Williams said he feared for his life before stabbing a man

On Day 7 of his Solano County Superior Court murder trial, Kristofer Michael Williams of Vacaville took the witness stand Thursday in his own defense. He said he feared for the safety of the child and himself at a rural Vacaville home, where, during a tussle outside the home, he fatally stabbed a 30-year-old man in October 2018.

During the afternoon session, Deputy District Attorney Ilana Shapiro engaged in a withering crossexamination that zeroed in on the 35-year-old’s recollection of several things: exactly what happened just before he stabbed Jonathan “Jonny” Russell of San Francisco; how much alcohol he drank before arriving at the home in the 5800 block of Fry Road; how he came to believe the child, a 9-yearold girl, was allegedly being molested by her father; and whether, during his courtroom testimony, he contradicted statements he made during a video recorded interview with a Sheriff’s detective just hours after the stabbing on Oct. 23.

In the late-morning session, defense attorney Daniel Russo placed Williams on the stand, a move many legal observers might consider not only bold but also risky, in a possible effort to sway jurors to consider mitigating circumstances surrounding the killing.

Williams testified that it was his belief that the girl’s father, Gary Nofuentes, was a pedophile and sexually abusing his own daughter.

Court records indicate Solano County Sheriff’s investigators said Williams was disturbed by an ongoing child custody battle and believed Nofuentes’ daughter belonged with her mother, Kailyn Scarlett Gibson, 32, of Vacaville, who at the time was a friend of Williams and was seeking to gain custody rights in Solano County Family Court. Williams told Russo that Jessica Anne Weirich, 30, also of Vacaville, drove him to the Fry Road home in an attempt to get the girl.

Weirich dropped him off but the gate leading into the property was locked. Eventually Nofuentes and others, who had attended a funeral service for a friend earlier in the day and had been drinking heavily, arrived at home and, Williams said, “hopped out of the truck “and fell flat on his face.”

Later Williams said he walked in to the home, then into the kitchen, opened up the refrigerator only to see nothing but alcoholic beverages in it.

And the general condition of the home? Russo asked.

“It was bad — there were sheets over the windows,” said Williams, adding that beer bottles and cans were in plain view, the kitchen sink was full and an odor permeated the room.

At one point admitting he was an alcoholic, Williams told Russo he was somewhat drunk when he arrived at the home but Nofuentes and others were more intoxicated than himself. Yet Williams wondered how could anyone “leave a child alone in a house like this.”

Once inside the girl’s bedroom, Williams allegedly heard Nofuentes and another standing near the child say, “Don’t say anything.”

Williams then separated the two men, making a gesture with his tattooed hands, to retrieve the girl.

“She was looking nervous,” he told Russo. “I wanted her to get out of the house.”

Williams told the girl that he would take her to her mother and, he said, “She put her arms up to be picked up and I picked her up.”

Once outside the home, Williams told Russo, he sensed “something that wasn’t right” about the girl and her relationship with the men in the home and Russell, in turn, wondered what he thought “we’re doing to her?”

Williams said Russell, a close friend and housemate of Nofuentes, grabbed him, and Williams said, “Don’t touch me.”

Then, “I got blindsided and got knocked to the ground,” he said but told Russo he didn’t know who knocked him down.

At that moment, while getting up, Williams said he pulled out his pocket knife, then made a slicing gesture in the air seated at the witness stand behind protective, poster-sized plastic shield. “I was worried about my life,” he said. “I was scared … I was freaked out.”

He admitted that he “slashed” with his knife at both Nofuentes, who suffered a wound to his abdomen area, and Russell, then, while leaving the property, called Weirich.

Williams testified that he threw away his pocket knife “in a slough near Highway 113” and threw away the shirt that he wore. “I was scared,” he said, adding that he went home to his residence on Roscommon Drive in Vacaville.

“I was freaking out and threw up,” he told Russo. “I looked at my daughter. I was crying.”

After being taken into custody, he spoke with Sheriff’s Detective Andrew Hendrix and was read his Miranda rights.

Williams told Russo that he lied about not having a weapon and getting rid of his shirt, saying again, “I was scared.”

Only later did Williams learned that Russell had died after being taken off life support at the Kaiser Permanente Vacaville Medical Center. He added that he thinks about what happened “every single day.”

Williams said he heard “stories” from Gibson that her daughter was being molested and was further convinced of it when he saw the conditions inside the house.

“Why not call the police of CPS (Child Protective Services)?” asked Russo.

“It was the last thing on my mind,” replied Williams. “I just wanted to get her out of the house.”

He recalled that when he asked the girl if she wanted to be with her mother, “She didn’t say anything. She just put her arms up” to be picked up and carried away.

During the first minutes of the afternoon session, Williams repeated that he was scared and thought his life was in danger at the moment he stabbed Russell.

“It was self-defense,” he said.

