A woman who left her 6-year-old son to die in the woods more than 2 decades ago was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Friday, Jan. 12.
Prosecutors say Teresa Black, 46, killed her son William Deshawn Hamilton in 1999.
William’s body was discovered on Feb. 26, 1999 in a wooded area near the intersection of Clifton Springs and Clifton Church Road.
An autopsy revealed medicine in his body and a broken bone in his face – indicating he was beaten with a blunt object.
The boy’s identity remained a mystery for 23 years until a woman called in a tip to police in 2022.
Ava McNeil, who called in the tip, said she knew Black and William in Charlotte, North Carolina, and had been searching for him since 1998.
McNeil (pictured) said Black did not regularly bathe William and she seemed emotionally detached from her son before moving with him to Atlanta in 1998.
In her testimony in court, McNeil said she recognized William from an updated police sketch (top right).
Cold case detectives traced Black to Arizona where she was living at the time. She was extradited to Georgia to face trial.
The prosecutor said Black gave William a lethal dose of cold medicine and the child’s death was due to a drug overdose.
However, a defense attorney said Black gave her son medicine because he was sick. He said the two were homeless at the time. She took William into the woods to sleep.
The next morning, William did not wake up and she left him there.
“Leaving William in the woods was the greatest mistake of Teresa’s life,” the lawyer said.
He said Black gave birth to William when she was only 15. She “turned her life around,” and raised a daughter in the ensuing years after William’s death.
Black’s mother, Margaret Hamilton, called into the sentencing hearing to beg the judge “for mercy for my grandson, because I don’t understand what has really happened.”
William’s distraught father, William Hamilton, said Black continued to collect child support payments years after his son was already dead.
“William was already gone, and I didn’t know that,” Hamilton said of the child support that was taken out of his paychecks.
Black (pictured) faced several charges, including felony murder, aggravated assault and cruelty to children.
But on Wednesday, a DeKalb County jury convicted Black on a single charge of concealing the death of another.
10 years was the maximum sentence the judge handed down.
“As a mother, I cannot fathom how you could leave your child in the woods to rot,” said Judge Stacey Hydrick.
Black received credit for the more than 500 days she’s already served.
Watch the sentencing hearing below.
