Even The Judge Couldn’t Hold Back TEARS, Cops Needed Therapy After Solving This | True Crime story

It was absolutely an emotional day for the family of Felicia Williams. Even the judge cried. But perhaps the most stunning moment came from the little girl’s father and his calm words to the man who took his world. Judge Michelle Sisco handing down the state’s ultimate punishment, death. >> May God have mercy on your soul, Mr.

Ritchie. >> One by one, the victim’s family described the sleepless nights Granville Ritchie caused them by raping and murdering 9-year-old Felicia Williams. Her grandmother. >> I just miss my grandbaby. >> Her sister. >> She meant the world to us and he discarded her like she was nothing. >> Her mother.

 [snorts] >> I’ve waited 2,000 300 and 10 days for this day to come. >> Felicia Demerson says she wore black to quote “bury” Ritchie today. >> The only thing I regret today is that I cannot ice play his face. And he that would be for him to be hung. For him to feel what my daughter felt. >> Even the judge was unable to hold back her own tears.

>> [snorts] >> My heart breaks for you as a mother. Absolutely breaks for you as a mother. >> But one of the most remarkable moments came from the victim’s father. >> I forgive you, bro. That’s how strong my God is. I come and smile at you today with no harm or ill will towards you. You’re my brother. You made a mistake.

But you got time. You got time to get right with God, bro. >> Williams says Ritchie must answer to a higher authority. >> [music] >> Tampa, Florida, May 2014. A 9-year-old girl walks out the door for what should have been just another afternoon. She never makes it home. The people responsible for her that day, they didn’t call the police.

 They didn’t go looking. Instead, for hours, they sat there stitching together a lie, building a story to explain away something they already knew had gone horribly wrong. >> [music] >> Less than 24 hours later, a couple fishing along the water would find her. >> [music] >> This is a true crime story about betrayal wearing a familiar face.

 About a woman who called herself a little girl’s godmother and the stranger she let get close enough to end her life. This is Felicia Williams’ story. Her family called her Sugarplum. Born December 9th, 2004, Felicia was the second youngest of six sisters, her mother’s namesake. Sweet, >> [music] >> funny, quick to laugh, and even at 9 years old, she had a nurturing streak.

She was the kid who noticed when somebody was upset and tried to fix it. She was a student at Edison Elementary in Tampa. Teachers adored her. Classmates adored her. She was rarely seen without a smile plastered across her face in the hallways. Outside of school, she was living the simple stuff. Obsessed with Hello Kitty.

 Always down to visit the park near her house and feed the ducks and birds gathered around the pond. Family time was her favorite time, and family was the center of her whole world. On Sundays, she sang in the youth choir at Zion Temple Holiness Church, where the congregation knew her as cheerful, polite, always first to volunteer.

 And despite being just 9, she already had her future mapped out in her head. She told people she wanted to grow up to be a teacher or maybe a doctor. Both ambitions traced straight back to that same caring nature everybody around her had picked up on. Like most kids her age, Felicia’s whole world revolved around a small circle, her family, her school, her church, and the people she spent time with day in, day out.

 One of those people was a woman named Ebony Wiley. >> [music] >> In Ebony was 23, living in the same East Tampa neighborhood as Felicia’s family. She worked at a nearby nursing home and had built a genuinely close relationship with Felicia’s mother, also named Felicia Demerson. Over the years, Ebony had become a fixture in the family’s life.

 She’d take the kids to church, out to lunch, to local parks, on bike rides through the neighborhood. The kids knew her well and liked having her around. The bond ran deep enough that Ebony referred to herself as Felicia’s godmother, and for Felicia’s mother, that wasn’t just a nickname tossed around. It reflected years of watching Ebony show up for her children.

 By May 2014, letting Felicia spend a day with Ebony wasn’t unusual in the slightest. It was routine. So, on May 16th, 2014, when Ebony showed up asking if Felicia could hang out with her that afternoon, nobody blinked. Felicia had been home with her siblings while her mom was out at a hair appointme

Around 4:00 p.m., Felicia called her mother to ask permission. Ebony had told the family she planned to take Felicia to a Friday night church service or the park, or to grab something to eat. All things they’d done together plenty of times before. >> [music] >> Nothing about the request raised a single red flag.

