A small part of a seven-page confession was read in a DuPage County courtroom Tuesday in which Jacqueline Williams said she took part in the slaying of an Addison woman whose baby was cut from her womb.
The statement also implicates Fedell Caffey, Williams’ boyfriend, in the slayings of Debra Evans and Evans’ children Samantha, 10, and Joshua, 7.
Thomas Epach, Cook County chief criminal prosecutor who held the same office in DuPage in 1995, told Judge Peter Dockery that on Nov. 18, 1995, the day after the killings and several hours into an interrogation of Williams, “She hung her head down and said `I was there. I’m so sorry it happened. I will tell you the truth.’ “
Epach said he wrote down Williams’ seven-page statement in the Addison Police Station in the presence of Addison Detective Mark Van Stedum and Cook County Assistant State’s Atty. Colin Simpson.
The statement was a rare glimpse into a shocking case that attracted national headlines. Through two years of pretrial hearings, prosecutors and defense attorneys have been instructed to minimize the amount of information made public in order to ensure a fair trial for Williams and two other defendants, Caffey and LaVerne Ward.
Tuesday’s hearing in Dockery’s Wheaton courtroom came on a motion by DuPage County Public Defender Stephen Baker, who was seeking to prevent Williams’ statement from being introduced at trial.
Dockery allowed Epach to read only a few specific passages in the statement.
Among those were statements that specifically point to Caffey, who has contended he wasn’t at the Addison apartment when the killings took place.
In the statement, Williams said she looked on as Caffey cut into Evans’ abdomen to retrieve the fetus.
“I saw the baby emerge,” the statement said. “It had no color and was covered with blood and mucus. The baby looked limp and I saw it. It looked lifeless.”
At the hearing, Baker questioned several police officers who went to the Schaumburg apartment that Williams and Caffey shared. It was there that the newborn baby was discovered alive and healthy.
Baker’s questions seemed to indicate that the defense will argue that Williams was coerced into making the statement because she felt mentally and physically threatened by police.
The bodies of Debra Evans and Samantha were found in their Addison apartment on Nov. 17, 1995.
Joshua was slain the next day in a Maywood alley after having been allegedly kidnapped. Authorities believe the boy was killed because he had seen what had happened to his mother and sister.
Another son, Jordan, who was a year old at the time, was discovered unharmed in the apartment where his mother and sister died.
The newborn was named Elijah and lives with members of Evans’ family in southern Illinois.
The hearing Tuesday was continued until January.
