Episode 229 - The Escort, The Mercenary, and The Car Dealer
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Perhaps there's no more quintessential story to the American dream than that of a self-made man. A young person who starts from nothing, works their fingers to the bone, and then carves out their own future by building a dynasty. Well, in 1957, that's exactly what Charles Mond was doing in Austin, Texas.

At 19, Charles took what little money he had and started buying and selling used cars. It turned out he had a knack for recognizing opportunity, like having a sixth sense when it came to business. After only a few years, he saved up enough to buy his first official car dealership.

Eventually, Charles expanded his operation into a handful of dealerships, something that was quite revolutionary for the time, making him one of the first automotive mega-dealers in the entire country. Before his death in 2002 at the age of 75, Charles had built an extremely successful and well-loved used car empire worth millions he could pass down to the generations to follow.

But as the old saying goes, the first generation makes it, the second generation spends it, and the third generation blows it. However, it's difficult to imagine someone blowing it as badly as Charles' grandson Erich Mond would go on to do in 2020.

Join me now as we dive into the shocking case of Eric Mond, a multi-millionaire auto magnate living the high life in Austin, Texas. You'll learn the truth behind a scandalous secret Eric didn't want anyone to find out about and the lengths some people go to protect their own image, especially when money's no object.

Hole 6 at the Austin Country Club in Austin, Texas is a beautiful golf hole by anyone's definition. Beyond its perfectly manicured fairway, the challenging par 4 runs perpendicular to the scenic Colorado River, which eventually flows right through the heart of downtown Austin.

Standing on the tee box, golfers have front row seats to the most iconic views in the entire city. The 600-foot-tall Austin 360 Bridge, a spectacular arch bridge spanning a river that's become a symbol of the city and one of the most photographed landmarks in the area.

Over the years, Hole 6 has been played by some of the best golfers in the world during the televised PGA Tour events, like Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. But if 44-year-old Derek Mond wanted to see it, or play it, all he had to do was step outside his back door.

In 2020, Eric lived with his wife Sherry and a teenage daughter in a massive $5 million mansion bordering the country club's sixth hole. At 7,000 square feet, the extravagant house included 10 bathrooms. As a partner in his family business, the Mondato Group, it's estimated Eric's monthly earnings were somewhere in the ballpark of $300,000.

And whenever Eric did go golfing, he was a staff favorite, mostly because he shelled out $100 tips like it was nothing. Eric also had an older son who was away at college in Nashville, Tennessee, a city that mirrors Austin in many ways, including its world-famous music scenes.

While Austin has billed itself as the live music capital of the world, for much longer, Nashville has been dubbed Music City USA. In early 2020, while on a trip to Nashville to visit his son, Eric set himself up in a room at a swanky downtown hotel.

Using the alias "Eric Moore", Eric contacted a high-end escort he probably had found online, an escort who went by the name "Layla Love". According to her online bio, for a fee of $750 an hour, she guaranteed a unique burst of mutual pleasure with everything a man could desire.

After exchanging a few messages, Layla agreed to meet Eric in the hotel bar later that night. Although we don't know the exact details of what happened next, we do know Eric didn't want his wife to find out about it. The next time Eric went back to Nashville, again supposedly to visit his son, he contacted Layla ahead of his trip, letting her know he was heading back to town.

On February 5th, Eric sent Layla a message that read: "Good day, beautiful. Looking forward to later. I'm in Nashville. I'll meet you in the bar like last time. Text me when you arrive." For Layla, it seemed like she'd found herself a reliable and satisfied repeat customer. And for Eric, it seemed he'd found a discreet woman who'd happily keep their scandalous secret.

Three weeks had passed since Eric's clandestine rendezvous, but the secrecy he thought he'd maintained came crashing down on March 1st, when he received a series of strange and unexpected messages on his cell phone from an unknown number. The messages made it abundantly clear that someone knew about his secret affair.

Moreover, they knew exactly who he was, that he was married, and that he was worth a fortune. Unless Eric was willing to pay $25,000, the mystery messenger promised to go public with everything they knew. He was being extorted. For Eric, coughing up $25,000 wasn't the issue. It wouldn't even put a dent in his bank account.

But the problem with being blackmailed is there's no way to guarantee it will ever stop. Even if Eric forked over the money, how long would it be before the blackmailer appeared again, asking for more, leading to a never-ending cycle of extortion and payment?

