Case No. DHF-005 | Subject: Meisha Williams | Date: 24 August 2024 (verdict 23 October 2026) | Location: New Rochelle, New York, USA | Status: CONVICTED — SENTENCING PENDING
Posted: 25 October 2026
Status stamp: CONVICTED — SENTENCING PENDING
Image note for readers: All images in this file are original illustrations created for Dark History Files. They are atmospheric artwork, not photographs and not real evidence. No image in this file depicts Meisha Williams, Robert Wooten, any member of either family, or any real person, and no image depicts any crime.
Caption: Case card for DHF-005 — Meisha Williams, New Rochelle, New York, August 2024. Status: CONVICTED — SENTENCING PENDING.
THE FILE CARD
Case File No.: DHF-005
Subject: Meisha Williams
Date: 24 August 2024 (killing); verdict 23 October 2026
Location: Apartment at 55 Clinton Place (One Clinton Park), New Rochelle, Westchester County, New York, USA
Status: CONVICTED — SENTENCING PENDING
Investigating agencies: New Rochelle Police Department, with assistance from the New York City Police Department and the FBI's Westchester Safe Streets Task Force
Prosecution authority: Westchester County District Attorney's Office
Conviction: On 23 October 2026, a Westchester County jury convicted Robert Wooten, 30, of second-degree murder, two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, and third-degree criminal possession of a weapon. Other charges were dismissed.
One-line summary: A 30-year-old nursing assistant was fatally shot in her New Rochelle apartment in August 2024; two years later, after a trial that turned on a self-defence claim and on video that did not show the shooting itself, a jury convicted her boyfriend of murder — and sentencing is still to come.
Why this file is stamped CONVICTED — SENTENCING PENDING: a jury has returned guilty verdicts on murder and weapons charges, so "convicted" is now a matter of court record, not an allegation. But no sentence has yet been imposed, and the court has not yet decided a leniency application the defence intends to make. Until sentencing is decided, this file will not state a prison term as fact. If sentencing changes the picture, or if an appeal follows, this file will be updated, dated, and re-stamped — never quietly rewritten.
THE CASE
A new flat, a short stay
Meisha Williams was 30 years old and worked as a nursing assistant. In the summer of 2024 she moved into a high-rise apartment building in downtown New Rochelle, New York — One Clinton Park, at 55 Clinton Place. She had arrived only about two months before the morning this file is about, and she was still, in the ordinary sense, settling in.
Her relationship with Robert Wooten, also 30, had lasted about four years. Court reporting describes the two of them living in Georgia and Virginia before Williams moved to New Rochelle, while Wooten remained a Georgia resident. That history matters to this file for one reason only: it is the background the trial itself argued over, and neither side's version of the relationship should be taken as settled fact beyond what the jury decided — which was guilt on the charges, not a ruling on every claim made about the relationship.
Two pieces of court-record context belong here, stated plainly and without embellishment, because the trial put them in front of the jury. First, there was a court order of protection in place barring Williams from contacting Wooten. Second, Williams had a pending felony charge in Virginia arising from an incident at a gas station in which she had stabbed Wooten during an argument. This file reports those facts because they were part of the proceedings; it does not use them to explain away what happened in the apartment, and it does not treat either party's past conduct as a verdict on the killing itself. The jury's verdict is the finding that counts, and it is recorded below.
Williams had also been using an assumed name in connection with the apartment — the name of a friend, according to reporting of her mother's account — possibly, her mother suggested, because she worried she might not pass a background check under her own name. The building's former leasing agent later testified that he did not know her real name until after her death. It is a small, sad detail, and this file includes it only because it explains why the first hours of the investigation carried a confusion about identity that the trial later had to clear up.
A friend of Williams and that friend's boyfriend were also staying at the apartment in the week of the shooting, as they sought her help with renting in the building. On the Saturday morning of 24 August 2024, sensing tension between Williams and Wooten, the two visitors went for a walk to give the couple space. What they came back to is the point at which an ordinary morning became a police case.
