Tennessee– The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said Thursday that they are looking for a man who they say killed four relatives of a baby who was found alive and abandoned in the sweltering heat this week.
The bodies of James M. Wilson, 21, Adrianna Williams, 20, Cortney Rose, 38, and Braydon Williams, 15, were found on Tuesday in Tiptonville, a town in northwest Tennessee’s Lake County. Austin Robert Drummond, 28, is wanted in connection with their deaths, the TBI said.
The baby daughter of Wilson and Adrianna Williams was found alone and unattended in a car seat in a “random” front yard near the Dyer County community of Tigrett, which is about a 40-mile drive southeast of Tiptonville. The four people were later found dead.
The white 2016 Audi that Drummond was thought to be driving was found empty in Jackson, Tennessee, and was retrieved by police, the TBI said Friday. Jackson is about 45 miles away from Tigrett to the southeast.
They haven’t said why they think Drummond is guilty, if they know why the baby was left a county away from where the bodies were found, or if they know what the killers were trying to do.
Danny Goodman, who is the district attorney for Dyer and Lake counties, said that Rose was the baby’s maternal grandmother and Braydon Williams was the baby’s maternal uncle.
“All of them were from Dyer County, and we think the person who killed them knew all of them,” Goodman said, adding that Wilson and Adrianna Williams were the parents of the baby.
The TBI said that Drummond has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder, one count of aggravated kidnapping, four counts of felon in possession of a firearm, and one count of having a firearm while committing a dangerous felony.
Authorities said at a news conference on Friday that Drummond is still in the area and should be seen as dangerous. They asked people who see him to not interact with him but instead call 911 for help.
David Rausch, director of the TBI, said, “We do need the community to be very careful. We don’t want them to try to talk to this person.”
A gas station in Jackson, Tennessee, was robbed with a gun by Drummond in 2013, and he was found guilty of aggravated robbery. For that crime, he got 10 years in prison and got out in September 2024, according to records.
Thursday, the US Marshals Service and the TBI both offered a $15,000 reward for information that would help them catch Drummond.
Based on the TBI, he is 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighs 190 pounds, has blue eyes, brown hair, and a goatee.
A baby was left behind hours before bodies were found.
The baby was found in a front yard near Tigrett on Tuesday afternoon in a car seat, which brought the investigation to a start.
The child was seen by someone who called 911, and investigators were looking into reports that the baby had been left there by a “dark-colored minivan or a white mid-size SUV,” according to the sheriff’s office. It was 116 degrees outside. Goodman said the little girl is about 7 months old.
The sheriff’s office said four people, later identified as the baby’s relatives, were found dead in Tiptonville, just hours after the baby was left behind.
The bodies were found on Tuesday along Carrington Road in Tiptonville, the TBI said, but they didn’t say more.
When people asked the TBI about the investigation, they only pointed them to their news releases. The news releases don’t say how the four people were killed or how they were found. They also don’t say if investigators have a motive or who might have left the baby in the yard near Tigrett.
In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Dyer County Sheriff Jeff Box said, “Today is a very sad day for our community.” “We are dedicated to finding the truth and making sure that justice is done.”
The TBI said that about a dozen groups are working on the case, such as the FBI and a US Marshals Service fugitive task force.