Not wanting to pay the blackmail and not wanting his secret exposed, Eric contacted Gil Pellet, a private security specialist in Austin. This wasn't the first time Eric had done business with Gil. In the past, the Mond Auto Group had encountered a problem with people trespassing on their car lots. So, they consulted Gil's company, Speartip Security, to find workable solutions to their problems.

Gil's pedigree for private security reads like the character from a Daniel Silva novel. Born in Israel, Gil served in the IDF and its special forces. Later, he worked for Mossad, the Israeli equivalent of the CIA or MI6. At 6 feet tall, with a bulking weightlifter's frame, Gil certainly looked the part as well.

He came to the US in 1999 and began his private security career in Hollywood, working as a personal bodyguard for celebrities like Charlie Sheen. When Eric approached Gil and told him about his predicament, Gil's advice was to take the matter to police. But when Eric decided he'd rather not, fearing his secret would be exposed, Gil assured him he could find another way to take care of his problem.

He promised to figure out the identity of the blackmailer and make it stop. For Gil, the first step was uncovering Layla Love's true identity, which obviously wasn't her real name. After all, it was entirely possible Layla herself might be responsible for the attempted extortion.

To do this, Gil reached out to several of his contacts in the world of private security, putting together a team of former military he believed were just right for the job. And within a few short days, they'd found her. There are some things in life that are okay to be a total crapshoot, like trying a new milk for your coffee, or a cheap Instagram ad impulse buy, or mixing it up at a new takeout spot. But

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33-year-old Holly Williams was a professional esthetician living in southwest Nashville, and she'd made a good name for herself in the field, especially when it came to medical skincare. But Holly was also a well-known fixture in the Nashville nightlife and social scene. In fact, one friend compared her to Marilyn Monroe, saying that all the men would try to be the first one to light her cigarette for her.

Another friend compared Holly's looks to Kim Kardashian's. So beautiful, she was intimidating, but noted that Holly had the knack for breaking the ice quickly and a talent for making everyone feel comfortable around her. Molly Timms, a former reporter for The Tennessean, a newspaper in Nashville, was one of the journalists who'd spoken to many of Holly's friends.

In an interview with the Austin American Statesman, Molly provided some valuable insight into Holly's personal life.

Holly Williams has been described, you know, as the perfect big sister. She'd include her little sister in cheerleading sleepovers when they were younger and make sure she always felt welcome. As she got older, you know, she was still trusting and sweet, sometimes got pulled into things that got her in trouble, friends said. She worked to get her medical esthetician degree, which is a very specific type of cosmetology. People can work with burn victims, skin trauma, etc.

medically doing work to remove tattoos, things that are really important beyond the level of what you normally hear in a cosmetology license. It's a really interesting field. And through that all, whenever you met her at a party, they said she'd make you feel included. She wasn't the loudest, brightest person in the room with personality, but she made you welcome. And they loved that about her. Most of Holly's friends were also aware of one more thing about her, something she didn't really try to hide.

Aside from being a skincare specialist, Holly also worked as an escort under the name Layla Love, a side hustle that often came with luxurious benefits, like $20,000 weekends and vacations to exotic locations on the customer's dime. It was also a job she didn't try to hide from her boyfriends.

For the past two years, her boyfriend had been a local auto mechanic, 36-year-old Bill Lanway. Like Holly, Bill was also a part of the rowdy Nashville nightlife scene, the kind of guy most friends described as being the life of the party. But the friends who knew him best believed that most of Bill's carefree party lifestyle was really just a coping mechanism for a life filled with tragedy.

A tragic history that began for Bill as a young boy growing up in nearby Clarksville, Tennessee. Molly Timswood discovered through interviews that when Bill was just three years old, he watched as his parents erupted into a violent altercation. A situation that escalated to the point where Bill's father Lyle held him and his mother hostage at gunpoint for a period of time.

Lyle would later be arrested and sent away for psychiatric evaluation. He was in the home that day. It was Thanksgiving Day in 1986. His father had been in and out of care for holding him hostage a few weeks before, at least him, possibly him and his older sister, and had been receiving help for that, but received a day pass to go home when the tragedy occurred.

