After 40 years in prison for killing his sister, Columbus man gets life for second murder
Michael Edward Simmons got a few years of freedom between two murder convictions.
Now those years are gone.
The man convicted at age 16 of killing his half-sister in Columbus’ Oakland Park neighborhood was convicted last week of killing a neighbor there in 2022. A judge sentenced him Monday to the penalty Georgia law requires, for a second murder conviction: Life without parole.
Arrested in 1978 in the rape and drowning of 7-year-old Dawn Worth and sent off to prison the next year, Simmons served almost 40 years, before he was paroled in 2018.
He returned to the Wise Street home where he grew up. His mother, Mary Worth, still lived there.
A couple of blocks away, on Oct. 13, 2022, he got into a fight with Christopher Williams outside the Blan Street home of his estranged girlfriend, the mother of Williams’ fiancee. He knocked Williams out with a single punch, and then continued to beat him, pounding Williams’ head to the ground.
Williams suffered headaches and nausea before he died a week later from bleeding in his brain.
On Nov. 2, 2022, Simmons went back to jail, again charged with murder. Jurors deliberated 20 minutes Thursday before convicting him.
Before Judge Ron Mullins sent him back to prison, Simmons testified that in the years he was free, he got work at two local electrical companies, went to church, and helped care for his aging mother.
He recalled that right after he was freed, his took his mother to movies and out to dinner, “things I thought I’d never be able to do,” he said.
He repeated the self-defense argument from his trial, saying Williams grabbed his throat the night they struggled outside the home of Effie Martin, whom Simmons had dated. Williams had been staying there, and had blocked Simmons as he tried to push his way in.
“I hit him to get him off my throat,” Simmons said. “I cannot have remorse for saving my own life.”
To Williams’ family, he said, “I hope y’all forgive me one day.”
Families speak
Simmons’ mother also spoke Monday, telling Mullins that Simmons was innocent in both his murder cases.
“My son has been accused of something he did not do,” she said of her daughter’s murder, later adding, “Michael is not a criminal, and he would not hurt no one.”
He also noted that Simmons had steady employment, during his parole. “Michael is a good son. He got a job and he worked,” she said.
Williams’ niece, Shanequa Williams, spoke on behalf of his family. “What you took from us cannot be replaced,” she told Simmons.
She said Williams’ refusing to let Simmons inside Martin’s house should have ended the confrontation, as it was not Simmons’ home to enter. “Why didn’t you just leave?” she asked. “Why didn’t you just walk away?”
The testimony
Martin said she had given Williams a key to her home, and he often stayed there to keep her company.
Though she broke up with Simmons two years earlier, they still were friends, she said, but she did not allow him into her home uninvited. She had gone to bed the night he came over and starting knocking on her door and bedroom window, so she did not answer, she said.
Williams arrived there from work as Simmons came to the door, after rapping on Martin’s window. Williams told him he would not wake Martin.
Williams regained consciousness, after the fight, but felt ill for days before Martin heard him collapse in his bedroom, and found him dead on the floor. An autopsy found a half-inch layer of clotted blood in the right side of his brain, and determined head trauma caused his death.
This story was originally published December 12, 2023 at 12:00 PM.