HARDIN/GALLATIN COs.—Anxious family members and friends of Chrissy Lampert Williams, the 39-year-old Shawneetown woman missing from Rosiclare since December 2, 2013, have held pickets, candlelight vigils, and massive search parties, but as of press time (Dec. 5), there hasn’t been a trace of her whereabouts found, and no clues whatsoever as to where she could be.
The effort to find Williams is a testament to the tenacity of people in southern Illinois, especially when “one of their own” is missing and there is no understandable reason that that person would disappear of her own volition.
But throughout the ordeal of Williams’ disappearance, a considerable amount of contention has arisen, this from the family toward certain law enforcement entities whom they believe could have done more to prevent the possible scenario that Williams could have come to harm.
Add that in with the accounts of the last people known to have seen Williams on the night she disappeared, and the fact that the terrain she would have been traveling across can’t exactly “hide” a large truck like the one she owned, and the mystery surrounding her disappearance deepens and grows more strange…but at the very least, accurate word is now getting out about the circumstances of the days and hours leading up to the last time anyone saw Chrissy Williams.
Rigsby and the texts
Sources have advised Disclosure that Williams had been seeing Shawneetown man Kelley Rigsby on and off for quite some time, at least dating back to her 2012 divorce from her husband Doug Williams.
The friend with whom Williams was visiting on the night she disappeared, Briannah Davis of Rosiclare, advised media that she had been with Williams in recent weeks when Williams and Davis had gone to Shawneetown to “stalk,” as Davis called it, Rigsby, a situation that worried Davis, as Rigsby had allegedly been physically violent with Williams on past occasions.
A recent contact Williams had with Rigsby, however, had been confrontational: a few days before Williams’ disappearance, Williams had gone into Lincoln Street Pub in Shawneetown and found Rigsby there with another woman. They proceeded to make a scene, and, according to Shawneetown Chief of Police Bob Boone, the owners of the pub were able to get it all calmed down and removed Williams from the premises.
Boone said he was aware of the situation between Williams and Rigsby, and was aware that just a few weeks prior to her disappearance, she was “parked behind his house, blowing her horn” (whether this was the same “stalking” incident Davis was speaking of is unknown), and Rigsby had said he was “gonna call the law” and have Williams arrested, but that never transpired.
Whatever the case, phone texts between Williams and Davis on Saturday, November 30, discuss the situation that had happened at the bar.
At 4:45 p.m., Williams texted Davis, “Well just got a text from dumbass telling me I will pay when I get to town for last night.”
“Is that right??? I would file a report on that asap!” Davis replied.
“Just tried. Boone won’t do it says it’s just as much my fault as his,” Williams texted.
“No, he threatened you I would go to the PD and show them that text,” Davis said.
“Won’t matter they won’t do anything never do until I come up dead so if I go missing tonight Kelley did it :-(” Williams said.
“Come over here! Don’t go home tonight,” Davis texted, to which Williams said she couldn’t because she had to work early Sunday.
Last seen in Rosiclare
On that following Monday evening the 2nd, however, Williams, who had just had a prescription for nerve pills refilled, may or may not have been under the influence of them, and was again drinking, this time at a bar in Elizabethtown with Davis.
They returned to Rosiclare and went to the residence of the parents of one Scotty Miller, whom Davis was seeing.
There, Williams was visibly upset, crying, and bewailing a situation she was in with yet another man, Randy Davis (no known relation to Briannah Davis).
While she was there, she was moving restlessly about the place, and took off her scarf, inadvertently leaving it there.
Miller, a barge worker, was packed and ready to go on the boat the next night, and was agitated that Williams there, weeping about Randy, so he and Davis were trying to get Williams to sober up and calm down.
Ultimately, Williams and Davis left, and went to the ROC One-Stop in town to use the ATM machine before moving on to other areas.
They left, then came back to Rosiclare, where Williams left Davis and was last seen driving away from Miller’s parents’ residence in town at about 9 p.m.
That was the last time anyone ever saw her; the last person to see her was Briannah Davis.
