Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Beauty Queen Has Meltdown as Jury Seals Her Fate in Baby Murder Case

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

Trinity Poague was acquitted of the most serious charge of malice murder in the death of baby Jaxton Dru but found guilty of two counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated battery and one count of cruelty to children. Poague, a former beauty queen, had been accused of beating JD to death in her dorm room. JD was the son of Poague's on-again, off-again boyfriend, Julian Williams. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy looks at the case and Poague's body language in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:If you’re ever injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can submit a claim in 8 clicks or less without having to leave your couch. To start your claim, visit: https://www.forthepeople.com/CrimeFixHost:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Producer:Jordan ChaconCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. We're going to hold responsible the person, the only person, who could have inflicted these injuries on this 18-month-old baby. A Georgia beauty queen was in the fight of her life as she stood accused. of beating her boyfriend's little boy to death, but her attorney said she was innocent. She has been accused of a crime she did not commit based upon speculation that is incorrect. I take a look at what we learned about the death of baby J.D. before the verdict in Trinity Pogue's trial. On counts two, three, four, five, and six, the verdict reads we the jury find

the defendant guilty. And I'll look at what Trinity's facial expressions may have told us. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. You know, there's a reason that Morgan and Morgan is America's largest personal injury law firm. It's because the firm wins a lot. The firm has more than 1,000 lawyers who've recovered $25 billion for more than 500,000 clients. In the last few months alone, a client in Florida received $12 million when the insurance company offered just $350,000.

In Pennsylvania, another client was awarded $26 million. That was 40 times the insurers offer. Morgan and Morgan makes it really easy to fight for what you deserve. You can even start a claim from your phone. So if you are ever injured, you can start a claim at for the people.com slash crime fix. Click the link below or scan that QR code that you see right there on your screen. Trinity Pogue has been convicted of a terrible crime that she says she didn't commit. She had been accused of murdering the 18-month-old son of her on-again, off-again boyfriend Julian Williams.

The little boy's legal name was Romeo Angelus, but everyone called him JD. Julian Williams was J.D.'s dad, and Julian was the primary parent in Little J.D.'s life. J.D. died in January of 2024 in Sumter County, Georgia. The DA says that J.D. died after spending time with Trinity Pogue alone. I'll get into the claims that the DA was making about Trinity in just a moment, but first a little bit more about her. In January of 2024, Trinity Pogue was a freshman at Georgia Southwestern State University. She was just 18 years old. A year earlier, she'd been crowned Miss Donaldsonville and even competed in the Miss National Peanut Festival. But Trinity's days as a pageant queen ended for good, following her arrest

for Little J.D.'s murder in early 2024. During Trinity's trial in Georgia, she didn't show a whole lot of emotion. And we'll talk about that with a body language expert here shortly. But first, here's a little bit of DA Bud Lamb's opening statement. Throughout all of this, one of the primary sources of friction think that you will hear about the primary sources of friction in this relationship and what you will hear is this that Trinity Pogue resented this child she resented this child because the child got more of of Julian Williams Jay goes by Jay but most people call him Jay Williams and so if I say Jay or Julian I'm talking about the same person I'm talking about the child's father

But, you know, the child, JD, got a lot more attention from Jay than, perhaps than Ms. Poe did. In addition to that, she, the evidence will show that she resented the fact that she was sort of placed in a stepmother role that that wasn't the role she wanted to be in, that she wanted to have a family, she wanted. to have children, she wanted to have a child or children with Jay Williams, but not that child. She wanted her own child with Jay Williams. Bud Lamb also told the jurors that there was evidence that Trinity simply didn't like Baby JD and had threatened to hurt him. You will see and hear evidence in both in the form of text messages and people who knew Trinity Pogue and who had conversations with her and you'll hear from them about the things that she said and you'll see some of the text messages that she said and going all the way back to like August of 2023 um you know she was

expressing her anger about the child her frustration about the child that uh you know commented in a text message to a roommate uh that she really would just like to punch him you know and it's like well i know that sounds terrible you know because he's just a little boy but still you know I wish I could just punch him. And she makes those references and things like that that continue throughout their relationship. So she texts Paris and she says, I can't do, I can't do being around JD anymore.

