A mother recently charged with murder more than 20 years after her son’s body was found in the woods near a DeKalb County cemetery is accused of drugging the boy and hitting him in the head, court documents show.
Teresa Bailey Black, 45, of Phoenix, Arizona, was booked into the Maricopa County Jail on June 29, according to online records. Black was arrested by Arizona authorities on a warrant out of DeKalb that was secured after investigators identified the body of her 6-year-old son, William Hamilton, District Attorney Sherry Boston announced Wednesday.
Credit: Maricopa County Sheriff's Office
Credit: Maricopa County Sheriff's Office
The indictment against Black reveals new information about the decades-old killing, while court records from her prior home in North Carolina show that Black was involved in another person’s death years earlier.
Black is charged with two counts of felony murder, two counts of cruelty to children and one count each of aggravated assault and concealing the death of another.
One felony murder charge and one child cruelty charge each stem from the accusation that Black gave Hamilton enough of the drugs found in Benadryl and Tylenol to hurt and ultimately kill him, the indictment shows.
The other counts of murder and child cruelty accuse Black of failing to seek medical treatment for Hamilton, while the aggravated assault charge accuses her of hitting her son in the head. The indictment’s final charge claims she concealed Hamilton’s death by leaving him in the woods and lying about his whereabouts.
The discovery of Hamilton’s body on Feb. 26, 1999, was shrouded in mystery because police could not determine the child’s cause of death, Boston said during Wednesday’s news conference. The 6-year-old’s body was unidentifiable because it lay in the woods for months before it was discovered. At the time, investigators said the child appeared to have been healthy and showed no obvious physical injuries. Hamilton was well-dressed and appeared to have been carefully placed near the cemetery.
Several years before Hamilton’s body was found, Black was involved in another person’s death, according to court records from Mecklenburg County in North Carolina. On Sept. 7, 1994, she was convicted of manslaughter at the age of 17. She served more than a year in prison before being released on Nov. 8, 1995.
The DeKalb District Attorney’s Office confirmed Black’s manslaughter conviction but could not provide any further details about the incident. The Mecklenburg superior court clerk has not responded to an open records request from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Boston’s team is still building its case and is asking for more information from the public. Anyone who may have known or interacted with Black or Hamilton between December 1998 and February 1999 is asked to call the DeKalb DA Office’s cold case tip line at 404-371-2444. Callers may remain anonymous.
— Please return to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for updates.
About the Author