 Confident her daughter was with someone she trusted, Felicia’s mother said yes. What she didn’t know was that Ebony had invited someone else to join them. Just 3 days before Felicia disappeared, Ebony met a man walking through her East Tampa neighborhood. He introduced himself as Trevor. That wasn’t his real name. He was Granville Richie.

 Ebony didn’t know that yet. The two swapped numbers and started spending time together immediately, and things moved fast. Within days, Ebony believed she was falling in love, already picturing a future with him. What she didn’t know, Richie was married >> [music] >> and according to statements he’d later give investigators, he was involved with multiple other women at the same time.

>> [music] >> Eboni had built an entire fantasy on a foundation that wasn’t real. In those three days, she told him everything >> [music] >> including her frustrations about looking after Felicia. Nothing serious, just the normal friction that comes with watching somebody else’s kid. On the morning of May 16th, she vented to Richie that Felicia had been stressing her out.

Richie suggested they pick the girl up together and sit her down for a talk. To Eboni, it probably felt harmless. She had no idea this would be the very first time Felicia would ever meet Granville Richie. That afternoon, Richie pulled up in a silver Lexus to grab Eboni and Felicia.

 Eboni assumed they were just going to get food. Instead, Richie steered the car toward the Doral Oaks apartment complex in Temple Terrace, telling her his mother lived there and was cooking dinner. Eboni wasn’t comfortable with the idea. Felicia had never met this woman and it felt wrong to expect a 9-year-old to sit down and eat a meal prepared by a total stranger.

So they compromised. A stop at a Checkers to grab food for Felicia, who ate in the backseat as they drove the rest of the way to the apartment. For Felicia, it probably felt like any other outing. She had no way of knowing the afternoon had already tilted into something else entirely. Once they got to the apartment, Eboni had Felicia call her mother.

 Felicia said she was with Eboni. No mention of the apartment, no mention of the man in the car. To her mother, it sounded like a routine check-in. Nothing to worry about. Before they went inside, Richie showed Eboni a bag of drugs. She took ecstasy, the same thing she’d taken the first time the two of them had met >> [music] >> just days earlier.

 Not long after they were inside, she felt it hit. Even so, she and Richie sat Felicia down and brought up the same issues Ebony had complained about that morning. Allegations that Felicia had been taking money and phones from family members, along with some trouble at school. At some point, Richie said he wanted marijuana. Ebony called her grandfather, who told her to come by and he’d sort her out.

And here’s the part of the story that would end up under the most scrutiny. Ebony decided to leave Felicia alone in that apartment with a man she’d known for 3 days. She hesitated, but Richie pushed back, told her it wasn’t smart to bring the kid along, not with him lacking a license and weed about to be in the car.

 He talked her into leaving Felicia behind, so she did. By her account, she was gone somewhere between 40 and 50 minutes. During that stretch, she and Richie spoke on the phone more than once, including one call where she needed help getting back through the gate at the complex. But when she got back, Felicia was gone. Richie told her he’d given Felicia some cash and let her walk to a nearby CVS to grab candy.

 Said the 9-year-old had gone on her own and just hadn’t come back. Worried, Ebony drove to the CVS and asked an employee if a girl matching Felicia’s description had come through. The answer was no. She drove back to the apartment complex and found Richie standing outside, shirtless, sweating, wearing nothing but a pair of pants. By her account, he looked genuinely upset that Felicia hadn’t turned up.

Ebony tried to talk him down, telling him Felicia had a habit of wandering and would probably show back up on her own. Time kept passing, still no Felicia. And despite believing the girl was missing, neither of them called her family, neither called the police, neither one of them went out looking.

 Instead, [music] Ebony went into a bedroom closet to pray and calm herself as the drugs wore off. When she came out, she had a drink. Then she and Richie had sex on the living room floor. Hours went by. No call to Felicia’s mother, no call to police, no search for the little girl Richie claimed had simply wandered off.

 But Felicia wasn’t lost, and before the night was over, Granville Richie would start making sure nobody ever found her. For a woman who called herself Felicia’s godmother, Ebony Wiley showed remarkably little urgency once the girl disappeared. No frantic search, no immediate call to police. For hours, Felicia’s family had no idea anything was wrong at all.

