Trenton Ivy was sentenced to 42 years after pleading guilty in Marquisha Williams's killing.

A guilty plea and an agreed prison term are the court's judgment on the counts that were admitted. They are not a jury verdict, and they are not the first-degree murder charge that was on the file before Monday. First Alert 4 reported that on Oct. 5, 2026, Trenton Ivy, 33, pleaded guilty in the death of Marquisha Williams, 29, and was sentenced to 42 years. Her mother told the court the number was not enough. That disagreement is what was said in the room. It does not change the term the court imposed.

On Monday, Oct. 5, 2026, Trenton Ivy pleaded guilty in St. Louis County to second-degree murder, tampering with a motor vehicle, and two counts of tampering with evidence, First Alert 4 reported. The station reported he was sentenced to 30 years on the murder count and four years on each of the other three counts, a total of 42 years. Before the plea he was charged with first-degree murder, abandonment of a corpse, and two counts of tampering with evidence. Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Brianna Baldwin told First Alert 4 that the vehicle-tampering count replaced the abandonment count. She said the office read the statute to require that a body be abandoned in Missouri, and Williams's body was found in Illinois, which the office thought could become an appellate issue. Baldwin said the swap did not change the 42 years the two sides had already agreed to. A plea to second-degree murder admits that count. It is not a trial finding of first-degree murder, and the years are the sentence on the counts that were entered.

Williams was 29 and the mother of four, First Alert 4 reported. The station reported she was last seen alive on Dec. 18, 2023, in her Jeep with Ivy, after they dropped off their children. Prosecutors later charged him with killing her on or around Dec. 20, 2023, the same day both were reported missing. Ivy was arrested in Racine County, Wisconsin, while driving her Jeep, on charges of endangering safety by use of a dangerous weapon, resisting an officer, and attempting to flee, the station reported. On Dec. 27, 2023, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney's Office charged him with first-degree murder. The next day her body was found in a nature preserve outside Chicago. First Alert 4, citing a Cook County medical examiner's report, reported the manner of death was homicide and the cause was strangulation. Those are the reported steps of the investigation. Monday's judgment is the plea and the 42 years.

First Alert 4 reported that prosecutors said a June trial would have been their chance to prove Ivy killed Williams after a physical fight, then damaged her phone and concealed her body. That is what the state says it would have argued. The plea took the case off that calendar. Before the sentence, Williams's mother, Norvette Chavis, told the court, "I lived through a nightmare," and said a prison term has an end date while the family's pain does not. She said, "You may have taken my daughter's life, but you will never take her love." A cousin's letter, read in court, said the children lost their mother not only on the day she died but on every day after. Prosecuting Attorney Melissa Price-Smith urged people in violent relationships to leave and report it. Those statements are what was said in court. They do not add a year to the term. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.