Do you know who killed Knoxville Police Officer Mark \Tony\ Williams in 1989? In the summer of 1989, a promising young life was tragically cut short, leaving a community in mourning and a mystery that would linger for decades. Mark Anthony 'Tony' Williams, a 24-year-old male Knoxville Police Department officer, was shot and killed on July 7, 1989. Known to his friends and family as Tony, he had given up a college football scholarship to pursue a career in law enforcement and had been with the department for three years.
On that fateful July night, while off-duty
and riding his motorcycle near the intersection of Interstate 40 and Cherry Street in Knoxville, Tennessee, Williams was struck by gunfire. He was shot three times in the back, with a fourth bullet hitting the seat of his motorcycle. Despite his grave injuries, he attempted to get to a hospital, taking the nearest exit before losing control of his motorcycle and crashing.
The initial investigation led to the arrests of two men, Larry Wayne Witt, also known as 'Boot Nose,' and Johnnie Edgar Warwick. Witnesses had reportedly seen the two men, along with a woman, under the interstate in what was suspected to be a drug deal shortly before the shooting. Witt had also sustained a gunshot wound to the leg around the same time. Warwick, who was found with a pistol, implicated Witt in the shooting, though he gave multiple conflicting accounts. Witt, in turn, denied shooting the officer and claimed he had accidentally shot himself. Complicating the case, ballistics tests on the guns belonging to Warwick and Witt did not match the bullets that killed Williams, leading to the murder charges against both men being dropped. Witt, however, remained incarcerated on unrelated drug and counterfeit charges.
For over three decades, the murder of Tony Williams remained an unsolved cold case, a persistent source of pain for his family and a lingering question for the Knoxville Police Department. However, the pursuit of justice never fully ceased. In the years that followed, new information surfaced, including a secretly recorded undercover drug transaction where one of the original suspects implicated the other in the killing. The case was officially reopened and reinvigorated about five years ago by the KPD's Homicide Unit, with assistance from the FBI. Investigators utilized new forensic technology to re-examine the crime scene and re-interviewed witnesses and suspects.
This renewed effort culminated in a significant breakthrough. In December 2023, the case was presented to a Knox County Grand Jury. After reviewing the evidence, the grand jury found that there was probable cause to believe that Johnnie Edgar Warwick had committed the first-degree murder of Tony Williams. The finding stated that Warwick did 'unlawfully, intentionally, deliberately and with premeditation kill Anthony Williams.” However, just a month prior to this determination, on or around November 1, 2023, Johnnie Edgar Warwick died in federal prison where he was serving a sentence for other crimes. With the death of the man identified as the killer, the investigation into the murder of Officer Tony Williams was officially closed, bringing a long-awaited, albeit bittersweet, sense of finality to a case that had haunted the community for 34 years.
