Philly foster mom accused of killing girl faked texts to mislead police, report says
Carprice Williams was arrested a day after the body of Malayshia Allford, 10, was discovered in the trunk of a car in South Jersey.
In the days after 10-year-old Malayshia Allford was reported missing, her foster mother went to great lengths to misdirect investigators: texting herself affectionate notes from the girl’s phone, responding throughout the day to feign concern, and later claiming the child had fallen down some steps, according to a police report.
All the while, police say, Malayshia was already dead — her body hidden in the trunk of a car in South Jersey.
Witnesses who spent time inside the West Philadelphia home of Carprice Williams, the foster mother charged with killing Malayshia, also described chronic and horrific abuses: withholding food from the child for as long as a week, beating her with a phone cord, and throwing her down stairs, according to the report obtained by The Inquirer.
The report, which details interviews with unnamed witnesses, provides a grim account of what happened inside Williams’ home. It also raises questions about what supervision city-contracted social workers provided, and how Williams was able to continue in her role as a teacher in the Philadelphia School District.
Williams, 36, was charged with murder on Thursday in the death of Malayshia, whose body had been found the day before in the trunk of a car at an apartment complex in Lindenwold, Camden County.
The Defender Association of Philadelphia, which represents Williams, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Since early 2025, Williams taught fifth grade at Lewis C. Cassidy Academics Plus School, a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school in Overbrook. She had also worked at Mifflin Elementary in East Falls for a time, at Young Scholars Charter School in Northern Liberties, and at a Montgomery County preschool.
School district officials said they could not answer questions about Williams’ tenure, but her $114,041 salary is at the “senior career teacher” pay rate, indicating she had at least 10 years of teaching experience plus a master’s degree and further postgraduate education. Williams’ LinkedIn profile said she holds a master’s and doctorate from Drexel University. Asked to verify that, a Drexel spokesperson confirmed only the master’s degree.
Arthur Steinberg, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, said Malayshia’s death was “a horror” and “a tragedy.” Steinberg called for an investigation into the foster care system but said the matter “had nothing to do with her role as a teacher.”
“To have something like this happen, it’s just unspeakable,” he said.
The Philadelphia School District has declined to answer questions about the case. A city spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment Monday afternoon.
Williams had been a foster parent since at least 2020.
That is when she took in two young siblings — one of whom ended up in the hospital the next year with a traumatic brain injury, severe malnutrition, and marks indicative of being struck with an object, according to a lawsuit.
A doctor at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia certified that 2021 event as a “near fatality,” triggering a review that found the foster mother had committed abuse and recommended that she never be allowed to foster again, the lawsuit said.
However, a Pennsylvania Department of Human Services spokesperson said, Williams successfully appealed the child-abuse finding and her record was expunged.
The Bureau of Hearings and Appeals, an administrative review board within the state human services agency, overturns roughly 90% of cases brought on appeal, according to a 2021 report by Pennsylvania’s auditor general that found the system was failing child victims.
Nadeem Bezar, a lawyer representing Malayshia’s estate, said that even if Williams was not in the child-abuse registry, the information about the 2021 incident would have been retained in an internal database and should have been used to bar her from future foster placements.
In that 2021 case, Williams told officials that she heard a loud noise and then found the child unresponsive with labored breathing. Later, the children in that case alleged that Williams had grabbed the child’s braids and slammed her head to the floor.
Last month she tried to cover up the circumstances of Malayshia’s death over the nearly two weeks the child was missing, the police report said. Williams provided relatives and law enforcement with conflicting accounts about when she had last seen the girl, and crafted a phony text exchange to support her story that the child’s biological parents had kidnapped her, according to the report.
Investigators concluded that Williams used Malayshia’s phone to text herself: “Mommy I know you are waiting for me to come home but my family they don’t want me to be adopted. … I love you.”
The report lays out allegations by witnesses it does not identify who told police that Williams bent a child’s fingers backward until they were injured, made another stand in a corner all night, directed her 4-year-old son to hit another child with a sword, and forced Malayshia to walk up and down stairs wearing a heavy weighted vest. Williams had the inside of the home under video surveillance, according to the report, and required Malayshia to ask permission to use the bathroom.
Williams contradicted the witnesses’ accounts, saying she had never hit Malayshia, though she told police the child had recently fallen down a few steps. She said Malayshia sometimes wore a weighted vest to calm her during tantrums but had not worn it in about six months.
A medical examiner determined that Malayshia died of blunt force trauma, according to the police report. She had a fractured rib, bruises on her head, torso, and buttocks, and whiplike marks across her legs, the report said.
Surveillance video recorded shortly before 2 a.m. on Oct. 26 shows a man dragging a large bag, with what appeared to be a strand of braided hair sticking out, from the alley behind Williams’ block and loading it into a vehicle, the police report said.
The man, a relative who initially denied his involvement, later told police that Williams said the little girl “didn’t wake up,” and when he urged her to call police she told him it was too late, according to the report.
Authorities have not said whether the relative is expected to be charged.
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