A Florida man was sentenced this week to life in prison for murdering his roommate – whose death he tried to frame as a suicide using a note penned nearly 40 years earlier.
James Edward Hicks, 62, strangled Terri Jo Williams, 65, in August 2022 and left her body in a shallow water decoration in the front yard of the Pensacola home she was trying to evict him from, the Pensacola News Journal reported.
However, Hicks — who’d called in sick that day — told cops he thought Williams had drowned herself because she had been battling depression, the arrest report showed.
Two days later, he claimed to have found a suicide note – which officers noticed was only half a page, with the bottom part torn off, the document stated.
Unbeknownst to the killer, cops had earlier taken a photo of the note in full — including the soon-to-be torn-off part that dated it to decades before Williams’ death.
In it, she had written “It doesn’t help that Jason died yesterday” – referring to Williams’ 2-year-old son, who died in 1985.
“James Hicks had intentionally removed part of the note that proved when Terri Williams had written it,” Assistant State Attorney Matt Gordon told the jury in May, according the Pensacola News Journal. “He had done so to corroborate his claim that she committed suicide.”
The note would “prove to be his downfall,” Gordon said.
An autopsy also revealed that Williams did not have any water in her lungs or nostrils, which discounted Hicks’ claim that she died by drowning.
Williams was found with bruising around her neck, as well as injuries to her forearm and four ribs that were broken while she was still alive. The medical examiner determined that she had been strangled and then left in the shallow water feature.
Interviews with Williams and Hicks’ neighbors revealed that they often heard fighting coming from the home, the arrest document stated.
Just a few hours before Williams died, she appeared in court on felony charges stemming from a July 22, 2022, incident in which she allegedly hit Hicks and used a hammer to break down his bedroom door.
The argument that led to Williams arrest was supposedly due to her asking Hicks to move out, the arrest report explained.
She had also asked her landlord and her son for advice on how to get her roommate to leave.
At the time of the killing, Williams and Hicks had lived together for eight years. They met while working at a local Publix, police said.
Hicks was arrested in October 2022 and found guilty in May of second-degree murder. Circuit Judge Linda Nobles sentenced him Tuesday to serve life in prison.