The morning of 24 August 2024
When the visitors returned to the building, they found Wooten leaving. Prosecutors told the trial that he told them he had shot Williams and that they should call for help. The visitors raised the alarm, and the building's former leasing agent used an emergency key to enter the apartment. He found Williams in the bathroom and called police.
This file deliberately does not describe the injuries. The fact that matters to the record is that Williams was fatally shot in her apartment on the morning of 24 August 2024, and that the shooting was the act for which Wooten was later tried. How many shots were fired, and where they struck, were matters argued in court; repeating them here would add detail without adding understanding, and this archive does not publish graphic killing detail.
Wooten did not stay at the scene. He drove away from the building, and investigators tracked his Cadillac Escalade using licence-plate readers to Queens, New York, where he was arrested the same night. The firearm was never recovered. Wooten later testified that he had disposed of it in a sewer in Queens — his account, reported here as testimony, not as an established fact about the weapon, which has never been found.
He was charged with second-degree murder and weapons offences, and he pleaded not guilty. That plea is where the case stood for a long time: an arrest on the night of the killing, and then a wait of more than two years before a jury heard the evidence in full.
Two years of waiting
Court records show a case that moved slowly through the system. The trial did not begin until 15 September 2026, before Westchester County Court Judge George E. Fufidio Jr., and it ran into its fifth week in October. For Williams's family and for Wooten alike, that is a long time to wait for a verdict on a single morning in 2024. This file does not fill the gap with speculation about why the case took as long as it did; adjournments and scheduling are part of court business, and the public record checked for this file does not give a single settled explanation.
What the wait does explain is why the verdict, when it came on 23 October 2026, landed as news two years after the event. A case that is decided long after the headlines have moved on is exactly the kind of file this archive exists to close properly: not with a summary of the first day's reporting, but with the outcome the court eventually reached.
Caption: Illustration of a high-rise apartment building at dawn — atmospheric artwork, not a photograph of the real building and not evidence.
The trial: two stories in one room
The trial, as reported from the courtroom, was a contest between two accounts of the same morning, and the jury had to choose between them on evidence that was incomplete in one important respect: the shooting itself was not captured on video.
The prosecution's account was that Wooten was the first to produce a gun that morning, and that he killed Williams because she was ending the relationship. “He wouldn't take no for an answer and he killed her,” Assistant District Attorney Edward McLoughlin told jurors in opening statements. The prosecution argued that Williams had grabbed a kitchen knife only after the gun was displayed, and asked jurors to weigh who was advancing and who was backing away in the video evidence. It also argued that Wooten's flight from the apartment and his disposal of the gun showed consciousness of guilt. Those are prosecution arguments, reported here as arguments made in court — the jury's verdict shows they were accepted, but this file does not present an advocate's words as its own findings.
The defence account was self-defence. Wooten's lawyer, Angelo Gerard MacDonald, told jurors that Wooten had acted reasonably and justifiably in self-defence, and that the jury would hear about abuse and controlling behaviour he said Williams had subjected Wooten to. The defence also pointed to the gaps in the video evidence: jurors repeatedly saw footage from a motion-sensitive Blink camera Williams had installed in the apartment kitchen, showing the argument, but the recordings had gaps caused by uploading delays, and the shooting itself was not on them. The defence argued those gaps left jurors to speculate, and that speculation could not be enough for a conviction. That, too, is reported here as an argument — one the jury ultimately rejected.
The video, then, was both the trial's centrepiece and its limit. It showed an argument in a kitchen, with Williams repeatedly telling Wooten to leave, according to court reporting. It did not show the fatal act. The jury had to decide what happened in the room beyond the camera's view, on the basis of testimony, the recovered evidence, and the accounts of the people who entered the apartment afterwards. That is a harder decision than a case with a complete recording, and it is worth saying so plainly: this verdict was not handed to the jury by a single piece of footage.
The verdict
On Friday 23 October 2026, the jury convicted Robert Wooten of murder in the second degree, two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, and criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree, all felonies. Other charges were dismissed. Westchester County District Attorney Susan Cacace announced the verdict, and the New Rochelle Police Department was credited with leading the investigation, assisted by New York City police and the FBI's Westchester Safe Streets Task Force.
