Court Hears Testimony in Hickey Murder Case

By Sam Thrift Thursday, September 15, 2011

Brothers Darius and Dennis Hickey sat before a York County judge Wednesday afternoon and told him how the morning of June 9 seemed like a normal Thursday morning.

Darius, 14, spoke to his mother when he woke up at 6:45 a.m. and saw her sleeping when he left for school about thirty minutes later. Dennis, a junior at Christopher Newport University, woke up between 9:30 and 10 a.m. and thought he was alone. Assuming his mother went to work, Dennis called her cellphone, but couldn’t reach her.

Feeling something was wrong, he checked to see if his mother’s car was in the driveway. When he saw the vehicle in front of their home on Arcadia Loop in York County, he went to her closed bedroom door to knock, then see if she was still in bed.

Around noon, Dennis Hickey found his mother bleeding next to her bed, called 911 and administered CPR until the medics arrived. Medics pronounced her dead at the scene.

Two days later, the York County Sheriff’s Office arrested MacCoy Johnson, a 43-year-old Newport News man who had a short relationship with the 39-year-old victim, Felice Hickey, months before. They charged him with first degree murder.

York County Commonwealth’s Attorney Eileen Addison questioned multiple witnesses on the stand Wednesday in York-Poquoson Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court, piecing together a possible timeline of the same morning from Johnson’s perspective.

Johnson’s boss, an executive chef from the Omni Hotel off J. Clyde Morris Boulevard in Newport News, met Johnson at the service entrance behind the hotel around 8:30 that Thursday morning. When his boss gave him a ride to the bus stop the night before, Johnson had offered to detail his car the next morning. Taking him up on his offer, the chef watched as Johnson drove his black Dodge Caliber out of the Omni parking lot a few minutes later.

An employee of a car wash on Route 17 in York County, two miles away from Hickey’s home, said he walked by a black Caliber around 10:15 to 10:30 a.m. when he was emptying the trash. Johnson, he said, was the man vacuuming the car and asked the employee where he could fill up his bucket.  

Johnson, a prep and line cook, brought the “sparkling clean” car back to the Omni between 12:30 and 1 p.m., dropping the keys on his boss’s desk.

Addison questioned the York County investigators who had interviewed Johnson about eight hours after Hickey was found dead. In the hour-plus interview, Johnson told investigators he was washing a car in front of the Omni that morning and he had not seen the victim for three weeks. He said their relationship was more like friendship than love.

When investigators asked about a wedding band picture on Johnson’s phone, he admitted it was for Hickey.

A mutual friend of Johnson and Hickey, also a coworker of the accused, described the relationship between the two on the stand. He said they began dating in April and by May, Johnson had mentioned wanting to marry the victim. Although the witness suggested to Johnson that he wait, he proposed to Hickey soon after. Hickey broke up with the Johnson in response, the witness said.

The witness told the courtroom that two weeks before Hickey’s murder, Johnson told him that he went to Hickey’s house after a fight with his sister and heard a man’s voice through the door. The defendant later told the witness that Hickey said she was seeing another man.

Investigators went to the York County carwash the day after the murder. In a garbage bag in the carwash dumpster, they found trash that was in the Caliber the morning prior and a bracelet that Darius said was his mothers.

The York County Sheriff’s Office arrested Johnson at 12:35 a.m. June 11.

Addison concluded by saying that Johnson had motive: Hickey had turned down his proposal and was seeing someone else. Johnson, she said, also had access to knives at work, which were comparable to the murder weapon.

Defense Attorney Douglas Walter told the court there wasn’t enough evidence to support the Commonwealth’s claim. He explained that the murder weapon was never found and investigators said there were no signs that Hickey’s house was broken into. Walter finished by asking how the defendant committed the crime, in such a short period of time, without the victim’s son waking up.

After restating the evidence, Judge Michael McGinty decided that there was sufficient evidence to certify the case to the grand jury. The next grand jury convenes Tuesday.