A Missouri woman who reportedly confessed to killing a Eureka Springs woman in January is back in local custody after being sentenced to life in prison for a separate slaying in Missouri.
Taylor Santiago, 31, was booked into the Carroll County Detention Center in Berryville on Thursday, Nov. 6, according to the detention center intake log. She is charged with capital murder, first-degree attempted capital murder, aggravated residential burglary, first-degree battery and four felony counts of endangering the welfare of a minor, according to court documents.
Santiago is scheduled to appear in Carroll County Circuit Court at 9 a.m. Monday, Dec. 1, according to the detention center intake log.
The charges were filed 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 affidavit 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.
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.