Instead, before Richie drove Ebony home, the two of them agreed on a story. Richie was firm on one point. There should be no mention of a man being there that day. In his place, Ebony was to invent a woman named Vivian, someone Ebony understood to be Richie’s mother, despite never having laid eyes on her. Story locked in, the two went their separate ways.

 Ebony called her sister and met her at a liquor store on 22nd Street, running the fabricated version by her first. Only after that did she call Felicia’s mother. By then, hours had already slipped by since Felicia had supposedly wandered off. Felicia’s mother told her to meet at a nearby Burger King, but instead of rushing straight there, Ebony had a friend swing by to pick up her and her sister and made one more stop first.

 Not to search for Felicia, to buy more ecstasy. She’d later admit she wanted to get high again. When Felicia’s mother finally got the call, none of it made sense. According to Ebony, she’d taken Felicia to an apartment in Temple Terrace belonging to her boyfriend’s mother, and while she was in the shower, Felicia had somehow vanished.

 For a mother already in the dark for hours, the explanation only deepened the panic. It was dark outside. Her 9-year-old was missing, and the person she’d trusted to look after her couldn’t say where she was. Up until that moment, Felicia’s mother believed her daughter had simply spent the afternoon with someone she trusted.

 Now she was hearing that Felicia had been taken to a stranger’s apartment and had allegedly disappeared while in Ebony’s care. She didn’t wait around for answers. She called the Temple Terrace Police Department immediately and reported her daughter missing. After the report was filed, Ebony met with officers near the apartment complex and repeated the same false story she and Richie had built earlier that night.

 As the search stretched into the dark hours, Felicia’s family waited >> [music] >> hoping for news that she’d been found safe. Morning came instead with nothing. [music] Ebony went to work but couldn’t hold herself together and got sent home early. She spent much of that day in contact with Richie’s mother who’d since been briefed on the cover story while also trying to reach Richie himself.

After several failed attempts, she finally got him on the phone. By then, doubt was creeping in. She asked him point-blank if he’d done something to Felicia. He said no. But investigators had concerns about Ebony’s account from the jump. The timeline didn’t hold together. Key details were missing. How exactly a 9-year-old girl had simply vanished raised more questions than it answered.

 So, on May 17th, the day after Felicia disappeared, detectives brought Ebony in for a more formal interview >> [music] >> pressing her hard on the hours leading up to the disappearance. Under that pressure, her story started to crack. She admitted the first version wasn’t true. >> [music] >> There had been no Vivian. Instead, she said she’d been at the apartment with a man she knew only as Trevor.

 According to this new account, while she and Trevor were having sex in the bathroom, Felicia sat in the living room watching cartoons. When they came out, Felicia was gone. For detectives, this answered a few things and raised a dozen more. It didn’t take long to figure out who Trevor really was.

 While Ebony was still being interviewed, >> [music] >> investigators had her call him and tell him she’d changed her story, that she’d told police he’d been with her the day Felicia vanished. But, investigators were already closing in on his identity independently, using phone records and details tied to the apartment. They connected the name Trevor to Granville Ritchie.

 Once they had his name, they started digging into his background, and what they found was troubling. Ritchie wasn’t just some guy Ebony had met days earlier. He had an extensive criminal history stretching back years, including convictions for violent offenses. As investigators learned more, their focus shifted hard toward the man who’d been alone with Felicia during the last hours she was known to be alive.

 By now, Ebony’s original story was in ruins. The Vivian version was gone. The second version raised even more red flags, and detectives had already found evidence contradicting parts of what she’d told them. After that second account, Ebony Wiley was arrested and charged with lying to investigators. She knew by then that detectives didn’t believe a word of it.

 And as the pressure kept building, she was about to change her story once more. But before she got the chance, the investigation took a devastating turn. On the afternoon of May 17th, while detectives were still working to piece together what had happened to Felicia, a couple fishing along the shoreline near the Courtney Campbell Causeway made a horrifying discovery.

 At around 3:20 p.m., they spotted a small body floating near the rocks and mangroves. It was Felicia Williams. Less than 24 hours after she’d last been seen alive, the search for a missing child had become a homicide investigation. Once confirmed, investigators went back to Ebony and told her Felicia was dead. The conversation changed instantly.

