Susan Williams found guilty

Susan Williams, the 44-year-old Garden City mother and former Rockville Centre resident accused of hiring a hit man nine months ago to kill her estranged husband, was found guilty by a Nassau County jury after four hours of deliberation on Monday.

Williams was guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and possession of a forged instrument. She was found not guilty of criminal solicitation.

In February, Williams hired a man who offered his services to kill her husband, Peter Williams, for $20,000 while the two were in the midst of an ugly divorce. Unknown to her, the supposed hit man was an undercover Nassau County police detective involved in a sting operation set up by Joseph LaBella, a private investigator who had been working for Williams, and other police personnel.

Surveillance tape of Williams’s encounter with the undercover officer at Eisenhower Park on March 3 was played for the jury during the trial, and replayed during prosecutors’ closing arguments Monday morning.

“The evidence speaks for itself,” Prosecutor Anne Donnelly said.

On the tape, Williams can be heard telling the man that she wanted her husband’s death to look like an accident. She also mentions a $1 million life insurance policy in Peter Williams’s name, on which she forged his signature to make herself the beneficiary in the event that he died.

Defense Attorney John Carman did not call Susan Williams to the witness stand during the two-week-long trial. In his closing statement, Carman claimed that LaBella and the undercover police detective manipulated Williams last February, when the mother of four was battling cancer, financial troubles and a bitter divorce. But Carman’s argument did not sway the jurors.

Carman said on Monday that he plans to appeal the verdict. “We will continue to fight on behalf of Susan Williams,” he said.

Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice offered a different sentiment. “The members of the jury were able to hear and see the real Susan Williams for themselves through the audio and videotape evidence,” Rice said. “The defendant cold-heartedly planned the murder of her children’s father and just as cold-heartedly left the devastation of the family in her wake.”

Williams faces 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison when Judge Norman St. George sentences her on Dec. 17.

In a related development, authorities reported on Monday that the boyfriend of one of Williams’s daughter had been arrested after inappropriately contacting a juror last Friday. The juror was removed and replaced with an alternate, and the boyfriend — Frank Trapani — was arraigned on Tuesday.