Tampa, Fla. (NewsRadio WFLA) – Ebony Wiley told jurors in a Tampa courtroom on Monday that she considered herself a “godmother” to her 9-year-old neighbor Felecia Williams. She also said to them that Felecia’s mother, Felecia Demerson, trusted her to take the young girl to church, to the park, or ride their bikes around the neighborhood.
Wiley also had to admit that she willingly participated in helping Granville Ritchie, the man who she had met three days before he is accused of sexually battering and strangling Felecia Williams to death, in covering up his crime, leading the girl’s family and police to believe initially that Felecia had disappeared on May 16, 2014.
Besides Ritchie himself, Wiley is likely the last person to see Felecia alive when she left Ritchie’s Temple Terrace apartment that May afternoon to buy marijuana for him from a friend of her grandfather’s.
Felecia was left alone with Ritchie for less than an hour according to detective’s analysis of cell site data showing Wiley leaving and returning to the Doral Oaks apartment complex where the three ended up that afternoon.
Wiley’s story eventually collapses the next day as investigators from Temple Terrace and Tampa police departments along with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office launched a massive search for the missing girl.
However, it was a passerby who spotted Felecia’s nude body in the water and mangroves on the Clearwater side of the Courtney Campbell Causeway near an access road running along the north side.
Jurors have also heard graphic details of how Felecia Williams died from forensic pathologist Dr. James Downs on Thursday, including the depth of the crush injuries from her strangulation, penetrating through the girl’s neck so deep it caused hemorrhaging into the muscles in at least ten different locations.
As the trial continues, jurors may consider one central question already being hinted at by Ritchie’s defense attorneys: Can they ultimately blame Ebony Wiley for her misplaced trust in Granville Ritchie in leaving Felecia alone with him and lying about what possibly happened to her, creating enough reasonable doubt to cause a hung jury or even find him not guilty.
SEX, DRUGS AND THE DISAPPEARANCE OF FELECIA WILLIAMS
A budding romance began in the mind of Ebony Wiley when she first met Granville Ritchie, Trevor as he introduced himself, as she was walking through her neighborhood three days before Felecia Williams disappearance and death.
He had driven by, making sure that she was not underage, as Wiley describes, implying that he possibly wanted to have sex with her. They exchanged phone numbers and ended up having a date that night involving her taking a “molly” pill or ecstasy, drinking whiskey and having sex in Ritchie’s mother’s bed, the only bed in the apartment.
Wiley says she fell in love with Ritchie that night, but ultimately describes the experience as him “selling her a dream.” He denied being married despite wearing a wedding ring and as he later tells detectives, had at least two other girlfriends.
They even discuss Wiley’s relationship with Felecia Williams in the days leading up to May 16, including the fact that Felecia had shown up where she worked as a home health aide. They also discuss the fact that Felecia was having issues with allegedly stealing money and cell phones from other family members, issues verified according to retired Temple Terrace Police Detective Thomas Carroll.
When Ritchie and Wiley decide to meet up on what would be the fateful Friday when Felecia would end up dead, Wiley decides that Felecia can come along with them, not knowing where exactly they were going.
At first, she thought they were going to McDonald’s, but Ritchie dismisses that plan as they begin driving towards his Doral Oaks apartment complex. Wiley asks if they can get food for Felecia somewhere, but Ritchie insists that his mother is making food at the apartment where he and Wiley went the first night they met.
Wiley tells the jury and Assistant State Attorney Jennifer Johnson that she thought it would be strange for them to eat with his mom, thinking to herself that Felecia would not want to eat a stranger’s home-cooked food.
As prosecutors then show, Ritchie drives his silver Lexus to the Checkers near the corner of 56th Street and Bullard Parkway. He orders and pays for a box of shrimp and fries before driving back to his nearby apartment. Felecia begins to eat her food on the way.
Once they were at Ritchie’s apartment, Wiley tells Felecia to call her mother and only tell her that they are together. According to Wiley, no mention is made of where they went to or who else they were with since Felecia’s family trusted her. Before getting out of Ritchie’s Lexus, he shows Wiley a bag with drugs inside.
She takes another “molly” pill, like the first night they spent together. Wiley tells the jury she starts feeling the effects of the tablet soon after all three are in the apartment. Despite that, she and Ritchie decide it is an excellent time to talk to Felecia about stealing and how she needed to stay home when she was suspended from school.
Wiley also describes how “molly” makes her feel sexy, but she is able to control her feelings when she needs to. At some point, Ritchie asks her if she can get him some marijuana so he could smoke. Wiley calls her grandfather, as she tells the jury, and he tells her to come to his house.