At one point, Williams refuted the claim that he threatened the girl, that if she didn’t go with him and leave the Fry Road home, saying, “I’ll put a bullet in your head.”

“I’d never say anything like that to a child,” he said.

Upon cross-examination, Shapiro got Williams to admit that he was told that the girl had been molested and that he had a daughter himself with Weirich but was not married to her.

The prosecutor then bore in on how much alcohol he had consumed that day: two beers after his daughter got picked up, and three more later, five beers in all, he said.

Shapiro aggressively questioned Williams who told him the girl was being molested, but he testified that he was unsure. She wondered why he did not tell investigators that Gibson told him that her daughter was being molested.

“I didn’t want to get the others in trouble,” he said.

Referring to the transcript of a recorded jailhouse call to Weirich’s mother on Sept. 27, 2021, Shapiro said that Williams never saw Nofuentes or Russell molest the girl.

Then Shapiro began to show more than a dozen video clips of the interview between Hendrix and Williams.

At one point Williams told Shapiro that the refrigerator in the Fry Road home was empty, contradicting his previous testimony that it had contained alcoholic beverages.

Clip after clip also showed that Williams told a driver of another car that arrived at the home, Jonathan McCommon, that he was going inside the home to get the child and to keep the truck running in the meantime.

Shapiro also questioned Williams about whether he had consumed as many as 12 beers on Oct. 23 rather than the five he admitted to, but Williams, watching a brief video clip, said he had referred to having a “12 pack” of beers.

“Were you lying to the detective then or are you lying now?” the prosecutor asked.

Williams said he was not lying in either instance.

Shapiro got Williams to admit that he had had training in self-defense and also admitted that he had “punched” Nofuentes inside the home because he was angry at him but did not necessarily threaten him.

He repeated that he was unsure who knocked him to the ground, who “blindsided” him, but recalled that, upon getting to his feet, he stabbed Russell “because he was standing over me.”

Shapiro asked him why he carried a pocket knife, and Williams replied, “I always carry a pocket knife. It’s an everyday thing.”

At the time of his stabbing Russell, Williams could not recall where he stabbed him and it was only later that he learned it was in the neck.

“How can you not know where you stabbed somebody?” asked Shapiro.

Shapiro appeared to get Williams to admit that alcohol “had no effect on the decision you made” to commit a violent act.

The trial resumes at 10 a.m. Monday in Department 11 in the Justice Center in Fairfield.

While Williams appeared to be unsure whether there were alcoholic beverages in the refrigerator, Angela Cunha, an identification supervisor with the Sheriff’s Office in Fairfield, testified on Wednesday that she saw open alcohol containers in the home but no drugs and also saw blood stains outside the home.

Last week Nofuentes told Shapiro that he remembered “a large figure” in the house but did not identify that person as Williams. Nofuentes said he felt “a sharp pain” in his stomach and was later taken to Kaiser Permanente Vacaville Medical Center, where he underwent surgery for a knife wound and spent 10 days in recovery.

Nofuentes suspected he had been stabbed and testified that he awoke in the hospital but did not know that Russell had been stabbed or where his daughter was. Russell died some days after Oct. 23 after being taken off life support.

Also on Thursday Dr. Arnold Josselson, a forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy on Russell, testified that Russell died of a “stab wound to the right side of the neck.”

On cross-examination of Nofuentes, Russo focused on his actions and questioned his level of intoxication, asking if he was able to care for his daughter, showed photos of liquor bottles atop a refrigerator in the home and a beer carton or beer containers in another location in the same photo.

And on Sept. 30 Solano County Sheriff’s Deputy Mark Demarest, the first witness of the trial, testified during cross-examination by Russo, that a young, frightened girl inside the home told him the men there were “drunk and crazy.”

Judge William J. Pendergast previously severed the trials of people connected to the crime.

Gibson was initially charged with dissuading a witness; cruelty to a child by inflicting injury; and eavesdropping by recording confidential information. After her arrest on Nov. 16, 2018, she posted a $75,000 bond and was re

leased from custody. She is represented by Fairfield criminal defense attorney Denis Honeychurch. If convicted at trial, Gibson, who returns to court at 8:30 a.m. Dec. 8 to set a preliminary hearing, may face as much as three years in prison.

Weirich, who reportedly drove Williams to the Fry Road home, was initially accused of being an accessory after the fact. After her arrest, also on Nov. 16, she posted a $25,000 bond and was released from custody. She is represented by defense attorney Barry K.

Newman. If convicted at trial, Weirich, who also returns to court on Dec. 8 for the same proceedings, likewise may face as much as three years in prison.

In addition to the murder charge, Williams faces kidnapping of a minor under 14; assault with a deadly weapon; child endangerment; and burglary of an inhabited dwelling. He remains without bail in the Stanton Correctional Facility in Fairfield.

During a held-to-answer arraignment in late October 2019, Williams pleaded not guilty to all charges. If found guilty of them all at trial, however, he may face more than 50 years in state prison.