Ex- NFL and Florida State player Todd Williams has been found dead in a Tampa Bay area hotel. He was 35.
The Manatee County Sheriff’s Office reports that deputies responded to the Sarasota Suites late Monday morning, just hours before the Seminoles won a national championship.
Todd Williams, a Bradenton native, had reportedly complained to his mother of feeling sick on Friday. She found his body Monday.
He could not taste anything and had stomach pain for about a month, his mother, Ozepher Fluker, said, so she advised him to go to the hospital to get checked out Friday.
After not hearing from him over the weekend, Ozepher Fluker went to the hotel. She said she knew her son was gone when she heard crying coming from his room. Ozepher Fluker said Todd Williams lived at the hotel for about six years.
Todd Williams was one of Florida’s top prospects after his senior season at Southeast High in Bradenton
Todd Williams, a 6-foot-5, 330-pound offensive lineman, was a member of the 1999 FSU Seminoles, who won the national championship. The team was led by another Southeast star, Peter Warrick.
Sheriff’s spokesman Dave Bristow says they haven’t found anything suspicious, but an autopsy will be performed.
Todd Williams was one of the state’s top prospects after his senior season at Southeast High in Bradenton.
He was a redshirt freshman on the Seminoles’ 1999 national champion team.
Todd Williams was drafted by the Tennessee Titans in the 2003 NFL Draft and went on to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Green Bay Packers.
Jill Kelley, the Florida housewife whose complaint over threatening emails revealed David Petraeus’ affair, has attempted to exploit her connections once again.
In her first words since her part in the scandal was revealed over the weekend, Jill Kelley has sent a string of pleading emails to the Tampa Mayor, complaining she has been receiving threats and claiming: “The truth will one day prevail.”
The anguished messages, seen by the Tampa Bay Times, were sent in the early hours of Tuesday and Wednesday to Bob Buckhorn, whom she knows socially.
Jill Kelley claims her three children are scared to return home and her husband, Dr. Scott Kelley, has been forced to sleep at the hospital because he cannot get into their driveway, due to the swarms of media.
“Dear Mayor Bob,” Jill Kelley wrote, adding that she, David Petraeus and General John R. Allen – whom she was found to have exchanged “flirtatious” emails with – “have been exploited by the media”.
“I wouldn’t care – if they got the facts right and the focus was on the criminal that stalked all of us,” she added, apparently referring to David Petraeus’ mistress Paula Broadwell.
“But the truth will one day prevail.”
It is the second instance of her trying to exploit her “position” – after she called the police asking for “diplomatic protection” from the media due to her role as honorary consul to South Korea.
“I’m an honorary consul general, so I have inviolability, so they should not be able to cross my property,” Jill Kelley told the 911 operator.
“I don’t know if you want to get diplomatic protection involved as well, because that’s against the law to cross my property because, you know, it’s inviolable.”
But the move backfired – with the police releasing the calls to the media and failing to provide her the protection reserved for those in positions of genuine authority.
“To put insult to injury, your police dept gave the local 911 tapes to the press!” Jill Kelley wrote to Bob Buckhorn, adding that the recordings included her cell number, so: “I have been receiving threats all night.”
“I’m scared and cannot believe what my city, in which I have contributed so much of my love, time, money and leadership, has now done to me and my innocent family,” Jill Kelley wrote.
Bob Buckhorn told the Times that he did nothing in response to Jill Kelley’s complaint and simply said that the 911 recordings were public records.
He added that he knew the Kelleys socially after he won the mayoral race in March 2011 – even though they did not support him in his bid and he had never met them before.
Jill Kelley with General David Petraeus and his wife Holly at her home in 2011
Yet just three weeks after Bob Buckhorn was sworn into office, Dr. Scott Kelley and his wife hosted a reception for him at their lavish $1.3 million home on Bayshore Boulevard.
Jill Kelley has since invited Bob Buckhorn to a string of social events, including her daughter’s sixth birthday party, which are also documented by email, the Times reported.
She invited him and his wife to a dinner party for the King of Jordan and, after he was unable to attend, she wrote to him again.
“The King and his sister [the Princess] are awesome people!” Jill Kelley said.
“Actually your name was brought up by the Generals when they were showing off the party I hosted you! (everyone loved that party).”
They met again when Bob Buckhorn and his wife gave her a ride home following an event at MacDill Air Force Base, for which she organized events as a volunteer social liaison officer.
“Gen. [James] Mattis, was so kind to offer, but I realized you two were passing my way,” Jill Kelley emailed the mayor the following day.
Their messages also show how she involved herself in a spat over a radio host’s claims that he was going to deep fat fry the Koran earlier this year, according to the Times.
Officers at MacDill told the mayor that the publicity stunt could harm troops, and asked him to speak with the host.
Jill Kelley also called the mayor to tell them she had been speaking with Gen. John Allen and Vice Admiral Robert Harward, the deputy commander of CentCom, who said they needed the mayor’s help.
When Buckhorn responded to say it was being dealt with, Jill Kelley said “they asked me to get involved, like I did when it happened with the Pastor last year”.
Her shrewd social-climbing tactics also came to light this week when she was pictured with Marco Rubio and her twin sister, Natalie Khawam, when he was running for the Senate.
The photograph was tweeted by Republican Angelette Aviles who said that it was taken at a March 2010 fundraiser, where tickets were $1,000.
But the twins didn’t pay – instead, they appeared, took the photo and left, Angelette Aviles told the Times. They did not contribute to his campaign.
Yet over the past week, Jill Kelley’s connections have given her more exposure than she was perhaps intending.
After David Petraeus dramatically resigned from the top of the CIA last Friday, it emerged that Jill Kelley had played a key role in exposing his affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell.
In May, Jill Kelley alerted the FBI that she had been receiving threatening, anonymous emails warning her to “back off” David Petraeus, whom Kelley and her husband are good friends with.
The FBI was forced to launch an in-depth investigation as some messages contained classified information about David Petraeus’ whereabouts, and they feared there could have been a security breach.
