John Jefferson
Jarvis Earl Hickerson and Amalia Alexander (Harris County Sheriff’s Office).
A Texas man who retaliated against his girlfriend, by killing her and dumping her body in a field after she filed domestic violence charges against him, will spend the rest of his life in prison.
Jarvis Earl Hickerson, 40, was sentenced on Wednesday to life in prison without parole for the 2016 killing of 32-year-old Amalia Alexander on Sept. 19, 2016, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced in a news release.
It was a long wait for justice for the victim’s family, in pain over the gut-wrenching killing and the similarly long wait for any kind of healing.
“He took her body far away and left her there to rot,” Laura Alexander, Amalia’s sister, said in 2023, local ABC affiliate KTRK reported. “Left her there to rot and let the animals tear her apart. Think about that.”
Ogg remarked about the lag, saying: “Eight years is too long for anyone to have to wait for justice, but our Domestic Violence Division was able to get life without parole, which was the appropriate sentence.”
“This case is horrible and shows exactly why we take every allegation of domestic violence so seriously – too often it escalates to homicide,” she added in the news release.
The series of events leading to the bloodshed began days after Alexander filed an assault charge and a protective order against Hickerson for assault after he hit her at a north Houston IHOP restaurant where they were eating, prosecutors said.
After failing to convince her to drop the charges – even proposing to her to keep her from testifying against him – Hickerson killed Alexander in her Houston apartment and dumped her remains in a field in Montgomery County, more than 40 miles north of Houston, authorities said.
“His begging and manipulation didn’t work – because Amalia was strong,” said Mary McFaden, who heads the DA’s Domestic Violence Division. “At that point, he knew she was not going to back down, so he killed her in retaliation.”
The series of events leading to Alexander’s death began on Sept. 19, 2016, when she was last seen with Hickerson after the two of them left a family member’s residence.
The woman’s family filed a missing-person report after she didn’t show up for work the following day, authorities said.
Hickerson claimed he did not know where Alexander was or how she left the area, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
On Nov. 30, 2016, authorities found her skeletal remains in a shallow grave in a field in Montgomery County, officials said. Cellular phone records led investigators to that location, local NBC affiliate KPRC reported.
At the time, Hickerson was in jail for violating a protective order that was placed on him after a domestic violence altercation with Alexander earlier that year, and he was eventually charged with capital murder in the case.
Prosecutors said surveillance video showed him leaving her apartment the day she disappeared, and his cellphone records showed he was in the area where her remains were found on two consecutive days after she went missing.
KPRC reported that Hickerson’s truck – with a large object in the bed – was seen arriving and leaving her apartment complex before she disappeared.
While free on bond in the murder case, Hickerson tampered with his GPS ankle monitor and assaulted a different girlfriend by choking her. He was rearrested on April 6, 2021, and has remained in custody since, prosecutors said.
The victim’s GoFundMe page said she had chosen a career working with the elderly so she could “express her gift of generosity and kindness.”
“She moved to Houston to start a new life,” the page reads. “She loved God and had a smile and a laugh that would brighten your day.”
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