Susan Williams case resumes after mistrial

The second trial of Susan Williams — who is accused of attempting to hire a hit man nine months ago to murder her estranged husband — began on Nov. 4 at Nassau County District Court in Mineola, six days after Judge Norman St. George declared a mistrial in the case.

St. George made his ruling after learning that Williams’s defense attorney mistakenly signed a stipulation allowing the prosecution to play an incriminating recording of a jailhouse phone conversation between Williams and her daughter for the jury.

A new jury — seven men and five women — was selected, and last Thursday the prosecution and the defense gave their opening statements once more.

On Monday, Williams’s ex-husband, Peter Williams, 46, testified for the second time. Williams repeated his previous claim that Susan, whom he married in 1989, had an extramarital affair with his younger brother Robert, and that, contrary to what his wife has claimed, he remained faithful to her in the years that they were married.

In February, Susan Williams, 44, was introduced to an undercover police officer posing as a hit man, whom she instructed to kill Peter Williams, according to prosecutors. She had asked Joseph LaBella, a private investigator she had hired in 2008 to follow her husband, to find a hit man, after which LaBella helped police set up a meeting between Williams and the undercover officer, during which, police said, Williams gave the officer a $500 down payment on a $20,000 job. The encounter was captured on surveillance tape.

Two years earlier, Williams had asked LaBella to follow Peter Williams and “get dirt on the husband,” according to testimony LaBella gave in court two weeks ago.

In his testimony on Monday, LaBella repeated those words and said that Williams offered suggestions for murdering her ex-husband, which included blowing up his car and running him over. LaBella said that he gave Williams two choices during a Feb. 23 phone conversation that took place before her encounter with the supposed hit man: beating up Peter Williams or murdering him. That conversation was played in court again on Monday.

Williams, a mother of four, is also accused of forging her ex-husband’s signature on a $1 million life insurance policy in order to make herself the beneficiary.

She is charged with criminal possession of a forged instrument, two counts of criminal solicitation and conspiracy. If convicted, she faces 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison.

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