DA questions Williams’ veracity during second day of testimony in his murder trial on Monday

Accused of a 2018 murder outside a home in rural Vacaville, Kristofer Michael Williams continued his second day of testimony Monday in his own defense but incurred still more scathing questions and assertions from the prosecution during the eighth day of his trial in Solano County Superior Court.

“Is it possible you were lying to the detective?” asked Deputy District Attorney Ilana Shapiro during crossexamination in the Department 11 in the Justice Center in Fairfield.

Toward the end of the morning session, she repeatedly asserted that Williams, 35, lied or contradicted himself in court over statements to Solano County Sheriff’s Detective Andrew Hendrix just hours after he stabbed Jonathan “Jonny” Russell on Oct. 23 at a Fry Road home.

As she did Thursday, Shapiro aggressively pushed that line of inquiry with a series of rapid-fire questions, prompting Judge William J. Pendergast to request that she slow down to give Williams time to answer.

Shortly afterward, Williams stepped down from the witness stand, and his defense attorney, Daniel Russo of Vallejo, called Hendrix to the stand.

Alluding to a recorded video of Williams speaking with Hendrix after the stabbing, Russo asked if investigators sometimes lie to suspects to obtain information. Hendrix admitted they did.

Russo also asked Hendrix, the lead investigator in the case, if he agreed with the defendant that the 9-yearold girl at the home “needed help,” a belief that prompted Williams, who was friends with the girl’s mother, to travel to the home in an effort to take custody of the child.

Hendrix said that was true. Williams’ concern for the welfare of the girl goes to the heart of the case.

Court records show he was disturbed by an ongoing child custody battle and believed the girl belonged with her mother, Kailyn Scarlett Gibson, 32, of Vacaville, who was seeking to gain custody rights in Solano County Family Court. He previously testified that he believed the girl’s father, Gary Nofuentes,

was molesting his own daughter and was horrified by the living conditions inside the home.

Russo then asked Hendrix if Williams explained to him “why he was so sensitive” about the conditions in the house.

Williams told Hendrix that he grew up in a household in which his mother was a drug addict, and Russo said that, for his client, “It was like going back in time” to his childhood.

Alcohol consumption — how much and what ? — by all involved in the case has been a through-line of inquiry throughout the trial by both Shapiro and Russo. He asked Hendrix if he had “any awareness of how drunk Nofuentes and Russell” were on Oct. 23 after earlier in the day their attending a funeral reception for a friend in Vacaville where alcohol was plentiful and both consumed several drinks there.

Russo, referring to previous testimony, recalled that Nofuentes, arriving at the Fry Road home, got out of a vehicle and fell flat on his face.

“Would he (Nofuentes) be capable of caring for a child?” the attorney asked. “No,” said Hendrix. Afterward, Russo questioned another Sheriff investigator, Ronnie Sefried, who also interviewed Williams after the crime.

Sefried remembered Williams as being “cooperative” during the interview and recalled the Fry Road home, when he arrived on scene, as having “a college, frathouse type environment,” with “beer cans … typical of a young frat house.”

At one point Sefried, replying to one of Russo’s questions, appeared to suggest that Williams may have been acting in self-defense at the moment he was knocked to the ground while trying to wrest the girl from Russell’s arms. (Williams had previously testified that he feared for his life and the safety of the girl before stabbing Russell in the neck with what’s been described as a pocket knife.)

Russo noted that Sefried had said “many times” during the interview that Williams “was being honest.”

“Yes, I believe he was being honest,” said Sefried.

The trial, which is beginning to wind down, continues at 10 a.m.Tuesday in Department

11 in the Justice Center in Fairfield. Attorney closing arguments are expected to begin at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Pendergast said on Monday.

During Thursday’s testimony in his own defense, Williams admitted he was an alcoholic, telling Russo he was somewhat drunk when he arrived at the home but Nofuentes and others were more intoxicated than himself. Yet Williams, walking through the house, 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.”

Once outside and as tempers flared, Williams said, “I got blindsided and got knocked to the ground,” he said but told Russo he didn’t know who knocked him down.

Williams admitted that he “slashed” with his knife at both Nofuentes, who earlier in the evening suffered a wound to his abdomen area, and Russell. Then, while leaving the property, called Jessica Anne Weirich, 30, the mother of his own daughter, who had earlier driven him to the Fry Road home.

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.

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

Only later did Williams learn 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.”

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 about 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.

Judge 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 released 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.