The punishment came nearly four years after Darryl and Sharon Getman were killed inside their Florida retirement-community home.
TAVARES, Fla. — Anthony Getman still sends messages to his parents’ old phone numbers on birthdays and holidays, years after Darryl and Sharon Getman were killed in the home where they had expected to spend their retirement.
That private ritual became part of a public courtroom proceeding when Anthony Getman testified during the penalty phase for Vickie Lynn Williams, the woman convicted of murdering his parents. His sister, Brittany Getman, also described the lasting weight of the loss. Their testimony came as a Lake County jury considered whether Williams should be sentenced to death or spend her life in prison. The jury chose life, and Judge Cary F. Rada imposed that sentence, resolving the final question of a trial that examined violence, mental illness, forensic evidence and the consequences of the deaths for one family.
Darryl Getman, 83, and Sharon Getman, 80, were found stabbed to death at the Lakeside at Waterman Village retirement community in Mount Dora on Dec. 31, 2022. Their green Kia Soul was gone. The discovery turned a quiet holiday weekend at a senior community into a homicide investigation that soon crossed state lines. Police eventually identified Williams as the suspect, recovered the couple’s vehicle in Georgia and spent the following years building a case that would culminate in two first-degree murder convictions.
Before investigators reached Georgia, surveillance evidence helped establish what had happened around the retirement complex. Police said Williams had been seen walking through Waterman Village and approaching residents. She asked people for assistance, including permission to use a shower and charge a phone. Footage later showed the Getmans’ Kia leaving the property. Those images helped authorities place Williams in the community and gave investigators a timeline as they tried to determine who had entered the couple’s home and where their missing vehicle had gone.
Sharon Getman’s cellphone supplied the investigation with a moving lead. The phone remained inside the Kia, and detectives used cellphone information along with license-plate readers to follow the vehicle away from Mount Dora. The trail eventually reached Savannah, Georgia. Williams was arrested there on Jan. 2, 2023. Authorities said she had taken jewelry and paintings belonging to the Getmans in addition to the car. What started as a search for two victims’ missing property therefore became an interstate effort involving Mount Dora police, state forensic specialists, Lake County authorities and Savannah officers.
The personal belongings later returned to the courtroom in another form. During the guilt phase, Brittany Getman identified property that belonged to her parents, including her mother’s wedding ring. Jurors also heard from forensic witnesses. Prosecutors presented DNA evidence and other testing from the Getmans’ home, as well as surveillance recordings and items recovered after Williams was found. The Fifth Judicial Circuit State Attorney’s Office said analysts at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Orlando Regional Crime Laboratory supplied important forensic evidence tying Williams to the scene.
The defense did not ask jurors to view the case only as a dispute over forensic identification. Its central argument was that Williams was legally insane when the couple died. Lawyers presented evidence that she suffered from schizophrenia and psychosis and argued that delusional thinking prevented her from understanding that her actions were wrong. The prosecution acknowledged the existence of serious mental illness but said it did not meet the threshold necessary to excuse the killings. That disagreement became the defining legal issue of the trial.
To make its case, the state asked jurors to examine what Williams did around the time of the homicides. Prosecutors pointed to her interactions before the killings and to evidence that she tried to clean up afterward, took property and left Florida in the couple’s car. They argued such actions reflected an awareness of wrongdoing. Fuller Blue, a Savannah acquaintance, testified that Williams later spoke about having a new car and laughed while saying things were all right. Prosecutors used that account as one part of their argument that Williams remained capable of purposeful conduct despite her psychiatric condition.
Jurors were persuaded. After hearing more than a week of testimony, they deliberated for about 30 minutes before finding Williams guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and theft. The verdict meant the insanity defense had failed and Williams would be held criminally responsible for the Getmans’ deaths. But because the State Attorney’s Office had announced it would seek capital punishment, the verdict did not immediately answer how Williams would spend the rest of her life.
The courtroom then changed focus. Evidence that had been relevant to guilt gave way to arguments over punishment and testimony about loss. Prosecutors said the circumstances of the killings and the victims’ ages supported death. Defense lawyers returned to Williams’ untreated schizophrenia and severe mental illness, this time not to ask for an acquittal but to argue against execution. Jurors who had already determined that Williams was legally responsible were asked to decide how much weight her illness should carry when choosing between life imprisonment and death.
For the Getman family, the penalty phase also created an opportunity to explain what could not be captured by crime-scene evidence. Brittany Getman said the deaths changed the way she experiences ordinary life and left joy diminished. Anthony Getman described continuing to reach toward his parents through messages that can no longer receive replies. Their testimony emphasized the long aftermath of the New Year’s Eve killings, when the effects of the crime continued far beyond the retirement community where the investigation began.
The jury’s decision spared Williams from execution. Rada sentenced her to life in the Florida Department of Corrections after jurors returned their recommendation. State Attorney Bill Gladson said afterward that the proceedings had held Williams accountable for the deaths of Darryl and Sharon Getman and thanked the agencies and forensic personnel involved. Assistant State Attorneys Thomas Wieczorek and Nicholas Camuccio prosecuted the case, according to the State Attorney’s Office.
The sentence brought together two judgments that emerged from different parts of the case. Jurors rejected the defense’s claim that Williams’ mental condition made her legally insane and therefore found her guilty. Yet when asked to choose a punishment, they declined the death penalty urged by prosecutors. Williams will remain imprisoned for life, while the verdicts stand as the legal determination that she was responsible for killing the Getmans and taking their property.
For the family, the sentence ended the trial but not the absence described from the witness stand. The case began with Darryl and Sharon Getman found dead in the retirement community where they lived, moved through a search that reached Georgia, and ended in a Lake County courtroom almost four years later. Williams no longer faces the possibility of execution. The confirmed outcome is life imprisonment for the two murders, while the Getmans’ children continue to live with the loss that the criminal proceedings could document but could not undo.
Author note: Last updated November 7, 2026.