He hates me and I hate him. It's what she's telling Paris, even while she's driving to America's with the child in her car. She put a child in her car and Jay was following them up here. Lamb also told the jury how J.D. was fine when his dad was with him, but when he returned, the boy was hurt. When Jay Williams left to go to pick up pizza, the child was sitting up, eating. not in any distress, didn't have a mark on him. But by the time the child back to the emergency room, after spending 35 minutes in that room with Trinity Poe,

this is what the child had. He had fresh bruising on his face. There was a fresh bruise, a visible, immediate, you know, sort of immediately visible bruise on the right side, yeah, right side of his forehead. There was a bruise on the right side of his neck. There was a bruise on his cheek. There was a much bigger bruise on his other cheek.

And you'll hear some testimony from the medical examiner and maybe others about what kind of a bruise this was and this is what is what they call a pattern bruise, okay? It's something that when a doctor, when a medical examiner, somebody who's trained and experienced looks at it, they say, you know, I know what caused that bruise because it's like a bruise and there's a little break,

you know, skin, whatever, it's not bruise, and there's another bruise. And it's called a pattern bruise because it's something that is known it's the kind of bruise you get from a hard slap to the face, or from, from this kind of a thing, this kind of a pinch to the face. So there's that bruise on the left side.

He's bleeding from his brain. There are bruises, multiple bruises, four, five or more fresh bruises on the top of this child's head. Okay? Here and here and here and here and in the temporal parietal region, which I think means right here, okay, and up here at the top of his head. And, and that's not all. On the back of his head, this bone, right here, the bottom of the scalp, okay, that sort of dish shape, that kind of goes in, okay, sort of naturally

protected, protected by your shoulders and by the crown of your head. This bone here at the bottom of his skull, the occipital bone, is fractured. Now as the occipital bone fractured, but he has a massive hemorrhage at that location at the back of his head. A hemorrhage that was causing a hematoma collection of blood that was so, so fresh and so immediate that the people at the emergency room are like, you can feel it. But Trinity's defense attorney told jurors that Trinity was innocent. This is an 18-month old child that had tragic injuries. There's no question about that. Well, the second victim

sits at this table right here, right behind me. That victim is Trinity Poe. Because she has been accused of a crime she did not commit based upon speculation that is

incorrect. Because you're going to see from the evidence that what occurred here is nothing to do with Trinity Pope's hands, nothing to do with any violence she would have ever have done toward the child. The evidence is going to show you the Trinity Pope was 18 years old at the time she was accused of this crime. She had graduated from

high school the spring before that. She had graduated with honors. She had received a scholarship from the Jimmy Carter Scholarship Program. She agreed to come to Georgia Southwestern under that scholarship program to get a degree in nursing. She had just completed her first semester of school making straight A's when it began second semester in January of 2024. Now, when she first entered Georgia Southwestern back in August of 2023, she had a relationship, the relationship of boyfriend, girlfriend, with Julian Williams, who you've already heard a little about. Julian Williams is 23 years old.

She's 18. This relationship has already been described, and we acknowledge was volatile. It was an immature relationship. one in which they argued in fault and broke up and got back together and broke up and got back together. The breakups were usually on an hour or two, fussing over text, message, or whatever. But you will see from that evidence and all that you will hear from the courtroom that Julian Williams was a controlling boyfriend. He wanted to know everything about what Trinity Bow was doing.

He wanted to know the passwords for every bit of her social media, Snapchat, Facebook, TikTok, whatever it may be, he wanted complete access. That when he text message when he was away, he wanted a response immediately. He wanted to know that she was not going anywhere when she was in college where she would talk to other men. He did not want her to do anything. He was a controlling factor in their relationship. But at the same time, Trinity Poe at the time, thought she was in love with Eugene Williams.

And so as time went on from August until January. when this event occurred. Julian Williams would come to see her at Georgia Southwestern College and spend the night quite often. He spent every weekend, virtually every weekend with her. Tim Gamble told jurors the investigation into J.D.'s death was flawed. There was a rushed to judgment in this case. You'll see the GBI got in this case earlier. He said Attorney Pogue was the last person that was with a child. Child was in distress. She must have done. From that point on, There was no effort to do anything, but try to prove. Oh, the person they did.

But they had problems, as they said, when they went to the dorm room and they scoured it trying to find evidence, they found nothing. That did not support that theory very much. So they then have said they think it had to be within a time frame, a very short time frame that this occurred. When Julian Williams testified about his son's death, there was a very, very sad moment. And then the defense used that as an opportunity. to question the investigation. When was you throwing up? You possibly started when I got out, when I got him.

