Iowa fugitive worked as a chef in San Diego under an alias for more than a decade

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Earlier this year, Troy Williams told a reporter about his difficult childhood growing up in the projects in New York City.

The up-and-coming-chef had worked his way up from line cook to head of the kitchen at Miss B’s Coconut Club, a Caribbean restaurant in Mission Beach. He struck a sympathetic figure in a Times of San Diego feature, recounting experiences of racial profiling and the resulting difficulty of navigating the job market as a Black man.

But Tuesday, the U.S. Marshals Service arrested him, alleging in a news release that he was a fugitive who had lived for more than a decade under an alias after being charged for his alleged role in the 2012 kidnapping of a woman who had reportedly been his girlfriend.

Much of his identity appears to have been fabricated — including his name. His real name was Brian Anthony Williams, according to the U.S. Marshals Service, and he was wanted on several outstanding warrants in Iowa.

Brian Anthony Williams was arrested by U.S. Marshals on Tuesday. (U.S. Marshals Service) Authorities said the woman was shot in the leg and then abandoned in a field in Davenport, Iowa, in October 2012. Williams had allegedly conspired with three other individuals to fake his own abduction alongside hers, according to local reports of the incident.

Williams was charged later that year with kidnapping, assault, conspiracy to commit a felony and first-degree arson. The next year Williams was charged in the Southern District of Iowa for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution in the kidnapping case.

Williams, now 50, was arrested at the Mission Beach restaurant this week and was taken into custody “without incident,” according to the U.S. Marshals Service.

“This arrest is a perfect example of those who think they have bested law enforcement and evaded arrest,” U.S. Marshal Ted Kamatchus of the Southern District of Iowa said in the news release.

Williams’ appearances in local publications and television segments may have led to his discovery and arrest, with the U.S. Marshals Service learning of his whereabouts and assumed identity last month.

Eddie Jurado, the general manager at Miss B’s Coconut Club, told NBC San Diego that he and other staff members had been stunned to learn of Williams’ true identity.

“This is crazy, we’ve been through it. I’ve been here 10½ years, he’s been here 10½ years. He’s been running that kitchen for about eight or nine, once our first chef left and he took it over. We’ve been through COVID. I was his roommate for a while and he’s not even Troy,” Jurado told the news outlet.

Pete Cich, managing partner of the restaurant, said in a statement to online news outlet SanDiegoVille that the arrest of the man known to him and others as “Troy” has been “deeply unsettling.”

“[O]ur thoughts are with the people harmed in the events described by authorities,” Cich said.

Miss B’s Coconut Club management did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Times.

Williams’ extradition to Iowa is pending, the U.S. Marshals Service said Tuesday.

The Times of San Diego this week appended an editor’s note at the top of its February feature on Williams, writing that “nearly eight months after this story published, U.S. [Marshals] arrested Brian Anthony Williams on charges related to a 14-year-old kidnapping in Iowa. They allege that he had been living under a false identity as Troy Williams, the head chef at Miss B’s Coconut Club in Mission Beach.”

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Suhauna Hussain is a breaking news reporter at the Los Angeles Times.

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