New trial starts for wife accused of ordering hit

Susan Williams was unsentimental when she asked a would-be hit man to kill her husband, a prosecutor told a jury Thursday as the new trial of the Garden City woman got under way in Nassau County Court.

"If I could do it myself, I would," Williams told the man, Assistant District Attorney Anne Donnelly said.

That hit man turned out to be an undercover police officer, and Williams' orders were captured on videotape, Donnelly said in her opening argument at Williams' trial on conspiracy and criminal solicitation charges.

Thursday marked the second time in as many weeks that prosecutors and Williams' defense lawyer presented their opening arguments. Williams' first trial ended in a mistrial last week after a taped phone conversation between the defendant, 44, and her daughter was erroneously played for a jury. That jury was dismissed Oct. 29.

Williams has pleaded not guilty to second-degree and fourth-degree criminal solicitation, second-degree conspiracy and second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument. If convicted, she could face a maximum of 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison.

In an opening statement sharpened since she presented much of the same material last week, Donnelly said it was Williams' nasty divorce from her husband, Peter Williams, 46, that led her to look for a way to kill him.

"The defendant always gets what she wants," Donnelly said.

Donnelly highlighted what prosecutors have said is key evidence: the videotape, taken in the undercover officer's car, that shows Williams ordering the hit. Williams is seen on the tape paying a $500 deposit on a $20,000 job to an undercover detective, prosecutors say.

"She says if he's in an accident and ends up, 'you know, dead,' 'I'm great,' " said Donnelly, adding that Williams previously had forged a document transferring ownership of her husband's $1-million life insurance policy to herself.

"She says, 'I don't want his leg and his arm broken. I can do that,' " Donnelly said. "She said, 'Hurting him is not enough. I want him dead.' "

Williams' lawyer, John Carman of Garden City, said Williams was exhausted from a fight with cervical cancer and a bitter divorce. Casting the blame on others, he said she was manipulated both by a private investigator she had hired to snoop on her estranged husband and an undercover police officer into ordering a crime she never would have thought of on her own.

"As bad as her life was, Susan Williams wasn't a violent person," Carman said, adding later, "This case is about two men who had a goal, and the immoral and unfair lengths they went to to achieve it."

Yesterday morning before opening arguments were given, lawyers selected the final three alternate jurors in the case. The sitting jury is made up of seven men and five women, with three men and one woman serving as alternates.

Testimony in the trial is slated to resume Monday.