Sexual battery charges streaming in against fitness trainer

They hired him as a personal trainer, a paid exercise coach who would motivate them to lose weight and tone arms and legs.

Instead, a rapidly increasing list of women allege, James Elbert Williams III groped and sexually battered them.

Williams is accused of sexual battery and battery involving three different women at two gyms, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. The office is actively investigating eight other reports - and more calls are coming in, said spokeswoman Debbie Carter.

Williams, 39, was charged with sexual battery in one case July 1, posted bond and was released. When a second woman came forward with a report, detectives issued a warrant for his arrest.

U.S. marshals found him Wednesday at a hotel in Little Rock, Ark., and arrested him. When Tampa Bay newspapers and TV stations publicized the arrests, additional complaints started streaming into the sheriff's office.

"After his arrest, we've had numerous calls from females out in the community who've had dealings with him," Carter said.

The alleged incidents go back several months, with one woman reporting occurrences from almost a year ago, Carter said.

Carter said Williams, who ran Get Fit on N. Dale Mabry and a new gym, Club Tone on W. Linebaugh Ave., met women online via match.com and posed as someone else, telling them about a trainer who worked with his sister.

"Then he would actually hook these people up with himself as the personal trainer," she said.

Tammie Culligan says that's how a friend came in contact with Williams, and they hired him as a trainer together.

Culligan is not one of the three alleged victims in the charges Williams formally faces but is among those who have come forward with their own stories. She said she is speaking publicly because she wants others who may have had similar experiences to feel comfortable coming forward.

Culligan, a private investigator, said Williams does "things you wouldn't do on a first date with somebody."

"I've never had anybody touch me like that inappropriately over my clothes," she said.

It only happened one time, Culligan said, and then she avoided him. She said she and her friends gave Williams reasons that they couldn't come to the gym any longer, worried about alarming him and making him aggressive.

Since then, she said, she's talked to 10 other women and, "Almost every one that comes forward is worse than the next."

"We knew if he was doing this to us, in our gut you know, even though we didn't really know, we had a gut feeling that there had to be something else," she said.

The woman range in age from their 20s to their 50s, with no obvious similarities, Carter said.

"It's not like he was targeting one specific type of person," Carter said.

Culligan said Williams claimed to be former University of Florida football player Elijah Williams and that he went by other names, including Jay and EJ.

She said she and her friends paid for four months of training and stopped going after about 10 sessions, but didn't get their money back. She said she lost about $2,400.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office is asking anyone who has had contact with Williams and believes they are a victim of a crime to call 813-247-8200.