An Atlanta mother will spend the rest of her life behind bars for gruesomely killing her two young sons, whose heads were found in an oven seven years ago, according to court documents.
Following a two-week trial, a Fulton County jury found Lamora Williams guilty Thursday of six murder charges in connection with the deaths of 2-year-old Ke’Yaunte Penn and 1-year-old Ja’Karter Williams, documents obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution show. She was then sentenced to life in prison plus 35 years, a final disposition stated.
On Oct. 13, 2017, Williams called 911 after she said she came home from work and found her sons dead in a tipped-over oven at the Oakland City West End apartments on Howell Place. During the call, she said she left her three sons with a cousin at the southwest Atlanta residence and admitted that her biggest fear was getting into trouble.
“This is so serious; I’m so scared,” Williams told the dispatcher. “I don’t want to get locked up because I was at work.”
Credit: Fulton County Sheriff’s Office
Credit: Fulton County Sheriff’s Office
But investigators didn’t believe Williams left her children with a caregiver. Family members said she had undiagnosed mental health issues and was overwhelmed by having four young children and not enough help. The 31-year-old was ultimately booked into the county jail the following day.
An arrest warrant stated she killed her sons “by placing them in an oven and turning it on.”
In addition to the murder charges, Williams was indicted on a charge of making false statements and two counts each of aggravated assault and concealing a death. She was also indicted on three charges of cruelty to children because another young son, who was 3 at the time, was at home during the incident. Williams’ eldest child, a girl, was safe with family and not home that night, police said.
According to autopsy reports, the bodies of Ke’Yaunte and Ja’Karter were not burned, but had been damaged by the oven. A medical examiner said they could not determine specific causes of death, which were attributed to “violence of unclear etiology,” the reports stated.
The boys did not have any broken bones or blunt force trauma, and the examiner couldn’t rule out if they had been strangled before being placed inside, according to the autopsy reports. Their injuries were limited to their heads and necks, but Ke’Yaunte appeared to have been pulled out slightly from the oven, the medical examiner stated.
“These thermal changes appear to be entirely from dry heat and changes from prolonged exposure to heat,” the examiner wrote in the reports. “It would require an extensive amount of time to get to this degree.”
A month before the killing, Williams quit her job because she couldn’t find a babysitter, according to her longtime friend Neesa Smith. Williams eventually said she “couldn’t do it anymore” before admitting that her two boys were dead, her friend added.
“Nobody could tell what she was going through,” Smith said.
Williams was found guilty on all charges, including two counts of murder, four counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault, three counts of child cruelty, two counts of concealing the death of another and a count of making false statements. She was given life for the two murder charges and 10 years each for one cruelty to children charge and two counts of concealing the death of another. In addition, she was given five years for the false statement charge.
The other charges were either merged or dropped.
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