During a trial at the Lowndes County Circuit Court on Tuesday, 19-year-old Shae Boykin testified that, on Aug. 14, 2014, her then boyfriend Traveil Hicks told her he murdered 46-year-old Gwen Roberson.
It was a confession Boykin relayed to investigators with the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office and led to Hicks’ arrest the next day.
“I knew that it wasn’t right,” Boykin said when she took the stand Tuesday. “It wouldn’t be right for me to hold that in.”
Hicks’ trial for capital murder and arson began Tuesday with Assistant District Attorney Lindsay Clemons prosecuting and Judge Lee Howard presiding. Public defender Steve Wallace represents 19-year-old Hicks, who is not eligible for the death penalty because he was 17 at the time he allegedly committed the crime.
As Clemons questioned Boykin on the stand on Tuesday, Boykin told the jury how three days after the trailer fire that destroyed Roberson’s home and burned her body, Hicks stood outside Boykin’s bedroom window crying and telling her what he had done. She said he told her that he broke into Roberson’s home to steal money, hit her in the head twice — first with the butt of his gun and then with a cast iron skillet he took from the kitchen — and then stabbed her in the neck with a knife he found in the kitchen before setting the trailer on fire.
Clemons also called on LCSO Sgt. Will Spann, who was a detective at the time of Roberson’s death, to testify. When Boykin told him and two other detectives what Hicks told her, what she said matched with injuries found on Roberson’s body, Spann told the jury. He testified that no other suspect’s information matched the evidence authorities already had.
At the trial, Boykin said she initially didn’t want to turn Hicks in to the LCSO but she changed her mind because “(Roberson) deserves justice.”
Wallace questioned Boykin’s motives for turning Hicks in and asked if Hicks had sex with Boykin’s mother shortly before the murder. Boykin said she didn’t know but admitted that “she was mad at both of them” at the time.
Boykin’s mother Ann Elmore Mosely, who Clemons also called to the stand as a witness, said she never had any kind of sexual relationship with Hicks and testified that, in the days following the fire at Roberson’s trailer, Hicks was acting unusual and “crying terribly bad.”
But the brunt of the testimony Tuesday was from Boykin, who explained to the jury that Hicks told her he planned to break into Roberson’s home to steal money. Boykin said Hicks told her he snuck through the house and came upon Roberson singing in the bathroom. Roberson screamed, and Hicks told her he just came over to borrow sugar for his grandmother and that the door had been open, Boykin testified.
Roberson then walked to the front part of the trailer near the kitchen and front door to check on the lock, Boykin said.
“And that’s when he had hit her in the head with the … butt of the gun,” Boykin said on the stand.
Boykin said Hicks told her Roberson fell face down on the floor of the trailer but was still breathing, so Hicks took a cast iron skillet from the kitchen and hit her in the back of the head. When she still was breathing, he took a knife from the kitchen and stabbed her in the back of the neck, Boykin said Hicks told her.
Other witnesses who testified on Tuesday included Thomas Culpepper, a narcotics agent with LCSO who was the first deputy on the scene the night of the fire, LCSO Capt. Ryan Rickert and Lowndes County Coroner Greg Merchant.
The trial continues today.
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