The moment Julian walked back into the dorm room with the pizza, he knew something was horribly wrong. His son was lying there, vomiting and unresponsive, his tiny body limp in a way that made Julian’s own legs give out underneath him. He carried the boy to his car, and JD threw up a second time before they even made it to the hospital. Julian didn’t know it yet, but he was carrying his son to his death.
Trinity Madison Pogue had been a pageant queen, crowned Miss Donaldsonville in 2023, the year she started her freshman year at Georgia Southwestern State University. She seemed like the girl who had it all together. She studied nursing to follow in her father’s footsteps, lived in the Oaks 2 dorm, and had been accepted into the President Jimmy Carter Leadership Program. She posted humble words after she lost a state pageant, thanking Jesus for her blessings and writing that gratitude was the only crown she needed.
No one in that small Georgia town could have imagined the darkness she was carrying inside. Julian Williams met Trinity while he was finishing up his business and accounting degree at the same university. He came from Colquitt, Georgia, raised by his mother Elizabeth, a woman battling cancer who leaned on her son for support. Julian worked as a painter at a machine and engineer shop in Bainbridge and lived with his mother and sister Ashanti.
He had a one-year-old son named Romeo Jackson Drew Angelus, but everyone called him JD. JD’s mother, Shayla, lived in Florida, and after JD was born, the couple separated. When JD was just a few months old, Julian took over full-time care of the toddler, with his sister watching him while Julian worked and their mother helping where she could between treatments. JD had big brown eyes, long lashes, and a button nose.
He loved Oreos, tortilla chips with salsa, and his little Power Wheels car that looked just like his dad’s white Ford Mustang. He was a happy little boy who loved to babble and make people laugh. Julian and Trinity’s relationship officially began in June of 2023 after an on-again, off-again fling. At first, Trinity was hesitant about dating a man with a child, but she warmed up to the idea.
Julian didn’t expect her to take on a motherly role so quickly, but she dressed JD, fed him, and changed his diapers without being asked. But about two months in, Trinity confessed her doubts in a text message to Julian. She told him that every time she saw JD, she felt anger rising up inside her, a gut feeling she couldn’t explain. She was only eighteen, she wrote, and Julian was twenty-four with a child and more responsibilities than just spoiling her.
She didn’t want to be his second baby mama. She wanted to be his first, but that would never happen, and she didn’t think she could continue the relationship with that thought in the back of her mind. Julian thought they moved past it. In reality, Trinity was faking her happiness while her resentment grew silently.
In November of 2023, Trinity offered to watch JD while Julian worked a shift, so the couple could spend the night together without the back-and-forth driving. While Julian was gone, Trinity texted him and his sister that JD had wandered behind her when she wasn’t looking and that she had accidentally hit him with a drawer. When Julian came home, he saw a bruise on his son’s face. He asked Trinity about it, and she burst into tears, swearing she would never hurt the boy.
Julian didn’t see anything that proved otherwise, so he accepted her story and headed home that night instead of staying over. The novelty of caring for a child wore off quickly. Other students in the Oaks 2 dorm could hear a child crying through the walls. In social settings, Trinity openly talked about how much she hated JD.
She vented to her roommate Paris through texts, writing that she felt anger toward the child, that she wanted to punch him, and that she almost cried when JD kept touching her face while they were in bed together. She ended one message with “LMFAO,” adding that it sounded so bad. Her roommate asked if she meant jealousy, and Trinity said she didn’t know, just that instead of love, she felt rage. On January 13th, 2024, Julian and JD spent the night in Trinity’s dorm room.
The next day, Trinity texted her roommate, saying she couldn’t stand being around JD anymore, that the boy hated her and she hated him. Julian went to Walmart to pick up a pizza for the three of them. He left JD in Trinity’s care, expecting to be gone for about thirty-five minutes at most. Trinity’s roommate wasn’t there, so it was just a helpless toddler alone with a woman who despised him.
While Julian was gone, Trinity beat the boy. Several people in the dorm building heard a child crying for a long time, and then suddenly, the crying just stopped. One freshman described hearing the cries and then an unsettling silence, and no one knew what had happened. Julian returned with the pizza around 12:30 in the afternoon to find his son vomiting and unresponsive.
He rushed JD to Phoebe Sumter Hospital. The doctors found injuries to JD’s liver, bruises on his head, a brain bleed, swelling in his face, and a fractured skull. According to the doctors, the brain bleed had occurred between thirty minutes and an hour before JD arrived at the hospital. They couldn’t find his pulse until they performed a tracheostomy.
Trinity told the doctors that JD had fallen hard from her bed. The emergency room physician, Dr. Michael Bussman, was suspicious. A fall from a bed that was only forty inches tall couldn’t cause such severe damage.
The doctors worked to stabilize JD so they could transfer him to a hospital in Atlanta, but JD died next to his father before they could get him ready. While JD lay dying and Julian sat in complete panic, Trinity kept her eyes on her phone. She typed incriminating questions into the Google search bar, including, “How do you get a brain bleed? ” and “How can a depressed skull fracture go unnoticed?
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When investigators questioned Trinity about what happened while Julian was gone, she claimed JD was snacking before he became unresponsive. But the coroner found that JD had no food in his stomach at the time of his death. The autopsy showed JD died from blunt force trauma to his torso and head. His brain was so damaged it was useless.
The coroner initially thought some of the injuries could have been older, but his examination contradicted that. These were recent injuries. The official cause of death was homicide. As the details surfaced, investigators turned their full attention to Trinity.
She kept changing her story. First, JD fell from her bed. Then, he tripped on an air mattress. Then, he fell from a chair.
