In January, he launched another unprovoked attack. Barry Thomas was the talented restoration artist that managed Jim's basement workshop. At that time, Danny mostly worked on the main floor of Mercer House, doing things like stocking the bar, getting ice, and going to the post office. He only occasionally came down to the lower-level workshop. Barry very rarely ever talked to him or even saw him because Mercer House operated on two separate levels.
"There's Jim's private level upstairs, which is his own house," Barry explained, "and there's a shop downstairs, which is what I was more involved in. I tried to keep the separation between the two things very firm, so that Jim had a private dwelling to live in…I could run a business from it without causing a lot of inconvenience to him.
"I was leaving work one day about 5:30 when the incident occurred," Barry said. "During the day, I had observed Danny in the house, and he had been very moody the whole day, kind of sulking almost.
"And I was leaving with three other people, and I was coming up the staircase, and I heard steps coming down the staircase, and (at the same time) Jim came around the corner from the study into the main hall, which runs down the center of the house.
"And as I turned around to see where the footsteps were coming from, I saw Danny coming down the staircase and he was obviously very upset, because he just came at me and then went to kick me in the stomach, and his foot made contact with my stomach, but then Jim grabbed him and hauled him off with another fellow, and then Jim said to Danny, 'Get out of here!' I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know why he attacked me.
"I'd get on with Danny quite well. Whenever he came downstairs, we talked, and that's why I was so taken aback.
"A day or two later, when I came in, Danny was in the house. I walked up to him and I said, 'Danny, why did you attack me?' And he could not remember attacking me. He said, 'I don't remember I attacked you and I don't know why I attacked you.' And he wanted me to kick him and he said that would make him feel better.
"I told him what would make me feel better: if he would promise that he would not do that again. He promised, but the incident was left like that. I never found out why or for any reason.
"It scared the living hell out of me, and I was so taken aback, because I wasn't expecting it. Just the sheer fright of having someone attack you for no reason, it just makes you very nervous to be around someone when you don't know if this may happen again."
Subsequently, Danny's relationship with Jim began to fray, and Danny was less welcome as a permanent houseguest. A month after the attack on Barry Thomas, Douglas Seyle, one of Jim's employees, arranged for Danny to rent the carriage house on his mother's property at 101 East 36 Street, starting in February.
At the end of February, Danny was in trouble again. Danny and George Hill, his best drinking buddy, enjoyed picking fights. Earl LeFevre, a mechanic with Gulfstream, had lived on Key Street for 20 years. Both Danny and George Hill had lived in that same neighborhood. One day, Danny and George went to LeFevre's house to see his son. When his son left the house to talk to them, Danny and George threatened him with bodily harm. LeFevre came out to protect his son, and George hit him, shouting, "I don't have to take any shit from you, either." LeFevre ended up fighting George, while his son fought with Danny. After Lefevre's wife said she was calling the police, Danny and George left, but not before George broke down LeFevre's front door, warning him that he hadn't heard the last of it. Lefevre went to court and filed complaints against Danny and George for threatening bodily harm, battery and destruction of property. George had to pay for damages.
Danny's relationship with Debbie was becoming increasingly strained. Danny constantly asked her to marry him. "It got old, you know," she said. "I told him, 'Please. Don't ask me to marry you. I'll go out with you tonight, but don't ask me to marry you.' I didn't want to get married to him, huh-uh. I didn't even move in with him."
When investigator J.D. Smith asked Debbie whether she thought that Danny was merely staying with Jim to hustle him, she answered, "Slightly, yeah." Debbie had no idea how Danny was paid for the work he did for Jim. She never saw him with a payroll check. She did notice that Danny was always borrowing money from Jim. The cash, she assumed, was an advance on Danny's pay.
Debbie said that Danny would get mad at Jim if he wouldn't lend him money. "He'd raise his temper and start really giving it to Jim. Danny cussed and stomped and hollered, screamed and threw a fit and told Jim he was going to hit him. He told me he would knock the shit out of Jim anytime. Didn't say he had [beaten Jim]. Talking big, trying to impress me. It was like a little temper tantrum or something, you know? Jim gave him the money. I heard that one time and I stepped back in the foyer and I was ready to go out the front door. I didn't want to stand there while they were arguing."
J.D. Smith asked Debbie if Danny had ever told her about Jim being involved in something illegal. Had Danny had ever mentioned to her that Jim had been involved with another antiques dealer on something shady that took place some time ago? There were a number of shady deals that Jim participated in, but this may have been related to the theft of silver from Mercer House that Jim had staged for insurance money. Might Danny have had something on Jim? Debbie said she didn't know about anything illegal at Mercer House, but Danny's behavior toward Jim caused her to have some doubts: "By the way that argument was that day when I was there, Danny acted like he was holding the upper hand-that he could get his way. And that was the way he acted around me, was that he could get his way, no matter what, around Jim Williams. He tried to act real powerful around me. That he could get all the money in the world, that Jim would give it to him."
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