A Houston mother whose three children were found abandoned and living with their 8-year-old brother’s decomposing body in 2021 has pleaded guilty to charges related to her son’s death.
Gloria Williams pleaded guilty to two charges of injury to a child last week, according to Harris County court records reviewed by PEOPLE. The charges stem from her 8-year-old son Kendrick Lee’s murder in March 2021.
In April 2024, Williams’ boyfriend Brian Coulter was sentenced to life in prison for beating the 8-year-old boy to death, according to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.
A Houston judge told Coulter, 34, at the time that the case was one of the most “horrific set of facts that I’ve ever had to witness, to listen to and to image” in her career, according to local outlet KPRC.
Williams’ three children — ages 7, 9, and 15 — had been abandoned in the family’s apartment for several months with “skeletal remains … also found inside the unit,” Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez had told reporters in 2021.
“The apartment was in a horrible condition. We saw soiled carpet, no furniture at all. No bedding, no blankets that we could see. We saw roaches and flies and a very bad condition for anyone to live in,” Gonzalez said, as previously reported.
Williams’ oldest son had called police to report that his sibling “had been dead for a year and his body was in the room next to his,” the sheriff had told reporters.
Williams and Coulter had moved out of the apartment in March 2021, seven months before her 15-year-old son had contacted police. Prosecutors said Williams attempted to conceal her son’s death, and had sent groceries to the apartment once a month and continued to pay rent, KPRC reported at the time.
The three remaining children were taken to the hospital after authorities found them in the apartment, and the kids were “malnourished and showed signs of physical injury,” Sheriff Gonzalez previously said.
At a press conference announcing the charges in 2021, Lt. Dennis Wilford described Coulter as “manipulative” but said Williams should still take blame for her son’s death.
“I would say they are both an abuser,” the lieutenant told reporters. “He’s an abuser physically, and she’s an abuser by omission.”
