Police describe bloody items found in mother's home after 3-year-old's death

Oct. 6—Maine State Police officers testified Thursday about several bloody items found in the Trefethen home in June 2021, which prosecutors say complicate a Stockton Springs woman's defense about how 3-year-old Maddox Williams died.

Maddox was one of more than two dozen children who died in 2021 with cases flagged by the Department of Health and Human Services. His mother, 36-year-old Jessica Trefethen — who also goes by the names Jessica Williams and Jessica Johnson — is on trial for depraved indifference murder.

Trefethen brought a small, lifeless Maddox Williams to Waldo County General Hospital in June 2021 where he was pronounced dead. Trefethen and her defense attorneys say Maddox was playing outside when a dog leash pulled him down, dragging him over a boulder in the yard, before his older sister allegedly kicked him.

But prosecutors say an autopsy showed Maddox's injuries appeared "inflicted" and that Trefethen spent three days after Maddox's death avoiding police.

Maine State Police Sgt. Scott Bryant, who commands the agency's evidence response team, testified Thursday that he found several red-brown stained items in the living room and hallway of Trefethen's mobile home, where she lived with Maddox and three of her young children.

Bryant arrived at the Trefethen home on the evening of June 21, 2021, after watching a medical examiner conduct Maddox's autopsy earlier that day. Trefethen was not home, but Bryant said officers had a search warrant to investigate the property.

Assistant Attorney General Leane Zainea showed the jury various bagged pieces of evidence from a table toward the back of the courtroom, near a cardboard box of files with an orange sticky note labeled "Trefethen evidence." The objects included a chair cushion, bath towels, cuttings from a leather recliner and a white washcloth, all bearing dried red-brown stains.

"And why are items found with red-brown staining interesting to you, in your capacity as a sergeant with the evidence response team?" Zainea asked.

Typically, Bryant said, it means blood. He said officers tested the evidence and verified the presence of Maddox's DNA.

Assistant Attorney General John Risler, who is co-prosecuting the case with Zainea, pointed to the evidence during opening statements as proof of Trefethen's abuse against Maddox.

But under cross-examination from Trefethen's defense attorney Jeffrey Toothaker, Bryant said it was unclear how old the blood stains were, what caused them, and where on Maddox's body they had come from.

"We cannot say, with any degree of certainty, when that blood was deposited?" Toothaker asked, holding one of the bagged chair cushions against his chest so that the stain faced where Bryant was sitting at the witness stand.

"Correct," Bryant said.

"All we can say is this is his blood on these items," Toothaker said. "We don't know if mom was there, if mom was working, inside or outside."

The prosecution's witnesses so far have painted a deeper image of Maddox's life with his mother, who he lived with from March 2021 to June 2021, after going back and forth between her home and his father's, Andrew Williams of Warren.

Trefethen — now, a mother of six children, including Maddox and a baby she delivered just after his death — lived at the end of a dirt road branching off Cape Jellison Road. There was a porch built onto the front of the gray mobile home, and an abandoned attachment in the back that was separated from the main residence by a hanging blanket, Bryant testified.

Children's toys were scattered across the green lawn. The father of three of Trefethen's children, Jason Trefethen, lived on a camper next door.

The house inside was cluttered. Trefethen's defense attorney, Jeffrey Toothaker, described the place as "chaotic," in "disarray," a "mess" that a hypothetical cleaning lady had not visited "for some time."

There was food everywhere, Toothaker said.

Maddox's oldest sister testified on the first day of the trial Wednesday, that Trefethen would treat Maddox's bruises differently from her other children's, covering his marks with temporary tattoos and makeup. She would sometimes slap Maddox across the face, and suggested she didn't kiss Maddox as much. While on a family vacation in New Hampshire last Easter, the girl said she saw her mom throw Maddox out of the hotel bathroom.

Maddox's paternal grandmother, Victoria Vose, testified Wednesday about the times she cared for Maddox during the first year of his life after child protective workers took Maddox from Trefethen's home, following the overdose of one of her other children, and then every other week from October to December of 2020.

Maddox would go back and forth between his mother's home and his father's several times in his short life. Williams, who lived in Warren near Vose, lost custody of Maddox twice when he was arrested for an attempted robbery in early 2020 and an OUI the following year. Maddox was there for both events, Trefethen's attorneys told the court.

Maddox's death is one of five child homicides that occurred in 2021. It was the deadliest year on record for children who have been involved with the state's child protection system under the Office of Child and Family Services. More than two-dozen children died, though not all were homicides and the deaths sparked outrage at the state Legislature.

The Government Oversight Committee voted in September to subpoena DHHS records from Maddox's and three other cases to view confidentially, months after state lawmakers agreed to strengthen an independent office tasked with investigating complaints against Child Protective Services.

Trefethen's trial is also the first since a Maine law took effect this summer ordering state courts to prioritize child homicide cases.

Two more trials are tentatively scheduled for January and March 2023. And Hilary Goding of Old Town, whose 3-year-old daughter Hailey died of a fentanyl overdose last year, pleaded guilty last week to manslaughter and will be sentenced at a later date.

The trial in a fifth homicide case, the death of month-old Sylus Melvin in August 2021, has yet to be scheduled. Reginald Melvin of Milo was indicted on a murder charge in January in that case.