Latest / Gone Cold - Texas True Crime / Shallow Grave: The Slaying of Helen Dawn Williams

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Shallow Grave: The Slaying of Helen Dawn Williams · Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

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The concol podcast may contain violent or graphic subject matter. Listener discretion is advised.
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Houston's historic Third Ward, also known by its nickname The Trey, has
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as rich, important, and tragic a history as any other Texas community.
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While precise boundaries of the Third Ward are not easy to nail down, the
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area is usually defined by a starting point at Congress and Maine downtown and then
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stretching miles south and southeast at an ear forty five degree angle. The boundaries
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have changed over time, anyway, as has the Third Ward's demographics and power
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as a cultural epicenter. Though the Trey's population was almost evenly split between blacks
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and whites when the Wards were created upon Houston's and Corporation, by the end
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of the mid nineteenth century, whites began leaving for suburban developments, the Third
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Ward became mostly black and locally owned and operated businesses there grew and thrived at
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Dowling Street, especially the center of the Third Ward's business hub. The area
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quickly became an important part of the black community and culture in the following years,
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and not just for Houstonians. Black men and women from all over Southeast
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Texas came to indulge in the Third Wards nightlife, a place where their culture
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was prevalent and celebrated in nineteen thirty nine, when it opened, Blues and
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jazz at the El Dorado Ballroom provided patrons with respite, if only briefly,
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from the Jim Crow laws that dominated the surrounding areas of the city and Houston's
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outlying small town. The El Dorado had plenty of local talent, but the
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nightclub's house orchestra often backed the greats too, like James Brown, Ella Fitzgerald,
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Ray, Charles, Edda, James, and Little Richard. In nineteen
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seventy, twenty one year old Houston Black Panther leader Carl Hampton was killed in
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a gun battle between militants and police. His death likely an assassination. What
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is a fact is that Hampton, as only a young man, was largely
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responsible for the creation of the Rainbow Coalition in Houston's Third Ward, in which
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the Mexican American Youth Organization and the John Brown Revolutionary League, a group of
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white community activists, the namesake of which was a staunch and militant white abolitionist,
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worked alongside his Black Panthers to demand changes for working class families and the
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poor. There After the civil rights movement, Houston, of course, became
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desegregated, and black folks too began leaving the Third Ward for the suburbs.
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Police in the Tray had also developed a larger presence and more aggressive demeanor,
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and police brutality in the Third Ward was something of a commonality. Those two
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factors were heavily among the things responsible for the area's decline until gentrification began occurring
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in the twenty tens, a seemingly inevitable occurrence in modern times, particularly in
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areas as rich with history and as beautiful in architecture as Houston's third Ward.
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Texas Southern University came to the Third Ward in nineteen forty seven and was established
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specifically to offer black folks in Texas the same educational opportunities that were already offered
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to their white counterparts in dozens of universities across the state. For decades,
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the school was plagued by efforts to subvert its cause, but TSU was pivotal
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in Houston's civil rights movement. In nineteen sixty, after students organized the cities
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first sit in at A Weingarten's grocery store, lunch counter, many of the
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city's businesses decided to desegregate. Had TSU never come to the trade, the
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communities decline might have happened much more rapidly than it did. But for many
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decades, the university has attracted the area's best and brightest, from motivated community
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activists to artists and intellectuals. The university, specifically the Third Good Martial School
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of Law, is what attracted Don Williams to the area, the daughter of
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a successful and expected Houston attorney, in October of nineteen ninety three. However,
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Don's otherwise idyllic story ended shockingly and in tragedy after she went missing from
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Houston's third Ward. Helen Henderson was born on March fourteenth, nineteen sixty eight,
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and was known by her middle name Dawn. Little can be found about
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Don's childhood and adolescence, with only her father, Isaac Edwin Henderson or Ike,
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providing insight. We do know that Don graduated from Sharpstown High in southwest
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Houston, where she was active in the Apollo Queens, the school's drill team
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and PEP squad. She graduated there in nineteen eighty six at age eighteen,
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and her future promised to be bright. Dawn was a remarkably intelligent individual,
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and her father often commented that she was friendly and tended to get along with
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just about anyone and everyone. Don was a devout Christian and was accepted into
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the ministry. It was originally her intention to become a pastor, but Don
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struggled with what to do with her life. Her father said aside from preaching,
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she had a passion for law, and in an almost made for Hollywood,
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in her conflict, Don was torn between the ministry and following in her
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father's footsteps and becoming an attorney. Ultimately, Don's desire to practice law one
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out. Though her father, Ike was proud of his daughter's faith, he
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beamed with pride over her decision to work alongside him. Ike was looking forward
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to Don joining him at his practice, and one day he'd pass his firm
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down to her. Don enrolled at Texas Southern University's third Good Marshall School of
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Law and moved to Southeast Houston in the city's third ward. By this time,
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TSU had grown to include many undergraduate and graduate degree programs. The campus's
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brick paths, shaded by large decades old trees, provided students with a picturesque
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walk between classes. Don worked hard and was quickly considered an accomplished student at
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the historic college. During mock trial competitions conducted by a student group Dawn was
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involved with, she argued her side skillfully and with an adept understanding of the
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law. She wanted to be in the courtroom. In other words, it
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wasn't just the law, it was also the action. As a member of
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the sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, Dawn was immensely interested and very involved in extracurricular
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activities at TSU. She held her head high as a Tiger, the school's
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mascot. In June of nineteen eighty nine, twenty one year old Don Henderson
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married twenty one year old Raphael Anthony Williams, who went by Tony. By
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October of nineteen ninety three, with less than a year of school left until
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twenty five year old Dawn obtained her law degree, the married couple was living
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together a little less than two miles from the university's campus on cal At Street.
