Erin Mulcahy Murder Case: Brent Williams Trial, Verdict, and Appeals

The Erin Mulcahy murder case ended with the conviction of her estranged husband, Brent A. Williams, for strangling the 35-year-old Waynesfield, Ohio woman in July 2017 and staging her body in the shower to make the death look like an accident caused by an alcohol-withdrawal seizure. After a five-day bench trial in Auglaize County Common Pleas Court, Williams was found guilty of murder on June 11, 2019, and sentenced to fifteen years to life in prison.¹

Who Erin Mulcahy Was

Erin M. Mulcahy was born on August 3, 1981, in Lima, Ohio. She married Brent Williams on April 14, 2016, after about two years together. By the summer of 2017 she was living alone at 200 Karen Street in Waynesfield.²

The marriage was described at trial as tumultuous. Police had been called to the home for domestic disturbances, and Williams was arrested for domestic violence in November 2016.³ In March 2017 the couple drafted a handwritten agreement in which Williams promised not to yell at her. Williams moved out on July 2, 2017, blaming her drinking. The next day, Mulcahy texted him, “Plus I am divorcing you.” On July 7, when another woman declined to see Williams because he was married, he replied, “Ha, no I’m not. Not any more.”⁴

How Her Body Was Found

On July 8, 2017, the building’s landlord, Scott Bowsher, noticed water leaking from Mulcahy’s apartment into the crawl space below. Unable to reach Williams, he called Williams’s father, and the two entered the unit together. They found Mulcahy’s body at the bottom of a stand-up shower with the magnetic glass door closed and the water still running. Bowsher called 911.⁵

She was lying on her side in what investigators described as a neat fetal position. Clothes were laid out on a hamper and a towel sat on the toilet seat, as if she had planned to step out of the shower. There were no signs of forced entry, no signs of a struggle, and no odor of decomposition, even though she had been there for three days.⁶

Why the Death First Looked Natural

Mulcahy had a documented history of severe alcoholism and seizures tied to alcohol withdrawal. Her father and others initially believed she had died from a medical event. Williams reinforced that reading when officers spoke to him outside the apartment, telling them he had seen her seize before and that she had probably died after refusing her withdrawal medication. Waynesfield Police Chief Motter later testified he was initially surprised when the death was reclassified as a homicide, because the scene showed no obvious signs of foul play.⁵

What the Autopsy Found

Dr. Diane Scala-Barnett, the Lucas County Coroner and a forensic pathologist, performed the autopsy and concluded the cause of death was strangulation. She documented hemorrhages in the gumline, eye, epiglottis, and midline over the hyoid bone, along with petechial hemorrhages on the neck and a bite mark impression on the tongue. The injuries were concentrated at the front of the neck with nothing corresponding at the back, a pattern she said was consistent with a carotid-sleeper or one-arm chokehold that can cause unconsciousness in five to eight seconds. Petechial hemorrhages, she testified, are common in asphyxia deaths but are not produced by seizures, because seizures do not apply pressure to the neck.⁶

The Auglaize County Coroner adopted her findings and ruled the death a homicide, placing the time of death on July 5, 2017, between 6:45 p.m. and 7:32 p.m. Fly eggs were found on the victim’s perineum even though her legs were closed and the shower was running. The pathologist concluded the body had to have been moved into the shower after death, because flies could not otherwise have reached that area.⁵

The Evidence Against Brent Williams

The investigation ran a full year. Sheriff Al Solomon said death investigations often wait on forensic and coroner’s reports before an arrest.³ On July 26, 2018, a grand jury indicted Williams on two counts of murder and one count of tampering with evidence.⁷

Several threads tied Williams to the killing.

Cell site data. His phone placed him in the general area of 200 Karen Street between 6:18 p.m. and 8:35 p.m. on July 5, the window the coroner identified as the time of death. Neither his phone nor Mulcahy’s transmitted any data between 6:48 p.m. and 7:32 p.m., a gap that lined up with the estimated time of death. Williams said his parents’ home was about three miles away and could explain the tower connection.⁵

DNA and sperm-tail evidence. A vaginal swab contained semen matching Williams at a rate rarer than one in one trillion. A BCI forensic scientist testified that sperm tails typically survive only 8 to 12 hours in a living person, while heads can last up to 72 hours. Williams claimed the couple had consensual sex on July 2, three days before Mulcahy died. The prosecution argued the intact tails pointed to sexual activity much closer to the time of death; Dr. Scala-Barnett testified that if a person is killed shortly after sperm is deposited, the tails do not decompose until the body itself does, effectively preserving them.⁵

