It was a missing person’s case turned murder investigation.
One that shocked an entire community as everyone tried to figure out what happened to Hobe Sound mother Tricia Todd.
Fast forward several months to the end of September. Her ex-husband Steven Williams has now been sentenced to 35 years in prison for her murder.
And for the first time we are seeing just how deceptive and untruthful Steven Williams was during the investigation.
In a series of recorded interviews on the day Williams was arrested in May, investigators try to get Williams to confess to the murder and then reveal where he left her body.
You can hear Williams say to investigators, “I can’t take you to it because I don’t know where it is.”
At the time of these interviews, it had been almost a month since Tricia's disappearance. And Williams had finally admitted to investigators he was involved in her disappearance.
However, he continued to lie when they pressed him about the night she was killed.
“I came back and she either hit or head or banged her head against something,” Williams first told investigators.
Williams and Todd had been together that night caring for their sick child.
Then he eventually changed his story again and said the two had argued over money.
“It escalated. Then I just moved her away and she slipped and that’s when she freaking fell."
But the lies didn’t stop there.
“It’s just a dark road. I just remember just driving a long dark road,” Williams told investigators.
In the interview Williams told investigators he panicked and dumped her body, but maintained he didn’t know where.
“I just laid her down and crossed her hands and I left her things with her, her phone and her wallet and then I just sat.”
That may have been his biggest lie of all.
Prosecutors offered Williams a plea deal, 35 years and second degree murder if he took investigators to the remains.
When they unearthed her remains, they found she had been dismembered by a saw and buried in a tub of acid on the Hungryland Preserve.
Ultimately, the terms of the plea deal were met, according to the court. Williams was sentenced at the end of September.
Tricia Todd’s family has finally been able to lay her to rest and honor her memory.
