Mother of gang member convicted of first trans hate crime claims victim was 'living in sin'

Josh Vallum confessed the first hate crime against a transgender person this week in Mississippi. But, the killer's mother is coming out now attacking the woman her son killed and buried, the DailyMail reported.

Vallum's mother, Kelly Wilkins, said in an interview this week with Alabama.com, proclaiming her devout Christian beliefs. She claimed that her son "blacked out" when he killed Mercedes Williamson and that it had nothing to do with hating transgender people. She spent the interview using the wrong pronoun, referring to Williamson as "he" instead of her preferred pronoun "she."

"It wasn't about that," Wilkins said of Williamson's gender. "He did black out because he didn't know. He was kissing that boy (sic) thinking it was a girl and when he put his hand in their pants and felt a penis he blacked out."

She said that the two were "living in sin."

"I am a Christian," she continued. "I believe what God says. His word says its (sic) a sin to be homosexual. It also says it is a sin to kill. Josh is not gay. Ask all the girls he has dated over the years. I'm not more focused on either sin. They are both sin."

"I am very sorry that boy lost his life," she says of the transgender woman. "I'm sorry Josh killed him. I hope that boy cried out to God for forgiveness before he died and is in heaven now."

Earlier this week, Wilkins blamed Williamson for her own death in a long Facebook post. She also denied again that her son was gay, despite homosexual pornography being found on his phone.

"It was a tragedy for that young person to have died. It was also wring (sic) the way he lived his life as a female when God created him as a male," she wrote on Facebook.

Vallum was dating Williamson, but when he found out that she was a transgender woman he broke up with her.

Not long after, he became fearful that if his gang found out that he had a sexual relationship with someone who was born a man he might be killed. He stabbed Williamson multiple times using a military knife. He then beat her with a claw hammer until she stopped screaming.