Ellis Hickman left cards on the windshield of Rakiyya States? car in the weeks before she died. No one disputes it.
But investigators piecing together the Baltimore County woman?s killing also traced e-mails and instant messages they say Hickman and States exchanged. “When you leave a card and don?t sign it, that?s creepy,” she wrote in one message, according to court testimony.
Hickman is set to go on trial this week, accused of stalking and killing States. Defense attorney Edward Barry brought up the e-mails Monday, saying it can?t be known whether Hickman actually wrote them. Further, he said, they only offer proof he left the cards ? not that he killed her. Prosecutors must show the electronic messages are authentic and couldn?t have been altered, a judge said.
Hickman was living with his fiancee in the same complex as States in September 2005, when firefighters burst into her burning apartment and found her in a bathtub, suffocated and bludgeoned to death.
The e-mails show Hickman was “in effect stalking her,” prosecutor John Cox said Monday at a hearing just before jury selection. Bringing them up at trial will “show the efforts at communication” Hickman made before States was killed, Cox said.
Hickman left for Florida several weeks after her killing, after authorities confronted him with evidence suggesting he was involved in it, according to court testimony. A police officer will be called at trial to say authorities chased Hickman to a trash receptacle trying to arrest him in Florida, a prosecutor said.
Facing arson and harassment charges in addition to murder, Hickman was brought to court Monday.
Prosecutors agreed not to bring up at trial Hickman?s prior criminal record without notifying the court.
Hickman?s trial is scheduled to take five days.
