Herman Williams
![Herman Williams, pictured with his sister Carolyn Langendorf, was exonerated and released from an Illinois prison on Sept. 6, 2022 after 29 years. (Image: Tori Howard for the Innocence Project)](https://innocenceproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/01-INNOCENCE-PROJECT-HERMAN-WILLIAMS-09.06.2022-scaled-1.jpg)
In September 2022, Herman Williams was exonerated of the 1993 murder of his ex-wife in Waukegan, Illinois by DNA testing and the exposure of faulty forensics and police misconduct. He had spent nearly 29 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
The Crime
On Sept. 26, 1993, the body of 27-year-old Penny Williams was found in a shallow pond near the Midlane Country Club in Waukegan, Illinois. She was fully clothed. Her floral buttoned shirt was tucked into her jeans. An autopsy concluded she had died of blunt force trauma before she was placed in the water. Her arms bore defensive wounds indicating she had fought with her attacker. The area was frequented by people who drove off-road vehicles through the mud.
The Investigation
The main suspect was her former husband, 29-year-old Herman Williams, a chief petty officer in the U.S. Navy at the Great Lakes Naval Base in Lake County, Illinois. Mr. Williams had more than a decade of service, including two tours in the Gulf War, and top secret security clearance. He and Penny had two children, Charlie and Crystal before they divorced in 1991 after seven years of marriage. She and the children lived in Arizona.
In 1992, Mr. Williams had married again. His second wife, Katherine, also known as “Kitty,” worked in a t-shirt shop in a shopping mall near the base. Mr. Williams and Kitty were living in Gurnee, Illinois, about seven miles from the base.
In the summer of 1993, when Mr. Williams learned that he was going to be reassigned to San Diego, California, he invited Penny, as well as six-year-old Charlie and three-year-old Crystal, to move in with him. At the same time, Kitty moved into the Colonial Apartments not far away.
On Friday, Sept. 24, 1993, when Mr. Williams arrived at the base, he was informed that Penny’s purse had been turned in to the base police. He took the purse to the Gurnee Police Department and reported that Penny had not come home on Thursday, the night before.
Police interviewed him for hours. His truck was eventually seized. When he was released more than 12 hours after arriving at the station, he walked home. The Lake County Major Crimes Task Force, a unit of detectives, evidence technicians, and other officers drawn from police departments throughout Lake County, was called in on the case.
Ultimately, the police and Mr. Williams would offer radically different accounts of what was said during the various interrogations that took place.
According to Mr. Williams, he told police that on the evening of Sept. 22, 1993, he and Penny decided to see a movie. As they often did, they asked a downstairs neighbor, Wayne Ecklund, who had two children the same age as Charlie and Crystal, to babysit.
Mr. Williams said the movie had already started when they got to the theater, so they skipped it and went window shopping in the mall. He said he then dropped Penny off at the apartment and went to wash his truck using a handheld spray washer. Afterward, he bought an iced tea at a McDonald’s and drove to Kitty’s apartment.
After he arrived, he and Kitty drove to a K-Mart to buy batteries for her camera as well as some socks and hair clips for Crystal. Kitty gave Mr. Williams two t-shirts she had made at the t-shirt shop — one for Charlie and one for Crystal.
Mr. Williams said that when he arrived home around 10:30 p.m., Penny was writing a letter to a friend. She had not yet retrieved the children from Mr. Ecklund downstairs. He said they went together to retrieve the children. While there, Mr. Williams gave the t-shirts to the children.
Mr. Williams said he told the police that the following morning, he and Penny talked in the living room while the children had breakfast. Afterward, Charlie walked downstairs to Mr. Ecklund’s apartment to go to school with Mr. Ecklund’s children. Mr. Williams said he dropped Crystal off at a babysitter and went to the base.
When he came home, Mr. Williams said he took care of the two children as well as Mr. Ecklund’s two children. He grew increasingly concerned when Penny did not come home. Her car was in the parking lot, and she had not left a note. On Thursday night, he called the Gurnee police department to file a missing person’s report and was told to call back when 24 hours had passed since he last saw her.
