The mother of a little boy whose 1994 murder was so unremarkable that his anonymous corpse lay unclaimed in the Philadelphia morgue for more than a decade pleaded guilty today in his death and agreed to testify against her husband, who she says battered the
boy to death.
Alicia Willis Robinson, 34, who gave birth to the child who forever will be known as Boy in the Bag, pleaded guilty to a charge of hindering apprehension in exchange for an agreement to serve five years in prison.
As part of the plea deal, she will testify against Lawrence Robinson, 38, her boyfriend at the time of the murder and now her husband.
Alicia Robinson’s son, Jerell Willis, was 4 years old in 1994 when his corpse was discovered in a duffel bag by a passerby in a trash-strewn lot near the foot of the Ben Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia.
Detectives called the child the Boy in the Bag and his unsolved slaying came to symbolize the banality of big-city child murders. His corpse lay unclaimed in the city morgue until 2001, when a donor contributed money for a grave marked by a headstone that read, “unknown boy.”
INQUIRER: The Banality Of Evil