A man charged Monday in a double slaying considered cold for more than seven years was connected to the crime by DNA evidence, court documents filed Wednesday state.
Hilliard A. Fulgham, who is in Louisville, Miss., serving a seven-year sentence for burglary, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the 2006 stabbing deaths of Linda Wright, 45, and Dorothy Lindley, 60. Wright and Lindley's bodies were found in the Warwick Apartments, on 51st Street just east of Lewis Avenue, on Jan. 4, 2006.
Fulgham's wife, Jacqueline Octavia Smith, 36, was arrested Tuesday in Violet, La. She is charged with two counts of accessory to first-degree murder.
An affidavit filed Wednesday in Tulsa County District Court states that a Mississippi woman told law enforcement there that Smith had confessed of her and Fulgham's involvement in the deaths.
The woman said Smith had told her that Fulgham had come home from a drug transaction in Tulsa covered in blood, saying he needed to leave town. Evidence at the scene suggested that the person responsible for the deaths "likely cut themselves."
Blood recovered from the scene gave a DNA profile for an unidentified man, which eventually resulted in a positive match for Hilliard Fulgham. Fulgham had provided DNA to Mississippi authorities when he was convicted there in 2007.
Smith and Fulgham had been living two doors away from where Wright and Lindley were killed, according to court documents.
After being arrested Tuesday, Smith told Oktibbeha County Sheriff's Office deputy Robert Elmore that Fulgham had left the apartment they shared that night to buy methamphetamine. Smith said that Fulgham returned, not with meth, but with cocaine.
Smith told Elmore that she didn't want cocaine and was upset that Fulgham had not returned with meth, so Fulgham left to get a refund. When he returned, he was covered in blood.
After that, it was two days until the bodies were found, Smith told Elmore. By this time, she had helped Fulgham dispose of the knife and bloody clothes, as well as bandage a wound to Fulgham's pinky, which he said had been cut during the homicides.
Smith said she gave Fulgham money to buy a bus ticket to Montgomery, Ala., and that she moved to Kinder, La., to live with her mother. About three months after Wright and Lindley were killed, Fulgham moved to Kinder, La., from Mississippi, court documents state.
A short time later, Fulgham was arrested in Louisiana on warrants in Mississippi.
Tulsa Police Department Detective Roger Smith traveled to Mississippi to obtain a DNA sample from Fulgham, according to the affidavit. While there, Fulgham reportedly asked Davis, "what if I was a victim, too?"
Smith is held at the St. Bernard Parish jail. She and Fulgham are awaiting extradition, which Tulsa Police Department Sgt. Dave Walker said he hopes "happens soon."
Copyright 2013 - Tulsa World, Okla.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