During the interrogation, the police went to Charlie’s school. Charlie said that Penny had poured the milk on his cereal at breakfast. He also said that after he arrived at Mr. Ecklund’s apartment, Mr. Ecklund asked if he needed to pick Charlie up after school. Charlie said he went back upstairs to ask and saw his mother leaving in a car that Charlie did not recognize.
Mr. Williams also consented to a search of his truck. By that time, police suspected he was responsible for Penny’s disappearance.
On Sept. 30, 1993 — five days after Penny’s body was found — Mr. Williams was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.
In November 1993, a coroner’s inquest was held. During the inquest, Deputy Chief Corner James Whipper said that based on the findings of Dr. Nancy Jones, the pathologist who had conducted the autopsy, the condition of Penny’s body was “consistent with her possibly being dead Wednesday or Thursday.”
The Trial
On Feb. 8, 1994, six days before Mr. Williams was to go on trial in Lake County Circuit Court, the lead prosecutor, Michael Mermel, gave a report to the defense from Richard Bisbing of McCrone and Associates, a forensic analysis company. Mr. Bisbing explained that he had conducted an analysis of soil from the pond as well as the mud found caked on the inside of the right front wheel well of Mr. Williams’ truck. He concluded the mud from the truck was “similar in all respects” to the mud from the pond.
Mr. Williams went to trial on Feb. 14, 1994. Mr. Mermel and co-prosecutor Robin Goodstein contended that Mr. Williams killed Penny so he could take custody of the children and move with Kitty to San Diego. Because the prosecution believed that Mr. Williams killed Penny and dumped her in the pond sometime between 7:45 p.m. (when he and Penny left Mr. Ecklund’s apartment after dropping off the children) and 9:03 p.m. (the time-stamp on the receipt for the iced tea that Mr. Williams bought at McDonald’s), establishing the time of death was critical.
Before Dr. Jones, the pathologist who conducted the autopsy, took the witness stand, Prosecutor Mermel said that Dr. Jones had just been shown — for the first time — a video of the retrieval of the body from the pond. After viewing that video, according to Mr. Mermel, Dr. Jones changed her estimate of the time of Penny’s death. Dr. Jones now testified that Penny had been killed on Wednesday, Sep. 22, and no later than 1 a.m. on Thursday, Sep. 23. That testimony narrowed the time frame considerably from the original estimate given at the coroner’s inquest.
Mr. Mermel did not disclose a memo that he had written to his fellow prosecutor, Ms. Goodstein, on Dec. 3, 1993 — about two months before the trial. The memo said, “According to Dr. Jones, Penny Williams could have died anytime between Wed 22, evening until late Thursday, 23rd. (Friday unlikely unless very early 1-3 am).”
Gurnee Police Sergeant Gary Garofalo testified that he interviewed Mr. Williams when Mr. Williams first came to the station with his wife’s purse. Sergeant Garofalo said that Mr. Williams identified Penny as his wife — not his ex-wife — and failed to mention that not only was he divorced from Penny, but also that he was married to Kitty.
Sergeant Garofalo claimed that Mr. Williams told him that on Thursday morning, Penny was tired from the night before, so he told her to sleep in. Sergeant Garofalo said Mr. Williams told him Penny was still in bed when Mr. Williams left to take Crystal to the babysitter.
Sergeant Garofalo said he asked Mr. Williams why he divorced Penny.
“He stated directly to me that he grew tired of their relationship because she put on all her weight; she quit her job; she got lazy, and they were constantly fighting, and he just didn’t like being married to her anymore,” Sergeant Garofalo said.
Sergeant Garofalo said Mr. Williams told him that Kitty had moved out when Penny and the two children arrived. Sergeant Garofalo said Mr. Williams characterized it as “kind of a soap opera … He called it his Camelot Castle … He wanted to have Penny with the kids close in proximity, living under the same roof, and [Kitty] still maintained as his current wife.”
Sergeant Garofalo said Mr. Williams said he and Penny had “about 10 fights about it, and they got pretty vehement.”
“He told me at that point in time he had more or less told her that he had made the decision that he couldn’t really leave [Kitty], but that he still adamantly wanted to be a father to those children; that she had had the children for a couple of years, and that he felt it was his turn,” Sergeant Garofalo testified.