Wooten remains held without bail at the Westchester County Jail pending sentencing. That single fact is the bridge between the verdict and the next stage of this file: conviction is decided, punishment is not.
What sentencing still has to decide
Judge Fufidio did not set a sentencing date at the verdict, because he anticipates a hearing will be needed on a claim Wooten intends to make under New York's Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act. A hearing will likely not take place until the new year. To succeed, Wooten must convince the judge that prior violence he faced from Williams was a significant contributing factor to the killing.
The stakes of that hearing are concrete. Second-degree murder in New York carries a sentence of 15 years to life at the minimum end and 25 years to life at the maximum end. If the judge grants the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act motion, the maximum prison term would be 15 years. If the motion is refused, the sentence will fall within the ordinary range. Until the hearing is held, any statement of how long Wooten will serve would be a guess, and this file does not guess.
That is also why the stamp on this file reads “CONVICTED — SENTENCING PENDING” rather than simply “CONVICTED”. The first word is settled. The second half is the honest remainder.
What the verdict does and does not settle
A conviction settles criminal responsibility for the killing of Meisha Williams on 24 August 2024. It does not settle every question the case raised, and this file will not pretend otherwise. It does not resolve, for example, the full history of a four-year relationship that both sides described in sharply different terms, or why a morning that began with visitors stepping out for a walk ended with a woman dead in her own bathroom. Courts decide guilt; they do not always produce a complete biography, and readers should be wary of any account that claims to.
What can be said, without overreaching, is this: a woman who had moved to a new town two months earlier, who worked as a nursing assistant, and who was 30 years old, was killed in her own home. The man who killed her was arrested the same night, pleaded not guilty, claimed self-defence, and was convicted by a jury two years later. He now waits in jail for a sentencing hearing that will decide how the law weighs both the killing and the history he says preceded it. That is the file as it stands on 25 October 2026.
TIMELINE
- About 2020–2024 — Meisha Williams and Robert Wooten are in a relationship lasting about four years, living in Georgia and Virginia at different times.
- About June 2024 — Williams moves into an apartment at One Clinton Park, 55 Clinton Place, New Rochelle, New York, about two months before the killing.
- About May 2024 — A judge issues an order of protection barring Williams from contacting Wooten, following an incident at a Virginia gas station in which Williams stabbed Wooten during an argument; a related felony charge in Virginia is pending at the time of the trial (dates as reported; the order is described in court reporting as issued three months before the killing).
- 24 August 2024, morning — Williams is fatally shot in her New Rochelle apartment. Visitors who had stepped out return to find Wooten leaving; he tells them, prosecutors said, that he had shot her and they should call for help. The building's leasing agent enters with an emergency key, finds Williams, and calls police.
- 24 August 2024, night — Wooten is arrested in Queens, New York, after investigators track his Cadillac Escalade using licence-plate readers. The firearm is never recovered.
- 2024 — Wooten is indicted and pleads not guilty to second-degree murder and weapons charges.
- 15 September 2026 — Trial begins before Westchester County Court Judge George E. Fufidio Jr.
- 28 September 2026 — Opening statements; prosecution argues Wooten killed Williams because she was ending the relationship; defence argues self-defence.
- October 2026 — Trial enters its fifth week; jurors hear argument video from the apartment kitchen camera, with gaps, and testimony including Wooten's own account.
- 23 October 2026 — Jury convicts Wooten of second-degree murder, two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, and third-degree criminal possession of a weapon. Other charges dismissed. No sentencing date set; a Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act hearing is expected, likely in the new year.
- 25 October 2026 — This file's research date. Wooten remains held without bail at the Westchester County Jail pending sentencing.
EVIDENCE & LEADS
- Kitchen-camera video (Blink camera installed by Williams): shows the argument, with Williams repeatedly telling Wooten to leave; gaps from uploading delays; the shooting itself was not captured. The central, incomplete exhibit of the trial.
- Visitors' account: a friend of Williams and her boyfriend, staying at the apartment, stepped out during tension, returned to find Wooten leaving, and were told by him, prosecutors said, that he had shot Williams and they should call for help.