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Their apartment was among a row of beautifully designed Tutor style for plexes built
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in the late nineteen twenties. While Don studied Tony worked at Texas Children's Hospital
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in the neurophysiology department, working with children who had sleep disorders. From the
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outside looking in, Don and Tony were an average couple with a normal,
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healthy marriage, but to those Don trusted the most, it seemed to be
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anything but that. When Don Williams reported for work at the office of Virgie
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Mountain, the Assistant Dean for student Development at Texas Southern University, on Thursday,
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October fourteenth, nineteen ninety three, she was upset. Don told Virgie
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that she and Tony weren't getting along. She'd given her husband a greeting card,
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Don relayed to the assistant dean, and he had torn it to pieces.
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She pleaded with her boss to keep the remnants of the destroyed card.
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It's unclear when the event took place and exactly what transpired. Also unknown to
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us is where Don went after work, but it was the last day she
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was ever seen by anyone other than Tony Williams. On the morning of Friday,
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October fifteenth, nineteen ninety three, Don Williams's husband, Tony, drove
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the couple's car to work, a red Volkswagen. He'd later say, According
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to Tony just before he left home that morning was the last time he saw
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his wife. He arrived back at apartment three of nineteen oh four Calumet Street
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that evening, he claimed, and Dawn wasn't there. He was only a
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little concerned at first that she was gone, Tony said, but his worry
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grew as the evening went on and his wife hadn't returned. He began calling
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relatives and friends to see if anyone had heard from Dawn, but nobody had.
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In fact, as he made the calls, Tony was informed for the
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first time by a friend of hers that Dawn hadn't attended her classes that day.
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The following morning, on Saturday, October sixteenth, Tony called the Houston
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Police and reported Dawn's disappearance. The only thing of hers missing from the apartment,
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Tony told them, were the clothes she'd been wearing at her purse.
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According to the Houston Chronicle, Detective Ruben Anderson of the Houston Police Department's Homicide
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Division took the report at the william home, Friends and neighborhood volunteers searched nearly
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the entirety of the third Ward and beyond looking for Don Williams, including around
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eighty third Goood Marshall School of Law students and members of TSU's Alpha Kappa Alpha
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sorority. The searches were said to have been large scale and appeared to have
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begun as early as the Friday night she disappeared, presumably after Tony began phoning
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friends and fellow students of dawn. The efforts continued into the next day,
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and as soon as the cops were informed that the young woman was missing,
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they assigned manpower to the effort. The search parties walked virtually every street of
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the third Ward, closely inspecting vacant lots and properties, drainage ditches and roadsides.
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Friends, fellow students, and relatives passed out flyers with her photograph.
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They read missing Helen Don Williams, age twenty five, five ft four inches
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tall, with hazel brown eyes and a mole on her cheek just under her
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right eye. A search fund was immediately established, the donations of which were
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accepted at the law school's student bar Association. The funds collected there, too,
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would be used for the employment of a private investigator, though whether one
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was hired was never reported. Don's parents also immediately offered a six thousand dollar
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reward for their daughter's safe return. The days turned to weeks and still no
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clues as to Don William's whereabouts could be found. The missing young woman's best
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friend, Monique commented, we covered a lot of ground. Everyone's taking it
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pretty hard. Her family hasn't given up hope, I can Erson. Don's
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father expressed concerns about his daughter's disappearance from the start. He knew it was
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foul play, and he told the police as much, insisting that she had
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absolutely no reason to up and leave. Detective Reuben Anderson from Houston Homicide said
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that Don and Tony's apartment showed no telltale signs of a struggle, foul play,
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or even forced entry, but he was more or less taking Tony Williams's
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word for it, since the man wouldn't let police in to examine the property.
