Murderous roommate's huge mistake after claiming woman who tried to evict him committed suicide

An abusive lodger who murdered his landlady tried to convince police she had killed herself 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, had been trying to evict James Hicks from her Florida home and was in court on the day of her death where Hicks, 63, was due to face trial for assaulting her.

Hicks told police she was his 'best friend' and he had found the grandmother drowned in a fountain outside the Pensacola bungalow they had shared for eight years.

But he was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday after a pathologist told a court there was no water in her lungs and she had been badly beaten before being asphyxiated.

'Love you always girl, rest in paradise,' friend Melanie Wright wrote on her obituary page. 'You finally have Jason in your arms again.'

James Edward Hicks claimed that he had found Terri Jo Williams dead after she drowned herself in a tiny pond outside the home they shared in Pensacola, Florida

The much-loved grandmother had been asphyxiated by the lodger she was trying to evict

Police responding to a neighbor's 911 call found the mother-of-three face down in the tiny water feature next to her front door on August 12, 2022.

Hicks told police that he had found her there and 'insisted' they look in her car, where they found alcohol on the passenger floorboard, and a single pill on the driver's seat.

She was pronounced dead at the scene and pathologist Deanna Oleske found her death to be a homicide by asphyxiation, noting 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 claimed to have found in the home's laundry room two days after her death.

'He presented the letter as being hand-written by (Williams) containing suicidal statements,' the court learned from the Pensacola Police Department affidavit

'When (Hicks) presented the letter only half of the page was present, with the bottom missing as though it was torn off.'

But investigators 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 revealed the missing bottom half of the note in which Williams had written 'It doesn't help Jason died yesterday' - referring to Williams' two-year-old son who had died in 1985.

Williams was found dead in a 'decorative eater feature' outside the front door of her home

Hicks handed police what he claimed was a suicide note, but they discovered she had written decades earlier after the death of her two-year-old son, Jason 

'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 at Escambia County Court.

'He had done so to corroborate his claim that she committed suicide.'

The court heard that Williams had met her killer when they were co-workers at the Florida-based Publix supermarket chain, and she had invited him to sub-let a room in her home.

Immediately after her death Hicks sent her a text message asking 'Where are you? You OK … text me,' and he told police that they 'communicated almost every day'.

But Williams had been trying to evict Hicks from the house, and police found a journal she had kept documenting a series of physical attacks by her lodger.

A forensic investigation of his phone and found only two other messages between the pair.

Neighbors told investigators that they often heard arguments coming from inside the single-story home and that Williams had described Hicks as abusive.

'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 told the court.

'Dr 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.'

Williams left two surviving sons and five grandchildren, and her family wrote that her 'proudest accomplishments, hands down, were her children'.

'The pride she exuded when talking about them was second to none.

Williams left two surviving sons and five grandchildren, and her family wrote that her 'proudest accomplishments, hands down, were her children'

'Throughout their lives, Terri treasured her role as mother to Kevin and Bryan, and by extension, to their families and her five grandchildren.'

In their obituary tribute they described her as 'strong, funny, hard-working and exceedingly caring and loving'.

'As evidenced by her lifelong collection of Native American keepsakes, she shared the cultural sanctity of nature and animals. Terri was a compassionate lover of animals, big and small.

'Any stray that might cross her path found a loving home.'