Watson in a 2016 booking photo.

PREVIOUSLY

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It wasn’t quite dawn when the sheriff’s deputy showed up to arrest Travis Watson, standing in his driveway with nothing but a phone and a pack of cigarettes in his pocket, spattered with blood. Some of it, he said, was his own. The deputy, Russell Hurley, couldn’t see much outside of what was illuminated with his car’s headlights. He cuffed Watson and put him in the back of his car.1 

Hurley moved to Watson’s trailer, a single-wide out near Hoopa he shared with his four-year-old daughter. He saw a pair of legs laying on the ground behind a sliding glass door. The rest of the body leaned up against a wall. Hurley stepped over him, shouting to anyone left unseen. No one was. The body lay in a pool of blood, more of it trailing up a small, narrow hallway into a bedroom.4 Hurley didn’t recognize him, but Cole Kane, another deputy who arrived soon after, did: he was James Williams, Watson’s uncle.2

Kane later found a bloody chef’s knife on top of a green Ford Ranger; Watson had said there’d be a knife in a truck. Kane came in the trailer and attempted to rouse Williams, shining a flashlight in his eyes and administering CPR.2 Nothing happened. Paramedics, let in after the police decided it was safe to enter, couldn’t do anything either. Williams was declared dead 20 minutes after Hurley arrived, 5:53 a.m., May 2, 2026.

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Reams of details like these are emerging from Watson’s pretrial hearing this week, which has been pushed back several times. Originally scheduled to finish yesterday, it’s been delayed until Friday to give Watson’s lawyer, public defender Owen Tipps, time to review a HCSO investigator’s report he hadn’t yet seen as of yesterday. If Judge Lawrence Killoran deems there to be sufficient evidence Watson murdered his uncle, they’ll schedule a jury trial. All of this information has been compiled from witness testimony delivered over the last two days and may be incomplete or inaccurate.

The law also allows weaker evidence to be introduced at preliminary hearings than it does during a jury trial. 

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Kane found Watson’s daughter with an acquaintance of Watson’s he’d called after he called the police to the property, her T-shirt marked with a bloody handprint left by Williams.2 

“Daddy attacked Uncle Bubba,” she told HCSO investigator Jennifer Taylor during an interview. (Taylor wasn’t sure how much she’d seen, what part of the altercation she’d witnessed.) After the fight was over, he fled, leaving his daughter in the trailer. He hid under a truck and called 911 and told the dispatcher he’d been attacked. He eventually tried to knock on a neighbor’s door to convince them to come and get her, but they didn’t answer. (His eldest daughter and someone else came later when he called her.)3 

Watson went back inside the trailer, kicked Williams and told him to “quit messing around and get up.” He didn’t. Watson put a blanket over his four-year-old’s head and ushered her out past the body. He called 911 and told the dispatcher he’d been attacked.3

Williams had attacked Watson after threatening to kill both him and his daughter, Watson told Hurley, and he’d attempted to defend him and his daughter from him.1 Williams had a gun — or maybe a knife — Watson claimed, and he had been forced to stab him.3 Williams choked and hit Watson, he said, and he’d stabbed him twice in an area he thought was around his right hip, severing the artery in his leg. 

Williams, 32, was only a year older than Watson. They had a complicated history, Taylor testified. They were close, like brothers. Williams had “shielded” Watson from sex abuse growing up, and they’d grown closer as they’d aged. However, they also fought like brothers. Watson didn’t tell Taylor about any physical fights, only verbal ones they eventually got over. 3

Several days earlier, Watson offended Williams egregiously. He’d sent Snapchat messages to Williams’ daughter, advising her and her friends to stay away from him.3 She showed them to her dad as he was sending them. Watson had also called 911 on April 30, two days before Williams’ murder, and told the dispatcher that Williams had robbed someone depositing money at the credit union in Hoopa and also stole a bike trailer from Watson.3

On May 1, Williams and a friend, Robert Kelsey, went out into the hills near Hoopa to ride four-wheelers and dirt bikes. Williams broke the chain on a bike, and they went to Kelsey’s uncle’s house. At around 4 a.m. the next morning — May 2 — they decided to head home to McKinleyville, but before they got there, Williams turned the truck around and said he wanted to see Travis and “deal with everything.”3 (When Taylor, the HCSO investigator, reached this point in her testimony, the judge paused the hearing until Friday. She hasn’t yet said where Kelsey went.)

HCSO investigators “extensively” searched the trailer and Williams’ truck. They didn’t find a knife or a gun, though they did find a closed pocketknife in one of his pockets during the autopsy. Well, Watson said, maybe it was a black phone he’d seen. He also wasn’t sure how he got the cut on his finger. 

Why would Williams, armed with a gun or a knife, instead choke him and hit him? Taylor asked Watson. And how could he even do all of those things at the same time? 

He couldn’t explain that.

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1: This according to Deputy Russell Hurley’s testimony.

2: This according to Deputy Cole Kane’s testimony.

3: This according to HCSO investigator Jennifer Taylor’s testimony.

4: This according to HCSO forensic specialist Andrew Campbell’s testimony.