Lee Andrew Williams is now behind bars – where Hialeah Police say he can no longer get to the young victims he sexually abused.
"His day of reckoning has come,” Hialeah Police spokesman Carl Zogby said.
The 61-year-old man’s latest victim was a 7-year-old girl whose family came forward two weeks ago, telling police that Williams had been sexually abusing the child for months, police said.
But their investigation unraveled a long history of sexual abuse, they said.
"What started two weeks ago has now turned into five victims who have come forward, some of them adults now, to tell us about crimes and abuses as far back as 40 years ago,” Zogby said.
One of those victims was a 12-year-old girl who said Williams sexually abused her in 2011. And three adults who have come forward accused Williams of abusing them when they were children, going back as far as 1973, police said.
"We’re only scratching the service, we're still interviewing people,” Zogby said. “We want the public to take a good look at him."
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Williams was being held Monday night on numerous charges of sexual battery on a minor, lewd and lascivious molestation of a child, and other charges, according to online Miami-Dade Corrections records. It was not immediately known whether he has an attorney.
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Williams targeted young girls between ages 5 and 10, according to police.
Most of his victims were relatives, Zogby said.
“But there could be strangers, there could be neighbors, who at one time were victimized by him,” he said.
Williams is a Miami native who moved to Hialeah about 12 years ago. At one point he lived in North Miami with his sister, who told NBC 6 South Florida that those who came forward were “habitual liars.”
But police say his victims have been brave after years of painful silence.
"Well, he’s got a long history of crimes in this town and finally he's going to pay for them," Zogby said.
