PLANO, Texas — The people who live in the Plano neighborhood where William Garland, 40, was arrested in December peaked from their blinds as FBI and ATF agents surrounded the home where he was living. They whispered to each other as they watched him taken into custody, accused of crimes some told WFAA they couldn't have imagined.
More than a month later, Garland is still in federal custody awaiting trial, after pleading not guilty to charges of coercion and enticement and aiding and abetting as well as conspiracy to commit sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion.
The idea that this could have happened in their neighborhood, shocked the people who lived next door to Garland.
But for one North Texas woman, the charges weren't a shock at all. What surprised her is that Garland was arrested.
"My mom actually came to my house and banged on my door to tell me," she told WFAA.
The woman, whose identity WFAA is concealing for her protection, said she felt mixed feelings of fear and excitement after learning the news about a man she said exploited and abused her for years.
Her Story
More than four years before Garland was arrested in December on sex trafficking charges, he was arrested in Plano on a stalking charge. WFAA sat down exclusively with the alleged victim in that case who said she was involved with Garland for eight years before she escaped in January 2020.
"In the beginning, we were in a relationship," she said.
When she met him, he was charismatic and charming.
"He was like every guy that you'd want to meet," she said. "Very affectionate. Very flirty."
But the man she met didn't introduce himself to her as William Garland. The name he gave her matched one of the aliases on the federal indictment against Garland. She said he told her he was Brazilian, tech-savvy and former military.
She said they connected at an event over a mutual love for gaming. After they met, they kept in touch and developed a long-distance relationship while she was living in another state with her children and Garland was living in Texas. After a few months, she said she moved to Texas with her children to pursue their relationship.
As time went on, she said his disposition started to shift.
"He'd say, "You need to spend less time with your kids. They need to live in their dad's house so that you can do all the things that we're into now,'" she said.
Those things developed from gaming to tactical shooting. Before meeting Garland, she said she'd never shot a gun before.
"I'd never been to a gun store, been to a gun range none of that so that was all new. Literally, all of the things I ended up getting into, like guns, his idea," she said.
According to court documents that were filed after she left in 2020, Garland created an online platform called "GUNS GIRLS GAMES" which was described by law enforcement as "an online gaming and firearm community focusing on videos of scantily dressed females shooting firearms and/or playing video games."
In her interview with WFAA, she and other women Garland recruited spent hours training and recording videos that he would edit and post to social media sites. The warrant issued for Garland's arrest in 2020 states, "Affiant learned Garland trained [woman] how to shoot firearms and how to move and shoot tactically. Affiant learned Garland videoed [woman] shooting firearms which were uploaded to the internet by Garland for GUNSGIRLSGAMES.'"
The document states that an investigator watched multiple videos posted to the platform and confirmed that they identified this woman in the videos. That officer wrote that she was "shooting a vast array of firearms while scantily dressed in clothes, costumes and women's lingerie."
"Like everybody else who starts as a content creator, you want to be YouTube famous," she said. "If you get big enough and you're talented enough and people know that you're not just faking the funk, you get sponsors. Sponsors equal money. Money equals a way out."
She said that promise of "a way out" was the promise Garland held over her when he presented the idea of getting into the escorting business to foot the bill for the life they were building.
"It was just to create a lifestyle that he wanted, that he told me that I owed him," she said. "And so I needed to start making enough money to buy guns. They're not cheap, you know. And not only that, but then he wanted to go get a house in Plano, and that's not cheap. And, you know, that house needed to be completely furnished.”
She said clients were chosen online so they could pick who she'd interact with and where the dates would be. She also said Garland and another woman, whom she later learned was his wife, managed her online profile and booked her dates.
She started gradually, with just a couple of dates per week. In the beginning, she said she had access to cash even though she'd give her earnings to Garland. With time, even as she started making enough money to support the entire household, Garland eventually stopped giving her access to her money.
"I had been giving him everything I was making every time I worked," she said. "It got to the point where he didn't want to trust me with any financial anything. And if I needed to pay a bill, he would take the cash out of a drawer and count it and then give it to me to go pay whatever bill I needed to pay, or go get groceries or go get gas or go get dog food. I was not allowed to have any extra money on me whatsoever."
