An Ohio man has been sentenced to 62 years behind bars for the brutal murder of a 16-year-old girl whose body he carried in a playpen bag to a landfill after killing her.
Ricki Williams, 22, was jailed on Tuesday for the 2014 murder of Gina Burger.
Burger had been at her birth mother Jackie Bacher’s apartment in Austintown, Ohio, when she vanished not long after telling her she was going out to get bags for ice tea.
The teenager was adopted when she was three and taken out of Bacher’s care.
She grew up in Texas, with adoptive mother Michelle Bennett, and had traveled to Ohio to spend time with her birth siblings after reconnecting with them on Facebook.
On June 23, she ended up in the apartment of her birth mother’s neighbor where Williams, who is homeless and who she did not know beforehand, was staying.
He stabbed her to death and chillingly pulled the knife out of her chest to smell it afterwards.
Remorseless Ricki Williams, 22, (seen left in court on Tuesday) was jailed for a minimum of 62 years for the 2014 killing of 16-year-old Gina Burger (right) who he stabbed in the chest
The neighbor Ronisha Johnson, testified against him and described the killing. She said Williams held her and Gina hostage and the teenager pleaded for her life before being stabbed to death.
After he killed her, Williams used a bag that Johnson used to carry her son’s portable playpen to move the teenager’s body out of her apartment.
He brazenly left it in the dumpster outside where it sat for a whole day before being taken by trash collectors to a landfill 20 miles away across state lines near Hermitage, Pennsylvania.
As he left the apartment complex with Gina’s body in the bag he was carrying, he walked past Bacher, who had called police to report her missing and sickeningly asked her if she wanted to ‘buy it’.
It is not known if he was aware she was the victim’s mother at the time.
This is the dumpster where Williams dumped the dead teenager’s body after removing her from his friend’s apartment in a bag that she used to carry her toddler’s playpen around in
The killing happened at this apartment complex in Austintown, Ohio. Gina, who was raised in Texas, was visiting her biological family who lived there and Williams, who is homeless, was staying with a friend. He snatched the 16-year-old as she went out to get bags for iced tea
After stabbing the 16-year-old in the chest, Williams removed the bloody knife from her body to smell it
The teenager’s body was found at a landfill near Hermitage, Pennsylvania, 20 miles away two days later. It had been collected by trash men
On Tuesday, Williams was sentenced to 62 years in jail.
He was remorseless and maintained his innocence, telling the judge: ‘I didn’t kill that girl.
‘I just want to put that out there.
‘I didn’t do it and I’m sticking with it,’ he said, according to WYTV which attended the sentencing hearing.
In earlier proceedings, he tried to plea guilty by way of insanity. He was convicted on a plea deal but claims he only accepted it to avoid being executed.
‘I didn’t do it’: Williams maintained on Tuesday that he was innocent, despite entering a guilty plea and previously arguing that he was insane
In 2014, he smiled at Gina’s family as he left court after one of his first appearances
Bacher, who overdosed on heroin days after Gina’s murder and who paraded herself to local media as her mother in the immediate aftermath of her death, was not present for the sentencing.
Bennett was there, having travelled from Texas to see Gina’s killer put behind bars.
In a stern victim impact statement, she labeled him a ‘piece of s***’ and ‘waste of oxygen.’
I am the p***** off mother of a murdered child who you had no right to take away from me, her father and our family.
Gina was staying with her birth mother Jaqueline Bacher at the time. She was removed from her care as a toddler but ended up back in her apartment after reconnecting with her biological siblings on Facebook. Days after her murder, Bacher overdosed on heroine and had to be revived by paramedics
Michelle Bennett adopted Gina when she was three and raised her in Texas. She traveled to Ohio for Williams’ sentencing on Tuesday and read a powerful victim impact statement in which she labeled him a ‘piece of s***’
Bennett has always said that she blames herself for letting Gina travel to Ohio to visit her biological siblings. She is pictured after Williams’ sentencing on Tuesday
”You’re a piece of s*** who killed a defenseless and innocent 16 year-old, 5ft 3, 100lb child.
Gina’s family said she was ‘innocent, defenseless’ and had already endured a ‘bad life’ when she was killed
‘That’s correct, she was a child.’
Gina’s biological siblings told of her troubled upbringing at the time of her death.
‘She had such a bad life,’ one told The Youngstown Vindicator.
She had gone to Ohio to visit her birth family with the permission of her adoptive mother who thought it would help her.
For weeks beforehand, she had been acting out in Texas and complained to her school that she had been abused in some way by her adoptive mother.
Bennett blames herself for the killing, saying she should never have let her go to visit.
She did not know that Bacher would be there at the time and had only agreed to let Gina go because she thought she would only spend time with her siblings.