Laura Williams

**Laura Williams** (Fay Masterson) was the main villainess of "Mommie Deadest," episode 8.22 of *CSI: Miami* (airdate May 10, 2010). She was the wife of Chuck Williams, and the couple had three children together: Andrea, Cody, and Bradley.

Laura was believed to be a "perfect" soccer mom by many of the people who knew her, but it was discovered that beneath the façade was a habitual child abuser whose motives were heavily implied to be perfectionism and unaddressed anger issues. Her backstory revealed that she and her family used to live in Philadelphia before moving to Miami. Furthermore, a murderous incident took place on August 23, 2003, when Laura blamed Bradley—who was 5 years old—for burning a hole in the carpet (when it was actually Andrea who did so), after which she forced him to drink lighter fluid. He died as a result, with Laura blackmailing and intimidating Chuck into keeping quiet by stating that their two remaining children would be taken away from them if he divulged the truth.

Bradley's death was officially ruled to be an accident, and for over six years, her torturous abuse continued. Andrea disclosed that her sadistic mother angrily declared that she was "worthless" and regularly handcuffed her to her bed after she found out about her sneaking out to see her boyfriend Logan Price (a college baseball player) one night; the female latter was known to despise the fact that the pair were even in a relationship at all. Additionally, preparations for the family's 2009 Thanksgiving dinner went awry when the evil Laura lashed out at her daughter for "[acting] like an animal" by grabbing food early. While forcing Andrea to eat out of a dog bowl, she yelled an insult at her and ominously glared at Cody as he recorded the ordeal on Laura's camera. When Andrea called 911 during another incident of her mistreatment on April 8, 2010, the deranged woman charmed the dispatchers by offering soda to them, allowing her to get away with her nefarious deeds.

At the beginning of the episode, Laura and Chuck were celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary by hosting a party at their house, but after it ended, Cody feared that he would receive more vicious "discipline" (whether it was going to be her hitting him, reminding him that "something [was] wrong" with him, or worse), as he had accidentally left a huge stain on the couch with his red marker when he left it open. Laura was then alerted to the sound of glass breaking and saw a lamp that Logan inadvertently broke while sneaking in to see his girlfriend. With his mother on the warpath, Cody approached her from behind and struck her in her back with an aluminum baseball bat, causing her to fall to the ground. Turning around to see who her attacker was, the wrathful villainess snarled at her only living son and prepared to stand up so she could unleash her cruelty on him again, only for Cody to fatally strike her head before hitting her seven more times.

This was followed by Andrea arriving at the scene and helping Cody cover his tracks by instructing him to never tell anyone about what he had done, along with wiping down the bat and planting it amongst Logan's bats in his apartment before falsely admitting to killing her mother. Even so, Cody was officially unveiled as the true killer in the episode's climax when Natalia Boa Vista and Horatio Caine interviewed him with his father present. After Cody's tearful confession, Chuck attempted to take the fall, only for Horatio to respond by saying that he would talk to the prosecutor in Cody's case about the horrific conditions the Williams family endured. He added that Chuck and his daughter needed to tell "the whole story" about Laura's villainy.