A toddler was fatally beaten and left in a bathtub years ago. Cops just nabbed the disguised suspect 1,000 miles away

An Ohio man wanted in the fatal beating of a toddler whose body was found in a bathtub in 2020 was nabbed by cops on Wednesday, some 700 miles away, after they caught him trying to disguise himself with a curly red-haired wig.

Dioblis Williams, 25, who was wanted in the death of his girlfriend’s 2-year-old son, Ja’mir Jones, was arrested in Framingham, Massachusetts, after a cop spotted him poorly disguised in a wig and sunglasses walking with another person.

“As (the arresting officer) was driving there, he noticed these two and noticed that they did not fit the area; they were unknown to him,” Deputy Police Chief Sean Riley said, according to WCVB.

The officer then realized he was headed to a briefing about the police and the U.S. Marshals Service’s attempts to serve a warrant for the same man he saw on the sidewalk.

Officers chased after Williams, who was caught on surveillance footage tossing the wig aside before he was taken into custody, authorities said.

Williams was charged with being a fugitive from justice on a Massachusetts warrant, as well as murder on a warrant from Ohio, according to MassLive.

In 2020, Columbus police responded to a call for a drowning and found the little boy not breathing. Police called for EMS and began CPR, but he was pronounced dead at the hospital. The boy was in the bathtub unsupervised and had an accident in his pull-up diaper mere minutes before he was found unconscious, according to court documents obtained by ABC 6.

According to his autopsy report, he did not drown, but died by homicide. His official cause of death from the coroner’s office was blunt force trauma to the abdomen. He had bruises on his face, torso and neck.

The little boy was remembered as a “jolly” and “happy baby” with “the most infectious smile,” his great-grandmother Bernice Anderson Pearson said.

“Hallelujah, thank the Lord, thank the Lord,” she added. “I’ve been praying for this for five years, five long years.”

Williams, who has a criminal history, is accused of repeatedly hitting Ja’mir, causing his death.

In 2023, Williams was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence, and in 2020 he was charged with misdemeanor assault, riot to commit misdemeanor and disorderly conduct. It’s unclear when the murder warrant was issued.

He had also previously been charged in Fort Myers, Florida, with aggravated assault with a weapon without the intent to kill.

Fort Myers police said he threatened a man with a box-cutter style knife at a bus stop in April 2024, allegedly yelling that he was going to kill the victim and that he “wasn’t afraid to go to jail.”

Officials with the U.S. Marshals Service said the arrest was “a reminder that you can run, but you can’t hide.”

“Mr. Williams thought that he could evade arrest and accountability by hiding in Massachusetts. I hope that today’s arrest brings us one step closer to justice for a young child whose life ended tragically. The USMS’s expertise in fugitive apprehension is bar none, as evidenced by today’s arrest,” said acting U.S. Marshal Kevin W. Neal.

It was not immediately clear what brought Williams to Massachusetts, but court documents obtained by WCVB indicated he was using an Instagram account that linked him to an address in the state.