The man accused of slaying three Muslim students last month near the University of North Carolina made one last call to his wife after his arrest.
“This is not your fault, and have a good life,” Craig Steven Hicks said, according to his wife’s lawyer, who spoke to the New York Times.
The two haven’t spoken since, according to the Times report published Tuesday.
Hicks’s wife, Karen Haggerty Hicks, is one of the few people who can give insight into her husband’s possible motives. That context is key as authorities investigate whether the killings may have been a hate crime. Prosecutors on Monday also announced their intention to pursue the death penalty for Hicks.
In a press conference shortly after her husband was charged with three counts of first-degree murder, Haggerty Hicks was quick to dismiss speculation that her husband, a self-described “anti-theist,” was motivated by religious hate. She insisted that the “incident had nothing to do with religion or the victims’ faith but was related to a longstanding parking dispute that my husband had with the neighbors.”
Her statement was in line with the possible motive offered by police at the time. But the Times report described the press conference as an “effort to prevent panic,” citing the wife’s own lawyer, Robert N. Maitland II.
The Times report also fleshed out some contentious encounters between Hicks and two of the victims — Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, and his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21 — that had previously surfaced in media coverage of the slayings.
Barakat’s older sister, Dr. Suzanne Barakat, said last month that Hicks had repeatedly flashed a gun at her brother and his wife and confronted them about parking in a visitor’s parking space Hicks claimed belonged to his own wife.
Hicks became more confrontational after Abu-Salha got engaged to Barakat and spent more time at the apartment, Barakat’s ex-roommate Imad Ahmad told the newspaper. Ahmad recalled one incident from October in which Hicks knocked at Barakat’s door to complain that the neighbors’ dinner party had woken up his wife and lifted his shirt to show a holstered gun.
While Hicks’ alleged motive is still unclear, local TV station WRAL reported Monday that new search warrants showed the suspect did keep photos and detailed notes of parking patterns at the apartment complex where he and the victims lived.
