An autopsy identified numerous injuries to a 3-year-old Stockton Springs boy whose mother is now charged with his murder, according to court documents obtained by WMTW.
Police have said Maddox Williams died Sunday after his mother and grandmother brought him to Waldo General Hospital in Belfast. The TV station reported the toddler was not breathing, and doctors could not revive him. The autopsy later found Maddox had a fractured spine and internal bleeding in his abdomen and brain, and he was missing three teeth. The medical examiner concluded that his death was not accidental, and the cause was multiple blunt force trauma.
Jessica Williams, 35, was arrested Wednesday and has been held at the Waldo County Jail since then. She will appear in court for the first time Friday at 9 a.m. She is the third parent this month to be charged in connection with a child’s death.
A background check shows Williams has a criminal record of mostly misdemeanor convictions, most recently theft in 2014, and has at times spent short stints in jail. The only felony on her record is a burglary in 2012, and she was sentenced to 30 days in jail.
Maddox Williams Photo from the #justiceformaddox GoFundMe page
Williams had posted often during the last year in a Facebook group for community assistance during the pandemic. She asked for help with birthday gifts for her five children, heating oil and laundry money.
A GoFundMe in the boy’s memory – titled #justiceformaddox – had raised more than $1,000 toward a $10,000 goal as of Thursday evening. Becky Stephens, who lives in Waldoboro, organized the fundraiser and said she is related to Maddox through his father’s family. In an interview, she described the little boy as curious, happy and helpful.
“He loved his cousins, and he loved his siblings, and he loved play,” she said.
Stephens said the boy’s mother and father separated before Maddox was born, and he spent most of his life living with his father and grandmother. Stephens never met Williams, but said a judge ordered in March that Maddox should move in with his mother. The Maine Department of Health and Human Services has not said what, if any, involvement child protection officials have had with the family.
Jessica Williams Courtesy of Waldo County Jail
“If there had been some oversight, maybe we wouldn’t be here right now,” Stephens said.
Stephens said she and her husband have been foster parents for 10 years, and she knows Maine’s system for child welfare lacks resources. If the GoFundMe raises more money than needed for funeral expenses, she said, the family intends to put it toward a scholarship for someone who is pursuing social work.
“We all know that no system is going to 100 percent make the right decisions,” she said. “But if you just look at the month of June in the state of Maine, and the number of children who have been killed and their parents charged with their deaths, something has to change.”
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