Lyle surprised the family by coming home unexpectedly on Thanksgiving. Grabbing a knife, he then proceeded to stab Bill's mother to death. Reports show that he also stabbed another family friend that day, although the attack didn't appear to be fatal.

Bill was raised by an aunt after that and taken care of. And then his life continued to see moments of tragedy, it seems. When he was older, he had a daughter, Maddie, who friends said was the light of his life. But she was diagnosed with a rare brain cancer as a child and died very young. And friends said he never really recovered after that. He was never...

While Bill put on his best face whenever he went out in public, behind closed doors, he flashed alarming signs of violence and anger. Police records show that Bill and Holly's relationship was incredibly volatile.

In fact, Holly had called police on Bill no less than three times over the previous year. Bill was charged with domestic assault against Holly in April 2019 after he'd hit her and then caused some damage to her car. In January 2020, Bill was charged with aggravated assault but released on bail after Holly accused him of trying to strangle her after she tried to run away from him after an argument.

Just four days later, Holly reported Bill to police again, this time claiming he'd taken her dog Max and released him somewhere outside. Days later, she found Max dead on the side of a road. Holly soon took out a restraining order against Bill, but he continued to violate it.

Molly Timms would learn that Holly even installed three security cameras around her home, one outside and two hidden ones inside. Screenshots of text messages provided by Holly's friends show she was scared. She was scared at the way the relationship was progressing, uncomfortable being around him at that point.

By the time Gil Pellett's hired security associates arrived in Nashville and located Holly Williams, they could see Bill was once again living with her, despite the restraining order. On March 5th, they sent an intelligence report back to Bill, sharing the information they'd discovered. But they still didn't know who the blackmailer was. However, they'd learned a whole lot more about Layla Love.

Eight days later, on the morning of March 13th, a construction worker at 497 Old Hickory Boulevard in West Nashville placed a frantic call to 911. Metro Nashville 911, what is the address of your emergency? Somebody rolled off the road and hit a tree. Are you with the vehicle?

While at work that morning, the worker had noticed a white Acura sedan at the bottom of a steep embankment next to his construction site. To him, it appeared as if the car had accidentally run off the road, careened down the hill, and then smashed into a row of trees.

From the outside, it didn't appear to be all that serious. The hood was crumbled to bed, the passenger side windows were blown out, and the airbags had deployed, but it clearly hadn't rolled, and the damage seemed minimal. Inside the car, however, was a different story, because there were two lifeless bodies, one in the front and the other in the back, and there was blood everywhere.

Oddly, both passengers' heads were face down on the floorboards with their feet in the air. When police arrived on the scene, they knew immediately this was no ordinary car crash. And it didn't take long for them to identify the deceased as Holly Williams and Bill Lanway. Upon examination, it was revealed that both Holly and Bill hadn't died from a sudden impact. Instead, they'd both been shot.

Police were tight-lipped about the details from the scene, but word spread quickly through the community about what had happened. And when Bill and Holly's friends learned they'd been shot, most of them came to the same conclusion. They believed the couple's toxic relationship had finally come to a breaking point and that Bill had most likely committed murder-suicide. Again, here's Molly Tibbins from The Tennessean.

So I've talked to family and friends of both. A lot of people have a lot to say about both of them. Well, we can see from police records that it wasn't great, especially in the last year of their lives. Holly called police on Bill, I believe, three or four times in the few months before they died, which raised questions when they were found dead as to the nature of what happened. Friends of Bill have struggled over the past year to reconcile their memories of someone who had a very difficult life but was a good friend to them with

the information about this relationship and the possibility he is involved in these deaths. Friends of the couple were unsure on how to react to the news. Many of them just shied away from the tragedy completely. A friend of Bill's told the Tennessean that he knew a lot of people that didn't go to Bill's funeral because they thought he was a murderer.

In the wake of their deaths, police found security footage from the cameras inside Holly's home. That illustrated the kind of friction that existed between Bill and Holly. On one occasion, Holly can be seen on the phone with her landlord asking for her locks to be changed so Bill wouldn't be able to get in. In another instance, the camera shows Bill unlocking the door and entering her home uninvited when Holly wasn't home.

Yet, despite the apparent motive, police had good reason to believe that a murder-suicide wasn't what happened at all.