Dr. Bussman refuted every version, explaining that JD’s injuries didn’t match any of her accounts. The swelling and fluid build-up in the boy’s face indicated a direct blow, not a fall. The university police contacted the Georgia Bureau of Investigation the day after JD’s death.
Agents pressed Julian and Trinity for hours. Julian’s account matched the evidence perfectly, but Trinity’s story kept shifting. Trinity was arrested a few days later and charged with aggravated battery, felony murder, and cruelty to children in the first degree. When the news broke, the campus was in shock.
Students had to walk by the dorm every day knowing a child had died there. Some said they were in disbelief. Others said Trinity had seemed outgoing and fun, and they couldn’t reconcile that image with the woman who was now charged with killing a toddler. The pageant circuit stripped Trinity of her title as Miss Donaldsonville, and the city manager made a statement distancing the town from her, saying they did not want to be represented that way.
JD’s mother, Shayla, was at home after work when she got the frantic call from Julian. She couldn’t understand him at first. She never thought he would tell her their son had passed. She said she hadn’t even known Trinity existed until that phone call.
She and Julian had agreed that JD would be kept separate from any future partners, and she was blown away to learn that her ex’s new girlfriend had killed their son. She said JD was at no fault for anything Trinity was feeling. If Trinity was jealous, she could have said something or simply left Julian. She hoped Trinity would be convicted because everything showed that she did it intentionally.
Four days after JD died, a family friend created a GoFundMe for funeral expenses. It reached its $10,000 goal within a week. The description spoke of an innocent life taken too soon, a laugh that would no longer fill the room, a smile that would no longer light the darkness. It described Julian as one of the best fathers around, a man who was the sole caretaker of his only child and now had the tragedy of laying him to rest.
In March, Trinity pled not guilty in her pre-trial hearing and was released on bond. The bond was set at $75,000, and she was required to wear an ankle monitor and avoid drugs and alcohol, but she was allowed to leave the country if she chose. Julian was furious. He said he felt like the court was giving her a slap on the wrist, and it felt like a slap in the face to him and his family.
All he wanted was justice for his son. Letting her out and being free was not right. She took an innocent child’s life. As the year went on, Julian faced more hardship.
His mother, Elizabeth, died on October 14th, 2024, after her battle with cancer. Julian posted a tribute on what would have been her birthday, writing that he knew she was taking care of JD for him now. The trial came in December of 2025. The state of Georgia has two kinds of murder charges: malice murder, which involves criminal intent, and felony murder, which applies when a suspect commits a felony and a death occurs as a result.
The prosecutor described Trinity’s motive as pure resentment. She hated that her boyfriend had a son that wasn’t hers, and that anger led to murder. He said that at 12:30 in the afternoon, JD was already dying. Trinity resented this child.
She wanted to have children with Julian, but not that child. The defense tried a different approach. They painted Julian as a violent, alcoholic father and suggested JD might have fallen from a bed or suffered an accident while Julian was showering. They called Trinity’s texts a symptom of her immaturity, not real hatred.
The defense attorney urged the jury not to find justice at the cross of innocent blood, insisting Trinity was not guilty. But Dr. Bussman testified that a fall from a bed or chair wouldn’t have caused JD’s injuries because both were too low to the ground. Trinity’s former roommate testified that JD cried around Trinity often, but not when other people were present.
Trinity’s current roommate, Paris, delivered the most condemning testimony. She read their text conversations aloud and told the court that Trinity had once said she wanted to run JD over with her car. During closing arguments, the judge ordered the gallery doors locked. Julian and his family sat on one side of the courtroom, Trinity’s family on the other.
The prosecutor pointed out that Trinity was the only person who could have killed JD in the time frame in which it occurred. The defense reminded the jury that they could not discount the possibility that Julian was responsible or that an accident had happened. They insisted there were reasonable doubts. Shayla spoke in Julian’s defense from afar.
She said she didn’t blame him because nobody ever imagines something like that could happen. She said Julian would never do anything to intentionally hurt their son, and she hoped he knew he had her support, too. She acknowledged that some people blamed him, but he was just taking care of his child, and his child was taken away from him. The verdict was read on December 5th, 2025.
Trinity was found not guilty of malice murder, and a brief outburst rang through the gallery before the judge silenced it. Directly after, she was found guilty of felony murder and aggravated battery. That evening, Julian posted on Facebook, thanking everyone who had been there for him and his family over the past two years. He wrote that justice had been served, even if it wasn’t to his satisfaction.
He said Trinity would serve a life sentence for brutally taking his child’s life. He said those people tried to make him out to be a criminal and a bad dad, but he was neither. He said his baby didn’t deserve any of it. Life in prison wasn’t enough for his liking.
On December 7th, 2025, Trinity Pogue was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after thirty years. She was sent to the McRae Women’s Facility in Telfair County, Georgia. The judge said he hoped the sentence could bring some closure to the family and that Trinity might find some sort of life after serving her time. JD’s funeral had been held in Florida back in January of 2024, and those in attendance wore matching shirts printed with one of his baby pictures and the phrase, “Long Live Jaxton Drew Williams.
” The hashtag #LLJD became a rallying cry for everyone who mourned him. Trinity’s family has avoided the public eye ever since the verdict, remaining silent when approached by news outlets. Julian began dating someone new in 2024, and they celebrated their one-year anniversary shortly after Christmas of 2025. They followed the trial closely and posted updates on social media.
They were both relieved when Trinity was found guilty while still mourning the loss of JD. When Julian first rushed JD to the hospital, the boy threw up on Julian’s jacket. Julian still has that jacket, and he hasn’t cleaned it since.
He says it’s the last thing he has to remember his son by.
