John Jefferson
Left: Gloria Williams. Right: Kendrick Lee (Harris County District Attorney’s Office).
The mother who did nothing to stop from her boyfriend beating her 8-year-old son to death and then forced her three other kids to live with the boy’s decaying remains will spend the next five decades behind bars, according to court records.
Gloria Yvette Williams, 38, pleaded guilty last month to causing serious bodily injury by omission in the death of her son Kendrick Lee. A judge found her boyfriend, 34-year-old boyfriend Brian Ward Coulter guilty of first-degree murder in April and sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole after a five-day bench trial.
During her sentencing hearing Tuesday, Williams told a judge she regretted allowing her children to live with her son’s body but said she did so to keep them away from Coulter, the Houston Chronicle reported. While displaying gruesome and disturbing photos from the scene and of the boy for the courtroom during Coulter’s trial, prosecutors refrained from doing so during Williams’ two-day sentencing hearing and instead just showed them to individual witnesses, per the Chronicle.
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Her defense attorneys reportedly emphasized it was Coulter who doled out the abuse while prosecutors highlighted her inaction. Prosecutors reportedly showed text messages between her and Coulter that showed while she questioned his abuse toward the children, she still professed her love for him.
As Law&Crime previously reported, shocked detectives began their investigation in October 2021 when a then-15-year-old boy called 911 to say he and his siblings, then ages 7 and 10, had been living with Kendrick’s body in a west Houston home for a year. Investigators later learned that after Kendrick’s death sometime in late 2020, Coulter and Williams covered the boy’s body with a blue blanket and then moved to another apartment, leaving the kids behind. Cops arrested the pair a couple of weeks after the 15-year-old’s 911 call.
The siblings testified that they saw Coulter repeatedly beating Kendrick while he was still alive. The youngest brother told the judge about how he watched Kendrick’s eyes until he stopped blinking during the beating.
“The death of Kendrick Lee was so tragic, and because of the fact that for so long there was no one to speak up for him, we felt like we had a duty to be his voice,” said Assistant District Attorney Celeste Byrom after Coulter’s conviction. “It was important that we were able to secure justice for him.”
Said cocounsel Edward A. Appelbaum: “No matter who you are, if you’re a human being, the facts of this case would shake you to the core. It’s a horrific act.”
Williams’ charges accused her of failing to protect Kendrick and give him proper medical care, food and shelter.
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