Judge OKs visit with son for mom accused in hit case

The jailed Garden City woman who prosecutors say tried to hire a hit man to kill her estranged husband will be permitted unsupervised visits with one of her two young sons, a Nassau judge ruled Tuesday.

Susan Williams' 16-year-old son wanted to visit her at the Nassau County Correctional Center in East Meadow without his therapist, said John Carman, Williams' attorney, and James Flood, the attorney assigned to represent the child's interests.

"The child wanted it. The mother wanted it," Flood said.

Details of the jailhouse visits are being worked out. Williams, 43, is being held on $1-million bond or $1-million cash bail.

Williams and her husband, Peter Williams, 47, have four children, two of whom - a daughter and a son - are older than 18 and in college. She has not seen her youngest child, an 11-year-old boy, since her March 4 arrest, Carman said.

Her 16-year-old son has visited Williams in jail, but he was accompanied by his therapist, Carman said.

Nassau police and prosecutors said Susan Williams tried to hire a hit man to kill her husband, with whom she was going through a bitter divorce. The supposed hit man actually was an undercover detective who prosecutors said videotaped Susan Williams as she paid him a $500 deposit on a $20,000 "job."

Before she was arrested, Susan Williams was living in the couple's expansive Garden City home with the two younger children. Since her arrest, Peter Williams, who owns a fence company in Lynbrook, has been given temporary custody of the younger boys and moved back into the Garden City house.

During Tuesday morning's brief court appearance before Acting Supreme Court Justice Norman St. George in Mineola, Susan Williams sat silent, with her hands cuffed behind her back.

At the time of her March arrest, she was charged with second-degree conspiracy and second-degree criminal solicitation. Earlier this month a grand jury indicted her on additional charges of second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument and fourth-degree criminal solicitation.

Prosecutors said the forged-instrument charge stemmed from Williams' fraudulently changing her husband's life insurance policy shortly before she allegedly tried to arrange his slaying.

Williams has pleaded not guilty to all charges. If convicted of the most severe charge, she faces up to 25 years in prison.

The judge ordered her to return to court on June 16.