John Jefferson
Lamora Williams (Atlanta Police Department).
A Georgia mother of three who killed her two little boys “by placing them in an oven and turning it on” will spend the rest of her life behind bars, a judge in Atlanta ruled on Friday.
Lamora Williams, 24, was convicted on myriad charges, including two counts of murder for the 2017 deaths of her sons, Ja’Karter Penn, 1, and Ke’Yaunte Penn, 2, who were killed roughly an hour apart.
The since-condemned woman called 911 that awful day.
“When I came in, the stove was laying on my son, on my youngest son’s head, and my other son was laid out on the floor with his brains laid out on the floor,” Williams told the dispatcher. “I don’t know what to do. I just came home from work.”
In February 2018, Williams was indicted on four counts of felony murder, two counts of murder, two counts of aggravated assault, two counts of concealing the death of another, and one count of making a false statement. She was later charged with two counts of cruelty to children in the first degree, one count of cruelty to children in the second degree, one additional count of aggravated assault, one count of obstruction of a law enforcement officer, and one count of battery resulting in substantial physical harm.
The defendant told police she left all three of her children with a caregiver from noon until 11:30 p.m. that day and returned home to find two had died while the caregiver was gone.
“Can you please help me?” she asked the dispatcher. “Like. Can you please tell me, like, I don’t want to get locked up because this is not my fault? I had just came home from work.”
Sometime between midnight on Oct. 12, 2017, and 11 p.m. the next day, Williams “knowingly and intentionally” killed the two toddlers “by placing them in an oven and turning it on,” an arrest warrant issued by the Atlanta Police Department alleged.
According to autopsy reports, the boys’ heads were stuck in a tipped-over oven. The medical examiner disagreed with police claims that the children had been burned.
“These thermal changes appear to be entirely from dry heat and changes from prolonged exposure to heat,” the medical examiner reportedly wrote in both autopsies. “It would require an extensive amount of time to get to this degree.”
Williams maintained her innocence.
Prosecutors stuck by the police department’s version of events — and contradicted the defendant’s narrative in jurors’ minds, according to a courtroom report by Atlanta-based Fox affiliate WAGA.
The boys’ father also called 911 — at roughly the same time. Williams was hesitant to give the dispatcher her address on Howell Place in the Oakland City West End neighborhood.
“I just received a call from my child’s mother that my … two of my … two dead babies; my sons are dead in an apartment,” Jameel Penn told the dispatcher. “She video called me and I seen it. I really think they are dead.”
The distraught father described the video call in comments to Atlanta-based ABC affiliate WSB-TV.
“It was like a real horror movie,” he said. “It was Friday the 13th.”
On Friday, Williams was convicted of 14 counts against her. She was quickly sentenced to a term of life in prison without the possibility of parole — plus an additional 35 years.
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