Posted on 06/07/2008 10:17:07 AM PDT by ruination
A Columbia journalism student will tell jurors on Friday how a sadist turned her Manhattan apartment into a "torture chamber" where she was raped, disfigured and nearly blinded.
"He ordered her to stab out her eyes," Assistant District Attorney Ann Prunty said Thursday as she opened the trial of 31-year-old Robert Williams with a horrific account of the alleged assault on April 13, 2007.
Standing naked in the bathtub with her lips glued and taped shut, her hands and ankles bound, the 23-year-old victim "couldn't do it," Prunty said.
"The next thing she heard was the kettle whistling," the prosecutor said. "She will never be able to stand that sound again."
Prunty's description of how Williams allegedly poured the boiling water on his victim stunned the packed Manhattan courtroom into silence and caused a veteran sketch artist to flee in tears.
The testimony that followed was even more gruesome.
"He chose a butcher knife and slowly began to slice into her face and eyelids, carving and disfiguring her face," Prunty said.
"In her despair, she told him to just kill her, but he was just getting started."
The 19-hour assault ended only after she blacked out - finally overcome by the overdose of painkillers she was forced to swallow - and he lost interest.
"Then he could no longer feel power over another human being," Prunty said.
Williams is charged with 71 criminal counts, including attempted murder, arson, rape and sodomy. He faces life in prison.
Shackled and with his hands encased in protective mitts, Williams stared straight ahead as Prunty spent an hour describing the victim's agony.
The former Bloods gang member tried to cover up the crime by wrapping the victim in a futon and torching her Hamilton Heights apartment, police said.
Prunty said the woman was too smart - and too tough - to die. She used the flames to melt the computer cables binding her to a futon frame. She also remembered everything, even faking blindness so she could "memorize distinguishing features," Prunty said.
"She described this man to a T," she said.
The ordeal left the student with a scarred face, severe burns and liver damage from the pills.
She was not in the courtroom Thursday. Her parents were - and they refused to cry in public.
Williams was waiting in the building elevator when the victim returned from a job fair around 10 p.m., police said.
Williams stood 6-feet-tall and weighed 160 pounds, a foot taller than the student. She got off on the fifth floor and he followed.
"He asked where Mrs. Evans lived," Prunty said. "His ruse froze her for a minute."
Then the assault began. "He shoved his way through the door," Prunty said. "She screamed and reached for her cell phone. He slapped it from her hand."
Williams "proceeded to violate her in every way imaginable, and in some ways, unimaginable" before grabbing her camera to record his depravity, Prunty said.
Then Williams took the torture to new level.
"He wanted to see her face, her fear and humiliation," Prunty said. "He gave her scissors and ordered her to cut off her hair."
Fearing she might be able to identify him, Williams threw something in her face.
"She thought it was water," the prosecutor said. "Then she realized it was much more sinister ... she smelled bleach."
Yikes. Sounds like something in a Hannibal Lecter story.
This disgusting piece of filth needs to be destroyed. No humane lethal injection and no last meal. If needed I will volunteer to kill him as long as I can do it in my own way.
No mercy at all for the scum.
I agree — s-l-o-w execution — incorporating every instrument and method he used on this poor girl - except the painkillers. And put it on primetime TV on all channels.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Let’s draw cards for the right to terminate this scum with extreme prejudice.
“The former Bloods gang member . . . “
And the respective ethnicities are?
Not good enough. Too quick.
He needs to be drawjn and quarterd..
...when he gets put in prison he needs to be shanked....it’s just a matter of getting money to the proper Aryan Nation gang members....oh hell, they might just do it for free.
The perp was an “honor student”..
You are kidding (I know you’re not, I’m just amazed). An honor student where? What about him being a gang member? Regardless, he’s a sub-human POS who deserves the most horrendous death imaginable. He probably has no remorse, I could see scum like this smirking in the courtroom.
Of course I’m sure the onsite courtroom reports will be prominently featured on all local and national newscasts like the Rodney King video was.
“Honor student” is the term defense lawyers and “activists” typically use to describe the miscreant, and then produce an old grammar school graduation picture. You’r right, being drawn and quartered wuld be too kind a death for him. There are any number of things that would make his smirk go away..
This scum may get life in prison, but some bleeding hearts will champion his cause and claim his prosecution was racially motivated and move to get him paroled. There are some perpetrators that are most deserving of capital punishment and he is one.
The media mullahs will portray him as “a victim of society”..
Why wouldn’t he smirk? He knows the worst thing that could possibly happen to him is a lifetime of free room, board, and medical care. He’ll probably live better in prison than he did on the outside. And he can always get paroled.
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