“I’m pleased this ends the way it should have started,” Susie Williams-Carter, Alexander’s 92-year-old sister, told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “We knew he was innocent and now we want the whole world to know,” she said. “We can’t rewrite history. But if justice can be done by publicly acknowledging such a mistake, then we must seize the opportunity,” said Jack Stollsteimer, the Delaware County attorney in Pennsylvania.
On October 3, 1930, the husband of Vida Robare, who works at a center for juvenile delinquents, found the body of his wife, who was “brutally murdered”. Sixteen-year-old Alexander McClay Williams, who was serving a sentence, was quickly charged and also signed several confessions without a lawyer or parent being present. In addition, there was no direct evidence and no eyewitnesses.
At his trial, an all-white jury found him guilty after less than four hours of deliberation. On February 27, 1931, Alexander McClay Williams was executed.