Church Worker Charged in Murder of Teen-Ager

A volunteer church groundskeeper was charged Thursday in the molestation and murder of a Marin County teen-ager, one of four girls in the San Francisco area who have disappeared during the last year.

But even as the Marin County district attorney charged Scott Williams, 29, with murder, authorities elsewhere in the Bay Area discounted the possibility that he was involved in the three other disappearances.

Special Agent Barry Mawn of the FBI, which has entered the investigation, said at a press conference Thursday that police “have not come up with any physical evidence that he (Williams) was involved in those three cases.”

Williams could face the death penalty if he is convicted of murdering Jennifer Moore, an eighth-grader who was last seen alive a week ago at an ice cream parlor near her home in the Marin County suburb of Novato. The allegations of special circumstances include rape and lewd and lascivious conduct with a child under 14.

A shaky Williams, stocky, bearded and handcuffed, appeared briefly before Marin County Municipal Judge Lynn O’Malley Taylor and will enter a plea of not guilty next week, said his lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Paulino Duran of Marin County.

Police tracked Williams after noticing Bible study books at the bottom of the garbage sacks in which Moore’s body was found. Similar sacks were found at the Bethel Baptist Church, where Williams, had worked as a volunteer groundskeeper and deacon.

Police investigators believe Moore was strangled in the church library and struck on the head. She was dumped in a field two miles from the church and discovered Monday, four days after her mother reported her missing.

“People are a little more guarded today and more aware,” said Police Chief Jim Rose of Dublin, where Ilene Misheloff, 13, was kidnaped in February.

In June, Amber Swartz-Garcia, 9, was kidnaped near her home in Pinole north of Oakland. In November, Michaela Garecht, 10, was kidnaped in Hayward, south of Oakland, apparently by a man with long blond hair.

Times researcher Norma Kaufman contributed to this story.