The following social history is taken from records of the Missouri Department of Social Services, Division of Family Services ("DFS"), the Central Baptist Family Services, the St. Louis County Special School District and the trial transcript. Additional information was supplied by various family members.
Tony Richardson was born September 3, 1974. He is the second of three boys born in close succession to Gwendolyn Williams. Tony's older brother, Cedric Richardson, was born in July 1973. His younger brother, Carlos Williams, was born in March 1976. Gwendolyn Williams was only 18 when she bore Tony, and only 19 at the birth of her third son, Carlos.
Tony has never known the love, attention and guidance of a caring and concerned father. For that matter, Tony has never really known of, much less been acknowledged by, his natural father. Tony's mother has never been married. Although the records alternatively indicate one Archie Cedric Richardson, as well as one Willie Gray, to be Tony's natural father, Gwen Williams is sure that Archie Richardson is Tony's father.
Willie Gray, as a surrogate father, has not been involved in any significant way in Tony's life. And while Archie Richardson early on acknowledged paternity of Tony's brothers, he refused to acknowledge Tony as his child, claiming that Tony looked different than him and was probably the result of Ms. Williams having fooled around with another man. In this regard, to hurt Ms. Williams, Archie Richardson would magnify his overt rejection of Tony by never allowing the youngster to call him "father," and by snubbing Tony from the attention he would give to Cedric and Carlos.
By the time Tony was six or seven years old, Archie Richardson had gotten married for the second time (but not to Gwendolyn) and was now completely removed from Tony's life. By all accounts, Tony grew despondent over the lack of a father's attention, so much so that Tony would purposely get himself into minor scrapes so that he would draw the attention of male police officers.
Tony's childhood was marked by poverty and abject living conditions. His mother lacked even a high school education and could only muster part-time work at a local White Castle hamburger shop. She, and her three sons, were resigned to an existence subsidized by AFDC and food stamps. Their living conditions were squalid, as Ms. Williams and her three children crammed themselves into a small, one-bedroom apartment consisting of two beds and a couch.
As far back as 1981, when Tony was just shy of seven years, his mother became ill with kidney problems. Because of her illness, her children were forced to shuffle between various relatives. From this point forward, Tony's bouncing from one home to the next would become a sorrowful routine.
Indeed, by the time Tony was seven years old, he was routinely abandoned by his mother for weeks at a time while she co-habitated with a series of boyfriends, some of whom were seriously caught up in hard drug usage. At times, Tony was forced to seek refuge with an aunt or his maternal grandmother to escape the morass brought on by his mother's habitual drug use and never-ending cycle of boyfriends.
It comes as no surprise that the Division of Family Services became involved with Ms. Williams and her three children on several occasions. In 1981, Tony received a suspicious burn to his arm. Even though it was later determined that Tony accidently burned himself on an iron while playing, the DFS case worker opened the case "due to a high risk of abuse" and the overwhelming task faced by Ms. Williams. The specific problem areas defined by the caseworker were: 1) lack of money; 2) Ms. Williams' illness, and 3) Tony's "behavioral problems."
In late 1987, DFS received a hotline call that Ms. Williams had left her children for three weeks, and had not been heard from since. Tony had not been in school for a month, and he and his brothers were now living with their maternal grandmother, Irene Ramsey. After Tony was enrolled in school, he was suspended for bringing a toy gun to school, likely because there had been a recent publicity scare about toy guns that looked like real guns. He was only 12 years old at the time. The case was closed in August 1988.
In March 1990, DFS was called in again when Ms. Williams, acknowledged by DFS as a "frequent drug user," again abandoned her children. Tony's mother was apparently spending her social security payments on drugs instead of buying her children food. Tony and his brothers again went to live with their grandmother. The caseworker noted the boys did not want to return to their mother's home, because when they lived there, "they were frequently hungry."
Although the atmosphere surrounding Tony's childhood was marred by his mother's excessive drug and alcohol abuse, he nonetheless took charge of raising his younger brother, Carlos. To this end, Tony did what he could to make sure Carlos would leave for school on time, and that he had enough to eat and clean clothes to wear. At age 15, Tony dropped out of school and enrolled in the Job Corp.
