Mom in hit man case pleads not guilty to new charges

A Garden City mother accused of trying to hire a hit man to kill her estranged husband was led from a Nassau courtroom in handcuffs Monday morning after pleading not guilty to new charges.

Susan Williams, 43, had been free on $500,000 bail since about a month after she was arrested on charges that she tried to arrange the death of her husband, Peter Williams, amid a bitter divorce battle.

Yesterday, Williams entered her plea to new charges of second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument and fourth-degree criminal solicitation. Nassau County Court Judge Norman St. George agreed to raise her bail to $1 million cash, or $2 million bond.

Peter Williams sat silently in the back of the courtroom and Williams' two elder daughters, ages 18 and 20, also did not comment.

Williams' next court date is May 25.

Nassau prosecutors say Williams asked an acquaintance in February to refer her to a hit man. The supposed hit man - actually an undercover police officer - videotaped Williams as she paid him a $500 deposit on a $20,000 arrangement, prosecutors have said. Williams pleaded not guilty after her arrest on charges of second-degree criminal solicitation and second-degree conspiracy.

If convicted, she could face a maximum of 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison.

Prosecutor Jane Zwirn-Turkin said in court that the new felony charge relates to a forged life insurance policy that Williams took out on her husband shortly before she arranged the hit.

Zwirn-Turkin said Williams told the would-be hit man on video that she was in financial trouble but that "if he died, there would be a change."

Williams' defense lawyer, John Carman of Garden City, said he plans to appeal Williams' bail.

Zwirn-Turkin said in court that Williams has shown a disregard for the law, sending her family members to take things out of the Nassau Avenue home that she was living in until her arrest. Her ex-husband lives there now.

She said recently Peter Williams arrived home and "thought he'd been burglarized," Zwirn-Turkin said. There were pictures missing from the walls and from the mantle, and a family member even took the title to the family's Mercedes, Zwirn-Turkin said.

But Carman said that the family members may have been acting independently. He said if Williams had broken the law in that regard, prosecutors would have charged her with a crime.