A video from ROC One-Stop’s surveillance cameras exists of Williams’ vehicle passing by as it was leaving Rosiclare headed north. It cannot be ascertained who exactly was driving the vehicle.
In the above map, the red arrow points to the pond off Iron Furnace Road where searchers thought the truck of Chrissy Williams, shown at right, might have slid backwards into the water at a depth of about 15 feet. A search conducted at that spot Saturday, January 4 turned up nothing, however. Below, Williams’ sister Tami Jackson looks at maps of Hardin County with Jodi Powers Search Team member Scott Heltsley; the search went daylong but turned up nothing in Hardin.
Seeing yet a third guy
To add to the deepening mystery, it’s been reported that Williams advised her son Dusty in a letter to him while he was in Marine boot camp in California that she was seeing Andy Naas, a police officer for Shawneetown. In fact, Williams had told Dusty that she had taken Naas a plate of food for Thanksgiving.
The last known phone call made from Williams’ cell was to Sara Hazel, Naas’ girlfriend. It’s unknown why Williams had called that number, unless she was attempting to get in touch with Naas; the call was unanswered according to reports.
It is known that Williams took money out of her 401K about a week or two before she went missing, ostensibly so she could get a plane ticket and go see her son’s graduation from boot camp. She had been talking of a “road trip” on her Facebook page, and friends just assumed she was talking about the trip to California.
Williams had also just started a new job in Morganfield, Ky., across the river from her home in Shawneetown.
All of this could point to a woman who was looking to have a fresh start in life…or it could point to a woman who was planning to get away and not look back.
Upset with Boone; Boone responds
But her family believes she would not willingly run, from anything including the bad relationships she was bothered by in the last hours anyone had seen her.
The family, especially Williams’ sister Tami Jackson, are very upset that Boone didn’t take the complaint about Rigsby seriously, since there was such a history there.
They arranged a picket held Jan. 1 in front of the police department in Shawneetown. Boone said he stayed out of the way and let them protest.
“I know the family is upset,” Boone said. “But they need to understand what was going on with those two” (Williams and Rigsby), “we couldn’t keep her away from him. She’s a grown woman, and I told them that.”
Boone also spoke of a recent incident in which a “couple of employees from Ferrell Hospital were wanting to kick Williams’ ass,” and when he made contact with Williams, they ultimately had to call EMS because she’d claimed she’d “taken a bunch of pills.
“We counted them, and there were the right amount there,” Boone said. “She’d had a few, but not an overdose.”
This lends an unfortunate illustration to the prospect that Williams may have similarly been under the influence on the night she disappeared…and may have driven somewhere that she couldn’t drive out of.
Hardin has combed their county
However, Hardin County Sheriff JT Fricker has advised that his department, as well as emergency management, has combed the hills and crevasses of his county, which he knows like the back of his hand, and “if anything,” he said, “we’d have found that truck, because there are places in Hardin you can disappear into if you’re just one person, but that truck would at least give away the place where you stopped and got out to walk.”
Fricker has been so meticulous in his effort to find Williams that when one of his people saw what they believed to be tire tracks that indicated a vehicle may have attempted a turnaround on a driveway off Iron Furnace Road north of Rosiclare, and may have begun rolling off into a deep pond on the property and tried to pull out and get away but subsequently failed, he brought in cold-water cadaver dogs, this on the day the major search with the Jodi Powers Search Team was going on: January 4, 2014.
The dogs turned up nothing; sonar reaching down into other bodies of water have been attempted as well and have turned up no evidence of Williams’ truck.
Interviews conducted; few answers
The disappearance is so troubling to so many that all of downstate is becoming aware of the search for Chrissy Williams, and nearly every county in deep south has been alerted to keep an eye out for the cute brunette or her big red SUV.
And while there is more information to bring this time than there was in the last issue, there are still no answers.
The investigation continues, and according to law enforcement, all the people who have been mentioned in this article have been questioned, including friends and acquaintances of each of them, as well.
Anyone believing they’ve spotted either Williams or her truck is asked to contact their local law enforcement and have them get in touch with Hardin County, as they, and Illinois State Police Dist. 22 in Ullin are the lead agencies in the investigation.