Tyrique Williams was taken into custody at Fort Leonard Wood months after Annie Lock vanished and days after her remains were identified.
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — When military investigators arrested Tyrique Zavier Leroy Williams at Fort Leonard Wood in April 2025, he was a North Carolina homicide suspect hundreds of miles from the city where Annie Lock had disappeared eight months earlier. More than a year after that arrest, Williams has admitted to second-degree murder and an offense involving concealment of Lock’s death and has been sentenced to 15 to 19 years in state prison.
The arrest at the Missouri training installation was the point at which a long-running missing-person investigation became an interstate criminal case. Fayetteville police said Williams was taken into custody April 16, 2025, by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division. At the time, Williams was 26 and was undergoing basic combat training with the 35th Engineer Battalion. He had arrived at Fort Leonard Wood in March, according to information the Army provided to local news organizations. Military authorities transferred him to the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office in Waynesville, Missouri, to await arrangements for his return to North Carolina.
Williams was initially accused of first-degree murder and concealment of death. His eventual conviction, however, came on different terms. In August 2026, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and desecration of a body or remains to conceal an unnatural death. Reporting based on the judgment says he received a prison sentence ranging from 15 to 19 years and credit for 468 days already spent in custody. Because the prosecution ended with a plea instead of a trial on the first-degree murder charge, the available materials do not include a jury verdict or a public trial record laying out every piece of evidence investigators collected.
The case that followed Williams to Missouri began in Fayetteville on Aug. 17, 2024, the date police say Lock was last seen near Kiana Lane. Family members said she had been living with Williams and that they shared a small child. They also said Lock was about five weeks pregnant. Her disappearance was not immediately entered into police records. Relatives later explained that Williams had told them he would file a missing-person report, and they believed he had done so. When family members checked again in October, they said they learned that no report had been filed. Police records show Lock was officially reported missing Oct. 10.
That two-month interval became a major part of the family’s public account. Lock’s relatives said they had attempted to check on her and had officers visit the residence she shared with Williams. According to family members, Williams said she was not home. Her sister later told ABC11 that she confronted him about whether detectives had contacted him and he acknowledged that he had not reported Lock missing. The family then went to authorities. Fayetteville police issued a public missing-person notice on Oct. 15 and asked anyone with information to contact detectives, beginning a formal search that would continue through the winter.
During those months, communications from Lock’s phone complicated the family’s efforts to determine whether she was safe. Her sister said messages arrived after Lock had vanished, but the spelling appeared unusual. She nevertheless replied because she did not want to ignore a message that might actually have come from her sister. Later reporting about a civil custody filing described texts claiming Lock needed a break, would return after a period of time and did not want a report filed. The record examined for this story does not identify the sender through verified forensic evidence, and no court finding reviewed here establishes who was operating Lock’s phone during that period.
Williams also married another woman during the period when Lock remained missing, according to the family and multiple reports. WRAL reported that the marriage occurred shortly after relatives learned he had not filed the missing-person report. Later reporting said the woman he married had recently had another child. The timing became part of public discussion about the case and intensified the family’s concerns, but it is important to distinguish that circumstance from the offenses Williams ultimately admitted. The criminal judgment establishes his guilty pleas to second-degree murder and the concealment-related charge; the available sentencing material does not state that his later marriage was itself part of either offense.
By March 2025, Lock’s family was still asking publicly for help. Her sister appeared in local news coverage and spoke about their relationship and the pain of not knowing where Lock was. A search warrant cited by ABC11 indicated that investigators believed Lock had argued with her former boyfriend before leaving their Cliffdale Road apartment on the day she was last seen. Police continued to describe the case as active. At that stage, authorities had not announced that they knew Lock was dead, and the family’s public statements still reflected the hope that she might be found alive.
That changed April 13, when Robeson County sheriff’s deputies discovered human remains in a body of water near the intersection of N.C. 72 West and Buie Philadelphus Road in the Red Springs area. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner identified the remains as Lock’s. The discovery was roughly 30 miles from the area associated with her disappearance. Fayetteville police then coordinated with the Robeson County Sheriff’s Office and Army investigators, leading to Williams’ arrest three days later at Fort Leonard Wood. Police publicly thanked military investigators in both North Carolina and Missouri, underscoring the multiagency nature of the arrest.
The distance between Fayetteville and Fort Leonard Wood was notable, but Williams’ military location did not move the underlying case out of North Carolina’s state courts. He was returned to face charges in Cumberland County. By October 2025, a Superior Court calendar listed Williams on the first-degree murder charge along with the offense involving desecration of remains to conceal an unnatural death. The case remained pending until the guilty pleas the following summer. The public sources reviewed here do not show that Williams was tried by a military court for Lock’s death, and his Army training status should not be confused with the state criminal prosecution that produced his prison sentence.
The plea to second-degree murder also narrows what can responsibly be said about the case. Initial arrest reports described allegations of first-degree murder, but that charge was not the final conviction. The verified sources do not provide a complete account of Williams’ statements during the plea hearing, a detailed description of Lock’s cause of death or a full explanation of the negotiations that led prosecutors to resolve the case at second-degree murder. Those facts should not be inferred from the original accusation. What is confirmed is the plea, the concealment-related conviction and the sentence, including the credit for time Williams spent incarcerated before judgment.
Fayetteville police identified Lock as 27 in their official releases, although later reporting contained conflicting information about her age. The police figure is used here as the contemporaneous primary record. Her family remembered her in more personal terms. Relatives and friends described a woman who was close to her family, cared deeply about her children and had plans that were abruptly cut short. Their decision to keep speaking publicly while the case was still categorized as a disappearance helped maintain attention on the search months before the discovery in Robeson County.
Williams’ location changed repeatedly during the case — from Fayetteville, to Army training in Missouri, to a Missouri jail while awaiting extradition, and eventually back to North Carolina to face prosecution. His legal status has now changed as well, from a defendant accused of first-degree murder to a prisoner convicted on his own guilty plea of second-degree murder. With the 15-to-19-year sentence imposed and 468 days of credit awarded, the verified court reporting identifies no pending trial in Lock’s death and no additional defendant charged alongside Williams.
Author note: Last updated September 22, 2026.