Horrifying Details Recounted as Hamilton Heights Rape Trial Begins

In April 2007, a Columbia graduate student was raped and tortured for 19 hours in her Hamilton Terrace apartment. More than a year later, her suspected rapist is now in court, facing 71 criminal charges including attempted murder, arson, rape and sodomy.

Assistant District Attorney Ann Prunty describe the harrowing ordeal in her opening statement. From the NY Times:

Over many torturous hours, [the victim] had been repeatedly raped, sodomized and forced to perform oral sex, a prosecutor told a jury on Thursday. The accused, Robert A. Williams, 31, had doused the woman’s face and body with boiling water and bleach, forced her to swallow handfuls of pills and to chase them with beer, sealed her mouth with glue, and bound her wrists and legs with shoelaces, cords and duct tape, said the prosecutor, Ann P. Prunty. And now, Ms. Prunty said, he was asking the woman to gouge out her own eyes with a pair of scissors.

Williams allegedly wanted her to blind herself, so she would not be able to identify him. The victim ended up trying to stab her neck, and Williams allegedly continued his abuse, using a butcher knife, to, as Prunty said, "slice into her face and eyelids, carving and disfiguring her face." The victim passed out from the pills and awoke to find her futon on fire--her attacker meant to kill her, but she managed to burn through the ties of her bound hands and escape to find help.

Police conducted a manhunt to find Williams, 31, who has a criminal history including attempted murder (twice) and assault. He was found a week later when he tried to break into a Queens apartment; residents there stopped him and called the police. One said, "If we had known he was a rapist, he wouldn't have made it off this block."

Police have previously said they have DNA evidence linked Williams to the rape, but his defense attorney has previously said he was argue his client is mentally ill (though psychological exams found Williams fit for trial). The victim is expected to testify today and the trial will continue throughout next week.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jen Chung in News on June 6, 2008 9:43 AM

Comments [rss]

chris lee

Hopefully this will serve as a cautionary tale to all of the good natured, naive students and hipsters that move into these sketchy neighborhoods. They congratulate themselves on their ability to get along with the locals not realizing that it's a numbers game, they cannot FATHOM the random and arbitrary violence of MANY of the people in the ghettoes.

bluemonday

agreed.

i remember this happened at the same time as the VTech shootings and it was barely covered if at all. i hope people pay attention now.

allie25

rusty nails are free, you can find them in the garbage.. shove one up the old pee hole, then cut it off with another rusty one. seriously, i wish someone would do us all a favor and shoot this guy point blank between the eyes. though, that might be too humane.

reading the description literally made me sick.

donner

Wu-tang reference= awesome.

JenChungsBaby

Even Law & Order SVU wouldn't touch this one with a ten foot pole. He's going away for life and that's all. Too bad some prison guard is going to have to risk his life every day dealing with this piece of shit.

eyekantspel

do we really need to spend millions of dollars on a trial, appeals, and paying for this monster's room, board and medical care for life?

just kill the fucker. take him out back and kill him. i don't care if it's slow or quick, as long as it's done.

Anna_Merkin

Re-reading an old post from Jen Chung made me realize that this guy is the worst kind of sociopaths and has been further hardened as a result of being an ex-con. It's almost as if this were a matter of time for him to do what he did.

The old report states that he "wrapped two razor blades in tissue paper, put them in a balloon and stuffed them into his rectum." Wow.

See Jen's comment above for the link.

Guest

Hey Snoopy, how about we remove his eyelids so he can't close his eyes and then make him watch the Sex in the City movie on repeat? Oh, and the electricity used to power the movie comes from his own blood slowly trickling out of his body onto some kind of water wheel that turns the generator. Is that green enough?

Anna_Merkin

Snoopy, do you really want this to be the gross-out board?

1) Stripping him naked in a room full of mirrors and using an X-Acto knife to slowly remove his skin until you reach the minimum that's needed to preserve life, pausing only to revive him with alcohol as he passes out.

2) Dipping his genitals into honey and letting fire ants loose for periods of 10-15 minutes at a time.

3) Leaving him out on top of a tinfoil-covered roof during the hottest days of the year, with no water.

4) Using him as a test specimen for various pharmaceuticals that are administered by hypodermic needle.

5) Sewing his arsehole shut and feeding him, and feeding him (ok, I got that from The Wu Tang Clan).

Jen S

What a monster.

Spirit of 76

Waterboarding is too easy. How about waterboarding with scalding water? Then when we tire of it, burn him at the stake.

Snoopy

There are a lot of creative thinkers on this blog. Can't we come up with a really horrific punishment for this dude? The rusty nail thing is a good start. Nothing lasting more than 90 days please. Don't want to spend too much of the taxpayers dollars. Special rewards if it has low carbon footprint, is ecologically sound and is sustainable.

JRod5417

HBDC- Perhaps, but you have to agree its easier to kill someone with a gun than tying them to a bed and lighting a match. Just saying.

Guest

JRod, that's highly unlikely. If he was going to kill her, he would have done it within that 19 hour period, gun or not.

JRod5417

OTC- Its probably a good thing she did not have a gun in her apartment, since he likely would have used it to kill her.

allie25

cut off his dick with a rusty nail.

Polite New Yorker

I will pile onto the lynch mob. The rightful delivery of justice in this case cannot be done within the confines of the law.

What can be done within the confines of the law is removing those responsible for his release from prison to begin with.

OTC

Stories like this always make me wonder why some women oppose the right to carry a concealed firearm.

If she had a gun, this would have been over fast, and he would have gotten what he deserved.

She should sue the city for violating her Second Amendment rights and allowing this to happen.

g0thamg1rl

It's truly difficult to even read the horrific things this young woman had to endure. It's scary people like this are functioning in our society/our city. Yes, I'm glad he was apprehended as well but now he's just going to sit in a jail cell where our tax dollars pays for his meals & accommodations. Our country is way too lenient on criminals as sick as this...