The Texas mother who allowed her children to live with their younger brother’s decomposing body for a whole year after he was murdered has been sentenced to spend 50 years behind bars.
Gloria Williams, 38, pleaded guilty in October to causing serious bodily injury by omission in the death of her son, 8-year-old Kendrick Lee.
Her five-decade prison sentence comes just five months after her boyfriend, Brian Coulter, was found guilty of Lee’s murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Coulter was convicted of capital murder after prosecutors proved he beat Lee to death in a Houston-area apartment in late 2020, then deserted the home with Williams for another apartment, leaving Lee’s three brothers to live in a roach-infested apartment for a year as the 8-year-old’s body decomposed.
“We expect parents to protect their children, not hurt them, because children really are our most vulnerable victims,” said Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg in a press release announcing the sentencing. “This case shocks the conscience not just because a child lost his life, but because of his parents’ complete and total disregard for human life.”
Prosecutors stated that Coulter and Williams abandoned the boys to live in the apartment in squalor, without electricity or beds to sleep on. The boys testified the couple would return every few weeks to drop off food and that Coulter would also beat the younger boys during those visits.
Some law enforcement agents also testified that when they first visited the apartment, they saw that the boys were malnourished and reported that the home was giving off a distinct smell.
It wasn’t until October 2021 that Lee’s eldest brother called the police to report his brother’s death. Authorities found the child’s skeletal remains under a blue blanket that Coulter laid over his body after he died.
Two weeks after investigators recovered the body, Coulter and Williams were arrested at a local library as they were searching for news articles about the case.
Williams’ attorneys prepared a defense that shifted most of the blame on Coulter and claimed he was at fault for much of the abuse that her sons suffered, the Houston Chronicle reported.
In an affidavit, they explained that Williams gave birth to six children with four different men who failed to provide her financial support. After a brief marriage to an older man who died, she met Coulter, whom she came to rely on.
“Brian told me things I wanted to hear and he seemed to care for my boys,” Williams wrote in the affidavit, adding that Coulter started hitting the children and pressuring Williams to punish them. “I told him to stop but he kept doing it. I was scared of losing Brian and being on my own again without any money.”
Prosecutors argued that Williams could have sought out help from family members or found an alternative means of care for her children after Coulter’s abuse started.
According to the press release, Williams was facing life in prison, however, the DA’s office was amenable to a plea deal that would keep the children from having to testify about the death. “By pleading guilty and waiving the right to a jury trial, the defendant finally acted like a protective mother,” said Edward A. Appelbaum, the chief assigned to the DA’s Child Fatality Section. “For one day of her children’s lives, she was a good mother.”
Williams surrendered parental rights to her children when she was arrested.
Two of her children have been adopted since her arrest and her eldest son is currently living with a foster family.
