He said he killed girlfriend and her cousin in self-defense. Miami jury calls him murderer
A South Florida man who admitted to the stabbing deaths of his long-time girlfriend and her cousin — but claimed it was in self-defense — was found guilty Friday of two counts of second-degree murder and could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Franklyn Delanoy Williams shook slightly but remained silently stoic after jurors returned in only two hours and Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Miguel M. de la O read the verdict. There was no reaction in the mostly empty courtroom as Williams was seated in the jury box. He was handcuffed and fingerprinted before being taken to jail.
De la O is expected to sentence Williams after Feb. 28. Williams, 52, could spend up to the rest of his life in prison. There is no maximum or minimum penalty for the two felonies that the Jamaican-born Miami businessman was convicted of. The few family members who were present during the week-long trial were absent when the verdict was read. It wasn’t immediately clear if Williams planned to appeal the decision.
Williams, who took the unusual move of taking the stand this week, admitted to using a knife to kill his girlfriend Sophia Simpson, 35, and her cousin Gabrella Griffith, 27, in their bayside Miami condo in May 2019. But he told jurors that he wrestled the knife away in self-defense after Simpson became enraged that he was leaving her and after Griffith, who lived with them, came to her cousin’s defense.
Then, he said, he tried to take his own life by downing a bottle of Tylenol and drinking Drano.
“I started crying,” Williams told Miami-Dade public defender Sasha Pernick. “I remember telling her, ‘I’m coming home with you.’ ”
State prosecutors argued it was Williams who grew angry after he learned that Simpson had married another man and had slept with him. They told jurors he approached Simpson in bed with an 8-inch kitchen blade and, after stabbing her, slit her cousin’s throat.
Bloody murders at Miami luxury high-rises
Simpson and Griffith were killed in an apartment on the 34th floor of the Paraiso Bay condominium, just across the street from its sister complex One Paraiso, which made headlines in 2022 after OnlyFans model Courtney Clenney was charged in the stabbing death of her boyfriend in that Miami condo building.
When Williams took the stand, he told jurors how the love of his life married another man in 2019 to bolster her immigration status, and how his 10-year relationship with Simpson quickly soured after she admitted to sleeping with her new husband.
When the fight was over, Williams had a slight cut on his right hand and both women were dead with 61 stab wounds between them.
“[Simpson] slapped me and said, ‘You’re not leaving, you’re not abandoning me,’ ” Williams said under questioning from Pernick. The defendant said when Simpson grabbed a “pocketknife” from a table next to the bed, they began to tussle. “I got the knife and we fell on the floor.”
Williams was arrested 11 days later after the women’s badly decomposed bodies were discovered in the master bedroom of Apartment 3406 by paramedics who entered the dwelling just before midnight on May 7, 2019. They were given the key by Williams, who, after a circuitous route, admitted to the murders, police said.
Williams told jurors he lived with Simpson for almost a decade and that he was fine with her plan to marry Bryan Barclay — until she admitted to having sex with him. They were married on April 27, 2019. The women were killed five days later and Williams was taken into custody and charged with the murders on May 8.
During the trial, jurors learned of a series of explosive events between the wedding date and Williams’ arrest. They included him leaving Simpson, her constantly texting him to return, the murders and finally Williams being driven by a friend to a Miami motel before he was taken into custody.
He told jurors how Simpson came at him with the knife in their apartment as he was packing to leave. He said he took the knife from Simpson while she was on the floor straddling the bed. That’s when, he said, Griffith grabbed him from behind and he stabbed her with the weapon using his right hand and pushing backward over his right shoulder.
Then, he told jurors, that after he tried to take his own life, he made his way to his car and drove to his mother’s Fort Lauderdale home, where he spent almost a week recovering before calling a friend. When his friend arrived, Williams said he told him there were dead bodies in his Miami apartment.
His friend, Williams said, talked him into meeting a federal agent at a Miami hotel. From there, he went to police headquarters, where he was eventually arrested.
At one point during the questioning at trial, Miami-Dade Assistant State Attorney Lindsay Davis asked Williams if he felt Simpson was “rubbing it in his face” when she showed up at their apartment with wedding cake and ornaments on the night she married Barclay.
“Yes,” Williams responded.
During closing arguments, Davis told jurors how Williams placed the murder weapon in Griffith’s bedroom before carefully planning his getaway.
“He wipes the blood off the knife. He hides it in Gaby’s room. He showers and changes clothes. And the next day at daylight, he leaves,” she said.
Pernick urged jurors to be open-minded. Even if Simpson knew Barclay wasn’t a U.S. citizen, as the defense claimed, who’s to say they didn’t have a plan down the road to gain citizenship, she told jurors.
She also told them Williams had plenty of time to pack up and leave for Jamaica, but he never did.
“He loves her. He wants to be with her. He just killed the two people he loved the most in his life. He tried to kill himself,” she said.
Davis said the only injury to Williams was a cut on his right hand and that it was caused by “slippage,” a term used when a hand slides on a knife that is forcefully pushed into something. And she told jurors that both women were killed by Williams out of rage.
“Why did he kill Gabby?” she asked jurors rhetorically. “To eliminate the witness. He grabbed her by the back of her head and slit her throat.”
This story was originally published January 10, 2025 at 5:45 PM.
