POMEROY — Prosecuting Attorney Colleen Williams called just one witness to the stand at Charles Williams’ plea hearing Wednesday: a state investigator among the first responding to the scene of Doris Jackson’s murder.

Williams, meanwhile, told a three-judge panel hearing his guilty plea it was never his intention to kill Jackson, only to rob her with the help of others.

Right after her February death, officials ruled Jackson’s death a result of strangulation and blunt force trauma, but have provided few details surrounding the facts of her death and the events that led to it.

The special agent with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, who asked that his name be omitted from press reports, said he was called to Jackson’s home on Feb. 23, just after sheriff’s deputies discovered the 83-year old woman’s body in the dining room. He said he later spoke to Charles Williams in two interviews, the second in which, the agent said, Williams admitted to Jackson’s murder.

The agent identified Williams at the defense table, and testified under oath that Williams said he had called on Jackson, whom he had known since his childhood, at her home in the Arbaugh Addition. His former fiance’s son drove him there.

Williams asked to use the bathroom, but Jackson discovered him in a bedroom. Jackson approached Williams from behind and grabbed his shoulder.

When Jackson asked Williams what he was doing, he struck her in the face, bludgeoned her, strangled her and bound her hands with a telephone cord, the agent said. Jackson’s body was found in the dining room, buried under a pile of her belongings.

Williams stole a number of items from Jackson’s home, including cash, firearms and jewelry, and loaded them into her Mercury Marquis. After that, the agent said, Williams came to Pomeroy to pick up his accomplice, James Lee Garnes, Jr. The two headed off to Columbus to dispose of the stolen property, with little success, and eventually left the car at an apartment complex on Richland Avenue in Athens.

In a statement read by his attorney, Charles Knight, Williams said he and Garnes had planned the robbery for at least a week, and that at least two others were also involved in the plans, but were never charged in the crime. He said he does not remember killing Jackson — that he “blacked out.”

Judges Fred W. Crow III, Dean Evans of Gallia County and Dan Favreau of Morgan County found Williams guilty and sentenced him to life in prison, with no chance of parole for at least 30 years. He has been transported to Orient Reception Center to begin that sentence.

Members of Jackson’s family spoke on her behalf, as well, speaking of her as a kind and loving woman who met a death she did not deserve.