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Wife kills husband with hammer,waits 2 weeks to call 911/Donna Williams, 51, charged with 1st degree murder/Police say Williams admitted to killing husband with hammer.Update: Gets 25 years in Prison.

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Wife kills husband with hammer,waits 2 weeks to call 911/Donna Williams, 51, charged with 1st degree murder/Police say Williams admitted to killing husband with hammer.Update: Gets 25 years in Prison. Empty Wife kills husband with hammer,waits 2 weeks to call 911/Donna Williams, 51, charged with 1st degree murder/Police say Williams admitted to killing husband with hammer.Update: Gets 25 years in Prison.

Post by Wrapitup Mon Oct 08, 2012 4:43 pm

By Katherine Cavazini
updated 9:58 PM EDT, Mon June 04, 2012
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VANCOUVER, WASHINGTON -- A 51-year-old woman has been charged with first degree murder after police say she admitted to killing her husband with a hammer and waiting two weeks to call 911.

On May 30, 2012, Donna Williams called 911 to report she had killed her husband with a hammer a couple of weeks ago, according to a probable cause affidavit. Williams allegedly told the 911 dispatcher that her husband’s body was still in the back bedroom of their home.

When investigators arrived at the scene, they reportedly found Williams smoking a cigarette outside. Police detained her after she turned to walk into the residence. Court documents revealed that police noted Williams had a black eye.

Inside the home, responding officers discovered the body of Mark Williams, 55, on the bed, covered with bed sheets.

According to the affidavit, Detective Sergeant Kevin Allais said there was a “significant quantity of red stains, consistent with blood stains,” and “numerous red stains on the walls consistent with blood spatter.” Allais also said the “male on the bed appeared to have been struck numerous times in the head with a blunt object.”

During the course of a police interview, police say Donna Williams stated that her husband had become increasingly abusive towards her over the course of their 30-year marriage. She described the abuse as primarily verbal, but she told investigators about one incident of physical abuse, according to court documents.

Police say Williams told them that her husband was a daily marijuana user who also frequently used cocaine. She said that on Mother’s Day, May 13, 2012, her husband came home and she could tell that he had been using cocaine so she confronted him, according to the affidavit.

She claimed her husband responded by “striking her in the left eye with his closed fist,” according to the affidavit. Her husband allegedly forced her to sit on the floor for an extended period of time. After he eventually allowed her to stand up, Williams allegedly told police she went to bed.

The following morning on May 14, Williams “became frustrated” when she looked in the mirror and saw the injury to her eye, she told police, according to the affidavit.

Williams reportedly stated that she went to the garage and grabbed a hammer. She allegedly walked back to the couple’s bedroom where her husband was still asleep and “struck him ‘three to four times in the head,’” according to the affidavit.

According to court documents, Williams allegedly told investigators that she believed her husband was still alive at that point because she could hear him struggling to breathe, saying, “’I just let him lie there and die.”

Police said Williams told them she walked to a convenience store, then came back home and went to the bedroom and found her husband “holding his head and still struggling to breathe.”

Williams allegedly told police she left the bedroom to retrieve the hammer, went back in and struck her husband in the head again. The probable cause affidavit stated that Williams told police her husband was no longer holding his head or struggling to breath.

The Clark County Coroner’s Office concluded that Mark Williams died of blunt-force trauma to the head. However, the coroner’s office has not yet determined how long the victim was dead prior to the discovery of his body.

"I don’t believe that my mother was a victim of abuse,” Rukiya Droste, Williams’ daughter told HLN's Nancy Grace. "I truly believe my mother was mentally disturbed."

Droste also told HLN, "What I did see was that my parents had a very toxic relationship. My mom a lot of the time was the aggressor. My dad was a very laid back guy.”

HLN reached out to Williams’ attorney, David Kurtz, for a comment, but calls were not immediately returned.

Donna Williams remains behind bars at the Clark County Jail with bail set at $750,000.

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Last edited by Wrapitup on Sat Mar 30, 2013 10:37 am; edited 1 time in total
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Wife kills husband with hammer,waits 2 weeks to call 911/Donna Williams, 51, charged with 1st degree murder/Police say Williams admitted to killing husband with hammer.Update: Gets 25 years in Prison. Empty 911 call may be used to defend woman accused of killing husband

Post by Wrapitup Mon Oct 08, 2012 4:45 pm



By Lincoln Graves KATU News and KATU.com Staff Published: Jun 4, 2012 at 5:50 PM PDT

PORTLAND, Ore. - A Vancouver woman's disturbing 911 call may help in her defense after being accused of beating her husband to death with a hammer, according to one prominent defense attorney.

Donna Williams waited 15 days to alert police to her crime while the body of her husband, Mark, lay in their bed at their home near Northeast 76th Street and 122nd Avenue.

Criminal defense attorney John Henry Hingson doesn’t represent Williams but after listening to her 911 call says it may set the stage for a battered woman defense.

Williams told the 911 dispatcher Wednesday, May 30 she murdered her husband because he abused her.

"He started beating me – gave me a black eye, and I got mad and took a hammer to his head while he was sleeping," she calmly told the dispatcher.

