Jury Convicts Woman in Witness Death

A Torrance woman was found guilty Thursday of capital murder in an unusual case involving the slaying of a witness.

Jurors convicted Antoinette Yancey, 28, of helping her jailed boyfriend carry out the shooting of a witness to a fatal robbery at a computer store in Fountain Valley.

Although it was a capital case, Yancey will not face execution. Because the jury did not find that she actually pulled the trigger, Deputy Dist. Atty. Rick King dropped efforts to seek the death penalty. Yancey now faces a sentence of life in prison without parole.

“I’m going to accept what the jury felt, and the jury felt that we did not have the sufficient evidence to prove she was the actual killer,” the prosecutor said.

The 22-year-old witness, Ardell Williams, was shot in the back of the head on March 13, 1994, at point-blank range as she filled out a job application form outside a Gardena business.

The young woman had provided damaging testimony before the Orange County Grand Jury that helped lead to indictments against Yancey’s boyfriend, William Clinton Clark, and others in a fatal 1991 robbery at a CompUSA store. A 49-year-old woman was killed when she arrived to pick up her teenage son, an employee at the store.

King told jurors that Clark--jailed without bail--was desperate to get rid of the witness, and recruited Yancey to carry out his execution scheme.

The prosecutor accused Yancey of befriending the witness and her family, using an assumed name, then luring the young woman to her death at a remote industrial office. Two hours after Williams was killed, Yancey visited Clark in the Orange County Jail.

Wiping tears from her eyes, Yancey testified that her boyfriend used her to unwittingly arrange the meeting at which Williams was shot.

“Did you love him enough to kill for him?” her attorney, Gary Proctor, asked.

“No, I would never kill anyone,” she replied.

Her lawyer called Clark, 42, of Los Angeles a “puppet master,” telling jurors he manipulated Yancey through 1,500 letters and hundreds of hours of phone calls.

Proctor told jurors there was no physical evidence, such as fingerprints or a murder weapon, to connect Yancey to the crime scene, and that evidence suggests the killer was left-handed and strong, probably a man. Yancey is right-handed.

Yancey admitted she still writes to Clark, whom she met at a nightclub where she worked, and said she let him suggest a phony alibi and other lies only to appease him.

“I loved this man and it was not easy for me to snap my fingers and fall out of love with him,” she testified.

Of some 30 capital cases in the county, a jury has never sentenced someone to death who did not physically kill his or her victim, King said.

Yancey was only the third woman in Orange County to face possible execution since capital punishment was reinstated statewide in 1977.

Jurors appeared emotionally drained after five days of deliberations, with one woman wiping tears from her eyes as the verdict was announced. Yancey appeared composed, although one of her lawyers said she was extremely disappointed with the verdict and will seek a new trial.

“She has felt and maintained her innocence from the beginning,” Thomas H. Wolfsen said. “She feels she got set up for this. She didn’t know that person was going to be killed.”

Jurors, however, said they found several holes in her story, and believe she was a willing accomplice and conspirator.

Relatives of the victim said they were pleased with the verdict, and satisfied that Yancey will spend the rest of her life in prison.

“We’re happy she will never do this to someone else,” said Liz Fontenot, one of the victim’s sisters. “We’re satisfied with that. We left it up to God.”

In May, Clark was convicted of double first-degree murder for masterminding the crimes leading to the slayings of both women. But the Orange County jury was unable to decide if he should be executed. He is awaiting a new penalty phase trial.