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a true horror podcast on Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts today. For starters, the crime scene didn't fit that theory. First, there was the broken passenger side windows. Police didn't find any broken bits of glass on the ground next to the car, and hardly any pieces inside, leading investigators to believe that both windows were broken at a different location.

Police also found it odd neither passenger was carrying their cell phones. But the most startling piece of evidence missing from the crime scene was a gun. If Bill shot himself, the gun shouldn't be far from the scene. But detectives searched high and low and there was no sign of a weapon. Now it was possible someone had discovered the scene and decided to steal the gun and cell phones.

But there was one more detail that simply made the murder-suicide theory impossible. There were two bullet wounds in Bill's head. After an official autopsy confirmed Bill and Holly's manner of death, three days later, Nashville police officially declared their deaths as a double homicide. Once police learned about Holly's life in the escort business, they naturally wondered if her chosen career might have had something to do with her murder.

Despite catering almost exclusively to wealthy clientele, police knew that it was still a risky and potentially dangerous occupation. While they continued poring over Holly's security camera footage, they noticed some alarming scenes, this time from camera's outsider front door. In the days before her murder, three different men, clad all in black, had come to Holly's door attempting to speak with her.

In one clip, the man can be seen attempting to take Holly's porch camera down. Footage from inside Holly's home at the same time revealed that she'd clearly been frightened by the men, because as they knocked on her door, she frantically made a call while wedging a door-jamming security bar between the handle and the floor. Police couldn't tell exactly who she was calling, but whoever it was, it certainly wasn't the police.

The last time Holly can be seen on camera was with Bill on the night of March 12th. As the on-again, off-again couple walked out the door together, they seemed happy, casual, and ready to spend a night out on the town. But just seconds after they walked off screen and got into Holly's car, the camera's audio captured a terrifying sequence of events.

A gun is fired and you can hear the glass from the passenger windows falling to the ground. For a brief moment, Bill can be heard shouting before he suddenly goes silent. Then, holly screams were the only sounds remaining. As the car drove off, the sound of holly screams disappeared into the night.

Detectives became convinced that the mysterious men they'd seen lurking outside Holly's home must have had something to do with her and Bill's murder. But they had absolutely no clue who the men could be. To uncover their identities, detectives knew they needed to get creative.

Looking through Bill and Holly's cell phone records, detectives noticed an unlisted number that had been trying to contact both Holly and Bill's cell phones in the days leading up to their murders. When police looked up the number, they discovered it was registered to an online app called Pinger, which allows users to place phone calls over the internet.

Using their computer experts, a series of legal subpoenas, and some serious forensic analysis, Nashville police eventually were able to uncover the identity of the person who'd made the calls. And that person's name was Adam Carey. At 28 years old, Adam was a former US Marine from North Carolina with two tours in Afghanistan under his belt.

But he wasn't just any Marine. He was Special Forces and a member of MARSOC, or Marine Special Operations Command, often described as the Marine equivalent of the Navy SEALs. After returning back to the States from combat, Adam hadn't exactly been a Boy Scout.

In 2016, Adam was arrested for impersonating a police officer when state troopers caught him attempting to pull over another vehicle by using flashing lights. To make matters worse, during the arrest, the troopers discovered a cache of weapons in Adam's car, including guns and hand grenades. To this day, there's no telling what exactly Adam was intending to do with those weapons.

For his crimes, Adam was charged with possessing weapons of mass destruction and surprisingly, only sentenced to four months behind bars. When police in Nashville discovered Adam's identity, the next step was to pull up his driver's license and take a look at his photo. When they did, they couldn't believe what they were seeing.

There was no doubt about it. Adam Carey was one of the mysterious men captured on Hawley's security cameras. Convinced they were now onto something big, detectives began doing some serious digging into Adam Carey.

Using many of the same techniques they'd used to uncover his identity in the first place, computer experts were able to find out that Adam was being employed by a man named Byron Brockway, another former MARSOC Marine who owned his own private security company called Ink Force LLC.

Somehow, and it's never been revealed exactly how, detectives were able to retrieve some private communications between Adam and Byron, including a few secret documents. On one of those documents was labeled, The Tennessee Sit Rep, and when investigators started reading through it, they couldn't believe their eyes.

