BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Telegraph Staff Writer
STARKE— The last of three defendants accused of plotting to kill an Alachua County woman to prevent her from testifying in a trial was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Demetrius Dewayne Wilson, 28, was already serving a 45-year sentence for planning the July 2020 killing of 19-year-old Blake Reed Williams on Old Lawtey Road.
In that case, prosecutors said Wilson promised to pay Marcus Tereual Whitfield, 33, $10,000 to shoot the 19-year-old because Wilson believed the victim had stolen a large amount of cash from him.
Whitfield was convicted of second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder for the killing and was sentenced to life in prison.
A Bradford County jury convicted Wilson of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder for Williams’s killing and was sentenced to 45 years.
On Jan. 4, Wilson pleaded to a second conspiracy charge. Prosecutors said he plotted with his mother and sister to hire an Orlando hitman to kill Tremika Presley of Alachua.
Presley testified in Whitfield’s murder trial, telling jurors she heard Wilson offer to pay Whitfield $10,000 to gun down the 19-year-old.
Presley told Starke police that one week after the killing, she saw Wilson and Whitfield together at a block party in Alachua. The following day someone fired shots into Presley’s home. She told Starke police Lt. Michael Rooney she believed Wilson and Whitfield fired the rounds due to her having knowledge of the pair’s conspiracy to kill Williams.
Rooney wrote in a sworn complaint that believing Presley was being intimidated and pressured not to testify, he began monitoring phone calls made by Wilson from the Bradford County Jail.
The lieutenant wrote that while monitoring calls between Wilson and his mother: Valerie McCutchen, the two discussed the witness and the fact that if Presley could not testify, the state had no case against Wilson.
Rooney added that Wilson and McCutchen talked about an Orlando man named “unc.”
“During the course of the conversations between Demetrius Wilson and Valerie McCutchen, they have cryptic conversations related to the possible testimony of Tremika Presley and discuss paying ‘unc’ to handle something for them related to the case,” Rooney wrote. “Additionally, Wilson’s statements to Valerie…are consistent with a criminal conspiracy that he is afraid may come to light due to Valerie talking to too many people about it.”
In one call, “Wilson tells Valerie to ‘stop telling everybody about what’s going on,’ and that Valerie is running her mouth too much,” Rooney wrote.
The officer documented further communications between Valerie and Wilson’s sister: N’Crisha McCutchen and Wilson. Rooney wrote that he believed the family was hiring “unc” to kill Presley.
According to a press release, officers stopped the McCutchens as the two women were driving to Orlando to meet with the hit man.
On Dec. 7, N’Crisha McCutchen agreed to plead to one count of unlawful use of a two-way communications device and to cooperate with the State Attorney’s Office in its prosecution of her mother and brother.
The State dropped the murder conspiracy charge, and both parties agreed that the defendant would serve one year, one day in prison, and four years’ probation.
Later that month, Valerie McCutchen pleaded to the same charges as her daughter and was sentenced to three years in prison, followed by three years’ probation.
She also agreed to testify against Wilson.
When sentencing Wilson for the plot to kill Presley, Judge James M. Colaw made the defendant’s 10-year sentence consecutive to his earlier 45-year sentence for arranging Williams’s death, stretching Wilson’s total time to 55 years.