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Neighbors in the adjoining apartments heard and saw nothing that day, they told
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police. Detective Anderson assured the public through the Houston Chronicle that they were doing
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everything they could to locate Don Williams. Police were following all possibilities. He
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said that family and friends were providing Don's husband, Tony told newspersons from kho
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U Channel eleven. I hope there's no foul play, but I do know
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she wouldn't go and do something like this. In his verbal statement to police,
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Tony said he had the car that day. He insisted that she would
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not have left home to walk somewhere in the neighborhood. If Don had gone
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anywhere, Tony was adamant she would have hitched a ride with a friend and
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would not have taken a cab. Tony was surprised to find out he said
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that Don didn't attend to class, which calls into question who he thought she
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was to have ridden with to class. It's unclear whether police addressed the seeming
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contradiction, but they likely did either way. Tony Williams didn't cooperate with the
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investigation and refused a lie detector test when detectives asked him to undergo one.
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To be fair, Houston police historically did little in the third ward to gain
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the community's trust. In fact, it was a common place for police manipulation,
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over aggression and downright brutality, not to mention little to no accountability for
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it. It's not difficult to imagine Tony didn't trust the cops to carry out
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a fair investigation. Suspicion, however, was cast on the man from the
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get go, and not only by the police. Don's father, Ike Henderson,
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had his own suspicions about Tony. I'm convinced that he did, in
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fact kill my daughter, Isaac said, and he continued with shocking revelations under
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certain circumstances. I have seen Tony's uncontrollable temper. He has the need to
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dominate other people. He couldn't control her. I indicated to her that he
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was dangerous. It was a very rocky marriage, very comfrontational. She was
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at her wits end. Don's conversation with her boss the day before she went
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missing corroborates what her father said. Ike had his idea of what happened to
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his daughter, but Don's whereabouts were a mystery until almost a month after she
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vanished, when everyone's worst fears were realized. On Monday, November eighth,
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nineteen ninety three, a crew was clearing junk and debris that had been illegally
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dumped on a dear lease in rural Montgomery County, just north of New Caney.
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It was about fifty miles north of Houston's third ward. The crew discovered
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a grizzly and terrible sight freshly disturbed earth dirt mounded by wild animals. After
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digging and exposing the decomposed body of an unclothed woman who'd been buried in a
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shallow grave. Nearly a month after going missing, twenty five year old Helen
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Don Williams had been found. The body positively identified by dental records the following
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Thursday, November eleventh. Don's throat had been repeatedly and brutally slashed with a
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knife. An autopsy determined that she was most likely slain the day she disappeared.
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No murder weapon was found. A member of the crew who discovered Don's
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body later commented that it was not the first time he'd made such a discovery
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in the area by sheer coincidence. A grand jury was convening the day Don's
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body was identified. Since Don's husband, Raphael Tony Williams, had hired an
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attorney and refused to speak to investigators looking for the young woman, a grand
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jury had been called in an attempt to force Tony to cooperate. Also subpoenad
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was Kim Davis, a friend of the man's who testified before the court as
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his alibi witness. She and Tony were together the day Dawn went missing,
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the woman told the grand jury. Since Don's body was found a few days
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before Kim's testimony, detectives had already begun investigating the murder. Houston Homicide detective
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CB Douglas said that they didn't think Don was picked randomly. She wasn't killed
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on the dear lease where she was buried, the lawman continued. Rather,
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her body was taken to Montgomery County after her slaying. No clothing or personal
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items were found buried with Dawn or anywhere else near the scene, which was
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extensively searched. The Montgomery County Sheriff's office, however, found evidence on the
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body, Houston Homicide Lieutenant Joe Kunkle told the Houston Chronicle, and they were
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confident. Detectives said the forensic clues would lead to a suspect in a matter
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of days. That evidence was never disclosed to the public, and it seems
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almost as likely that the statement was made to make a specific suspect sweat as
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it was. Forensic technology at the time couldn't do much with damaged and or
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small quantities of biological evidence. It wasn't until after Dawn Williams's body was found
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that Houston police were able to obtain a warrant to search her and Tony's third
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Ward apartment on the nineteen hundred block of Calumet Street. They didn't find anything,
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since the apartment had been cleaned with bleach multiple times since she disappeared,
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and advances in crime seeing technology that might have been useful in this circumstance were
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not necessarily available at the time. During the initial investigation, Houston Police Detective
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CP. Douglas told the press that the department believed they knew who killed Don,
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but they refused to identify the person. Douglas also said that Don's husband,
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Raphael Tony Williams, was not a suspect, and went on to say
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investigators were looking at quote, anybody who really knew her. The statements were
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rhetorical, confusing, perhaps purposefully deceptive, and without a doubt, partially untrue.
