Rape victim, murderer, death row inmate: Terry Williams and the corrupt justice of Pennsylvania

Terry Williams was six years old the first time he was raped by an 11-year-old boy who lived in the neighborhood. He was not much older when he was sodomized again by another boy he knew. He was in middle school when it happened a third time. One of his teachers went out of his way to develop a close relationship with the boy, worked hard to build up his trust. Eventually, that same teacher began to regularly sexually abuse him. From there, things only got worse.

He was 13 when he began a "relationship" with Amos Norwood, age 51, whose rape and physical abuse continued over the next four years. He was 15 when an older man held a knife to his neck in the boys' home where he lived, and forced him to perform fellatio on him. He was 16 when he was raped and beaten by two older boys at a juvenile detention center. 

He was 17 when he began having sex with Herbert Hamilton, a 50-year-old man who preyed on children and sold prescription pills to neighborhood kids in exchange for money. And he was 17 when he killed Hamilton, stabbing and bludgeoning him to death before pouring gasoline all over his body. Williams tried to start a fire, but failed. He scribbled “I loved you” in toothpaste on Hamilton’s bathroom mirror before he left.

Six months later, Williams still hadn’t been caught. On one June night, 56-year-old Norwood coerced Williams into meeting him at a dark parking lot. It was there that Williams says Norwood pushed him up against a car and began having sex with him. Williams, bleeding, begged him to stop. The next day, Williams and a friend beat Norwood to death in a cemetery. This time, the police found him. It was 1984.

Today, more than 30 years later, the case continues.