And I know you was throwing up when I got in the car. Okay. So when you were getting in the car, when you were in the car, he threw up on you. Did anybody ask you to take the jacket so they could test to see if the child threw up on your jacket? No. If they had, would you have turned it over to them? Yes, I still have. have it also where is it at my house you ever been cleaned no why because

this last thing I got to remember move nothing for me right you recross just don't we know but the way I know they didn't take in that jacket for evidence but did they in any way even talk to you about to mention it while they were interviewing you yes Now, in addition to that, when they were interviewing you and talking to you about the jacket, did anyone ever look at your hands? No. Did they ever photograph your hands?

No. No one asked you to show your hands like this to the GBI agents? Not do I recall. No law enforcement asked for that to occur? Not that I recall. No photographs taken by anyone? Not, no. Solve questions I have, Your Honor.

All right. Anything else? Nothing further. So let's talk now about Trinity Pogue's body language. And to do that, I want to bring in Susan Constantine. She is a body language expert. Susan, thanks so much for joining me. I appreciate it. I don't think Trinity shows a whole lot of emotion. You know, this is my take at least. I'm wondering what your thoughts are. Yes, and you're correct in that because she doesn't show a lot of emotion. But showing no emotion doesn't mean that she's not suppressing her emotions. And you

literally can see it in her eyes. So we can talk about that in some of these clips that you've got set up for me. Let's take a look now. This was right before opening statements when the judge was talking. Let's take a quick look. Please don't draw any inference from that. And any of the conversation between the court and the lawyers about those objections is not evidence. That's legal banter that is not evidence in this case. Okay, Susan, what did you think? Okay, so what we typically see her do is

there is no expression, of course, in her facial expression. She does tend to spread out somewhat and that's taking up a little bit of space. However, her overall demeanor is very subdued. So when you look at her

facial expressions, her eyes, her mouth, her, the psychophysiology within her skin even coloring, it really does tell a story. So when I'm looking at those expressions that she has and that she doesn't have, this is a form of suppression. So what she is doing is consciously suppressing emotions, but that doesn't mean that she's not feeling emotion. It is a strategic move not to deliberately suppress emotions so that she appears to have a neutral expression so others can't read her. But not everyone, including me. I can read

through those non-suppression expressions. So Susan, let's take a look at another clip. This was during opening statements. And this was really when the DA is talking about the fact that his opinion is that Trinity really resented J.D. this baby and wanted her own baby. with J.D.'s father. And so she's showing some emotion here. As you said, though, you think she's trying to conceal it. So let's take a look and talk about it on the other side. She resented this child because the child got more of Julian Williams. Jay. It goes by Jay. Most people call him Jay Williams. And so if I say Jay or Julian, I'm talking about the same person. I'm talking about the child's father. Okay, Susan. So Trinity Pogue is listening to the DA.

talk about all of these things that she said in text messages. She's obviously paying attention. She's writing down notes for her attorney. What did you see? Okay. So it's really interesting to watch what things that are triggering her. So you can see this little quick little rapid flash of eye flutter that happens at strategic moments. Here's the strategic moments. And also there's something I want to talk about in her contempt. But when you're talking about text messages, right, there is a fear response, right? She's swallowed. You could see that swallow that happened. When she was talking about punching, that she was wanting to punch him, this is what there's some of the allegations that others had made. You can see a quick little eye flutter that that happens.

When that occurs, that is a form of contempt also. So when her eyes are, rolling up is like, oh, whatever, you know, she's kind of dismissing it as a form of contempt, but also there's eye flutter. So eye flutters is cognitive load, and it increases. So what I'm looking at is when does it increase and when does it say more neutral? So like I'm watching your facial expressions and I'm watching your eye, you know, your eye movement, like your flutters, right? You're closing and open. And it's a very natural, calm, you know, in sync movement as you're talking because there's no threat, right? But when she's hearing these allegations, it's increasing her stressors. That's cognitive load. So that's when you start to say blink, blink, blink, blink, blink, blink,