The SITREP, which is military shorthand for Situational Report, was characterized by its meticulous attention to detail, specificity, and tactical insight. Through this document, which was dated March 9th, just three days before the murders, detectives learned that both Holly and Bill had been under secret surveillance for nearly a week. But even more surprising was the reason why.

The document revealed that Byron had hired Adam to discover the source of an extortion plot. After establishing that Holly was in fact the true identity of Layla Love, they attempted to find out who was blackmailing their client. In order to do this, Adam and Byron, or the assets as they referred to themselves, sent an email to Layla Love, who they already knew to be Holly.

The email was a request for escort services. When Holly scheduled an appointment a few days later, they reached back out again, but this time with a ruse. They sent her an email saying they'd been mysteriously contacted by an unknown number who was trying to extort them for $25,000. But it seemed as if Holly genuinely had no idea who they were talking about.

Eventually, they came to the conclusion that it was most likely Bill who was behind the scheme. At one point in the report, it states: "If we receive confirmation that Mr. Lanway is acting independently, we will, at the client's request, take appropriate measures to ensure he sees the mistakes he's made and to cease and desist immediately."

Elaborating further on what was appropriate measures were, the document stated, "We will use everything at our disposal." As detectives continued following the digital breadcrumbs, they then discovered that the Tennessee SITREP document had been sent to yet another security professional in Austin, Texas.

And this was the first time Nashville police heard the name, Gil Pellett, who it turned out was the man who'd hired both Adam and Byron to conduct the surveillance in Tennessee. And once they found out his background, it really started looking like they'd uncovered a full-fledged team of ex-military mercenaries.

Chris Swecker, a former FBI assistant director for the Criminal Investigation Division, said in an interview with the News Nation that this might not be as uncommon as many people think. There is a small community of former military soldiers or fortune types like this who will do things for hire. They try to find high net worth individuals.

This is not a terribly unusual scenario in terms of former military doing dirty tricks and committing crimes like this. I've seen it firsthand.

The Tennessee sitrep document made it abundantly clear that these guys were willing to do whatever it took to silence the blackmailer, specifically including kidnapping, intimidation, reverse extortion, and anything else that might be required.

When Nashville PD realized just how insane this case was becoming, they reached out to the FBI and eventually were able to ascertain the identity of the mysterious client referred to in the documents. The man who'd hired this team of potential mercenaries to keep his secrets safe. And that man was, of course, Texas multimillionaire Eric Mond.

By this point, authorities were fairly convinced that Holly and Bill's deaths were the result of an elaborate murder-for-hire conspiracy organized as revenge for attempted extortion. But in order to prove that, detectives needed to learn what happened during the three missing days between the Tennessee sit-rap and the double homicide.

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Live the Chumba life, anytime, anywhere. Play for free now at chumbacasino.com. BGW group, no purchase necessary. Void work prohibited by law. See terms and conditions 18 plus. Information gathered from the secret documents also revealed another man who'd been working with Byron and Adam. But after helping surveil Holly and Bill for only a few days, the man started getting what he called bad vibes and decided to pull out of the operation.

After tracking the man down, the FBI asked him if he'd be willing to wear a wire and help the government investigate the case, and he agreed. His first secretly recorded phone call was to Adam Carey, where he pretended to be interested in paying Adam for another murder-for-hire job. During that conversation, Adam said the price would be $60,000 per shooter.

He then went on to describe the specific supplies he'd need to acquire, a chilling list that included guns, gloves, and subcutaneous injections. But simply knowing that Adam was willing to commit murder wasn't enough to prove he'd done it before. The next recorded conversation was in person with Byron Brockway, and it was this conversation that truly broke the case wide open.

Seated next to Byron in a car, the man recorded Byron talking openly about the murders in Nashville. In this conversation, Byron confessed to shooting Bill and claimed Adam had been the one to shoot Holly. Once the FBI had this evidence on tape, they decided it was time to bring the entire mercenary squad down. By this time, it had been nearly two years since the murders had taken place.

In early December 2021, Gil Pellett, Adam Carey, and Byron Brockway were all arrested on the same day. But there was still one fish they needed to catch. The big one. Eric Mond.

Through their investigation, the FBI discovered that Eric had transferred over $900,000 into Speartip Security's account, including a payment of $150,000 on the day Bill and Holly were murdered. But in order to make their case stick, they wanted more evidence. They wanted a confession.

