett to meet her at a side door. As Hallett followed Cooper up a stairwell, she was taken into custody by other agents.

When Hallett arrived at Room 328 to meet Amber, the door was slightly ajar. Inside the sweltering room, Hallett smelled marijuana. He saw a young woman he recognized as Amber sitting in a chair. He called her name. Amber stood and said yes, it was her. Hallett assured her he was there to "recover" her, not arrest her.

Amber went willingly downstairs to meet with a female investigator from the Texas Attorney General's office. For over an hour, Amber divulged all she had gone through during the previous months.

As this was happening, Williams eased into the motel's parking lot in his black Cadillac. When he saw four officers approaching with weapons drawn, he threw the car into reverse and gunned the engine. It was too late. He was surrounded.

A search revealed Williams was carrying four cellphones, four credit and debit cards, and 10 gift cards of the type used to buy Backpage ads. The car's trunk contained boxes of condoms and lubricants of the same brand found in the motel room. He had a receipt from a Days Inn in San Antonio where the initial sting was supposed to happen. And detectives found the ledger with an entry documenting Hallett's visit to the Sleep Inn in Killeen.

As Amber was led out of the motel, she spied William pulling into the parking lot. Later, on the witness stand, Hallett would describe how Amber went into a "complete meltdown" when she saw his car, hyperventilating and scurrying to find a place to hide.

"She kept saying, 'That's him! That's him!'" Hallett said. She calmed down only after officers convinced her Williams was in custody.

Amber was taken to the Bell County Juvenile Detention Center, where she was held for several weeks and given counseling. Then she was sent back to Killeen to live with her mother.

Cooper later cut a deal with prosecutors, pleading guilty to the promotion of prostitution of a minor. She agreed to testify against Williams and was sentenced to five years' probation.

Williams was charged with continuous trafficking of a person, a first-degree felony punishable by no less than 25 years to life in prison. He was released on a $75,000 bond to await trial, set for a year later.

A pimp’s day in court

In the first few months after Williams made bond in November 2014, Amber and her mother kept running into Williams and his father in Killeen — at the Walmart, at fast-food joints, according to court testimony. Once, Williams blocked the mother's car in a McDonald's drive-thru lane and demanded that she persuade Amber to drop the charges against him, the mother testified.

A judge barred Williams from having any contact with Amber or her family.

Then, on the morning of Aug. 16, 2015, as Amber and her mother prepared to go to San Antonio to testify against Williams the next day, a gunman broke into their apartment.

Total number of people convicted of trafficking minors These charts show the total number of people convicted of trafficking minors in Texas that served prison time between 2012 and the present. The first chart shows numbers for the five counties with the most convictions overall. The second chart shows the same numbers for the five counties with the most convictions per capita.

The attacker, dressed in black and wearing a ski mask and gloves, sprayed the place with bullets. Amber's mother was struck three times, and her brother-in-law was shot in the chest. A bullet just missed Amber's head. She fell down and played dead.

Miraculously, all survived.

At the court hearing the next day, prosecutors asked for a continuance. The trial was reset for the fall. Two days later, prosecutors drove to Killeen to meet with Amber and her mother at a battered women's shelter where they had gone to seek safety. Amber was terrified and no longer willing to testify.

Before the next court date, Williams absconded.

After about a year as a fugitive, Williams was found in the Dominican Republic. He was brought back to San Antonio in January 2017. This time, his bail was set at $450,000 and he had to surrender his passport.

Williams

The trial was held in San Antonio in November 2017 and lasted a week.

David Lunan, the lead prosecutor, had a wealth of evidence against Williams: the Backpage payment records, more than 330 ads, 26,000 cellphone texts, motel receipts. During the trial, it emerged that Williams — while pimping Amber and Cooper — was flirting online with hundreds of other girls.

Defense attorney Paul J. Smith tried to paint a picture of Williams, then 31, as a naive male duped by two conniving women who were in fact masterminds of a prostitution ring.

Those credit cards and gift cards and multiple cellphones found on his person? Williams was simply holding them for Cooper, who suspected Amber was stealing from her. The damning evidence on his own cellphone? His phone had been "merged" with Cooper's as part of an upgrade.

That online flirting with other girls? He was a man, and "that's what men do," Williams testified.

Smith asked Amber on the stand whether Williams had ever twisted her arm or tied her up. She said he hadn't. But under state law, physical force isn't required to prove a defendant sexually exploited a minor.

When Williams testified in his own defense, he said Amber had come onto him, not the other way around, and had told him she wasn't a minor.

After the jurors found him guilty, Williams appealed to their mercy in the sentencing phase, saying he was a church-going man. He said he hadn't done anything extreme, like "rape or murder."

When Lunan asked Williams if he thought arranging for the repeated rape of a child comported with Christian values, Williams said it did not.

Lunan asked the jurors to sentence Williams to 40 years.

The jury came back with 50.

Williams is now a prisoner in Beeville. He is appealing his conviction and declined to be interviewed for this article.

Number of people convicted of trafficking minors by year These charts shows the number of people convicted of trafficking minors per year in Texas. The first chart shows totals for Dallas, Harris, Bexar and then all other counties and the second for the whole state combined.

Cooper, after entering into a plea bargain and agreeing testify against Williams, disappeared before the trial and is a fugitive.

Amber, now in her 20s, lives in another state. She declined to be interviewed, saying she'd wasted enough time on Williams and was trying to move on.

During the trial, she told the jury why she'd decided to testify. She was done, she said. Done with having panic attacks every time she saw a black Cadillac. Done with struggling to breathe whenever she saw a man who resembled Williams.

She stared down her erstwhile tormenter across the expanse of the courtroom.

"I told myself I need to stop running," she said. "I'm just tired of running. I'm tired of living in fear of you."

***

About this story:

This narrative is based on the court record of Issac Lynn Williams' 2017 criminal trial, including the sworn testimony of Williams; Amber, the young woman he was convicted of trafficking; and the lead detective on the case. Quotes attributed to Williams and Amber are from the trial record.

The evidence includes emails and text messages between Williams, Amber and Williams' then-girlfriend, Deborah Ameia Cooper, as well as online ads promoting the women's availability for paid sex and the gift cards Williams used to pay for the ads. Also in the court record are Amber's handwritten notes describing her life under Williams' control, including the prices she was to charge for various sex acts. Amber — the name she used while she was being trafficked — asked that her identity and current state of residence not be revealed because she fears retaliation.

Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje is a San Antonio Express-News staff writer. Read more of her stories here. | mstoeltje@express-news.net | @mstoeltje

Animation by Mike Fisher

Interactives by Luke Whyte

Design by Rachael Gleason

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