'Childhood sweetheart:' man guilty of murder and drug dealing in 2023 homicide

FORT WAYNE, Ind. ---‘Blessed’ is the word Sedrick Williams has tattooed on his neck. It’s quite noticeable in his mugshot photo posted on the Allen County Sheriff’s website.

But calling himself ‘blessed’ is hard to fathom for Williams who is facing two murder charges in not one, but two, different incidents. Plus a rack of drug charges.

Sedrick Williams

This week, Williams faced a jury for the second murder he’s accused of committing, that of Vanessa Brabson, 34 at the time of her death.

He was found guilty of murder and drug dealing after the jury spent about seven hours deliberating the case. 

Police say on Oct. 18, 2023, Williams, now 33, shot her in the head in a vacant lot near Bloomingdale Park, a single shell casing found next to her body, according to court documents. 

For nearly two days, Brabson’s body lay on the ground. Police were called to the scene on Oct. 20, 2023 around 10:30 a.m. after someone walked through looking for cans to collect and found her.

Williams was quickly tied to the crime scene by homicide detective Ben MacDonald who reviewed Williams and Brabson’s phone records. The location of her cell phone stopped moving at 7:46 p.m. on Oct. 18.

Surveillance video from a nearby business showed a 2009 dark gray Chevrolet HHR registered to Williams entering the lot area at 7:44 p.m. and leaving at 7:47 p.m., time enough to shoot someone and leave. The location and timing of her cell phone coincided with Williams’ phone.

The shooting triggered multiple tragedies, including the murder of Vanessa’s husband and the incarceration of her brother for the deed. 

According to the probable cause, Williams and Brabson were at a witness’s residence just before the shooting. The witness said Williams handed Vanessa some “narcotic pills,” but apparently she didn’t pay for them, leaving readers to wonder if money was the reason she was killed.

In 2022, Brabson was supposed to be handling Williams’ business while Williams was locked up at the Plainfield Correctional Facility. 

It wasn’t any secret, according to Williams’ cellmate S.B., incarcerated at Plainfield on fraud and theft charges. Williams was on the horn to Vanessa often and everyone on the block could hear his side of the conversation.

S.B. who traveled to testify in court Wednesday said the calls became “a running joke” because Williams would argue and yell while he talked to her, totally irritated that she wasn’t handling the business correctly. 

What S.B. also said was that Vanessa was somehow selling drugs to other inmates. It was confusing but, during testimony, jurors learned that inmates bought drugs with cash or through CashApp through a third party and commissary was currency, too.

Some of the phone calls were “alarming,” prompting S.B. to write to the Allen County Prosecutor about his concerns. 

Sedrick loudly spoke of killing Vanessa and, yet, he called her “his wife,” later explaining that although she was married to someone else, they’d been childhood sweethearts and that “he still loved her.”

Sean Brabson was Vanessa’s husband and he also met an untimely death. Two days after Vanessa’s body was found, Sean was murdered in a Fort Wayne alley. 

Vanessa’s brother, James Saylor, believed Sean was responsible for his sister’s killing, according to court testimony. Saylor was convicted of shooting Sean Brabson to death just two days after his sister was discovered in the vacant lot.

James Saylor

Saylor paid for his grief-stricken actions. He was tried and convicted for the murder of Sean Brabson and sentenced in Sept. 2024 to a total of 80 years, a sentence that included the state’s firearm enhancement.

At William’s trial Wednesday, the defense, led by public defender Mitchell Hicks and seconded by Jerad Marks, wanted to introduce information that the husband and wife fought a lot and there was intimidation.

Marks said the defense needed to “build a nexus.”

Vickie Saylor, the Saylors’ mother, was put on the stand after the jury was excused so Judge David Zent could determine if any of the information was admissible in court.

Saylor hesitated in her answers.

“Did you ever call the police on Sean?” Hicks asked her. 

“I probably did,” Saylor replied.

“Did he have a gun?” she was asked.

“Not that I recall,” she answered.

Another interesting remark: “When they (Vanessa and Sean) got mad at each other, I would make them leave my house.”

In earlier testimony, Vickie Saylor divulged a little about her daughter.

“I know she smoked weed,” she said, and she knew Sedrick Williams because “he would bring Vanessa to my house.”

Three days after the homicide, on Oct. 21, Fort Wayne police arrested Williams when he and another man were spotted driving in the 3000 block of Hillegas Road and gave chase. 

They left the car in the area of North Wells and Sixth streets and fled on foot. A Fort Wayne Vice & Narcotics officer saw Williams run through houses after he displayed a gun. 

Williams had ditched a bag of narcotics that contained cocaine, methamphetamine, crack cocaine, Fentanyl powder, marijuana and more than 200 Fentanyl pills. 

Police also found in a backyard $278 in cash and a Smith & Wesson 9mm semi automatic handgun loaded with a round in the chamber. A  digital scale with cocaine residue was part of the stash.

For this case, Allen County Chief Deputy Prosecutor Tom Chaille combined the murder and drug charges. Deputy prosecutor Alik Hall headed up the drug side of the prosecution.

Now that this case is adjudicated, Williams is due to come back to face a jury in early January for the shooting death of a former prison cell mate in January 2020. The case has been through its ups and downs, particularly after a crucial witness was found dead.

The witness was reportedly in the vehicle when police say Williams shot 40-year-old Marlon Kimbrough in the back of the head with three more shots to the back of the neck, court documents said. The deceased witness who went by the name “Turtle” was charged with assisting a criminal.

The probable cause said Williams admitted he killed Kimbrough and said Kimbrough had assaulted him when they were incarcerated together at Miami Correctional Facility. Fort Wayne police have also suggested that the assault was sexual.

In court documents, the story of these crimes unfolds, but there’s no back story, and, in Indiana, the state is not required to give a motive.

You may get a hint of the defendant’s past at sentencing, that is if the sound is turned up in the courtroom and the prosecutor and defense attorney speak up. 

The judge will consider mitigators that could soften a sentence and aggravators that work against the defendant. In Indiana, for instance, an individual can be punished for years for not rehabilitating when he or she was a teenager.

It’s part of the sentencing formula.

According to the Indiana Department of Correction records, Sedrick Williams first went to prison at 16. Born on Dec 4, 1991, he was sentenced in November of 2008 for carrying a handgun without a license.

There followed other offenses starting in 2010 for guns, criminal recklessness and burglary. The state offers a disclaimer for the zig zag nature of dates and offenses on the IDOC prisoner record: 

‘Please note that offenses appearing on this record with the same cause numbers multiple times do not reflect multiple convictions for those offenses. They represent re-commitment to the Department of Correction for violations of probation or community correction.’

My Right Hand and I have wondered for years if the prison assault on Williams, who is slight of build and five feet five inches tall, changed him forever. 

Prison rape is a sickening truth most of us ignore. Just going to prison screws with your mind, according to incarceration experts.

And still somehow Sedrick Williams felt blessed. In court, that message was covered up, along with numerous tattoos, by a white turtleneck sweater.