Hingson has handled dozens of domestic violence cases. He says statements to the dispatcher will be key to her defense.

"With all due respect to the person who got killed, this is somewhat of a variation of a homicide defense that kind of originated in Texas," he said. "The SOB deserved killin'."

Family members told KATU News they were stunned by allegations of abuse but some neighbors back up Williams who says the violence went on for years. Williams told the dispatcher that she was abused by her husband for 30 years.

"There's a tremendous amount of sympathy if it's presented properly," Hingson said. "That's what juries sometimes conclude."

Despite the killer's own admission that she killed her husband by beating him to death with a hammer, Hingson’s said his experience tells him how the case could play out.

"She could be a coldblooded murderer and bald-faced liar, but most likely it's true that she was a victim of serial abuse over a very long period of time," he said.

Family members of Williams did not want to comment on the 911 call Monday.

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Wife kills husband with hammer,waits 2 weeks to call 911/Donna Williams, 51, charged with 1st degree murder/Police say Williams admitted to killing husband with hammer.Update: Gets 25 years in Prison. Empty Vancouver woman pleads guilty to fatally bludgeoning husband. She receives 25 years in prison, seeks forgiveness

Post by Wrapitup Sat Mar 30, 2013 10:36 am

By Paris Achen
Columbian Staff Reporter
Thursday, March 28, 2013

A Vancouver woman who bludgeoned her husband of 33 years to death with a hammer in May was sentenced Thursday in Clark County Superior Court to 25 years in prison.

Donna Rae Williams, 52, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder of her husband, Mark Williams, and made no request for leniency.

Instead, she said, she wanted forgiveness from his family. Dressed in orange jail garments and shackles, she faced nearly a dozen members of his family and several of her own in Judge Scott Collier's courtroom and spoke.

"I would like to say I am so sorry for what I've taken away from them," Donna Williams said. "I have not only taken him away from them, I took him away from myself. He was my life … my best friend. … I chose to do something horrible that day. … I should have made a better choice."

Her plea for forgiveness followed emotional statements from Donna

Williams' daughter, who was Mark Williams' stepdaughter, and also from the victim's sister.

Senior Deputy Prosecutor Camara Banfield said Mark Williams' memory had been tarnished by Donna Williams' original defense that she was the battered wife of a violent man addicted to cocaine.

Toxicology tests showed that Mark Williams had no cocaine in his system when Donna Williams struck him in the head repeatedly with a hammer in the couple's bed May 14 and then left him for dead, said Banfield.

Donna Williams then went to a convenience store, according to court records. When she returned, he was still breathing, so she retrieved the hammer and struck him in the head again until he was dead. She waited until May 30 to call 911 and confess to killing him.

"My sleepless nights include visions of my brother's tortured, bleeding, moldy body decomposing in his place of refuge, his bed," said his older sister, Judith Pitve of Vancouver.

Banfield also said there also was no evidence that Donna Williams had battered woman syndrome, which might have caused her to snap and kill Mark Williams.

"Nobody had ever seen him raise his hand against this defendant," Banfield said.

In fact, her children told prosecutors that Donna Williams was the one with the drug problem and the more volatile spouse. She was fired from her job for stealing and had been picked up in Oregon for shoplifting shortly before the murder.

"What was described by the defendant was not true and should not be the memory that is left of Mark Williams," Banfield concluded, her voice breaking with emotion.

Family members of Mark Williams, who was 55 when he was murdered, described the man they said they remembered.

Pitve first read a statement from Donna Williams' daughter, Rukiya Droste, who lives in Savannah, Ga.

Droste recalled how she learned at age 10 that Mark Williams wasn't her biological father.

"I remember most, feeling like it didn't matter that Mark wasn't my real dad," Droste wrote. "He looked in my eyes that day and said, 'You are my daughter, and you always will be.' That is the kind of unconditional love I was taught. My dad loved us, he worked for us, he lived for us, and he made his decisions because of us. (He) set the bar for being a man and taking care of his family."

She mourned that because of her mother's act, her four children would know neither of their grandparents.

Pitve held up an intricately carved wooden urn containing her brother's ashes. Mark Williams was her only sibling, and their mother almost died giving birth to him, she said.

"My brother, Mark, loved, cherished, protected and planned for your futures as one forever," Pitve said, addressing Donna Williams. "How could he know that the love of his life would act like a thief in the night and end his life so cruelly?"

Donna Williams initially said that she killed her husband while he slept because she was frustrated that he had punched her in the left eye the previous evening. Clark County Sheriff's Detective Kevin Allais said that Donna Williams had a black eye when he arrived at the crime scene.

"I think it's unfortunate that drugs and alcohol became a crutch for both of them," said David Kurtz, Donna Williams' defense attorney. "Mr. Williams decided to get clean. Mrs. Williams did not."

He said a mental health evaluation revealed that Donna Williams also has significant anger issues. Anger treatment and substance abuse treatment were requirements of her sentence.

However, Kurtz repeated his client's original account that Mark Williams had punched her in the face during an argument the night before his murder.

The next morning, "she saw the black eye (in the mirror), she saw her face was puffy," Kurtz said. "I think she just lost it, and that's when it happened."

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