Left inset: Gary Williams (Cobb County Sheriff’s Office). Right inset: Addreinne Gordon (Marietta Funeral Home). Background: The Georgia home where Gary Williams neglected and killed his 66-year-old wife Addreinne Gordon (Google Maps).
A Georgia man has been convicted of murder for letting his “bed-ridden and paralyzed” wife wither away in a “bed blackened with waste” before dumping her on the ground and leaving the 66-year-old to die in her feces-covered bedroom, prosecutors say.
It took Cobb County jurors less than an hour to return a guilty verdict for Gary Williams, of Marietta, last week for the 2021 death of his wife Addreinne Gordon, who was paralyzed on her left side and forced to spend most of her time in bed, according to court documents viewed by Law&Crime on Wednesday.
Williams was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of felony murder and neglect by a jury. Cobb County prosecutors announced his conviction in a press release, which noted how Gordon died from blood poisoning and had “numerous injuries” that doctors and Adult Protection Services said appeared to be “both new and old,” according to police.
Gordon was admitted to a local hospital with an “altered level of consciousness” and put on life support on Nov. 9, 2021, after Williams called police and reported that things were getting “real bad” with her. She died the following day.
“This case was not about how she died — it was about how she was forced to live,” said Cobb County District Attorney Sonya F. Allen in a statement. “She suffered slowly, trapped in a body she could not care for, completely dependent on the one person who vowed to protect her,” Allen blasted. “She was left lying in filth — her body was covered in sores and lesions, her hair matted, her nails grotesquely overgrown, her bed blackened with waste. She could not move; she could not help herself. The only person who could have given her dignity, safety, and comfort instead allowed her to endure a living torture until she died.”
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Court documents filed by prosecutors and Williams’ own defense lawyer outline how Gordon depended on Williams, who was arrested in February, to take care of her and change her clothes, including diapers she wore due to her health condition. A motion filed by Williams’ attorney in April described what he claimed happened before Gordon’s death.
“Mr. Williams told detectives that his wife seemed fine on Sunday, but that on Monday, she started feeling a ‘little funky,'” according to the motion. “She wasn’t eating, just drinking a bunch of fluids. She told him that she thought she had messed the bed up, and Gary told detectives, ‘Man did she ever.’ He figured that’s why she was not eating.”
Williams claimed he was “getting ready to change her diaper” when she suddenly got “uncomfortable” and “spun to the right real hard.” Gordon allegedly started to fall off the bed, according to Williams, and he claims to have caught her “but in doing so he aggravated his back,” the motion said.
“Gary had to lower [Addreinne] to the ground because he could not get her back into the bed all the way,” the document alleged. “Mr. Williams got [Addreinne] some pillows and a comforter and asked her if she’d be OK, because he would need to wait until the next day to try and get her back up into the bed.”
Williams’ lawyer claimed he told Gordon that he would need to get someone to help him, but she “told him no because she didn’t want anyone to see her covered in feces,” per the court filing.
“This ended up not working, and things started getting ‘real bad’ on Tuesday,” the motion added. “That was when Mr. Williams called 911.”
The man’s attorney cited the couple’s “911 call/dispatch history” for their residence and said it showed “multiple calls” since 2018, several of which were calls made by Williams to 911 for assistance with Gordon, according to the lawyer.
“One call was for [Addreinne] fainting (June 2018), another was for Gary falling (December 2018),” the April motion alleged. “In July 2018, Gary called for help with his wife because she was too heavy to pick up.”
Authorities say Gordon was “covered in feces from toe to breast” when first responders arrived at their home. “Despite being her only caretaker, accused claim[ed] she had no wounds on Monday when she rolled out of bed,” police alleged. “She was then left on the bedroom floor and feces until Tuesday afternoon.”
