Former small-town beauty queen Trinity Madison Poague cried out in shock as she learned her fate from a Georgia jury after being tried for the murder of her ex-boyfriend’s toddler son.
The 20-year-old former college student, who was tried for the January, 2024 homicide of of 18-month-old Romeo “Jaxton Dru” Angeles, appeared to have contrasting reactions as a Sumpter County judge read her jury’s verdicts on Friday.
At first, the judge reported Poague was declared not guilty of the most severe charge of “malice murder,” causing her to cry out and burst into what appeared to be tears of relief — only to have them instantly vanish as the panel found her guilty of five other charges.
Those included felony murder, aggravated battery, and child cruelty.
Later, the judge handed down a life sentence and an additional 20 concurrent years — just under an hour after the jury returned its guilty verdict.
“I don’t do a lot of speaking when I am passing the sentence. I have heard the case, and I’ve considered the tragedy,” W. James Sizemore Jr. said when he delivered his sentence later. “The bottom line is you’re going to receive a sentence of life in prison.”
Poague, a sophomore at Georgia Southwestern State University at the time, was charged with killing the young tot inside her boyfriend Julian Williams’ dorm room while he was out picking up a pizza.
Prosecutors argued that resentment fueled the killing because she allegedly wanted a child of her own with Williams, according to news coverage of the trial.
“She wanted to have a child or children with Julian Williams,” prosecutor Lewis Lamb told jurors on Tuesday, according to feed from CourtTV. “But not that child.”
While he was getting the meal, Pogue informed Williams in a text that his son was not breathing. He hurried back to discover the toddler unresponsive and drove him to an emergency room.
Later, the child was flown to a children’s hospital in Atlanta in an unsuccessful effort save his life.
Poague was charged with the murder a week after the toddler’s death after a medical examiner had determined the cause of death was a blunt force trauma to the head.
Poague first told detectives that the toddler was eating chips moments before he became unresponsive, a claim that an autopsy showed the child hadn’t eaten at all. She also claimed the child had fallen off a bed.
The prosecution also introduced evidence that while at the hospital, Poague searched for terms like, “How do you get a brain bleed?” and “How can a depressed skull fracture go unnoticed?”
Poague earned the 2023 Miss Donalsonville title, representing the southwestern Georgia town of hardly 3,000 residents. She later participated in the National Peanut Festival beauty pageant, where she did not place.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more