She initially wants Felecia to come with her, but Ritchie tells her it’s not a good idea since she could get pulled over driving while high and having a nine-year-old in the car.
Wiley agrees and takes Ritchie’s silver Lexus.
As for leaving Felecia with Ritchie, a man she has known for only three days, she describes how she wasn’t concerned, that he made her feel comfortable and Ritchie showed concern for Felecia.
By the time Wiley returns approximately 40 to 50 minutes later with the weed she had bought from a friend of her grandfather’s, the two had talked on the phone numerous times, including when she was trying to get the gate code from Ritchie to enter the complex.
According to Wiley, Ritchie tells her that he had given Felecia some money so she could go by candy at the CVS, also near the corner of 56th Street and Bullard Parkway and the Checker’s they had gone to earlier in the afternoon.
Wiley drives over to the CVS and asks the cashier if a girl matching Felecia’s description had come into the store in the past hour.
The cashier tells her no. Wiley leaves and goes back to Ritchie’s complex where a girl walking up to the gate finally enters the code and lets her in.
That’s when Wiley sees Ritchie outside his apartment, shirtless and sweating, only wearing a pair of pants.
Wiley says that Ritchie is mad that Felecia has not come back from the store. It’s Wiley who then tells Ritchie to calm down and that Felecia always walks off. It wasn’t until Ritchie calms down that Wiley says she begins to panic.
No call is made to Felecia’s family.
No call is made to the police.
Neither of them decided to go looking for Felecia.
Instead, Wiley tells jurors that she went into the closet in Ritchie’s mother’s bedroom to pray and calm down since she was coming off her high.
When she came out of the closet, she has a drink. Ritchie becomes sexual as she describes his mood.
They then have sex on the living room floor. Wiley does not sense that anything is wrong with Felecia nor that there was the distinct possibility that Felecia’s body was somewhere in the apartment after she had been raped and strangled.
In crime scene photos shown to the jury, Detective Carroll describes a series of drag and scuff marks from a suitcase all the way across the living room, onto the wood-like flooring in the kitchen and hallway leading to the front door.
When asked by prosecutors, Wiley says she never saw the marks while she was in the apartment implying they had to have been made after Ritchie took her home and he removed Felecia’s body in the suitcase, before dumping her into the water off the Courtney Campbell Causeway.
THE COVER-UP BEGINS
Before taking Wiley back to her mother’s house, she and Ritchie work out the story. They are going to tell Felecia’s family and the police eventually should they get involved.
Ritchie decides that there should be no mention of a male being in the apartment with Wiley and Felecia before she disappeared, insisting it would look bad for him and for Wiley. He tells her that a woman named “Vivian” should be included in the story, presumably his mother, whom Wiley had never met.
After the story is set and the two part ways, Wiley calls her sister “Cha Cha” and they decide to meet at a liquor store on 22nd Street.
Wiley tells “Cha Cha” the cover story for the first time.
They finally decide to call Felecia’s mother – now hours after Felecia reportedly disappears—who then tells Wiley to meet her at a nearby Burger King.
With no real sense of urgency, Wiley tells jurors she then called Kenny Shelton, a friend she refers to as her brother, to pick her and “Cha Cha” up and take them home.
Next stop: 15th street so Wiley could buy some more “molly” because she wanted to get high again.
Then they went to the Burger King where Felecia’s mother had already called the Temple Terrace police.
Wiley sticks with the cover story while she was interviewed by Temple Terrace detectives until around 3:30 am, now into Saturday morning before returning home.
She tells jurors she showed up for work the next morning at 7 am, but only stayed for 10 to 15 minutes before being sent home after she became upset and cried.
After sleeping some more when she went home, Wiley says she was talking to Ritchie’s mother over the phone – who was also in on the cover story at Ritchie’s request. Both were also trying to three-way call Ritchie several times before finally getting a hold of him.
Wiley tells the jury that she finally asks if Ritchie did something to Felecia because she needed to know. During her testimony, she still seemed unphased by what she had been a part of, now more than five years later.
While cross-examined by Ritchie’s attorney, she had to admit all over again how she actively participated in and became complicit in sticking with the cover story for nearly a full day… until Felecia’s body was found off the Courtney Campbell Causeway.
How jurors square her involvement in Felecia’s disappearance – leaving her with a man she barely knew, a man whose phone number she had labeled in her phone as “my husband,” leaving her with a man who had given her drugs and encouraged her to leave Felecia behind with her while she bought Ritchie marijuana at her grandfather’s house – with the physical evidence of her brutal strangulation and forcible sexual assault will no doubt weigh on his fate as a convicted murderer facing the death penalty.