DNA prompts new look at rape
Victim still contends she was right in 1985

By Bill Torpy, Jeffry Scott, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 01/21/07

Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said Saturday his office needs to examine all the evidence presented in the rape trial of Willie O. Williams, an Atlanta man who has served 21 years in prison but might have been wrongly convicted, according to new DNA tests.

While the Georgia Innocence Project contends that DNA tests have cleared Williams of the 1985 rape, Howard said the woman who was attacked "is still convinced" that he was her assailant. Howard said his office would be double-checking the results of those tests before making any decisions about the fate of Williams, 44, who is still in prison.

Photo: Louie Favorite/ Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Members of Willie O. Williams' family listen at a news conference Saturday. From left are Judy Beglar, the inmate's mother; Tracy Williams, his sister; and Gregory Holloway, brother.

"We had a victim very sure of the identification [during trial] and is still very sure," said Howard. "She still thinks this is the right person."

The district attorney said officials also will take a look at the man the Georgia Innocence Project is pointing to as the real attacker, an admitted rapist whose crimes followed a similar pattern.

That man, who is now 47 and still lives in the Atlanta area, was charged with a rape and two attempted sexual assaults that occurred in the months after the two crimes for which Williams was accused. The man was tried in January 1986 but it ended in a mistrial.

The man, who has not officially been named a suspect, later pleaded guilty to rape, aggravated sodomy, kidnapping and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. He was sentenced to four years in prison and six years probation.

The judge noted that the victims approved of the deal because they did not want to testify in a second trial.

Attorney Michael Schumacher, who defended Williams in 1985, said Saturday that he tried back then to get authorities to look at the other man as a suspect.

"I heard about the case through the grapevine so I went down to the trial," said Schumacher. "What stunned me was [the suspect] in that case was an exact duplicate of Mr. Williams. They were like twin brothers."

Schumacher said he made several attempts to get a new trial, but "the motions were duly rejected. ... To get a court to grant a new trial is a heavy burden."

Williams was convicted of raping a woman who had just pulled into a Sandy Springs apartment complex the night of April 5, 1985. As she got out of her car, a man approached and asked if she knew a resident named "Paul." When she tried to close her door, the man put a gun to her head and ordered her to move over.

He then drove the car to a dead-end street area near the apartment complex, where he raped and sodomized her. Afterward, he drove her car back to the parking lot and ran away.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is not identifying the woman because she was a rape victim.

Williams also was charged with a second attempted sexual assault that occurred five days later in a parking lot of an apartment complex on Roswell Road.

The man suspected by the Georgia Innocence Project lived on Roswell Road and that's also where one of the crimes he admitted to took place.

In the June 17 attack, the man snuck up on the victim, forced open her car door, held a pistol on her, drove her to another area, where he then raped her.

Bruce Harvey, a defense attorney who volunteers with the Georgia Innocence Project and is working with the Williams case, says prosecutors need to take DNA samples from the admitted rapist and compare it with evidence from the Williams case.

"Our theory is that it was a connected series of events from the same person." Harvey said. "Tests will either confirm or dispel that hypothesis."

The man, reached by phone Saturday, said he has not heard from authorities. He denied being responsible for either of the attacks that Williams is charged with.

"Whatever is going on, I don't know," he said.

Williams' case was revisited after he wrote to the Georgia Innocence Project in July 2005. The organization sought DNA testing of physical evidence in the case but at first was told by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that the evidence was destroyed.

Then the rape kit was found in July 2006, filed away under a different code in a storage room.

Georgia Innocence Project officials said the DNA results came back Thursday, and they drove to tell Williams the news Friday.

At a press conference Saturday, William's mother, Judy Beglar, dabbed her eyes as she tearfully recalled how she reacted when she learned DNA evidence might prove what she and her son had always believed — that he was in prison for 21 years for crimes he didn't commit.

"I was thrilled, overwhelmed, crying, literally falling on the floor," she said. "It was just drop on the floor happiness."

Her tears welled up and she wiped them away many times during the afternoon press conference. "My son is free. He just hasn't walked out of that door yet."