Mary Harris had lived a long and full life, reaching the venerable age of 97. She was a beloved mother who resided in a Chicago Housing Authority senior living facility, a place that should have been a sanctuary in her later years. Her daughter, Marian Harris, was a frequent and caring visitor. On the morning of July 25, 1989, Marian had visited her mother, who was wearing a pink scarf on her head.
It was a day that began with familiar affection but would end in unimaginable violence, shattering the peace of a long life for the sake of a small stereo.
Later that day, Mary Harris was found murdered in her apartment. She had been brutally beaten, her eyes blackened, and then strangled to death. An autopsy would later reveal that her hyoid bone had been fractured, a sign of the extreme pressure applied to her neck. The pink headscarf she had worn that morning was gone, as was a small Realistic Clarinet 16 stereo set her daughter had purchased for her. The motive was as senseless as the violence was extreme: the stereo was stolen to be sold for drug money. A life that had spanned nearly a century was extinguished for a pittance.
The investigation into the horrific crime led police to a woman named Dorothy Williams, a heroin addict with a history of preying on the most vulnerable. A tip from one of Mary's neighbors pointed detectives in her direction, and she was arrested on September 6, 1989. The evidence against her was overwhelming. Williams's fingerprints were found in the apartment, and she eventually gave three court-reported confessions to the police, admitting she had strangled Mary and taken the "component set" to sell for drugs. Mary's daughter, Marian, later had the heartbreaking task of identifying her mother's stolen stereo at the police station.
Dorothy Williams was not a first-time offender; she was a serial killer who targeted the elderly. Her violent spree included the murders of 79-year-old Lonnie Laws, whom she strangled with his own belt on December 5, 1987, and 64-year-old Cesar Zuell, who was stabbed to death on December 6, 1988. Williams also had a record of robbing other elderly residents in and around the same housing facilities, terrorizing those who were frail and defenseless. During her trial, prosecutors described her as a "reverse Robin Hood who steals from those who have nothing and uses it for her own selfish interests."
In April 1991, a jury found Dorothy Williams guilty of the first-degree murder and robbery of Mary Harris. A judge, calling her actions methodical and cruel, sentenced her to death. Later that year, Williams pleaded guilty to the murders of Lonnie Laws and Cesar Zuell, receiving life sentences for those crimes. For years, she remained on death row.
The final chapter of the legal case came in 2003, when Illinois Governor George Ryan, citing concerns over the state's capital punishment system, commuted the death sentences of all condemned inmates to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Dorothy Williams's sentence was changed to life imprisonment. The Illinois Prisoner Review Board had previously written a scathing assessment of her character, stating, "These helpless seniors, frail with age and medical disabilities, opened their doors to terrifying deaths, inflicted by a worthless criminal who has no place in civilized society." Dorothy Williams died in custody on December 19, 2020, at the age of 66, closing the book on a series of crimes that preyed on the trust and vulnerability of Chicago's elderly citizens.
