Who is death row inmate who worked with Modesto mom in stimulus check fraud scheme?
The Modesto mom who worked with her son, a death row inmate, in a stimulus check fraud scheme testified during the penalty phase of his murder trial in 2016 that “He’s always been a mama’s boy.”
Sheila Denise Dunlap pleaded guilty Friday to filing fraudulent claims to obtain $145,200 in COVID-19 stimulus checks in 2020.
Dunlap filed 121 claims using the personal identifying information of inmates and other people that was provided to her by her son from death row at San Quentin State Prison.
In court documents Dunlap’s son was identified only by the initials D.W., but public records and news reports show him to be 31-year-old Darnell Williams, convicted of killing an 8-year-old girl and a 22-year-old man in 2013.
According to the East Bay Times, Alaysha Carradine was killed in a revenge shooting by Williams against a man he believed killed his friend.
Williams targeted the man’s children, a 7-year-old girl and a 5-year-old boy, and their mother. Alaysha happened to be spending the night at their Oakland home when Williams showed up armed with two guns and wearing bulletproof vest, according to the paper.
“Williams rang the doorbell with a gun pointed downward at the children’s level and waited,” the paper reported. “When the 7-year-old opened the door, he fired 13 rounds. Everyone was hit, but only Alaysha was killed.”
A few months later, Williams shot and killed Anthony Medearis in Berkeley as he ran away begging for mercy. Williams thought Medearis was a snitch, the paper reported.
The jury that convicted Williams also sentenced him to death in 2016 following testimony about his childhood, which included parents who were often in prison. His dad was a violent drug addict and Dunlap had multiple fraud and forgery convictions. When his parents were in prison, Williams lived in foster care and group homes or with his maternal grandfather, who eventually adopted him.
Sheila Dunlap, who at the time had the last name Smith, testified that she told her son growing up that she did “enough wrong” so he and his sister wouldn’t have to, according to The Mercury News.
A psychologist who testified at the trial said Williams “absolutely idealized” his mother and it was “devastating psychologically” for him that she frequently was absent, according to CBS SF Bay Area. She described the mother and son as having an “unusually close bond.”
The psychologist testified that as a teenager Williams called his mother his wife and said he didn’t need to marry anyone because he was already married to his mother, according to The Mercury News.
When Dunlap was out of prison, she and Williams often lived in Stanislaus County. Her parole terms required her to be there because that is where she committed many of her crimes, according to the news site Berkeleyside.
Dunlap testified that Williams was an All-American athlete in middle school in Modesto and was scouted by at least seven different schools, according to Berkleyside. He was accepted into a private Christian school, where he was a “starring quarterback” but was expelled from school at the age of 14 for fighting and threatening school staff, according to the news site.
Dunlap was in prison in 2013 when she spoke to Williams in a recorded conversation a few days before he killed Medearis. He told her he thought the police were looking for him in connection with Alaysha’s murder.
She reminded him during the call that she still owned a house in Modesto where he could go, according to Berkeleyside.
The news site reported that Williams started committing crimes when he was in elementary school and his arrests often coincided with his mother’s.
“It was like he kept getting locked up when I was,” Dunlap testified. “Like he’d rather be in jail because I would be in jail.”
Dunlap has been out of custody while being prosecuted on the federal fraud charges. She is scheduled to be sentenced June 24 and faces over 20 years in prison.
This story was originally published March 7, 2022 at 12:48 PM with the headline "Who is death row inmate who worked with Modesto mom in stimulus check fraud scheme?."
