Trial Begins For Man Accused Of Killing 5 In 2008
CHICAGO (STMW) -- After Torolan Williams and his friend robbed and murdered five people at a house party on the South Side, he turned to his partner in crime and laughed, Cook County prosecutors said.
"That was some crazy s---!" Williams allegedly joked with Michael King as they drove off with lookout Arthur Brown in the early morning hours of April 23, 2008.
Williams was arrested less than two months later as he was coming out of Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where his baby had just been born and where he played with the Xbox he swiped from murder scene, Assistant State's Attorney Victoria Klegman said Tuesday as Williams' trial began.
Brown is expected to testify against Williams in exchange for a 24-year prison sentence.
Klegman told jurors the 31-year-old Brown will recount how he waited for King and Williams outside Donovan Richardson's home after they shot their victims and stole their jewelry, the video game console and TVs.
But Assistant Public Defender Steven Stach maintained his client's innocence, saying Williams never was inside the home, in the 7600 block of Rhodes Avenue.
Williams, now 28, was a "smart-aleck kid who got in with two older guys who manipulated him and are trying to place the blame on him for their crimes," the defense attorney said in his opening statements.
The bodies of Richardson, 24, Anthony Scales Jr., 26, Reginald Walker, 23, Whitney Flowers, 22, and Lakesha Doss, 17, were discovered after Scales' girlfriend and a friend went to the home that spring. All had been shot in the head.
April Rutherford was the lucky one, Klegman said.
Rutherford testified Tuesday that she came to Richardson's barbecue with Scales but left to go pick up a friend who was downtown.
When she came back, she knocked on the door but no one answered.
Rutherford and her friend Terry Arrington were able to get inside the house the next afternoon.
"Everything was flipped over," Rutherford said of the disarray in the residence.
Rutherford said she and Arrington first stumbled upon the lifeless body of Flowers, who went by the nickname "Princess."
Then Rutherford said she saw two of the dead men in the living room before she ran out of the house and called police.
"There's blood everywhere," Rutherford was heard crying on the 911 tape played in court.
When Arrington took the stand, he denied telling detectives that Richardson was a well-known pimp.
Doss and Flowers, whose body was discovered naked, were exotic dancers who lived with Richardson, as did Walker, according to court testimony.
King, 33, is awaiting trial.
Williams' trial is scheduled to continue before Judge Carol Howard on Wednesday.
(Source: Sun-Times Media Wire © Chicago Sun-Times 2014. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
