Woman agrees to testify against co-defendants
Monitor Editor
STARKE— One of three family members accused of conspiring to kill a witness in a murder trial has pleaded to a lesser charge and has agreed to testify against her co-defendants.
Starke police arrested N’Crisha T. McCutchen on March 10, along with co-defendants Demetrius Dewayne Wilson and Valerie Vanessa McCutchen, for conspiracy to commit murder.
Police accused the trio of plotting the murder of 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, who police said paid Whitfield to shoot Williams.
Rooney wrote in a sworn complaint that while monitoring calls between Wilson and his mother: Valerie McCutchen, 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 McCutchen talked about an Orlando man named “unc.”
The officer documented further communications between Wilson, Valerie McCutchen and N’Crisha McCutchen: 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.
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.