 There was no longer any chance the girl had simply wandered off and would eventually turn up. Detectives needed to know in full exactly what had happened inside that apartment. That’s when Ebony finally told them the truth. She admitted she hadn’t been honest about what happened on May 16th, that she’d left Felicia alone at the apartment with the man she knew was Trevor, and that every account she’d given up to that point had been fabricated.

 She and Trevor had agreed on the cover story long before anyone even contacted Felicia’s mother, the wandering off story, the details about Richie’s mother, all of it had been invented after Felicia disappeared. By the time anyone knew Felicia was missing, Ebony admitted, the story was already locked in.

 For investigators, it confirmed exactly what they’d suspected. Ebony hadn’t just withheld information. She’d actively worked to conceal what happened during the final hours of Felicia’s life. With Ebony now in custody, investigators moved fast to find Granville Richie. They’d been tracking him for days and learned he’d gone to St.

 Petersburg shortly after the murder. Once they located him, US Marshals arrested him on unrelated charges and brought him back to Tampa for questioning. What Richie told detectives was yet another version entirely, one that clashed with everything Ebony had already said. He denied Felicia disappeared during a shower.

 He denied the drugs, the CVS run, any claim that he’d been left alone with the girl. Instead, he said Felicia vanished while he and Ebony were having sex in a back bedroom, roughly 45 minutes by his account, [music] and when they came out, she was gone. He claimed he briefly searched before eventually driving her home himself. He then walked detectives through the rest of his night, leaving to visit a friend who wasn’t home, circling back to the apartment complex for a while, leaving again, and finally driving to St.

Petersburg around midnight to spend the night with his girlfriend. But by this point, investigators weren’t chasing down the inconsistencies between his story and Ebony’s anymore. They were chasing the evidence, and what it was telling them was a very different story altogether. After questioning Ritchie, investigators secured a search warrant for the apartment where Felicia had last been seen alive.

 What they found painted a grim picture. Inside, detectives found evidence suggesting Felicia’s body had been concealed and moved out of the apartment after her death. Drag marks ran across the carpet, consistent with something wheeled being pulled toward the rear patio. Near that patio, they recovered a broken suitcase wheel. Inside the apartment, a snapped zipper pull.

 Both pieces were later matched to a Protege brand suitcase. That discovery took on new weight once investigators searched the silver Lexus Ritchie had been driving. Sitting inside was that same Protege suitcase. Witnesses had already told police they’d seen Ritchie with two suitcases of the same brand, different sizes, in the days before Felicia disappeared.

 Investigators also found signs the apartment had been scrubbed down sometime after she was last seen. A review of Ritchie’s cell phone records added another layer. Cell site data placed him at the exact stretch of shoreline where Felicia’s body was found. And not just passing through, but remaining in that area for an extended stretch of time.

The Lexus gave up even more. Plant material lodged in one of the headlights matched vegetation growing at the site where her body turned up. >> [music] >> Soil recovered from the driver’s side floorboard matched soil from that same location. Individually, [music] each detail raised a question. Together, they built a timeline investigators believed they could finally reconstruct.

Based on the physical evidence, surveillance footage, cell data, and the state of the apartment, investigators developed a theory of what happened after Ebony left Felicia alone with Richie. They believed Felicia was killed inside that apartment sometime after Ebony walked out the door. Richie then hid her body while continuing on with the rest of his night as though nothing had happened.

 After dropping Ebony off, he returned to the apartment and began erasing the evidence, placing Felicia’s body inside a rolling suitcase, dragging it through the residence, out to the patio, and into the car. From there, cell records and traffic camera footage traced his path, leaving the apartment complex late that night, driving across Hillsborough County toward the Courtney Campbell Causeway.

 After crossing the main span of the bridge, he exited onto a included access road running alongside it, driving several miles until he reached a stretch shielded by dense brush, largely hidden from passing traffic. Investigators believe that’s where he removed the suitcase from the car and disposed of Felicia’s body in the waters of Old Tampa Bay.

