Jury selection in the murder trial of a Stockton Springs mother accused of killing her 3-year-old son last year begins Monday at the Waldo County Judicial Center in Belfast.
Jessica Trefethen, 36, was charged in June 2021 with the depraved indifference murder of Maddox Williams, after an autopsy showed he had suffered a fractured spine; bruises on his arms, legs, belly and head; bleeding in his brain; a ruptured bowel; and other injuries, according to a police affidavit.
The Maine medical examiner’s office determined the cause of death to be multiple blunt force trauma that was inflicted non-accidentally.
Maddox was one of four children allegedly killed by a parent last year, prompting a fresh round of scrutiny for the state’s child welfare system and an outside investigation into the deaths. One of the other accused parents, Hillary Goding of Old Town, pleaded guilty last week to manslaughter in the death of her 3-year-old daughter Hailey. Trefethen is the first of those parents to go on trial.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in Augusta have been attempting to gain access to Department of Health and Human Services records on Maddox, Hailey and the two other children to evaluate the child welfare system’s involvement with their families. A legislative committee last month voted to subpoena DHHS for the records.
The killing of Maddox Williams happened in the same town as the 2018 beating death of another child, 10-year-old Marissa Kennedy, who was killed by her stepfather, 56-year-old Julio Carrillo, and mother, 37-year-old Sharon Kennedy. That case also sparked intensive scrutiny of Maine’s child welfare system, which received 25 reports concerning Marissa and her family in the 16 months leading up to her death, but didn’t confirm her stepfather and mother were abusing her until she was dead.
Kennedy was convicted by a jury of murder and sentenced to 48 years in prison. Carrillo pleaded guilty to a murder charge and was sentenced to 55 years in prison.
Superior Court Justice Robert Murray, who handled Carrillo’s and Kennedy’s cases, will preside at Trefethen’s trial.
The prosecution will present evidence that Maddox’s mother inflicted his injuries.
The defense team is expected to argue that the child’s death was an accident, according to court filings.
It also hopes to point to others who spent time with Maddox — including Trefethen’s mother, Sherry Johnson, 60, of Stockton Springs, who cared for the boy while her daughter was working, as well as Jason Trefethen, 44, of Stockton Springs, the father of three children with Jessica Trefethen — as people who could have inflicted the injuries on the boy.
Jason Trefethen lived in a trailer located on the property where Maddox lived. He told police he saw Maddox playing with his siblings the day the boy died.
Prosecutors have asked the judge not to allow testimony about alternative suspects, but Murray has not yet ruled on that and other pretrial motions.
Maddox’s father, 31-year-old Andrew Williams, was incarcerated at the Knox County Jail in Rockland on burglary and other charges when the child died, according to police.
Williams, who had custody of Maddox until he was 2, had the boy with him when he committed two of his crimes in early 2021. He was sentenced to six years in prison with all but 18 months suspended to be followed by three years of probation. Williams currently is on probation, according to the Maine Department of Corrections.
Jessica Trefethen brought Maddox to Waldo County General Hospital at 1 p.m. on June 20, 2021. She told staff members that he had been knocked down by a dog leash and kicked by his 8-year-old sister.
But Maddox wasn’t breathing when he arrived, hospital employees told Maine State Police detectives, and they weren’t able to resuscitate him.
The Maine attorney general’s office last week declined to comment on the upcoming trial. Assistant attorneys general Leane Zainea and John Risler are prosecuting the case.
The defense team, made up of Jeffrey Toothaker of Ellsworth and Caitlyn Smith of Bangor, also declined to comment on its trial strategy. Toothaker said previously that the defense would call medical experts to refute testimony from the prosecution’s witnesses.
