A man and his accomplice, who were wanted in connection with the murder case of their old roommate in 2017 in Maryland, have been arrested at a homeless camp.
Sheriff officials from Arizona’s Pima County said 46-year-old William Rice and 45-year-old Christina Harnish, who also goes by Christina Stallings, were taken into custody following their arrest last Wednesday and are awaiting extradition for the murder of Megan Leah Tilman, 42, and a mother-of-three.
Anne Arundel County police in Maryland said they received a tip that Rice and Harnish were in the Tucson area and notified the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.
The victim’s father, Jim Tilman, thanked authorities for the arrests and for continuing to work on the case, but he said it still doesn’t take away the pain of losing a child.
‘It’s horrible, it’s rough, you think about it every day. Even though it might not come to full surface. It’s there, it’s back there,’ Tilman said.
Maryland authorities said Tilman was reported missing from her home in Annapolis in November 2017. She reportedly could be easily influenced and was described as having borderline intellectual functioning.
Before her death, Tilman reportedly had been living with her boyfriend, Rice, and Harnish in a rented townhome in the unit block of Rockwell Court in Annapolis with her mother, Gloria Owens, 62.
Megan Leah Tilman, 42, was found dead in 2019, two years after she was declared missing in Annapolis, Maryland
Authorities with the Arizona Sheriff’s Department arrested William Rice (left), 46, and Christina Harnish, 45, in Tucson, Arizona. Anne Arundel County police said the pair is suspected to be responsible for Tilman’s death
Rice (left), Tilman (center) and Harnish (right) were all living under the same roof in a townhome in Annapolis, Maryland, right before Tilman’s disappearance in November. Shortly afterwards, the two suspects moved out of state
Owens moved out of the home right before November of that year, and frictions between Megan and her family led to an apparent estrangement. Rice and Stallings had subsequently moved out of state.
A cousin of Tilman’s reported her missing to Annapolis Police Department after she hadn’t received any news from her weeks prior to her disappearance. Tilman’s family feared the worst when their relative — who had two daughters, Paris and Grace, and a son, Ceci — failed to show up in court for a child custody hearing. .
Detectives discovered that the last verified contact Tilman had with anyone was on Saturday, October 7, 2017.
Human remains were found on the shoreline on Shady Side, Maryland, eleven days later and were identified as those of Tilman in April 2019. The case was quickly ruled as a homicide.
The victim’s car – a champagne 1998 Jeep Cherokee – was found abandoned at a shopping center in Prince Georges County on November 3, 2017, two days after Tilman was reported as a missing person.
Tilman’s car – a 1998 Jeep Cherokee – was found abandoned at a shopping center in Princes Georges County on November 3, 2017, two days after the victim was declared missing. Police could easily identify that the vehicle was hers thanks to her distinct car stickers
Tilman’s vehicle also had a rear bumper sticker of a picture of a sailboat reading, ‘Put An Island In Your Life Put-in-Bay, Ohio’
The vehicle had several distinctive stickers on the rear. On the passenger side of the rear bumper was a sticker with a picture of a sailboat reading, ‘Put An Island In Your Life Put-in-Bay, Ohio’. On the upper portion of the driver’s side of the rear windshield was a sticker with a picture of a motorcycle reading, ‘LOOK TWICE SAVE A LIFE’. The windshield also had a Harley-Davidson and a animal paw sticker on it.
As of Sunday, it remains unclear Thursday if Rice or Harnish had a lawyer yet who could speak on their behalf.
Tilman’s father, Jim, is still haunted by his daughter’s murder and can’t imagine what he finals seconds could have been like.
‘You think how tragic it really was,’ he told WBAL-TV in Baltimore. ‘You think about their last 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes. Did they suffer?’