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To the day of this recording and early August of twenty twenty three,
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nearly thirty years after the murder of Helen Don Williams, Tony has not in
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fact been eliminated as a suspect. On November twentieth nineteen ninety three, just
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a couple of weeks after his wife's body was found in a shallow grave in
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rural Montgomery County, fifty miles away, Tony Williams left nineteen o four Calumet
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Street Apartment three and moved out of state. I guess he got tired of
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seeing my face, Houston homicide detective CB Douglas commented. In nineteen ninety five,
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two years after Don Williams vanished and was later found murdered, Houston Homicide
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Sergeant Ruben Anderson commented on the department's lack of progress. He called the case
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frustrating. The department reiterated that they had a possible suspect and that they thought
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more than an individual was involved, at least involved with moving and burying Don's
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body. Of this theory, Sergeant Anderson said, somebody had to help.
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Somebody saw it, and that's the person we're looking for right now. Investigators,
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it seemed, were looking to flip an accomplice against the killer. They
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just needed more evidence to make an arrest, he added. After eleven years.
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In two thousand and four, Houston Homicides CBE Douglas commented about Don's murder.
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He told the Houston Chronicle that he felt like he knew her, the
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victim of the detective's oldest open case. By this time, Douglas's tight lips
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had relaxed a little, and he told the inquiring reporter that Don's husband,
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Raphael Tony Williams, is a self centered, arrogant person who really believed in
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himself. I think he was jealous of his wife. He didn't like the
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fact that she would be an attorney someday and be on her own. He's
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never been charged, Detective Douglas went on, but I've never been able to
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exclude him. The homicide investigator said that many of Tony's neurophysiology patients lived in
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the New Caney rural Montgomery County area, near where his wife's body was found.
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Tony developed personal relationships with his patients, Detective Douglas said, and often
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visited them at their homes. I think someone helped him, inferred Douglas,
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saying that the man had a lot of friends and plenty of girlfriends. Tony
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Williams, to quote Douglas, got around quite a bit. The detective was
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looking for someone familiar with either Don or Tony he said to give them the
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information they needed to break the case wide open, but it never came.
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In an interview with KHOU Houston's Grace White in February of twenty twenty two,
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Houston Police Department Cold Case Unit detective Darcus Shorten said she remembered hearing about the
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Don Williams case as a rookie detective. Now with a file on her desk,
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Shorton had sent forensic evidence for testing. The results were unexpected. The
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DNA profile matched an individual who was in prison when the results came back for
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a separate crime, of course, someone who is not Raphael Tony Williams,
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the victim's husband. To make matters even more difficult, this individual, whose
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gender was not specified, was also incarcerated when Don was murdered. Still,
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detectives wonder how the DNA ended up on the evidence. Since her body was
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found, police have allowedly expressed their belief that whoever murdered Don had help moving
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her body. If they know that's how this person's DNA was left. The
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Houston Police continued to hold that information close to the chest. Don's memory and
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legacy live on through the Third Good Martial School of Laws. Helen Don William's
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mock trial competition, which is not only a challenge to participants and a chance
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to gain as real life court experience as possible before obtaining a law degree,
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but also a high honor. Winners and even runners up proudly displayed the program
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as accolades promoting their practices. Don's father, Ike Henderson said in two thousand
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and nine that the grief of losing his daughter to such a brutal crime doesn't
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go away. He'll never get to see her obtain her goals and ambitions,
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Ike said, one of which she was so close to, having been less
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than a year away from obtaining her law degree when she was slain. Ike
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Henderson said the family, still after decades, had not come to grips with
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the tragedy. Their feelings were difficult to describe, and the reality can strike
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again at any time, becoming as fresh as it was the moment it happened.
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We had high hopes that her life would be meaningful and beneficial to others.
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Ike lamented, it's something that will never be replaced. We cannot hate
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the person who did this, but we do want him to face justice.
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If her husband, Tony Williams, did kill Dawn that justice will never come.
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He has since died. If you have any information about the murderer of
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Helen Don Williams, please call the Houston Police Department's Cold Case Unit at seven
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one three three zero eight three six one eight, or remain anonymous by calling
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Crime Stoppers of Houston at seven one three two to two eight four seven seven.
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