 Afterward, he continued on to St. Petersburg to spend the night with another girlfriend. At some point, investigators concluded, he also got rid of the suitcase and the clothing Felicia had been wearing. By the time her body surfaced the next afternoon, most of the physical evidence tying her directly to that apartment was already gone.

 But despite his efforts, investigators believed the remaining evidence told a clear story. Felicia Williams hadn’t wandered away from that apartment. She never left it alive. Knowing what happened and proving it in court were two very different battles. Over the following weeks, detectives kept building the case, waiting on forensic results from multiple crime labs, working to lockdown the timeline, and strengthen every threat connecting Ritchie to that night.

On August 15th, 2014, nearly 3 months after Felicia’s murder, the case hit a major milestone. Ritchie, already sitting in Hillsborough County Jail on unrelated charges, was formally arrested in connection with her death. A grand jury indicted him on first-degree murder, capital sexual battery, and aggravated child abuse.

 For Felicia’s family, the indictment was a step toward justice, but an arrest was only the beginning. Prosecutors still had to prove, beyond doubt, exactly what happened inside that apartment on May 16th, 2014, and the details they’d uncover were nothing short of horrific. More than 5 years passed before Granville Ritchie finally stood trial >> [music] >> in September 2019.

 Over the course of the trial, prosecutors laid out forensic evidence, cell phone data, and witness testimony tracing his movements the night Felicia was killed. Among the most damning pieces, cell tower data tracking him from the apartment straight to the Courtney Campbell Causeway, and forensic evidence from his Lexus connecting him directly to the site where her body was recovered.

 Eboni Wiley took the stand, too, walking the jury through the events leading up to Felicia’s disappearance, and explaining how she’d come to leave the girl alone with Ritchie in the first place. The defense went after her credibility hard, pointing to every conflicting version of the story she’d given investigators. They also challenged parts of the medical evidence surrounding Felicia’s death.

 None of it swayed the jury. On September 25th, 2019, after roughly 4 hours of deliberation, jurors found Granville Ritchie guilty on every count. Two days later, that same jury unanimously recommended a death sentence. In September 2020, Hillsborough County Circuit Judge Michelle Sisco formally handed it down. >> [music] >> During the hearing, Felicia’s mother stood before the court and spoke about the devastating toll her daughter’s murder had taken on their family.

 More than 6 years after Felicia left home expecting an ordinary afternoon with someone she trusted, the man responsible for her murder was sentenced to death. Eboni Wiley’s legal chapter closed separately. Investigators never accused her of taking part in the murder itself, but her repeated lies in the early stages of the case had caused precious time.

 In October 2020, she entered an open guilty plea to providing false information to law enforcement during a missing child investigation, a third-degree felony under Florida law, carrying up to 5 years behind bars. When she appeared for sentencing on December 18th, 2020, Hillsborough Circuit Judge Samantha the Ward weighed both the seriousness of what she’d done and her eventual cooperation with investigators.

Eboni was sentenced to 75 days in county jail. The sentence sparked debate that’s never really settled. Some believe Eboni was manipulated by Ritchie and ultimately helped build the case that convicted him. Others can’t get past one simple question. How does a woman who calls herself a godmother leave a 9-year-old alone with a man she’s known for 3 days, then spend hours helping cover up what happened next? What isn’t up for debate is this.

 On May 16th, 2014, a little girl loved by her family, her friends, and her whole community lost her life at the hands of a man she should never have been alone with. Felicia Williams was only 9. She should have finished elementary school, should have kept singing in that choir, should have kept dreaming about becoming a teacher or a doctor or whatever she eventually decided fit her best.

Instead, her life was taken by someone who never should have had access to her in the first place. For Felicia’s family, the grief carried an extra weight. She’d been placed in the care of someone they trusted completely, someone who called herself Felicia’s godmother, someone they believed would keep her safe.

 That trust was broken in the worst way imaginable. Today, Felicia is remembered as Sugarplum, a sweet girl with a bright smile, a soft spot for Hello Kitty, and a kind heart that touched everyone who crossed her path. Her family remembers her, her classmates remember her, her community remembers her, and more than a decade later, when people tell this story, it isn’t the horror of her final hours that sticks with them.

 It’s a little girl who should have come home. Rest in peace, Felicia Williams.