A 33-year-old man has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the strangulation death of Marquisha Williams, a 29-year-old mother of four whose body was discovered in a forest preserve outside Chicago days after she vanished from the St. Louis area. Trenton Ivy also pleaded guilty to tampering with a motor vehicle and two counts of tampering with evidence, closing out a case that stretched across three states before investigators found her remains.
According to KMOV, Ivy had originally been charged with first-degree murder, abandonment of a corpse, and two counts of tampering with evidence before the plea deal resolved the case. Prosecutors had alleged Ivy killed Williams on or around December 20, 2023, and a medical examiner determined the manner of death was homicide, with the cause listed as strangulation.
The case began to unravel after Williams failed to return home on December 23, 2023, prompting her mother, Norvette Chavis, to report her missing, per the same KMOV report. Surveillance footage had captured Williams and Ivy together in her Jeep just days earlier, on the morning of December 18, dropping off children at daycare, school, and Chavis' house, according to KSDK. That was the last confirmed sighting of Williams alive before her family reported both her and Ivy missing on December 20.
An Arrest in Wisconsin Breaks the Case Open
Ivy was taken into custody in Racine, Wisconsin, on December 22, 2023, and detained on charges of endangering safety with a dangerous weapon, resisting an officer, and attempting to flee police, per KMOV's reporting. He was the sole occupant of Williams' Jeep Compass when officers caught up with him, and investigators later said her license plate had pinged in both Wisconsin and Chicago in the days before his arrest, according to Chavis.
Detectives who searched the Jeep after Ivy's apprehension found apparent blood, biological material, and personal items belonging to Williams, according to the St. Louis County Police Department. In a post-Miranda interview with local detectives, Ivy confessed that he killed Williams in St. Louis during a physical altercation and disposed of her body at an unknown location, the department said. At that point, searchers still had not located her.
Family Searched Highways Before Police Found Her Body
While investigators worked the case, Williams' family continued searching for her, according to a Facebook video report from Laura Simon. Family members also searched along Interstate 55 toward Chicago.
Williams' remains were discovered on December 28, 2023, in the Camp Ground Road Woods forest preserve near Des Plaines, off Algonquin Road, the outlet reported.
Charges and the Path to a Plea
The St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney's Office charged Ivy with first-degree murder on December 27, 2023, according to KMOV. A St. Louis County grand jury later formally indicted him on February 14, 2024, expanding the case to include abandonment of a corpse and two felony counts of tampering with physical evidence, per Journal & Topics. Ivy waived extradition during a Racine County court hearing on January 12, 2024, and was booked into the St. Louis County Jail on January 19, 2024, First Alert 4 reported at the time.
Relatives told local media that Williams and Ivy had broken up and were attempting to co-parent their children, according to the Facebook video report. Ivy's guilty plea to the reduced second-degree murder charge, along with the tampering counts, brings to a close a nearly three-year investigation that spanned Missouri, Illinois, and Wisconsin and relied on both forensic evidence and a grieving family's own search efforts.
