Annie Lock’s relatives believed her boyfriend had alerted police, only to learn weeks later that no report had been filed.
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — For nearly two months after Annie Lock vanished, members of her family believed the man she lived with was doing what he had told them he would do: report her missing. By the time relatives discovered that had not happened, Lock had not been seen since Aug. 17, 2024. The search that followed would last another six months, ending with the recovery of her remains and, eventually, a second-degree murder conviction for Tyrique Zavier Leroy Williams.
Williams has now been sentenced to 15 to 19 years in a North Carolina prison after pleading guilty in August 2026 to second-degree murder and desecration of a body or remains to conceal an unnatural death. He will receive credit for 468 days already served. The sentencing gives the case a legal endpoint after a disappearance marked by an unusual reporting delay, questionable messages from Lock’s phone and a series of developments that led her relatives to become increasingly alarmed. Williams had originally been charged with first-degree murder when authorities arrested him in April 2025, but the case was resolved through guilty pleas to the lesser homicide offense and the concealment-related charge.
Lock’s family had last heard from her in August 2024. Fayetteville police said she was last seen Aug. 17 in the area of Kiana Lane. Relatives said she had been living with Williams and that the two shared a young daughter. Family members also told reporters that Lock was about five weeks pregnant. When communication suddenly stopped, the family did not immediately make its own missing-person report because, relatives said, Williams had indicated that he would contact law enforcement. They also requested a welfare check at the couple’s residence. According to family accounts, Williams told them Lock was not there when officers visited.
Weeks passed. In October, Lock’s sister began asking more direct questions about the supposed investigation. She told ABC11 that she asked Williams whether detectives had followed up with him. His answer changed the course of the family’s search: He said he had not filed a report. Fayetteville police records show Lock was then reported missing Oct. 10, almost eight weeks after she was last seen. Police issued a public appeal for assistance five days later. The gap did not prove what had happened to Lock, but it meant authorities formally entered the case well after her disappearance and after relatives had believed a police search was already underway.
As the family tried to reconstruct those missing weeks, another source of uncertainty emerged: messages apparently sent from Lock’s phone. Her sister later said she received texts after Lock disappeared and noticed differences in spelling. Rather than stop responding, she said she continued communicating in case her sister was actually on the other end. Reporting based on a later civil custody filing described messages indicating Lock needed time away and did not want anyone to report her missing. One message suggested she was still communicating with Williams. The verified public record reviewed for this story does not establish who authored those messages, and no complete digital-forensics findings have been publicly released.
The family’s concerns grew for another reason. By October, Williams had married another woman, according to relatives and subsequent reporting. WRAL reported that the marriage occurred within about a week of the family discovering that he had not made the missing-person report they expected. Law&Crime later reported that the woman Williams married had given birth to another child about a month after Lock was last seen. Those personal developments drew public attention because of their timing, but they should be separated from what the criminal judgment establishes. Williams’ conviction rests on his guilty pleas to second-degree murder and the offense involving concealment of Lock’s death, not on the fact that he later married.
Lock’s disappearance remained unresolved into 2025. In March, months after the formal missing-person case began, her sister made a public appeal for help. She described the two as exceptionally close and said the family wanted answers. Police had circulated Lock’s description and photographs and said detectives were actively seeking leads. ABC11 reported that a search warrant reflected investigators’ belief that Lock had argued with her former boyfriend before leaving their apartment on the day she was last seen. That document offered a glimpse into the investigation, but authorities did not publicly release a complete theory of the homicide or a detailed timeline of Lock’s final hours.
The search changed on April 13, 2025. Robeson County sheriff’s deputies found human remains in a body of water near N.C. 72 West and Buie Philadelphus Road in the Red Springs area. The North Carolina Office of the Chief Medical Examiner subsequently identified the remains as Lock’s. Fayetteville police then announced that Williams had been arrested April 16 and charged with first-degree murder and concealment of death. The discovery came roughly eight months after Lock was last seen and about six months after her family formally reported her missing. Local agencies and military investigators coordinated on the arrest as the case moved from a search for a missing woman to a homicide prosecution.
Williams was not in North Carolina when officers took him into custody. He had entered Army basic combat training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, where military officials said he was assigned to train with the 35th Engineer Battalion. Army Criminal Investigation Division personnel arrested him at the installation, and he was taken to the Pulaski County jail while authorities arranged his return to Fayetteville. Police thanked the Robeson County Sheriff’s Office, Army CID personnel at Fort Bragg and Fort Leonard Wood, and Missouri authorities for their assistance. The arrest put Williams before a North Carolina court on charges carrying far more severe potential consequences than the offenses to which he would ultimately plead guilty.
The case then moved through the court system for more than a year. A Cumberland County Superior Court calendar from October 2025 listed Williams on a first-degree murder charge and an offense identified as desecrating a body or remains to conceal an unnatural death. By August 2026, the prosecution had ended differently from the original charge: Williams admitted to second-degree murder. Available reporting on the judgment says he received a minimum prison term of 15 years and a maximum of 19 years, along with credit for 468 days in custody. The publicly available accounts do not provide a full transcript of the plea hearing or explain in detail why prosecutors accepted the final resolution.
The distinction matters because first- and second-degree murder are separate offenses under North Carolina law, and the guilty plea means the case did not proceed to a jury determination on the first-degree charge. The verified materials examined for this report also do not provide a definitive public account of Lock’s cause of death, the precise location where she died or the complete evidence linking Williams to the homicide. Those gaps should not be filled by inference. What is established through the court outcome is that Williams admitted criminal responsibility for second-degree murder and for concealing an unnatural death, and a judge imposed a lengthy state prison term.
The official Fayetteville Police Department releases identify Lock as 27, although some subsequent reports listed a different age. Police records are used here because they are the primary contemporaneous source. Her relatives described her as a mother and said she was pregnant when she disappeared. Friends who spoke after her remains were recovered remembered someone who had wanted to build a life around her children. Their public search for her preceded the criminal case by months and, in many ways, supplied the first chronology of the disappearance before investigators were able to announce an arrest.
With Williams’ guilty pleas and sentencing, the uncertainty over whether he would face trial has ended. He is serving a 15-to-19-year state prison sentence, reduced by the 468 days of jail credit specified in the judgment. The surviving public questions are narrower than they were during the missing-person investigation but still include details of Lock’s final hours and the authorship of messages sent from her phone after relatives stopped seeing her. No additional defendant or future criminal proceeding in Lock’s death is identified in the verified materials reviewed for this report.
Author note: Last updated September 22, 2026.