Asphyxia vs overdose: Pensacola man's murder trial hinges on which medical opinion is right
As the trial begins for the Pensacola man charged with killing his 65-year-old roommate over being evicted, there are two clearly different sides of how Terri Jo Williams died in 2022.
The state contends that 62-year-old James Hicks asphyxiated Williams on Aug. 12, 2022, during an argument and then staged her body in the front yard's small garden pond to appear like a suicidal drowning. Assistant State Attorney Matt Gordon told the jury there are multiple flaws with believing it was suicide.
"The most telling injuries were bruising to the musculature of her neck, injuries to her arms and four fractured ribs on the left side of her chest, ribs that had been broken while she was still alive," Gordon said during the trial. "Dr. (Deanna) Oleske found that Terri Jo Williams had been murdered. She found that she had been physically asphyxiated, meaning that airflow had been blocked through an event which put sufficient pressure on her throat and/or chest that made to where she was unable to breathe."
James Hicks charged: 61-year-old Pensacola man charged in asphyxiation-related homicide of female roommate
Oleske found Williams' cause of death to be homicidal violence, and she determined Williams' manner of death to be homicide. During the autopsy performed by Oleske, she also found there was no water in the lungs or nostrils of the victim, discounting the theory of drowning.
However, the defense refutes the state's telling of events as Hicks says he found her in the front yard that day and had nothing to do with her death.
"On the afternoon of Aug. 12, 2022, Mr. Hicks walked out of the front door of his home, was about to lock the front door and go get something to eat only to see his roommate of many years face down in the koi pond in the front yard," Hicks' attorney Casey Etheridge told the jury.
Etheridge also told the jury that a second doctor, medical consultant Dr. Craig Mallak, will testify during the trial and provide testimony that he believes Williams' cause of death was an overdose of amphetamines, not asphyxia.
"Dr. Craig Mallak ... will testify that his conclusion as to cause of death was an overdose," Etheridge told the jury. "You'll learn that Ms. Williams had a blood alcohol level two-and-a-half times the legal limit, cannabis in her system and a fatal amount of amphetamine in her body at the time of death.
The attorney also said Mallak will testify there are "important missing indicators" of asphyxiation.
Terri Jo Williams' suicide note
Despite the conflict in the opposing sides' views, Gordon says the suicide note Hicks' apparently found would "prove to be his downfall."
After Williams' death, Hicks gave a piece of paper he found in a trash can to law enforcement that appeared to be a suicide note, but the bottom half of the paper had been ripped off.
However, crime scene investigators happened to have taken photos of notebooks in William's room the day of her death, and in one of the notebooks was the exact same suicide note Hicks claimed to have found in a trash bin, including the part of the note that had been ripped off.
The bottom portion, which was torn off of the note Hicks gave investigators, dates the note to have been written decades prior to her death. Gordon said the bottom of the note said, "It doesn't help Jason died yesterday." Jason was 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," Gordon said. "He had done so to corroborate his claim that she committed suicide."
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola murder trial for Terri Jo Williams debates overdose asphyxia
