After three trials, man gets death sentence in stabbing death of pregnant teen
By Lisa J. Huriash Staff Writer Posted
April 17 2004
Fresh out of prison for killing a young woman, Ronnie Keith Williams bit into the body of his second victim -- this time a teenager -- and stabbed her repeatedly in the chest and back with a 15-inch knife in a drunken rampage. Late Friday afternoon, Williams was sentenced to die for that 1993 murder of the pregnant teen.
Soon after Broward Circuit Judge Sheldon Schapiro announced the sentence, the murder victim's mother, Margaret Dyke, cried from relief when told about the ruling. While unable to attend the hearing, she said she hears her daughter telling her, "`Now mommy, you can live. Now you can go on with your life. Now you don't have to worry if you're going to get justice or not. I knew all the time God was going to give you justice.'"
The caretaker of her daughter's crippled son Julius, who was delivered just before she died, Dyke added, "You know what it is to go through something like this for 11 long years? It's definitely not easy ... Nobody deserves to die like that."
Williams smirked as he was led away in shackles after the judge's ruling. His defense attorney, Hale Schantz, said he would appeal.
Lisashantill "Lisa" Dyke, 18, was in the Wilton Manors apartment of her friend that January morning. While she was making toast, Williams came to the apartment, apparently looking for his girlfriend -- who had broken up with him the night before -- or her sister. He stabbed Lisa Dyke, penetrating her lungs and four inches into her sternum. She identified Williams to a 911 operator and again on her hospital deathbed by pointing him out in a photo lineup.
DNA testing placed Williams' blood and his bloody fingerprint at the crime scene, and bite marks on Dyke's body appear to match Williams' teeth, according to a forensic dentist. Williams told police when he was arrested that the cuts on his hand were from washing dishes.
A jury convicted him in 1996 of Dyke's murder and voted 11-1 to recommend death. But that conviction was overturned because a juror had an emotional collapse during deliberations and was replaced by another juror. An appeals court ruled in 2001 that the judge should have declared a mistrial.
Williams' second trial, in December, ended in a mistrial after a prosecutor accidentally read a statement to a witness that could have led jurors to realize Williams had been tried before.
In February a new Broward jury deliberated only a few hours before finding Williams guilty of first-degree murder under two theories: premeditated and felony murder. That meant the jury rejected his defense that he was too drunk and high on drugs to have planned the attack.
It also meant the jury believed Dyke's statement to police that she had been raped -- even though no medical tests were done to prove her claim because she was rushed into surgery in an effort to save her life.
The same jury last month deliberated only 15 minutes before recommending in a 10-2 vote that Williams receive the death penalty.
One of the jurors, Sandy Troehler, of Davie, came to Friday's hearing, sitting in the front row so she could "follow it through."
"This is definitely justice," she said. "I don't want anybody like that out on the street. I don't want him near my grandchildren."
Prosecutor Deborah Zimet said the death sentence was warranted so that there would "not be a third grieving mother."
Williams pleaded no contest in 1982 to a charge of indecent assault on a child after police said he raped a 9-year-old girl with his finger.
And in late 1984, he went to the house of Robin Jeffrey, a young girl who had broken off a relationship with him after she learned about the pending rape charge, and killed her sister.
He stabbed Gaynel Jeffrey, 21, in the back and chest. He dragged the body from room to room, then stuffed her in her mother's car and drove to a construction site where he dumped her. For both the rape and murder, he was sentenced to 17 years but served only seven because of prison crowding. He killed Dyke eight months after his release.
Before his final ruling, Schapiro pointed out that just before both murders, Williams had broken up with a young woman. To punish each of them, he tried to kill their relatives. In the case of Lisa Dyke, he had been there to kill her roommate but found her there instead.
The murders were "unnecessarily torturous," and "Lisa Dyke suffered extreme mental anguish" and she was "forced to choke on her own blood and vomit," Schapiro said.
Schapiro said he didn't find a "nexus" between Williams' deprived childhood, which included being beaten up by school kids, "and the vicious, brutal murder of Lisa Dyke."
Jeffrey's family was in court, wiping tears from their faces. They said they felt the death sentence was vindication for Gaynel, as well.
"Put him in the chair because he's a monster," cried Robin Jeffrey, Gaynel's sister. "I want to be at peace ... This is over. It's the way it's supposed to be."
Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at lhuriash@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4557.
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