Taylor Paige Santiago pleaded guilty Monday, May 4, to murdering 36-year-old Sophia Williams as she lay in bed at her home near Eureka Springs in January 2025, with Circuit Judge Scott Jackson describing Santiago’s plea deal with prosecutors as “the conclusion, in court, of a horrible episode.”
Santiago, 32, pleaded guilty to first-degree capital murder during a hearing in Carroll County Circuit Court in Berryville. She also pleaded guilty to first-degree attempted capital murder for shooting Nathan Green, Williams’ boyfriend with whom Santiago shares a child.
Santiago is already serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole in Missouri for killing her estranged husband hours before shooting Williams.
As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors will not pursue convictions on six lesser charges, including aggravated residential burglary, first-degree battery and four counts of endangering the welfare of a minor.
Jackson accepted Santiago’s plea and sentenced her to life in prison for capital murder and 40 years for attempted capital murder. The Arkansas sentences will run consecutively after Santiago’s life sentence in Missouri.
Santiago, who recently underwent a mental examination at the State Hospital in Little Rock and was found fit to proceed, had told Jackson at a hearing in December that she wanted to represent herself. At Monday’s hearing, however, she agreed to have public defender Beau Allen appointed as her legal counsel.
Handcuffed and shackled at the waist, Santiago appeared in court in an orange jail jumpsuit. Before Jackson called her case, she sat quietly in the courtroom’s jury box along with other inmates from the Carroll County Detention Center.
When her case was called, Santiago stood next to Allen and answered Jackson’s questions in a clear, steady voice.
Santiago told Jackson that she had reviewed the plea agreement with Allen and that she understood what it included. She indicated that she was pleading guilty because she was in fact guilty and that she had not been offered anything in exchange for her plea except the details specifically included in the agreement.
Asked if she would like to say anything more, Santiago declined.
In addition to accepting Santiago’s plea, Jackson said he would issue a permanent order barring her from contacting Green.
Carroll County Prosecuting Attorney Tony Rogers said Santiago would be transported back to Missouri to serve her life sentence in that state.
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Deputies responding to a reported shooting just after midnight on Jan. 23, 2025, discovered Williams’ body in the back bedroom of a home at 17 County Road 511, according to an affidavit. Green, 34 at the time, had been shot in the cheek and was transported from the scene by ambulance, the affidavit says.
Four children, all under the age of 10, were in the home when the shooting occurred, according to the affidavit.
Investigators at the scene received a phone call from police in Aurora, Mo., who said that there had been a murder there as well and that Santiago had turned herself in.
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 his 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.
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.
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Santiago pleaded guilty to Huffman’s murder in April 2025 and was sentenced to life in prison without parole in Missouri.
Williams’ sister, Calista Abernathy, said in February 2025 that Santiago got the address on County Road 511 where Williams and Green were shot from court documents in a child custody dispute with Green in Missouri.
Abernathy said she had spoken with her sister on the afternoon of Jan. 22, 2025 and Williams told her that there had been a hearing that day in which a judge granted custody of the child to Green.
“And that night, she snapped,” Abernathy said.
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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.
Santiago’s mother was in the courtroom for Monday’s hearing. Rogers told Jackson that Williams’ mother and stepfather, Vickie and Richard Weis, chose not to attend the hearing. Green and his mother also chose not to attend.
Vickie Weis submitted a written victim impact statement that Jackson accepted to be included in the case record.
Addressing Santiago directly during Monday’s hearing, Jackson said the plea agreement “is the conclusion, in court, of a horrible episode.”
“That’s all for today,” he said. “Good luck.”
Williams was the mother of five children.
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