Murderous roommate’s huge mistake after claiming woman who tried to evict him committed suicide
An abusive tenant who murdered his landlady tried to convince police she had committed suicide by handing them an unfulfilled suicide note she had written years earlier, after the death of her two-year-old son.
Terri Jo Williams, 65, tried to evict James Hicks from her Florida home and was in court the day she died. Hicks, 63, was facing a charge of assault.
Hicks told police she was his “best friend” and that he found the grandmother drowned in a fountain outside the Pensacola bungalow they shared for eight years.
But he was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday after a pathologist told the court there was no water in her lungs and that she had been severely beaten before being suffocated.
“Love you always girl, rest in paradise,” friend Melanie Wright wrote on her obituary. “You finally have Jason in your arms again.”
James Edward Hicks claimed he found Terri Jo Williams dead after she drowned herself in a small pond outside the home they shared in Pensacola, Florida
The beloved grandmother was suffocated by the tenant she was trying to evict
When police responded to a 911 call from a neighbor, they found the mother of three face down in the small water feature next to her front door on August 12, 2022.
Hicks told police he found her there and insisted they look in her car. They found alcohol on the passenger floorboards and a single pill on the driver’s seat.
She was pronounced dead at the scene and pathologist Deanna Oleske determined she died of asphyxiation. She suffered two broken ribs, abrasions on her arms and bruising on the back of her head.
During a police interview a week later, Hicks gave officers a “suicide note” he said he found in the home’s laundry room two days after her death.
“He presented the letter as being handwritten by (Williams) and containing statements of suicide,” the court heard from the Pensacola police affidavit.
“When (Hicks) presented the letter, only half the page was there; the bottom was missing, as if it had been torn off.”
But detectives had already photographed the letter after finding it among her papers during a search of her bedroom on the day of her death.
The photo shows the bottom half of the note on which Williams had written: “It doesn’t help that Jason died yesterday” – referring to Williams’ two-year-old son who died in 1985.
Williams was found dead in a “decorative dining area” outside the front door of her home
Hicks gave police what he claimed was a suicide note, but they discovered she had written it decades earlier, after the death of her two-year-old son Jason
“James Hicks intentionally left out a portion of the note that indicated when Terri Williams wrote it,” Assistant District Attorney Matt Gordon told the jury in Escambia County Superior Court.
“He did this to support his claim that she had committed suicide.”
The court heard that Williams had met her killer when they worked together at the Publix supermarket chain in Florida, and that she had invited him to sublet a room in her home.
Immediately after her death, Hicks texted her asking, “Where are you? You’re okay… text me,” and he told police they were “in touch almost every day.”
However, Williams attempted to evict Hicks from the home and police found a diary in which she documented a series of physical attacks by her tenant.
Forensic examination of his phone found only two other messages between the two.
Neighbors told detectives they often heard arguing coming from the one-story home and that Williams described Hicks as violent.
“The most noticeable injuries were bruising to the muscles in her neck, injuries to her arms and four broken ribs on the left side of her chest, ribs that had been broken when she was alive,” Gordon told the court.
‘Dr. Oleske discovered that Terri Jo Williams had been murdered.
“She discovered that she had physically asphyxiated, meaning that airflow had been blocked by an event that put so much pressure on her throat and/or chest that she could no longer breathe.”
Williams was survived by two surviving sons and five grandchildren. Her family wrote that her “proudest achievement, without a doubt, was her children.”
‘The pride she exuded when she spoke about it was unparalleled.
Williams left behind two surviving sons and five grandchildren, and her family wrote that her “proudest achievements, without a doubt, were her children”
“Terri has always valued her role as a mother to Kevin and Bryan, and by extension, to their families and her five grandchildren.”
In their obituary, they described her as “strong, funny, hardworking and extremely caring and loving.”
“As evidenced by her lifelong collection of Native American memorabilia, she shared the cultural sacredness of nature and animals. Terri was a compassionate animal lover, large and small.
“Every stray dog that crossed her path found a loving home.”