BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Telegraph Staff Writer
STARKE— The second of three defendants in a plot to kill a witness in a murder trial has pled to a lesser charge, leaving her son as the sole defendant in the case.
Valerie Vanessa McCutchen, 60, of Starke pleaded no contest to unlawful use of a two-way communications device. The State dropped the charge of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
Under her plea agreement, the defendant was sentenced to three years in prison, followed by three years probation.
Starke police arrested Valerie McCutchen on March 10, 2022, along with her son Demetrius Dewayne Wilson and her daughter N’Crisha T. McCutchen, for conspiracy to commit murder.
Police accused the trio of plotting to kill Tremika Presley of Alachua, a key witness scheduled to testify in Demetrius Dewayne Wilson’s April trial.
During that trial, Wilson, 28, was found guilty of manslaughter and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder for his involvement in the shooting death of 19-year-old Blake Williams on July 10, 2020. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison.
Starke Police Lt. Michael Rooney wrote in a report that after Presley testified in the trial of Marcus Whitfield, the trigger man in Williams’s murder, he believed the witness was being pressured not to testify in Wilson’s trial, whom police said paid Whitfield to shoot Williams.
Rooney wrote in a sworn complaint that while monitoring calls between Wilson and his mother, the two discussed the witness and the fact that if Presley could not be located, the state had no case against Wilson.
Rooney added that Wilson and Valerie McCutchen talked about an Orlando man named “unc.”
The officer documented further communications between Wilson, Valerie McCutchen, and Wilson’s sister. Rooney wrote that he believed the family was hiring “unc” to kill Presley.
In a press release, Starke police said officers stopped the McCutchens as the two women drove to Orlando to meet with the hit man.
In December, N’Crisha T. McCutchen reached a similar deal with prosecutors as her mother. However, N’Crisha was sentenced to one year and one day in prison, followed by four years probation.
Both women agreed to assist prosecutors in their case against Demetrius Dewayne Wilson. His trial is scheduled for January.
