Arrest in 2003 slaying of Pennsauken girl

Wilma and Harry Williams III have gathered family and friends annually for five years to march and pray where their daughter's body was found near the 36th Street bridge on the Pennsauken-Camden border. They wanted answers in her killing.

They may get some today, when the Camden County prosecutor expects to arraign Warren Dixon, 23, of Camden, on a murder charge in the 2003 death of 16-year-old Sherita Williams. Dixon, who lives just four blocks south of the bridge, was arrested Friday.

"This is a bittersweet time for us," Wilma Williams said yesterday. Though relieved that a suspect is in custody, she said, she has many unanswered questions.

The investigation had always been on the front burner, said Jason Laughlin, spokesman for the Camden County Prosecutor's Office. The arrest of Dixon, a "person of interest" for some time, was the culmination of interviews and reviews of old evidence.

Wilma Williams said investigators had stayed in touch with the family over the years. Former investigator Marty Wolf, who turned the case over when he left for military service Iraq in October, "would come by every week, sometimes twice a week. He kept reassuring us the case would be solved," she said.

Still, the years of waiting were frustrating, she said. Although there was a $5,000 reward, Wolf told the Williamses that no one had ever come forward with information to claim the money.

Williams said she was surprised that Dixon was the suspect. In the fall of 2003, she said, Dixon transferred from Camden High School to Pennsauken High School, where her daughter was a junior. That semester he was in one of the girl's classes.

The two were not friendly as far as her parents knew. The Williamses had suspected that their daughter was trying to meet a male she had a crush on on the night she was killed, her mother said. They wonder whether she ran into Dixon on the way.

Police never told the Williamses whether their daughter had been sexually assaulted, Wilma Williams said. The couple hopes for more answers in coming weeks.

Sherita Williams was found clothed, with no signs of trauma. Toxicology reports came back negative for drugs and alcohol, authorities said. Eventually, the death was ruled asphyxiation. The teenager's only known medical condition was asthma.

The only personal effect that police returned to her parents was her gold necklace, which Wilma Williams continues to wear.

She found the body just two hours after reporting her daughter missing to the police. "Mother's intuition," she told reporters, led her to the spot beneath the 36th Street overpass at Hayes Avenue.

Earlier, police suggested that the teenager had run away. Harry Williams told reporters at the time, "My daughter would never run away."

He and his wife still live nearby with their surviving children, Sabrina, 24, and Harry IV, 17. Wilma Williams has given away some of her daughter's things, but kept her doll collection - Beanie Babies, old-fashioned porcelain dolls, and the girl's favorite, an I Love Lucy doll.

Wilma Williams can't erase the memories. "Every day, it's there," she said.

Sherita Williams left home the evening of Nov. 28 to have her eyebrows groomed at Hollywood Nails on Westfield Avenue, her mother said. She told her mother that she then planned to meet her best friend at a bus stop after the friend's work shift ended.

Workers at Hollywood Nails confirmed that Sherita Williams had been there. Her friend, however, got off at a different bus stop, so the two did not meet.

Wilma Williams began worrying the next morning after not hearing from her daughter. She knew that the teenager had a crush on a male friend who lived 30 or 40 yards from the 36th Street bridge, and was told that her daughter had been seen on 35th Street on Friday night.

Wilma Williams feared that her daughter might have been struck by a car while crossing the bridge or had fallen off it. About 10:30 a.m. Nov. 29, she went to the bridge and looked to the ground. She saw nothing.

About noon, she reported her daughter missing. With no news from police, she returned to the bridge around 2:30 p.m. and found the body near the railroad tracks that run beneath it.

In the following days, students at Pennsauken High School wore special T-shirts in Sherita Williams' memory.

Called Rita or Sunshine by friends and family, she was on track to graduate and was talking about college.

"She was a good kid with a good personality and always upbeat," William Clarke, the high school's principal, told reporters at the time. "She was no problem at all."

"To me, Rita was kind for her age, old for her age," her mother said. "She had an outgoing personality. She was always smiling. She loved to dance and loved being with friends and liked photography."