A crime lab analyst testified that tests were positive for the presence of blood on the carpet on the floor of Mr. Williams’ truck and threads of material from a door handle.
DNA testing was not attempted because an insufficient amount of DNA was recovered from the door handle threads and the carpet. The analyst said that the blood from the truck door handle threads was type O, the same type as both Penny and Mr. Williams. Blood typing tests of the truck carpet were inconclusive. The analyst said that human blood was present on the left shoe of a pair of gym shoes that had been seized from Mr. Williams. There was insufficient evidence to perform DNA testing on the shoe. The analyst said no blood type could be determined.
A sexual assault kit had been collected from Penny at autopsy. The analyst said no sperm or seminal fluid was detected.
Mr. Bisbing, the soil expert, testified that he analyzed soil samples from the truck and the pond for 50 different characteristics. Mr. Bisbing testified: “My opinion is that the soil identified from the right front wheel well of the truck is similar in all respects to the one soil sample taken from Midlane Lake identified as from in the water. Those soils are consistent.”
Waukegan Police Detective Lou Tessman testified that Mr. Williams confessed to him.
The prosecution also presented documents that Mr. Williams had filled out in order to receive compensation for moving to San Diego. The documents, which had been filed out before Penny came to Gurnee, listed Kitty, Charlie, and Crystal, but not Penny. The prosecution contended this showed that Mr. Williams was plotting all along to take the children from her.
Mr. Williams testified and denied killing Penny. He also denied that he had confessed.
On Feb. 18, 1994, the jury convicted Mr. Williams of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Mr. Williams’ conviction was upheld on appeal.
The Exoneration
Years later, Attorney Lauren Kaeseberg, executive director of the Illinois Innocence Project, and Attorney Vanessa Potkin, director of special litigation for the Innocence Project, began representing Mr. Williams. In 2016, a motion for DNA testing was granted. On July 1, 2022, the lawyers filed an 81-page petition for relief.
The petition cited:
- DNA testing by Forensic Analytical Crime Laboratory (FACL) of the scrapings of Penny’s fingernails which identified the DNA of a male and excluded Mr. Williams.
- FACL testing of blood on Mr. Williams’ truck showed none came from Penny. FACL testing showed no blood on Williams’ tennis shoes. DNA testing excluded Mr. Williams from male DNA found on Penny’s checkbook.
- Dr. James Filkins, a pathologist, reviewed Dr. Jones’ autopsy findings and trial testimony and concluded that Dr. Jones’ determination of the time of death was incorrect. Dr. Filkins reported that he believed Penny’s death occurred “sometime on Saturday, September 25, 1993.”
- Forensic experts reviewed the soil comparison in this case and found “issues at each stage of the analysis,” which rendered the original testimony unreliable.
- Detective Tessman, who had claimed Mr. Williams confessed, had a history of obtaining false confessions.
The Lake County State’s attorney’s office joined in the motion to vacate the conviction. On Sept. 6, 2022, Lake County Circuit Court Judge Mark Levitt vacated the conviction, and the prosecution dismissed the case.
In August 2023, Mr. Williams filed a federal lawsuit against numerous police officers and others, including Mr. Tessman and Mr. Mermel, seeking compensation for his wrongful conviction.
![Herman Williams, pictured with his sister Carolyn Langendorf, was exonerated and released from an Illinois prison on Sept. 6, 2022 after 29 years. (Image: Tori Howard for the Innocence Project)](https://innocenceproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/01-INNOCENCE-PROJECT-HERMAN-WILLIAMS-09.06.2022-scaled-1.jpg)
Time Served:
29 years
State: Illinois
Charge: First-degree Murder
Conviction: First-degree Murder
Sentence: Life
Incident Date: 09/26/1993
Conviction Date: 02/18/1994
Exoneration Date: 09/06/2022
Accused Pleaded Guilty: No
Contributing Causes of Conviction: Government Misconduct, Inadequate Defense, Unvalidated or Improper Forensic Science
Death Penalty Case: No
Race of Exoneree: Caucasian
Race of Victim: Caucasian
Status: Exonerated by DNA
Alternative Perpetrator Identified: No
Type of Crime: Homicide-related
Forensic Science at Issue: Other
Year of Exoneration: 2022