A Texas man will serve life in prison for killing his girlfriend and abandoning her body in a field in retaliation for her making a domestic violence complaint against him.
According to a press statement released Wednesday by Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, Jarvis Earl Hickerson, 40, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release for the murder of 32-year-old Amalia Alexander on Sept. 19, 2016.
The victim’s family has endured a protracted quest for justice, anguish over this horrific murder and an equally long wait for some form of closure.
“He took her body far away and left her there to rot,” Amalia’s sister, Laura Alexander, said in 2023. “He left her there to rot and let animals tear her apart. Think about that.”
Commenting on the delay, Ogg said: “Eight years is far too long for anyone to wait for justice, but our domestic violence unit was able to impose a life sentence, which was the appropriate sentence.”
“This case is horrifying and shows exactly why we take allegations of domestic violence so seriously – too often they escalate into murder,” she continued.
Prosecutors say the chain of events that led to the massacre began days after Alexander filed an assault complaint and protective order against Hickerson, alleging that Hickerson punched him at an IHOP restaurant in north Houston where they were dining.
Authorities said Hickerson tried to persuade Alexander to drop the charges and even offered to keep him from testifying, before killing him in his Houston apartment and dumping his body in a field in Montgomery County, more than 40 miles north of Houston.
“Amalia was strong, and his pleas and tactics didn’t work,” said Mary McFadden, chief of the district attorney’s office’s domestic violence unit. He knew then that she wouldn’t back down, so he killed her in retaliation.
Alexander was last seen with Hickerson on Sept. 19, 2016, after leaving the family home, which marked the beginning of a chain of events that ultimately led to Alexander’s death.
Authorities said the woman’s family filed a missing person’s report when she didn’t show up to work the next day.
According to a news release from the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, Hickerson said he had no idea where Alexander was or how he left the area.
Her skeletal remains were discovered shallowly buried in a Montgomery County field on November 30, 2016, by investigators who were led to the location by cell phone data, according to local news outlets.
Eventually, Hickerson, who had been jailed for violating a protection order imposed during a domestic violence dispute with Alexander earlier that year, was charged with murder in connection to the incident.
Prosecutors said he was seen leaving her apartment on the day she disappeared, and his cellphone records show he was near where her body was found two days in a row after she disappeared.
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Before Hickerson’s disappearance, her car was seen leaving and entering her apartment with a large item loaded in the bed.
While out on bail on the murder case, Hickerson strangled the new woman and disrupted a GPS monitor worn on her ankle, prosecutors said, adding that the suspect was taken into custody again on April 6, 2021, and has remained in custody since then.
According to the victim’s GoFundMe page, she chose to work with seniors as a career to “express her gifts of generosity and kindness.”
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