- Leasing agent's entry: the building's former leasing agent entered with an emergency key after the visitors raised the alarm, found Williams, and called police.
- Same-night arrest: licence-plate readers tracked Wooten's Cadillac Escalade to Queens, where he was arrested hours after the killing.
- Missing firearm: the gun was never recovered. Wooten testified he disposed of it in a sewer in Queens — testimony, not a recovered exhibit.
- Order of protection and Virginia charge (court-record context): an order barring Williams from contacting Wooten, and a pending Virginia felony charge arising from a gas-station incident in which she stabbed him. Reported as proceedings context, not as findings about motive.
- Prosecution and defence arguments (court record): prosecution — Wooten first produced a gun and killed Williams because she was ending the relationship; defence — self-defence, with claims of abuse and control, and video gaps creating reasonable doubt. The jury rejected the defence account.
- Conviction record: second-degree murder, two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, third-degree criminal possession of a weapon, 23 October 2026, Westchester County Court, Judge George E. Fufidio Jr.
- What is NOT evidence in this file: shot count and wound positions (argued in court, deliberately not repeated here as graphic detail); any claim about motive beyond what was argued in court; any account of the relationship beyond the attributed arguments of prosecution and defence.
Caption: Illustration of an empty courtroom — atmospheric artwork, not a photograph of the real courtroom and not evidence.
STILL UNKNOWN
- What sentence will Wooten receive? No date has been set, and the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act hearing — likely in the new year — could substantially change the maximum term. Until it is decided, the sentence is unknown.
- Will the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act claim succeed? That depends on whether the judge accepts that prior violence Wooten faced from Williams was a significant contributing factor to the killing. The hearing has not yet happened, and this file will not predict it.
- Will there be an appeal? No appeal has been reported as of this file's research date. A conviction of this kind may be appealed, but no filing is recorded here, and none should be assumed.
- Where is the firearm? It was never recovered. Wooten's testimony that he disposed of it in a sewer is uncorroborated by a recovered weapon, and the record checked for this file does not close that question.
- What happened in the moments the camera did not record? The shooting itself was not captured. The jury's verdict answers the legal question of responsibility; it does not produce a second-by-second record of an unrecorded act.
What would change this file: when sentencing is imposed, this file will be updated with the sentence, dated, and re-stamped. If the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act hearing produces a decision, that decision and its effect on the sentence will be added. If an appeal is filed or decided, it will be recorded in the same way. Until one of those happens, the stamp stays CONVICTED — SENTENCING PENDING, and this file will not be quietly rewritten.
WATCH THE FULL STORY
No companion video yet. If Dark History Files' sister channel Curiozoid publishes a video on this case, it will be linked here.
SOURCES
- Westchester County District Attorney announcement, 23 October 2026, as reported by Talk of the Sound — jury conviction (second-degree murder, two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, third-degree criminal possession of a weapon), Judge George E. Fufidio, Wooten held without bail at Westchester County Jail pending sentencing, investigating agencies.
- Rockland/Westchester Journal News (lohud), 23 October 2026 — verdict report: conviction, self-defence claim rejected, sentencing date not set, Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act hearing expected in the new year, sentence range 15 years to life to 25 years to life (15-year maximum if the Act's motion is granted).
- Rockland/Westchester Journal News (lohud), 29 September 2026 — trial opening report: charges, apartment at 55 Clinton Place, Williams's move two months earlier, assumed name, order of protection, Virginia charge, visitors' account, leasing agent's entry, kitchen-camera evidence and gaps, prosecution and defence opening arguments.
- Talk of the Sound, 11 October 2026 — trial calendar: trial began 15 September 2026, entered its fifth week, Judge Fufidio, court-record background.
- No competitor article text or image is reproduced in this file. Facts are stated in Dark History Files' own words, with court arguments attributed to the side that made them.
Reader question: The jury had video of the argument but not of the shooting itself — which part of the trial evidence do you think carried the most weight, and what should the sentencing hearing weigh first: the killing, or the history the defence says preceded it?
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This file is based on public reporting and official statements available as of 25 October 2026. Read how every file is built on the About page, or request a file via the Contact page.
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