The life insurance policy. On June 1, 2017, the first day he was eligible for employer benefits at PPG Coating, Williams took out a $25,000 policy on Mulcahy’s life.⁵

The July 6 visit and the shower texts. The day after Mulcahy was killed, Williams and his father went to the apartment at about 4:15 p.m. The landlord, working next door, asked whether Mulcahy was home so he could change the locks. Williams and his father said she was inside taking a shower. At 4:17 p.m. Williams texted Mulcahy’s phone: “Did u have a nice shower” and “I was there while u was in the shower.” She had been dead for nearly 24 hours.⁶

Conduct afterward. Within three weeks of Mulcahy’s death, Williams had created a profile on Plenty of Fish. A woman named Tiffany Reynolds testified that Williams met her on the site, sent her explicit photos before they met, and told her about the $25,000 life insurance policy. She said he claimed Mulcahy “drank herself to death” and that her death “didn’t seem” to bother him. Reynolds testified she grew suspicious he had hurt his wife based on how he acted. Two other women also testified about meeting Williams on the same platform.⁴

The Trial and the Competing Medical Theories

Williams waived his right to a jury. The case was heard by visiting Judge Mark O’Connor from June 3 to June 7, 2019.⁵

The central dispute was medical. Dr. Scala-Barnett testified the injuries showed strangulation. The defense called Dr. Werner Spitz, a well-known forensic pathologist, who attributed many of the findings to decomposition and suggested Mulcahy could have fallen during a seizure and struck her upper body against an edge, producing injuries that mimicked trauma. Dr. Spitz acknowledged he had not personally examined the body or the microscopic slides, while Dr. Scala-Barnett had performed the autopsy herself.⁶

Williams also argued he was physically incapable of strangling anyone because of Erb’s palsy, a birth injury he said made his right arm essentially useless. He pointed out that Mulcahy was taller and outweighed him by about 50 pounds. The prosecution countered with his own PPG Coating employment application, on which he had said he could lift up to 50 pounds and reported no disability. Prosecutor Benjamin R. Elder argued the injuries were consistent with a left-handed grip: “This is a move, this is a left-handed grip to grab her right shoulder and cut off her airway.” Dr. Scala-Barnett testified she could not rule out a single-arm strangulation.⁸

Verdict and Sentence

On June 11, 2019, Judge O’Connor found Williams guilty of one count of murder under Ohio Revised Code 2903.02(B), which covers a death caused as the proximate result of a felony offense of violence, in this case felonious assault. The judge acquitted him of the first murder count, which would have required proof that he purposely caused her death, and acquitted him of tampering with evidence. Williams was sentenced to fifteen years to life in prison.¹

Appeals and Where the Case Stands

Ohio’s Third District Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction on July 6, 2020, in State v. Williams, 2020-Ohio-3616, holding the evidence sufficient to support the verdict.⁵

On January 6, 2022, Williams filed a federal habeas corpus petition in the Northern District of Ohio, arguing the cell phone evidence was inconclusive, the sperm-tail evidence speculative, the lack of forced entry non-exclusive, Mulcahy’s alcoholism an alternative cause of death, and the insurance policy no proof of murder. A magistrate judge recommended denying the petition on December 19, 2024, and on March 24, 2025, District Judge James R. Knepp II adopted that recommendation in full, denied the petition, and declined to issue a certificate of appealability.⁹

Williams remains incarcerated, serving his fifteen-years-to-life sentence.

1
Hometown Stations. Williams Found Guilty of Murdering Estranged Wife
2
Legacy.com. Erin Mulcahy Obituary
3
Hometown Stations. Arrest Made in Connection to Erin Mulcahy Homicide Case
4
Insurance News Net. Life Insurance, Casual Sex at Center of Ohio Murder Trial
5
Supreme Court of Ohio. State v. Williams, 2020-Ohio-3616
6
GovInfo. Williams v. Haviland, Case No. 3:22-CV-00031 – Report and Recommendation
7
Dayton 24/7 Now. Ohio Man Charged With Murder of Wife Killed in 2017
8
Hometown Stations. Defendant Brent Williams Testifies on Final Day of Murder Trial
9
GovInfo. Williams v. Haviland, Case No. 3:22-CV-00031 – Order Adopting Report and Recommendation