White Supremacist Sentenced to 84 Years After Double Murder and Horse Sacrifice Claims

In April 2026, 43-year-old Brandon Gerner was found guilty of murdering two people and sentenced to 84 years in prison. He was convicted for the 2023 killings of Ashley Nicole Williams and Robert Leroy Riley, in Maple Valley, Wash. 

The saga began back on November 15, 2023, when three men—Brandon Gerner, a former inmate and leader of the Omerta white supremacist prison gang, Joshua Jones and Kody Olsen—trespassed onto a wooded commercial property located in Maple Valley, a commuter town outside of Seattle. When the trio of trespassers encountered 57-year-old Robert Riley on the property, a confrontation ensued in which Riley was shot in the chest and killed, as was his girlfriend, Ashley Williams, a 34-year-old mother of five.

Local outlet Komo News reported that the couple’s bodies were haphazardly hidden in the bushes under piles of refuse on a property just a few miles away and found the next morning by a man out walking his dog. Prosecutors told the court that Gerner stabbed Williams more than 20 times in an attempt to silence her after she witnessed Riley's murder. When the knife broke and Williams was still alive, Olsen then shot her three times in the chest, killing her. During the murder trial, a longtime friend of Riley's testified that, in addition to “ordering the execution of my best friend” and "brutally, violently, viciously, and horribly butchering Ashley,” Gerner had also “shot Riley’s old, blind dog.” 

This isn’t the first time Gerner has been entangled with allegations of violent crime against humans and animals. He had been released from prison only eight months before his fatal encounter with Williams and Riley after serving a 22-year sentence in prison for assault and burglary. Gerner is also connected to another incident in which he is accused of shooting a beloved neighborhood horse in the face at point-blank range as part of a ritualistic sacrifice to the Norse god Odin back in December 2023. 

According to local news reports, the horse, named LeMon, was well-known and loved by locals in his Pierce County neighborhood. Karen Greer, the mother of LeMon’s owner, went outside to feed him one early Sunday morning only to find the horse lying dead with a bullet hole piercing through his skull and spine. That memory is "going to be with me for a long time," Greer told local news King5.

In a ruling letter, Pierce County prosecutor Mary Robnett said that Gerner’s killing of the neighborhood equine was meant as a tribute to his deceased accomplice, Kody Olsen, and that co-defendants Gerner and Jones had "bragged to others that they had killed a horse in a field close to where the December incident occurred so that Mr. Olsen had a steed to ride into Valhalla.”

Norse mythology was a foundational part of Gerner and Olsen’s white supremacist ideology where horses play an important role by pulling the chariots of the sun and moon and carrying the dead to the hall of Odin in the afterlife.

Gerner was charged with first-degree murder, second-degree murder, unlawful possession of a firearm and first-degree animal cruelty. His co-defendant, Jones, was charged with rendering criminal assistance for helping to hide the bodies, while Olsen died in a shootout with Pierce County deputies before any charges were brought against him for his part in the incident. 

Lisa Mulligan, a defense attorney representing Gerner, argued that her client had simply helped move the bodies and that the responsibility for their untimely deaths lay squarely with the deceased Olsen. Google location data indicated that Olsen had also been present on the night of Williams and Riley’s deaths.

“In this case, fate has already punished the real killer of Ashley and Robert,” Mulligan said in court. “Convicting an innocent person is not justice.” 

In body cam and dashboard videos of the shootout released by law enforcement, Olsen’s Ford pickup truck is seen speeding off before skidding off the road and crashing to a halt in a grassy field. Jones began shooting at the deputies, striking two, who were not seriously injured, with one bullet striking an officer's handcuff pouch. Videos show four deputies returning a continuous spray of gunfire, eventually wounding Olsen, who, after a lengthy standoff, was taken to the hospital where he died four days later as a result of his injuries.

Jones pleaded guilty to helping conceal the deaths of Williams and Riley in 2025 and received a six-year sentence. 

Gerner himself was convicted by a jury for first- and second-degree murder, sentenced to 84 years at the end of April 2026, and immediately began the paperwork to file for an appeal. Throughout the trial, Gerner maintained his innocence, saying in a court statement that there was no tangible evidence linking him to the deaths and that his conviction had rested on “compromised witnesses with changing stories.”