blink, blink, blink, blink, blink, blink, blink, and all of on those strategic moments. And then the eye diversion, which is a form of contempt, dismissal, like smugness. So those are things that I look for when I'm watching her, they're so subtle that if you don't know how to count blink rates and what's normal and what is not and understand baseline and when it increases and decreases, you'll miss it. But when I'm trained to look for that, to me, it's glaring. Yeah, I'm definitely not threatened by you. No, you didn't be. You have nothing to hide. Just let you know that. Okay, we are going to take a look now at Trinity Pogue during her defense attorney's opening statement. See if you see anything different. And so as time went on from August until January when this event occurred, Julian Williams would come to

see her at Georgia Southwestern College and spend the night quite often. He spent every weekend, virtually every weekend with her. And most days, he spent at least a couple of times during the weekday with her. Okay. So in this one, we're seeing the crocodile tears, right? So there's not any sort of tears that are streaming down her face. She's very self-aware. So she's kind of patting, touching, but there's not a real flow of the glands. So she's very self-aware. So she's not wanting to show, again, these are all these suppression, because this is all part of what we call image management. This is what she's impression management. This is what she's impression management. She's trying to give us a visual of that she's crying, but yet she can't produce the tears. So that's why you see her just kind of tapping them. The other thing is you might have seen where she kind of bit her lip. It's a part right there. All right, so that's concern.

So when you're hearing something that might create concern, because what you're doing is you are going back into a file in your subconscious memory when she heard that comment that created concern. So now if I were an investigator, I would be swarming around that queue because somewhere in there, there was concern. Now, the other thing is that she tends to kind of look away. So look at the times where she looks away and at what point she does because when I'm reading her in anyone's body language, you have to tie it to content.

When somebody says something and then watch a change in their baseline, when there's a change in baseline, there's something changed. And that's really the bottom line. So what happened? There's obviously concern there because she swallowed. She dabbed her eyes. She's trying to give the impression that she's, you know, taken by it that is creating an emotional response, but yet no flow of tears. She's biting the lip, which is concern. So now that's a cluster. See, now you start to thread the story together, and it begins to tell a different story nonverbaly. Really interesting. Do you think she's so self-aware, in part because of her background on the beauty pageant circuit? She's used to being on stage, so she knows how to present herself, and she knows that it's important to carry herself in a certain way. Sure. That's just part of performance, and that's image management.

That's what falls underneath one of the points of interest in deception, a point a point of interest in deception is image management. That is where you try to control your expression so that you can convey a different, you know, emotion or a different, you know, think thought pattern. So, or sometimes when they're talking, they'll use language that will create a kind of a great image of themselves. So as a beauty queen, she knows.

She's on camera, right? So she knows how we're supposed to walk, how it's supposed to talk, and then how I'm supposed to carry my body language, and you're in performance because all the eyes are on you. So they try to shut down these non-verbals. You often see these artificial smiles, so those caged, you know, selfie smiles, but you don't see this here. She's not, you know, she's not on runway, but this is what they do because, you know, they're in front of the limelight. So you have to do take that into consideration. However, if I, I were the jury. Let's think about how the jury might perceive all of this. They're not going to see, oh, you know, she's really upset. She's crying. She seems dismissive. She doesn't seem like she's showing the right emotional effect. That's what they're reading. They may not know why she's doing it, but they are smart enough to figure out going, something's off with this. Because when a real emotion is projected, like on your face, if you're happy, you're going to actually make me smile. If you're upset about something, I might even throw my eyes.

eyebrows. So we tend to match and mirror emotion. So when you're looking at the jury, if I were in that jury in that courtroom, I'd be watching the jury to see how many people are showing any sort of empathy or concern with her. And chances are they are not. If that's the case, then they're not going to sympathize and the emotion of sympathy is a really big factor here. Well, Susan, it's always interesting to talk to you. You've always got some really interesting analysis when it comes to body language. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming on. You're welcome. Now there's one facial expression from Trinity Pogue that we really do not need Susan here to analyze, and that is the face that she made when the verdicts were read. All right, Ms. Pogue, if you would please stand.

The verdict reads as follows as to each count. On count one, it says we the jury find the defendant not guilty. On counts two, three, four, five, and six, the verdict reads, we the jury find the defendant guilty of felony murder, two counts, aggravated battery, two counts, and cruelty to child in the first degree. So Pogue was acquitted of malice murder, but convicted of two counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated battery, and one count of cruelty to children. The judge sentenced Trinity Pogue to life in prison. And she was clearly dejected and disappointed when hearing those words from the judge.

She plans to appeal. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Annette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.