A slain Dallas woman predicted her boyfriend would kill her. A jury says it wasn’t him

An emotional jury acquitted a Dallas man accused of killing the woman he planned to soon wed.

Victor Williams used the mask he wore to guard against COVID-19 as a tissue and cried as State District Judge Audra Riley read the jury’s verdict of not guilty Wednesday afternoon, marking the end of his murder trial.

Jurors had previously been divided on Williams’ guilt in the March 2019 slaying of Sheila Denise Prater, 45. They were split 6-6 at the end of deliberations on Tuesday. Shortly after they returned to the Frank Crowley Courts Building on Wednesday, nine jurors were in favor of acquitting while three wanted to convict.

They were still divided 9-3 about 2:30 p.m., the jury wrote in a note to the judge. Riley urged them to try to reach a unanimous verdict or else she would declare a mistrial. Half an hour later, after about 11 hours of deliberations, they returned a not guilty verdict. Two jurors clutched tissues. Tears streamed down the face of one juror.

Jurors left the courthouse without commenting on their verdict.

Defense lawyer Wayne Lacy argued that Dallas police zeroed in on Williams too early and built a case against him that lacked evidence.

“I think that was a huge mistake in their process,” Lacy said after the verdict. “They never looked anywhere else.”

Prater’s adult son found his mother in a profusely bloody crime scene on March 3, 2019, in her southeast Oak Cliff home. Lacy argued that blood and gunshot residue would have had to be found on Williams’ clothes and car, a BMW he shared with Prater.

But no blood or gunshot residue was found in the BMW. Police collected clothes Williams wore when he was last seen with Prater at a restaurant the evening before she was found dead. There was no blood on his shoes, and testing on his jacket revealed one particle of gunshot residue on the right cuff.

Daniel O’Kelly, director of International Firearm Specialist Academy, testified for the defense that one gunshot would produce about a million particles and he would expect many more on the jacket if Williams wore it during a shooting. O’Kelly also testified that particles transfer easily, and can remain on clothing for weeks or months.

Relatives of Williams and Prater testified that their relationship had been on and off. They broke up days before the shooting but reconciled, Prater’s son said, noting that he disapproved. Williams and Prater recently bought rings and planned to marry, Williams’ mother testified.

But Prater was still legally married to her ex-husband, although they had filed for divorce. Sometime after her death, that man sought a $60,000 life insurance policy, Lacy revealed to the jury.

Prosecutor Jerry Varney pointed to a text message Prater sent to friends shortly before her death. “If anything ever happens to me Victor Lenord Williams 10/12/69 did it. He said he has nothing to lose,” she texted.

Williams said he dropped Prater off at her home the last night she was seen alive because she had other plans and then went to a friend’s house in Cedar Hill. But that didn’t match cellphone records that showed him at Prater’s house until 1 a.m.

All that evidence was only circumstantial, Lacy argued.

Williams won’t be released from jail immediately, Lacy said. At the time of his arrest, Williams was on federal court probation for a bank robbery and will have to face accusations that he violated terms of that probation.