Carroll County prosecutors have filed charges including capital murder against a Missouri woman who reportedly confessed to killing a Eureka Springs woman in January.
Taylor Paige Santiago is charged with first-degree capital murder, first degree attempted capital murder, aggravated robbery, first-degree battery and three felony counts of endangering the welfare of a minor.
The charges were filed Thursday, April 12, in Carroll County Circuit Court’s Western District — two days after Santiago was sentenced in Missouri to life in prison without parole after pleading guilty to killing her estranged husband.
The local murder charge stems from the slaying of Sophia Williams, 36, on Jan. 23 in the bedroom of home at 17 County Road 511. Williams’ boyfriend, Nathan Green, who was 34 at the time, had been shot in the cheek and was transported from the scene by ambulance, according to an affidavit filed by prosecutors after the incident seeking an arrest warrant for Santiago.
The affidavit said Williams was lying in bed when she was fatally shot.
The affidavit said Santiago shares a child with Green and that four children, all under the age of 10, were in the home when the shootings occurred.
While local investigators were at the scene, they were contacted by police in Aurora, Mo., who said that there had been a murder there as well and that Santiago has turned herself in there, according to the affidavit.
During an interview with Aurora police, the affidavit says, Santiago said she had killed three people. Santiago said she had first shot Troy Huffman, her estranged husband, in Missouri and then drove Huffman’s Mercedes to Green’s home in Arkansas and shot him and his girlfriend, according to the affidavit. Santiago told Aurora police that she killed Huffman because she needed a vehicle, the af fidavit says.
The affidavit says that Santiago told police she had lost sole custody of her daughter and feared she would go to jail because she couldn’t pay child support.
Santiago told Aurora police that she had never been to Green’s “new place” and that she had to use her phone to map the address, the affidavit says. Santiago said that when she arrived, she first knocked on the front door of the mobile home but no one answered, according to the affidavit. She then called and again got no answer, the affidavit says. Santiago said she went to the back door and it was open, the affidavit says. She told police she was in the kitchen when Green confronted her and she shot him, according to the affidavit. She then walked back to the bedroom and shot Williams, the affidavit says.
Santiago said she shot both victims in the head, the affidavit says, and neither made a sound. She told police she didn’t know if either was alive when she left, according to the affidavit.
Santiago told police she used a Taurus .38-caliber revolver that she left on the floorboard of the Mercedes, the affidavit says. She said she reloaded the gun while sitting at a stop sign in Arkansas shortly before she arrived at Green’s home, according to the affidavit.
When a Missouri police investigator asked Santiago what she would say if she could speak to Huffman, Williams or Green, she replied: “Nothing,” the affidavit says. She then clarified that she would say “sorry” to the people who love and care about her and to the people who love and care about the three victims, the affidavit says.
Santiago referred to herself as a “disgusting, evil murderer,” and said that “death or jail forever” would be an appropriate sentence for her, according to the affidavit.
Online records indicate Santiago, who was 31 at the time of the murders, is being held in the Lawrence County (Mo.) jail.
Brother serving life sentence
Taylor Santiago is the sister of Joseph Santiago, a Berryville man who is currently serving life in prison after pleading guilty in June 2018 to the January 2017 slaying of his older brother, Alex.
Alex Santiago was 21 and Joseph Santiago was approximately three weeks from his 18th birthday at the time of the slaying. Prosecutors charged Joseph Santiago as an adult.
Carroll County Sheriff’s Office deputies responding to a call from the Santiago brothers’ father, Robert Keever, found Alex Santiago’s body inside the family’s rented mobile home at 92 Carroll County Road 219, in the Grandview area northwest of Berryville, on Jan. 17, 2017.
A probable-cause affidavit written by then-CCSO investigator Lt. Jerry Reddick says Alex Santiago had “extensive trauma to his head and had a sword sticking out of his mid-section.”
A baseball bat found near the body was covered in blood, and a scabbard for the sword was found lying on the bed in the master bedroom where Joseph Santiago had been, the affidavit says.
The affidavit says deputies responding to the residence spoke with Keever in the front yard and he told them Joseph Santiago was still in the back bedroom watching television. The affidavit says that during his initial call to the sheriff’s office, Keever indicated that Alex Santiago was autistic.
Defense attorneys requested a mental evaluation of Joseph Santiago in August 2017 and he was interviewed by a state psychologist in February 2018. The psychologist reported that Santiago lacked a mental disease or defect, had the capacity to effectively assist his attorney in his own defense and had the capacity to understand the proceedings against him.
Joseph Santiago is being held at the Arkansas Department of Corrections’ Cummins Unit in Grady.