In exchange for potential leniency from prosecutors, Gil Pellett agreed to help law enforcement by making a recorded phone call to Eric Mond. Working off a script, Gil told Eric that Adam Carey had been asking to get paid even more money. We got a problem with one of the shooters in Nashville. Uh-huh. He found out that you were the client that paid for this, for the job. Mm-hmm.

So we need to take care of him? Like we did last time.

Not only did Eric Mond agree to pay Gil money for another assassination, more importantly, Eric mentioned paying Speartip another $150,000, just like the last time, which was the exact amount of money he'd transferred to Speartip on the day Bill and Holly were murdered. At the time Eric had taken Gil's phone call, he was driving home from a hunting trip with a friend.

As soon as he hung up, the FBI ordered his immediate arrest, and within minutes, he was pulled over by Texas state troopers.

New information tonight about a bizarre murder-for-hire plot. Four people are under arrest facing federal charges in connection with a double murder in the spring of 2020. Federal investigators arrested Eric Mond, a car dealer from Austin, Texas; Gilad Pellin, who claimed to be a former member of the Israeli Defense Forces; as well as two former Special Operations Group Marines, Brian Brockway and Adam Carey.

Investigators say Mound spent... sent $750,000 to the others in order to kidnap and murder William Landway and Holly Williams. The FBI says Williams and Mound used to be in a relationship.

Williams and Lanway were shot to death. Their bodies were found at a construction site in West Nashville in March of 2020. A federal indictment unsealed today charges the four suspects with conspiracy to commit kidnapping, kidnapping resulting in death, as well as firearms charges. They face life in prison if found guilty. Even after all the arrests were made, detectives in Nashville were still left with one major question mark.

Just who exactly was behind the extortion attempt on Eric Mond? Putting all the pieces together, which included information from the co-conspirators as well as the victim's cell phone records, this is what they learned. Screenshots recovered from Bill's phone revealed he'd taken a photo of Holly's secret client list, which led investigators to believe he'd done this without her knowledge.

Soon after, Bill began sending extortion threats to Eric Mond after looking him up and finding out just how much money he was worth. Today it remains unknown whether Bill had tried to extort any of Holly's other clients. And while there's nothing to prove that Holly was unaware of the plot, it certainly wouldn't have been a very savvy business move on her end if she had. Eric was a repeat customer with deep pockets.

Why risk carrying away a cash cow like that for a one-time payment of $25,000? If anything, she'd almost certainly lose money by blackmailing him. Prosecutors would later claim in court that they believed Holly was never aware of the extortion attempts Bill had been making.

On March 11th, the day before the murders, Bill escalated his extortion threats from text messages to a threatening phone call to Eric, received while he was at home. Furious that the blackmailer had called him at his home while his wife was around, Eric then asked Gil to put a permanent end to the threat. That day, Byron Brockway traveled to Nashville and met up with Adam Carey,

Together, they waited an ambush outside Holly's home and attacked them just after they'd gotten into their car, with Byron fatally shooting Bill in the passenger seat just outside their home. And although Holly had been shot during the initial attack, Adam was surprised to discover she was still alive after driving her car to the construction site where they planned to dispose of the vehicle.

According to Byron, Adam then fired the final fatal bullet that killed her. Then, with two bodies in the car, Byron and Adam pushed the car over the embankment, where a construction worker would find it the next day. For nearly two years, Nashville police and the FBI had been working on the case in near total secrecy.

Almost no details of their incredible investigation were ever revealed until all the arrests were made in December 2021. But once everything came out, the media had a field day with the story of a Texas millionaire who hired a team of mercenaries to murder an escort he believed was blackmailing him.

News Nation journalist and host Ashley Banfield took to the airwaves to demonstrate just how brazen Eric Mond and Speartip Security had been after believing they'd gotten away with it all without getting caught. What do you get for the person who has everything?

How about a hitman? And if you're trying to pick the very best one, check out the five-star review that one security company got for its services. Quote, "Spear Tip is very professional and on top of it, they get the job done in an expedited time. Couldn't imagine using anyone else." Stop kidding. Eric Mond was apparently delighted with the service that he got from the alleged hitmen that he hired.

