Jurors found Vickie Williams legally responsible for the killings, then spared her from a death sentence days later.
TAVARES, Fla. — The decisive issue in Vickie Williams’ murder trial was not whether she killed Darryl and Sharon Getman, but whether severe mental illness prevented her from knowing that killing them was wrong. A Lake County jury answered no.
Williams, 53, was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and theft after a trial that placed competing interpretations of her mental condition before jurors. Her lawyers argued that schizophrenia and psychosis left her legally insane when the retired Mount Dora couple were killed in their home on Dec. 31, 2022. Prosecutors agreed that Williams had mental-health problems but maintained that her conduct demonstrated an understanding of right and wrong. Days after accepting the prosecution’s position and returning guilty verdicts, the jury nevertheless declined to recommend death, and Judge Cary F. Rada sentenced Williams to life in prison.
The distinction between mental illness and legal insanity shaped the trial. Defense attorneys presented psychiatric testimony describing Williams as suffering from severe schizophrenia and said her thinking at the time of the killings was driven by delusions. In opening arguments, the defense said Williams believed the Getmans posed a grave threat even though that belief was not based in reality. The legal question for jurors was narrower than whether she was mentally ill: They had to decide whether her condition met the standard necessary to excuse criminal responsibility for what happened inside the couple’s home.
Prosecutors sought to answer that question through Williams’ behavior rather than deny the evidence of illness. They pointed to her interactions before the killings, including encounters captured on video, and to what happened afterward. According to the state’s case, Williams tried to clean herself and parts of the scene, took belongings from the home and left in the Getmans’ Kia Soul. Prosecutors argued that those choices showed planning and an awareness of consequences. The jury agreed sufficiently to convict her after about 30 minutes of deliberations following more than a week of testimony.
That verdict ended one phase of a case that had begun almost four years earlier at the Lakeside at Waterman Village retirement community. Darryl Getman, 83, and Sharon Getman, 80, were found stabbed to death in their residence on New Year’s Eve 2022. Investigators determined that their vehicle was missing. Police also had surveillance evidence placing Williams in the community, where witnesses said she had approached residents and sought help before the homicides. The Getmans’ departure from ordinary holiday routines became, for investigators, the starting point of a search that quickly extended beyond Florida.
A crucial break came from an object that had left Mount Dora with the stolen car: Sharon Getman’s cellphone. Detectives used information from the phone along with license-plate-reader data to trace the green Kia Soul north. The trail ultimately led to Savannah, Georgia, where Williams was arrested on Jan. 2, 2023. Prosecutors said jewelry and paintings belonging to the Getmans were also taken from their home. The State Attorney’s Office said physical evidence, surveillance recordings and property recovered in Williams’ possession were presented to jurors as the prosecution reconstructed the events surrounding the killings.
Forensic evidence gave the state another way to connect Williams directly to the residence. A Florida Department of Law Enforcement analyst testified about testing from the crime scene, including DNA evidence associated with knives and other objects inside the home. Investigators also documented evidence indicating movement through the residence and into the garage. Rather than rely on a single piece of proof, prosecutors assembled a chain that included the forensic testing, video, the missing car, the cellphone trail and the victims’ belongings. The defense’s strategy therefore focused heavily on criminal responsibility instead of trying to persuade jurors that Williams had never been there.
The state’s account of her post-crime conduct extended into Georgia. Fuller Blue testified that Williams appeared at his Savannah apartment and spoke about having a new car. He told jurors that she laughed while saying everything was OK and that she had bought herself a vehicle. Prosecutors presented the exchange as further evidence that Williams could function purposefully after leaving Florida. Defense lawyers, however, asked jurors to view her actions through the lens of serious psychiatric illness. The same conduct thus became part of two competing narratives about what Williams understood and why she behaved as she did.
The jury’s guilty verdict resolved that dispute for the guilt phase, but Williams’ mental health did not disappear from the case. It became central again when prosecutors moved forward with their request for the death penalty. The sentencing proceeding asked jurors to weigh aggravating circumstances urged by the state against mitigating evidence raised by the defense. Prosecutors emphasized the killings and the Getmans’ ages. Defense attorneys stressed Williams’ untreated schizophrenia and the evidence of psychosis, arguing that even after conviction her mental condition should persuade jurors to choose life rather than execution.
The penalty hearing also widened the focus beyond Williams. Darryl and Sharon Getman’s adult children testified about what their parents’ deaths had done to their family. Brittany Getman described the lasting emotional weight of the loss. Anthony Getman said he continues to send messages to his parents’ former phone numbers on birthdays and holidays. Their testimony differed from the forensic and psychiatric evidence that had dominated much of the guilt phase: It addressed not how the killings occurred or what Williams understood, but what the family had lived with since December 2022.
Jurors ultimately drew a line between responsibility and punishment. They had rejected the contention that Williams was legally insane and convicted her of first-degree murder, yet they did not agree that death was the appropriate sentence. Their life recommendation was followed by Rada’s sentence committing Williams to the Florida Department of Corrections. The result means the defense failed to obtain an acquittal based on insanity but succeeded in avoiding the punishment prosecutors had sought once the case entered its penalty phase.
The outcome illustrates the two distinct decisions jurors were asked to make. During the guilt phase, the question was whether Williams’ mental condition excused her from legal responsibility. During the penalty phase, that same broad body of psychiatric evidence could be considered in deciding punishment even after jurors had found her responsible. The answers were therefore not contradictory: Williams was found guilty of murdering the Getmans, while her mental-health history remained part of the argument over whether the state should execute her.
The Fifth Judicial Circuit State Attorney’s Office credited the Mount Dora Police Department, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Lake County Sheriff’s Office and Savannah Police Department for the investigation. State Attorney Bill Gladson said after sentencing that Williams had been held responsible for the couple’s deaths. No death sentence will follow the convictions. Williams’ trial-level case ended with life imprisonment, closing the immediate legal question that remained after the verdict while preserving the jury’s determination that mental illness did not excuse the murders under the insanity defense presented at trial.
Author note: Last updated November 7, 2026.