A Pensacola woman wanted to evict her roommate in 2022. Now he's on trial for her murder.
Editor’s note: The story has been changed to correctly explain the medical examiner’s findings. A 62-year-old Pensacola man will stand trial this week for allegedly strangling his roommate who tried evicting him in 2022.
James Edward Hicks will sit before a jury that will determine if he committed the second-degree murder of 65-year-old Terri Jo Williams on Aug. 12, 2022, by strangling her and leaving her body in a shallow decorative water feature at her Aqua Vista Drive home.
Although Hicks claimed he found Williams dead at the house in the water fixture, a medical examiner during an autopsy discovered Williams had broken ribs but did not have water in her lungs and nostrils. Dr. Deanna Oleske determined Williams' died of asphyxia and the manner of death was homicide.
PPD arrests Hicks: 61-year-old Pensacola man charged in asphyxiation-related homicide of female roommate
"Over the course of the investigation, the evidence led to James Edward Hicks as the person who took the life of Terri Williams," court records say. "For the past eight years, Terri and James resided together as roommates."
Court records indicate that Williams rented the home and sublet a room to Hicks, but the woman eventually attempted to evict Hicks from the room, which led to a confrontation.
That confrontation led to battery charges against Williams. The day she was killed, Williams attended a court hearing for those charges, and Hicks told law enforcement that he did not attend court with her.
"On the date of Terri's death ... James' statement was he never exited the house, nor saw Terri after returning from court until he was leaving the house to get Arby's and found Terri in the shallow 3-foot by 3-foot decorative water feature," court records say. "This is direct contradiction to a statement James made to Travis Workman, who assisted with CPR."
According to Workman, Hicks told him that he had gone inside the home to take a shower while Williams went to the store to buy cigarettes.
Hicks also told law enforcement he discovered a suicide note two days after Williams' death he alleged was written by Williams, but officers said the note was "only half a page" with the bottom missing "as though it was torn off."
"Upon a review of photographs taken inside Terri's home and in her bedroom on the day Terri died, the exact same letter had been located and photographed," records say. "The photograph showed the letter as a full-page latter, attached in a spiral notebook with the bottom portion of the letter indicating the suicide note was several decades old."
During Hicks' police interview, records say he was unable to explain how a portion of the letter was ripped off and found in the laundry room two days after police photographed the same intact letter in Williams' room the day of the death.
Hicks' trial is scheduled to begin Tuesday and last three days. He faces up to 30 years in state prison if the jury convicts him as charged.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola man James Hicks on trial for Terri Jo Williams murder