Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Woman Killed 2 Kids, Mom, Cut Baby From Womb

Associated Press

In a case a prosecutor said would “give nightmares to Stephen King,” a woman was convicted Friday of killing two children and their pregnant mother, then cutting the woman’s full-term baby from her womb.

The jury deliberated for about two hours before finding Jacqueline Annette Williams, 31, guilty on all counts.

She could get the death penalty.

Members of the victims’ family cried as the verdict was announced.

Williams was convicted in the November 1995 deaths of 28-year-old Debra Evans, her daughter Samantha, 10, and her son Joshua, 7.

Evans was shot in the head in her apartment and her full-term fetus was ripped from her womb. Samantha was stabbed to death. Joshua was abducted, and his body was found in an alley 10 miles away. Evans’ son, Jordan, then 1-1/2-years-old, was left unharmed.

The boy ripped from the womb survived and is now 2.

Two men are charged as accomplices, but prosecutors described Williams as the mastermind, calling her “the enormous evil” behind the killings. They said she held a baby shower for herself in August 1995 and even had a fake birth certificate made for Evans’ baby.

Williams’ motive was “her desire to take from the womb what she couldn’t have,” prosecutor Jeff Kendall said in closing arguments.

“She put her hands up inside that woman’s body and pulled that baby out,” said another prosecutor, John Kinsella.

“You want to know what a crazy killer looks like? Just look over there,” Kinsella told jurors, pointing at Williams.

The defense, which took just one hour to present its case Thursday, portrayed Williams as an abused and frightened woman who would do anything to please her boyfriend, Fedell Caffey, 25.

Separate trials are pending for Caffey and Laverne Ward, 26, Williams’ cousin and Evans’ former boyfriend who fathered the baby cut from her womb and Jordan.