He's the grandson of a Texas automotive tycoon. He now stands accused of paying three quarters of a million dollars to kill his former mistress along with her ex-boyfriend because that pair was going to tell his wife about his affair with that lady. The company's response to the five-star review, this would be the alleged hitman's response. The owner of Speartip wrote,

Thank you for the kind words. Always a pleasure doing business with you. Always a pleasure working with you. If this isn't already the dumbest story ever, that a former US Marine from whom you would expect a lot better, he also decided to give a good review. And he gave the Spear Company, that's Gillad's company, his boss, he gave him a five-star review too. So he's right underneath.

In 2022, Gil Pellett accepted an undisclosed plea bargain and pled guilty to the charges of murder for hire, conspiracy to kidnap with death resulting, and kidnapping resulting in death.

In exchange for the deal, he agreed to testify against the three remaining co-conspirators at their federal trial in November 2023. Eric Mund, Byron Brockway, and Adam Carey were all tried together as co-defendants in the same trial, but each defendant was represented by their own lawyers.

The proceedings predictably became a bit of a circus when all the defendants pled not guilty and attempted to blame all the other co-conspirators. But the jury ultimately believed Gil's testimony. According to Gil, murder for hire was never part of the original plan. His intention had been to simply gather all the information Eric needed to take the threat of extortion to the police.

However, after Eric got the phone call from Bill on March 11th, it was Byron who came up with the idea of murdering both victims and setting the price tag at $120,000. According to Gill, Eric jumped at the offer without hesitation, something he claimed had really surprised him. After all, a plan was put in place to eliminate the extortion threat permanently.

On the stand, Gil was forced to admit that he'd lied about much of his impressive military pedigree. Yes, he'd been a tank commander for the Israeli Defense Forces, but as for being a Special Forces officer and a former member of Mossad, it turned out he'd made it all up to look more impressive to potential clients like Eric. In the end, the jury found all three defendants guilty of conspiracy to commit murder.

Official sentencing for Eric, Byron, and Adam is currently scheduled for later this year. But because of their guilty verdict, all three are facing mandatory life sentence in federal prison. Sentencing for Gil is also scheduled for later this year. And while his plea agreement remains under seal, it's likely he'll receive at least some leniency for his role in cooperating with the FBI.

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So hop on to ChumbaCasino.com now and live the Chumba life. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Void where prohibited by law. 18 plus terms and conditions apply. When the federal indictment was released following Eric's arrest in 2021, the entire city of Austin was shell-shocked by the scandal.

It was hard to believe that the namesake of one of Austin's most recognizable brands was associated with such a horrific and callous murder-for-hire plot. Almost immediately, Charles Mon Toyota became the butt of every joke in town. Needless to say, the company's image, which his grandfather had spent his entire life building, was now completely shattered.

Within just four months of his arrest, the family decided to sell the entire company. It's now called Toyota of North Austin, and although the sale price of the business has never been publicly disclosed, its new owners estimate their new acquisition will generate approximately $435 million in revenue each year. The first generation makes it, and the third generation blows it.

Ironically, Eric Mond actually filed for divorce from his wife in 2020, which makes it all more bizarre that this entire case unfolded the way it did. Eric later withdrew the filing, but according to the Tennessean, Sherry divorced him in 2021. To this day, Eric maintains his innocence, claiming he never intended for anyone to be kidnapped or killed.

His lawyers had promised a swift appeal of his conviction. For those closest to the victims, one of the most difficult aspects of this entire ordeal was just how long it took for the public to learn the whole truth behind the murders. For nearly two years, until Eric was arrested, all family and friends had were rumors and speculation.

And for many of them, they believed the most plausible explanation for everything was that Bill had murdered Holly before committing suicide. When the truth finally came out, it offered a small amount of comfort to some, but only made others feel more guilty about the assumptions they made.

For 21 months, Holly's sister Emily was hopelessly wondering what had really happened to her big sister, her best friend. During that time, Emily said, "There's been so many times that she wished she could just pick up the phone and call her." One friend who'd known Bill since preschool told the Tennessean newspaper, "People were saying horrible stuff about Bill. I heard not great stuff about her, too.

Point being, neither of them were angels, neither of them were perfect, but neither of them were the person, the monster everyone was writing about. She then went on to say that her first initial thought was that now he and his daughter can really, honest to God, be together in happiness.

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