A slain Forest Park teen’s diary helped lead police to a Clayton County man accused in her killing.
Monday, attorneys began choosing a jury for the murder trial of Marshae O’Brian Hickman, whom prosecutors say choked and stabbed 15-year-old Candice Parchment in the early morning hours of April 28, 2010.
Hickman was indicted in November 2011 on charges including multiple counts of felony murder, aggravated assault, and concealing a death.
According to police reports and prosecutors, Hickman hid Parchment’s body beneath an abandoned mattress in a wooded area behind a Forest Park apartment building. Police searched seven months for the missing teen before finding her body.
Police said Hickman periodically kept tabs on Parchment’s body, and even sent text messages from her cell phone shortly after she disappeared. In the messages, Hickman pretended to be Parchment, telling her mother that she was OK and had run away to Tennessee.
Authorities found Parchment’s body in November 2010. It was nearly a year before her mother, Caffian Hyatt, discovered and read the diary. Police reports say a diary entry named Hickman as one of two teens who had allegedly tried to rape the girl months before her disappearance.
Hyatt turned the diary over to police, who discovered Hickman was already in the Clayton County jail on burglary charges.
Jury selection will likely end Monday and attorneys could begin opening statements Tuesday morning.
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