ATLANTA — Closing arguments will begin on Tuesday after jurors heard the final testimonies in the case where a metro Atlanta mother is accused in the 1999 death of her 6-year-old son.
Teresa Black is charged with two counts of felony murder, two counts of cruelty to children, aggravated assault, and concealing the death of another in connection with the 1999 death of her son, William Hamilton.
On Monday, Black sat in front of a judge and decided not to testify in her case. In four days of testimony, over 20 experts and witnesses took the stand for prosecution.
According to a previous indictment record, she is accused of giving her son too much cold medicine, which allegedly led to his death. The record also accused the mother of striking him in the head with an unknown object and failing to seek medical treatment for him. William's remains were discovered in 1999, but it wasn't until 2022 that detectives finally identified the boy and arrested his mom.
The prosecution's final witness also testified on Monday. Investigator Matthew McLendon interviewed Black when they tracked her down to Phoenix in 2022. He shared a Facebook message that was verified from 2017 where Wanda Hamilton, William’s aunt, asks Black about her nephew, who would’ve been 23 years old if he was alive.
Watch the testimony of the prosecution's final witness:
According to the investigators, the Facebook messages ended soon after when Black was asked again about William and stopped responding altogether.
The defense called in a forensic pathologist who claimed that William could have died of natural causes and believed that the fracture in William's skull was caused by animals after his death.
Watch the defense's final witness testimony here:
Final testimonies were heard just days after heartbreaking statements came from William's father and Black's best friend, who described the young boy's character. A video was also released of her police interview when authorities first questioned her about her son's death.
The boy's father, William Hamilton, alleged that Teresa received child support after William had already died.
“William was already gone, and I didn’t know that,” Hamilton said of the child support that was taken out of his paycheck after William’s death.
Black's best friend, Ava McNeil, testified on Tuesday where she claimed that Black did not regularly bathe William and seemed detached and standoffish toward her son before moving with him to Atlanta in 1998.
"He was fun, he was smart. He was a four-year-old who could read the encyclopedia. He liked trucks," said McNeil.
Closing arguments will officially start on Tuesday at 9 a.m.
Watch the full Day 4 of the trial here: