SHAKER HEIGHTS, OH – Ronald B. Williams is from Atlanta, Georgia but had moved to New York to work and was relocating to Cleveland, Ohio to marry Aisha Fraser.
On his Facebook page Williams makes reference to Fraser ” living in fear and being trapped by circumstances and responsibilities, so much that you couldn’t even save your own life, you had to depend on others.”
Williams’ thoughts amplify the concerns of another person who now thinks Mason’s words had a different meaning when he shared with her that he couldn’t see himself without “his” family before he nearly decapitated his ex-wife in front of their 9-year-old daughter on November 17. A source described Lance as picking up a garden hoe and swinging it at his wife’s neck.
Aisha Fraser was an only child who was helping care for both her aging and ailing parents when Mason took her life. Aisha was about to divorce Mason in September 2014 when he attacked her in front of their two daughters while driving along Van Aken Boulevard. Aisha had papers ready to serve him, but she wanted to do it in a public place.
Lance didn’t care about being in public when he smashed his fists into her pretty face and bit her over 20 times. He chased his badly-injured and bloodied wife out of the vehicle and down the street; leaving their two children alone and unattended. The brute force of his fists against her faced smashed her orbital eye socket and she later required reconstructive surgery.
After his brutal attack Aisha didn’t wait to kill off the rest of their relationship. She filed for divorce three days later and sued him in civil court for damages. She got an award of $150,000.
The ex-judge and state senator had a team of lawyers represent him like anyone with wealth or access to legal support would have on his side; which gave him the appearance of “more” representation than the average citizen that didn’t sit well with victims of domestic violence.
Lance also had 37 prominent citizens who testified to their professional and personal interactions with him “before” the act of rage against his ex-wife. He got 9 months of prison and a job $45,000 a year job with the city of Cleveland after his release. None expected him to repeat another attack.
Lance was given supervised visits with his children through a plan that included him dropping them off with his sister, Lynn, at Aisha’s rental property on 174th and Chagrin Boulevard. The couple didn’t have to see each other. Lance told a friend he wanted to be reunited with “his” family but Aisha wasn’t having it. She’d move on.
Ronald B. Williams and Aisha met in college 24 years ago. She attended Florida A&M University. They stayed friends.
Ronald had leased a home in Cleveland as he and Aisha prepared to marry. News of Aisha’s brutal murder devastated him.
Williams said Mason had no business at the house the morning he took Aisha’s life; and he knew the security steps she took to avoid him. There’s no truth, he said, to any suggestion that she wanted to reconcile with him. To one legal professional Mason’s appearance at Aisha’s house before she dropped off her daughter appears to be pre-meditated.
Lance didn’t own a car. The black Audi station wagon he drove away from the scene of his crime and into the body of a Shaker Heights police officer belonged to Aisha.
He ran back into the house where his sister had closed the door; and was arrested by the suburban city’s police.
Ronald’s breaking heart over the woman he loves has created an anguish in him where he believes the city’s “powers that be” let Aisha down. He listened to the 9-1-1 dispatch recording from 2014 and thought Mason should have been charged with attempted murder.
His anguish is understandable from the perspective of an Atlanta, Georgia native unfamiliar with Ohio laws.
Lance was charged with two counts of felonious assault, one attempted felonious assault, two counts of kidnapping, domestic violence and two counts of endangering children. All the charges but the “attempted felonious assault” and “domestic violence” were dropped. He pled guilty to the other two.
On September 16, 2015 visiting Judge Patricia Cosgrove sentenced Lance to 24 months at Lorain Correctional Institute with others he’d sent to the prison. She gave him credit for 6 days. Cosgrove was not an elected judge of Cuyahoga County.
Aisha isn’t the only Florida A&M University alumnus to be brutally murdered by a former spouse. New Jersey financial analyst Debora Bledsoe was shot to death by her daughter’s father, James Ray, III, in her upscale home.
Ray dropped off their 6-year-old daughter with a relative and drove through Texas and entered Mexico where he caught an airplane to Cuba. He was extradited from Cuba back to New Jersey.