The 2020 arrest warrant described the woman in this story as "an escort in the commercial sex industry" that lived with her "pimp", referring to Garland.
The home they were living in was in Plano, just less than two and a half miles away from the short-term rental home where Garland was arrested in December. She said the lease was in her name, and her earnings paid for the home and everything in it.
She said she made about $1,000 a day and worked about six days a week for more than three years consistently in addition to a client who paid $20,000 per month to be exclusive with her for about a year.
"There was a lot of money, and there was a lot of money that just kind of, in my opinion, went poof," she said. "I wish I would have kept a little journal."
Despite the fact that she was earning the money to support his lifestyle, she said Garland began to be physically abusive about a year into their relationship.
The first time, she recalled, was when they were moving into the home she had leased for them. She said he was angry with her for setting down a large television they were trying to hang.
“He just basically was so violent with me that, I mean, I felt like he had cracked my sternum," she said. "I couldn't breathe for days."
She said she never got medical attention that day or in any of the violent outbursts that grew in frequency with time.
"The end was just like you could tell, like if he was upset that he was seeing red. I feel like he didn't care if he killed me or not," she said. "So, at the end, it was like every other day something was going wrong. And even if I had a black eye or a busted lip or something, I still had to be expected to go to perform on camera for content. I still had to go to work.”
"The end" is how she described her last year with Garland. She said she suffered multiple concussions and that Garland often used whatever object he had nearby to assault her.
Court documents state investigators observed scars on her hands caused by electrical hot wires and that she told detectives that Garland used a dog shock collar and taser on her she didn't "perform up to Garland's standards."
When asked why she never left, she said she was scared.
“He convinced me that he knew where my family lived, he knew where my kids lived. And he said, 'If you ever leave, I will track you down. I will find you. I will.' These were his words, verbatim. 'Feed you sleeping pills, cut off your eyelids, and make you watch as I torture and then kill your family in front of you," she said.
Despite threats, she decided to escape in late January 2020. She said she sat in her car, while Garland and other women were gaming. She was supposed to be running a routine errand to prepare for a shoot. She'd been violently assaulted that day, like many other days. But that day, she'd decided, would be the last time.
"My only prayer towards the end was I'm going to see my kids one more time before I die. Like, I just prayed 'God, just let me see my kids one more time before I die' because I was convinced he was going to kill me. And I didn't know how I was going to be able to see them and still die at his hand... God was like, just go. So I just drove.”
She connected with one of her clients who she said was shocked to hear about how she was being treated and financially supported her escape.
She said she has not spoken to Garland since that day.
According to court documents, she met with investigators about two weeks after she left the home and told them her story. Less than a month after her escape, Garland was arrested for stalking after detectives discovered he'd placed a GPS device on the woman's car without her knowing.
Garland was released on bond.
In May 2021, Garland was arrested again in Plano for selling multiple guns that legally belonged to the woman who spoke with WFAA. He was charged with theft of a firearm.
WFAA reached out to the district clerk's office in Collin County, where Garland was arrested in 2020 and 2021 in connection to these allegations, about the outcome of those cases.
The office confirmed that Garland's charges were "discharged per DA directive", which the office said means the charges were not indicted within an allotted time frame. While this is not the same as the charges being dropped, the office said these charges are not likely to be indicted.
For the woman who'd come forward, those instances signaled a loss of hope for any kind of justice and created fear for her own safety even though she had a protective order against him.
"I was so mad," she said. "My mom was ticked...he's wearing an ankle monitor but is allowed to go into any county that's basically touching this county. He has free reign of the DFW."
But then came the news of Garland's arrest in December.
"I thought finally, he's getting what he deserves," she said. "This is a federal case this time. This isn't just a state-level case. It's actually going to go somewhere this time."
On the day Garland pled not guilty to the charges he faces Rafael De La Garza, Garland's court-appointed attorney, said "On behalf of Mr. Garland, just remember that he’s presumed to be innocent regardless of the allegations and they’re serious allegations and we take those seriously."
De La Garza did not respond to a request to comment on this story.
If convicted, Garland could face a life sentence.
The woman who spoke with WFAA for this story said she met with authorities last month and plans to cooperate with this investigation.
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