by Mark Bellinger
NASHVILLE, Tenn.- For more than 18 years Connie Williams has been the face of a murder victim's family. Her brother Carl was shot to death in 1994, when he was walking down I-40 after his truck broke down.
The case has never been solved.
"I don't want people to forget that this case is not solved. And it's not just Carl's case, but there's a few other Nashville cases that are near and dear to my heart and I just want people to know that they're still unsolved" Williams said in a 2005 interview.
She started a 5-K race in the memory of Carl and other murder victims. It lasted five years. Williams has also attended A Season to Remember, but events memorializing victims and helping families weren't enough for her. She spent years frustrated as she waited for justice.
"I am beyond it. It's not a frustrating thing for me. There was a time when we did these interviews that I would say I will never lose hope. That someone will be caught," she said.
Now, she has written a book about moving on and overcoming the loss of a loved one. Nearly a thousand copies have already been downloaded from Amazon.com, but writing it took a long time. Williams realized she was in no position to tell someone else how to grieve.
"So, what I thought I was going to help somebody else do, I realized that I had not completely done it myself," she explained.
In the three years it took for her to write, "Thinking Consciously Rocks!" there was a shift in her thinking from negative to positive.
"The memory of my brother doesn't go to the murder, the unsolved crime. It goes to childhood memories. It goes to just being grateful to have known him." Williams said. "What I wanted to convey is that we can do that with anything. It's a choice we make. we can choose to be negative or positive. And that's really what my book is about. It crossed over from just the murder of my brother to everyday life. How do I look at my day."
Williams still hopes there's justice for her brother, but she'll let detectives, lawyers and judges handle it.
"And it's not an " Oh, I'm giving up." It's really just that I've moved past that and I don't need that to be happy," she said.
Williams has found it's a much healthier way to remember her brother. In the meantime, Metro Police continue to work on her brother's murder case. It is being handled by Cold Case detectives.
