Text messages cast doubt on Johnson City manager’s claims about deal with suspected serial rapist

By Anita Wadhwani

Tennessee Lookout
Johnson City’s chief administrator made false and misleading statements about her efforts to purchase a condo from an accused sex offender at the center of a widening police corruption scandal, new filings in a class action lawsuit say.

City Manager Cathy Ball told local reporters in June that she had unwittingly entered a contract to buy the condo in 2022 from Sean Williams, the former Johnson City businessman who has since been implicated in scores of sexual assaults against women and children.

She contended she withdrew the offer once she learned who Williams was.

Text messages between Ball and her real estate agent, submitted in federal court on Friday, appear to contradict those claims.

At the time Ball was pursuing the real estate deal — a 3,000-square-foot downtown penthouse apartment for a below-market price that had not been publicly listed —Williams was a fugitive allegedly being sought by Johnson City police, whom Ball directly oversees.

The former Johnson City businessman is now behind bars. A trio of lawsuits accuse Johnson City police of public corruption, including allegations cops took kickbacks to protect Williams, even as he allegedly sexually assaulted dozens of women as well as young children.

The crimes allegedly took place inside the condo Ball was attempting to buy.

‘I did not tell…the story behind Sean’

“I want to make it clear that when I learned that the person was a fugitive, I withdrew my offer for the purchase of the contract,” Ball told reporters in June.

Ball noted she walked away from the deal months before the first of three civil lawsuits were filed containing explosive allegations against Williams and the police. Until then, Williams had been charged with illegally possessing ammunition. He had fled Johnson City before arrest on those charge.

Instead of withdrawing her offer, the texts show it was Williams who walked away from the deal, not Ball. Up until the day before Ball was set to close on the deal, she and her real estate agent were texting back and forth about the closing, with Ball asking for updates.

“I’ve checked email and called the seller multiple times … no response. I’m afraid closing will not take place tomorrow. I’m terribly sorry…),” read a May 31 text sent to Ball from Shannon Castillo, the real estate agent. Ball was scheduled to close on the condo June 1. An individual Williams granted power of attorney would have completed the transaction on his behalf, texts show.

Ball also reiterated in her comments to reporters and in a sworn legal deposition that the name, Sean Williams, “meant nothing” to her at the time she entered into a purchase contract with him.

Text messages, however, refer to information Ball and her real estate agent knew of Williams’ background.

In one text message to her real estate agent dated April 25, 2022, Ball said she had withheld information about Williams from a home inspector.

“I did not tell Michael the story behind Sean,” Ball wrote.

In another text message, Castillo — the agent — told Ball she would talk to the real estate attorney handling the deal about Williams. “I will fill her in on all the details regarding the seller,” Castillo texted Ball.

Until Williams walked away from the deal, he freely communicated with Ball’s real estate agent via text about the sale of his condo while he was a fugitive from justice, the texts reveal.  Nowhere in the legal record of the case does Ball say she reported her business transactions with a known fugitive to police.

The record does show that Ball texted then former chief of police Karl Turner regarding her plans to purchase the property. Text messages introduced into court show Ball asked Turner for a report of crime history in the neighborhood of Williams’ condo to see how safe the area is.  In her texts to the chief, under scrutiny for his own conduct in the Williams’ case, Ball does not give the specific address of the condo or specifically name Williams as the seller via their text communications, but refers to the condo in shorthand by street name. Turner then supplied a detailed list of all crimes committed around Williams’ condo.

Ball has the power to initiate an internal affairs investigation for the past two years that could scrutinize the actions and conduct of those implicated in the Williams case, including herself.

Instead, Ball has ordered any internal investigation be put on hold until the resolution of the class action lawsuit, court records show.

Neither Ball nor Castillo responded to a request for comment about the text messages.

‘Intended to manipulate the public narrative’

The text messages are the latest twist in a class action lawsuit against Johnson City and its police department by women, referred to only as “Jane Does” in legal documents, seeking to hold officials accountable for allegedly shielding a serial rapist and failing his victims.

The suit has also revealed the existence of a federal investigation into Johnson City Police Department, noting in filings that attorneys for the victims have provided hundreds of pages of emails to a federal prosecution team. The Department of Justice has previously declined to confirm the existence of such a probe.

The lawsuit was filed last year. A separate lawsuit was filed in 2022 by former U.S. prosecutor Kateri Dahl, who had pressed police to pursue assault reports against Williams. And in June of this year, a third lawsuit was filed against Johnson City, its police force and more than two dozen officers by a woman who alleges cops took bribes to protect a serial rapist who drugged then pushed her from a fifth-story window during an attempted sexual assault.

The latest filing containing Ball’s text messages is part of a renewed request by victims’ attorneys to bar Ball from making further public comments about the case.

Ball’s statements were “deliberately misleading,” “intended to manipulate the public narrative” and intended to serve “personal public relations’ goals,” victims’ attorneys alleged. They are also seeking sanctions against the city’s defense attorneys to the extent they participated in Ball’s press conference by alerting her to upcoming legal filings.

It is not the first time Ball’s public comments have featured in the ongoing case.

In August 2023, Ball held a press conference in which she told reporters some of the women who filed suit were partially “at fault” for their assaults because they “consumed and partook of illegal drugs.”

The women’s attorneys successfully obtained a court order allowing them to hold a press conference to address Ball’s remarks.

“Survivors deserve to be treated with respect,” one of the plaintiffs, identified in the suit only as “Jane Doe” said. “For a woman in Cathy Ball’s position of power to say publicly that victims are at fault when we didn’t have the ability to defend ourselves…it was a punch in the gut.”

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