Merrill Williams Jr., was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana January 26, 1941, to a family of heavy cigarette smokers.
[3] He began to recognize that some of the papers contained valuable information exposing tobacco company malfeasance.
In September 1990, he met up with Richard Daynard, an anti-tobacco crusader, at Nina Selz's Orlando home.
[3] June 1992, Williams attempted to interest the U.S. Attorney's office in the issue, after learning that they were looking into allegations of fraud at the Council for Tobacco Research.
[2] In 1994, Williams met with Don Barrett, a Mississippi attorney representing cancer patients suing tobacco firms.
Scruggs, along with Mike Moore, on May 6, 1994, brought 4,000 pages of Williams' purloined documents to Representative Henry Waxman, who began using them in hearings in Washington.
[7][4][10][9] Later that same month, a large box containing the 4,000 pages of documents obtained by Williams, with no return address other than the name "Mr. Butts",[9][11] was shipped Federal Express to UCSF Professor Stanton Glantz, who quickly recognized their importance and began publicizing the documents and publishing analyses based upon them.
[2] He died November 18, 2013, in Ocean Springs, Mississippi from heart disease, probably brought on by heavy smoking.