A Florida man was sentenced to life in prison this week for murdering his roommate and then trying to make his death look like a suicide using a note he wrote nearly 40 years ago.
James Edward Hicks, 62, strangled Teri Jo Williams, 65, to death in August 2022 and left her body in a shallow water feature in the yard of the Pensacola home from which she was trying to evict him. The Pensacola News Journal reported..
But Hicks, who was out sick that day, told police he thought Williams drowned because she was battling depression, according to the arrest report.
Two days later, he claimed to have found a suicide note, but officers realized it was only half a page long and had the bottom ripped out, documents state.
Unbeknownst to the perpetrator, officers had previously photographed the entire note, including the section that was about to be cut out, showing that it was written decades before Williams’ death.
“It doesn’t help that Jason died yesterday,” she wrote, referring to Williams’ 2-year-old son who died in 1985.
“James Hicks knowingly deleted portions of the notes that would have established when Teri Williams wrote them,” Assistant State’s Attorney Matt Gordon told jurors in May, according to the Pensacola News Journal. “He did so to support his claim that she committed suicide.”
Gordon said the memo “will be his downfall.”
The autopsy also found that there was no water in Williams’ lungs or nostrils, refuting Hicks’ claim that she had drowned.
Williams was found alive with bruises around her neck, injuries to her forearms and four broken ribs. The coroner determined she had been strangled and left in shallow water.
According to arrest documents, interviews with Williams and Hicks’ neighbors revealed they frequently heard sounds of fighting coming from the home.
Just hours before Williams’ death, she appeared in court on felony charges for punching Hicks and breaking down her bedroom door with a hammer during a July 22, 2022 incident.
According to the arrest report, the altercation that led to Williams’ arrest appears to have started when she asked Hicks to leave.
She also asked her landlord and his son for advice on how to get her roommate to move out.
At the time of the murder, Williams and Hicks had been living together for eight years and police said the two met while both worked at a local Publix.
Hicks was arrested in October 2022 and convicted of second-degree murder in May. Circuit Judge Linda Nobles sentenced him to life in prison on Tuesday.
