INDIAN RIVER COUNTY – A Gifford girl running after a milk delivery truck for a birthday gift in 1968 promised by local milkman Hiram Ross Grayam, was the key witness who last saw him before he was found dead the next day in an execution-style shooting during an apparent armed robbery, said Grayam's son and law enforcement officials Thursday.
The April 11, 1968, murder has been the county’s oldest cold case. During a news conference held 56 years to the day of Grayam’s killing, officials publicly declared the case closed, and identified the now-dead suspected killer.
“My dad had promised to give (the girl) birthday cake, and she saw him driving away. She ran towards the truck to say, ‘Where’s my birthday cake,’ (but) he had these two gunmen in the car with him,” said Larry Grayam, 72, of Vero Beach. “So, he shooed her away, didn’t want her to get hurt (and) said 'I'’ll be right back. I have to take these two boys somewhere'.”
Indian River County Sheriff Eric Flowers said one of the two people seen with Grayam, the suspected shooter, is Thomas Jefferson Williams, who was roughly 21 at the time.
According to Press Journal archives, on April 10, 1968, two young men entered Grayam's milk truck, and forced him to drive to a wooded area and fatally shot him.
A witness who heard gunshots saw the men fleeing in a 1950s-model Chevrolet. Grayam was robbed of $70.
Coming on the heels of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination six days earlier, the killing of Grayam, 47, traumatized the community, kept racial tensions inflamed and created front-page headlines.
Because the suspects were two Black men, and Grayam was white, then-Sheriff Sam Joyce tried to calm tensions by saying: "This was not a racial crime. It was a robbery."
Suspect emerges in 2006
Williams first emerged as a suspect in 2006, resulting from Grayam’s efforts to draw attention to his father’s unsolved murder case through interviews for newspaper articles and TV news broadcasts.
“We believe that the articles that were run in the Press Journal and Channel 25 … caused this individual to run scared, and he responded by (writing) a letter to the editor of the newspaper,” said Grayam. “At that point he wasn’t on anybody’s radar, but he kind of interjected himself into the crime and he became a suspect.”
At the time, Williams denied knowledge of the murder and told detectives he was not involved. He was dismissed as a suspect along with several other possible suspects in the following years, Flowers said.
In February 2022, they reconsidered Williams after an inmate at Indian River County Jail, said at the time to be related to Williams, told detectives Williams confessed to him that “he killed the milkman back in 1968.”
With the new information, detectives then found a woman in Miami who had been married to Williams and spoke with her in December 2023.
“She did not know this other family member (the inmate), had never spoken to him and gave the exact same account,” said Flowers. “Which ultimately gives us two independent witnesses who both say that this guy confessed to killing the milkman to them.”
Williams was said to be a career criminal who, in detectives' interviews, was implicated in other killings. He died in 2016, but Flowers said they were able to determine through those talks, he was in Gifford at the time of the shooting.
“(The inmate and Williams' former wife) were willing to speak with us only because this guy was so violent he is now dead,” Flowers said.
The identity of the second person considered a suspect in the case is known to detectives, Flowers said, but he declined to name him.
“We know who he is and we want someone to come forward from the community to give us more information,” he said.
... Back in 1968
Grayam was reported missing by the Fort Pierce-based Borden Milk Co. branch when he did not return from his route through the Gifford area.
His delivery truck and body were found the next day after deputies onboard Piper planes saw his delivery truck in what was a wooded area off 38th Avenue and 43rd Street.
Flowers said he believes because Grayam was well known as a “nice guy” in the area, the two men used a ruse to get into the truck.
“My father was well known in the community,” said Grayam. “Many of the citizens liked him because if they didn’t have enough money to pay their milk bill he would dip into his pocket to pay the milk bill.”
At the time of his father's death, Larry Grayam said they found in company records “he had less than $100 on him.”
Hiram Ross Grayam, was a World War II veteran who served in Gen. George Patton's 3rd Army, performed many civic duties, including serving as state commander of the Disabled American Veterans and was district commander of the Civil Air Patrol, according to Press Journal archives. He was awarded a Purple Heart for being wounded during the Battle of the Bulge.
After nearly a year in Europe, in 1946 he moved from Ohio to Vero Beach with his wife and three children.
Larry Grayam said he was 16 and a volunteer ambulance corpsman at the time of his father's killing and his family was devastated by the loss. He said it led him into public safety and photojournalism careers.
His mother, Doris Grayam, died "of a broken heart" three years after the killing, leaving him, his sister Karen and brother without parents, according to Press Journal archives. Karen, who was 14 when her father was killed, has since died.
Larry Grayam called the anniversary announcement “bittersweet” saying after six agency administrations, he was “very pleased that we’ve come to the point that we can now close the case.”
“I’ve got to hand it to this gentleman over here (Flowers),” he said. “He finally put a team together that’s beginning to solve these cold cases.
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Corey Arwood is a breaking news reporter for TCPalm. Follow @coreyarwood on X, email corey.arwood@tcpalm.com or call 772-978-2246
