Murder by nature

True crime podcast that dives into stories you never heard of, mysterious disappearances, and unsolved cases. You never know what small town we might be talking about this week.

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Murder by nature

The Diary to the Truth

January 23, 2023 • Jazmin Hernandez • Season 1 • Episode 29

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In 2010, a teenager suddenly disappearance in Clayton County, Georgia, without a trace of where she might be. Candice Parchment was 15-year-old living in Clayton County, Georgia, with her mother, Caffian Hyatt. She was an aspiring writer attending Forest Park High School with a bright smile and, by all means, had a promising life ahead of her. She had a journal in which she used to write down her thoughts from the day that she experienced, and it was unknown to everyone that this very journal would be the key to the case. Candice was close to her mother following their emigration from Jamaica for a different, much better life, so it was uncharacteristic for her to suddenly leave home on April 28, 2010. When Caffian couldn’t get a hold of her daughter despite trying multiple times over a period of six hours, she decided it was time to report her missing. Like some, unfortunately, the police did not take the disappearance seriously from the beginning. As days went on, Candice's mother started to receive texts from Candice’s phone saying that she was in Tennessee and okay. But something seemed off by the messages friends and family said. If you knew Candice, you would know she did not send those messages. However, her mother knew that Candice would not just up and leave. She was someone who was very reliable and was definitely not a runaway. The police did not have any answers to give to Candice’s mother, who claimed that the texts were not from Candice and that she could not have been in Tennessee. As days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, the police finally got a lead.

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“Welcome to Murder By Nature, where we discuss True Crime, Mystery disappearances, and unsolved cases! I’m Jazmin Hernandez, your host!

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On November 24, 2010, a body was found. The body was found a few hundred yards from Candice’s place, but to identify the body, the police needed hard evidence. When officers arrived on the scene, they imagined they would be walking up to a body but instead, they discovered skeleton remains. As the police did not have much to go off of with the identification of the body, they searched the whole area for any clues when they found an earring and a jacket. The two artifacts were unique enough that they decided to search the internet for some leads. As they browsed through numerous profiles and images, they found a picture of Candice wearing the same jacket. The detective who was leading the case, Ashley Melvin, had to make the hard call to inform Candice’s mother of what they found. As the news of the body being found, Candice's family and friends were already on high alert, and as soon as the call came in, devastating fell on them. Ashley promised Candice’s mother that he would find out who did this to her daughter and why. But, like some cases, Ashley Melvin had no leads. The crime scene was empty of what could have happened, and the detective had to wait until the autopsy came back to determine the case of death.

With nowhere to start or who to question, they patiently waited for the coroner's report. When the coroner's report came in, they quickly informed the police that Candice was stabbed in the chest and the manner of death indicated a homicide. As a rookie detective on his first homicide, this was terrifying for him to see the skeleton of a young girl, and Ashley was determined to find out who did it. As they started gathering more information on who Candice was and who she hung out with, they decided it was time to stop at the high school and start interviewing students who may have known what happened or who knew who Candice was. One of the first people of interest in the case was My’Lik Hamlett. He was Candice’s best friend and someone who they felt might have an idea of what happened to her or who may have done it. According to My’lik, the police were looking at the wrong person. He loved her very dearly and would never imagine hurting his best friend. Hamlett said he would never harm her and that they had shared a good bond. He did not know anything about Candice’s murder. As the police continued to keep their eye on him, they decided to look through his phone to find clues, but as suspected, they did not find anything. My’Lik did not take offense when the police saw him as a suspect because he wanted to find out the truth too. He knew that this was apart of the run to find the real suspect in the case. Just as quickly as he became a suspect as was fast as he was removed from the list.

As word started to spread about Candice's murder, there were rumors about Candice at the school. Some students said she ran away with a trucker, and some said a serial killer killed her. This struck a cord with police because not even a few months after Candice went missing, a 17-year-old girl disappeared on October 16, 2010. Police felt like the case resembled some of the same signs as Candice's murder. Monica Ambriz was 17 years old at the time of her murder and had been stabbed in the chest by a person named Artemio Hernandez. He was in jail for the crime, and the police started noticing similarities between the two cases as they continued to dig deeper. Ashley Melvin knew that he had to act fast. Ashley requested that the area’s police arrange a meeting with Artemio Hernandez to discuss Candice’s case. According to Ashley, Artemio Hernandez was someone who took pride in killing, so he would tell the police if his first victim was Candice. Weeks after finding the body of Candice, Ashley Melvin was finally able to interview Artemio Hernandez. Unexpectedly though, Artemio said he had never seen the girl; he didn't know who she was. He admitted to killing Monica but said he had not done anything to Candice. This devastated the detective, and there was no evidence to convict Artemio.

As Detective Ashley Melvin started to grow frustrated, he quickly had his eye on another suspect. Trey Jenkins. Trey had sexually assaulted two young girls and somehow knew Candice. He had communicated with Candice on one occasion; however, as the police continued to investigate Trey, they learned that they did not have enough evidence to convict him either. The police were able to locate Trey on the night Candice disappeared, and unfortunately, he was not even in the area at the time or any time after she disappeared.

Sixteen months go by, and the police had no leads in Candice’s case until her mother gave police their biggest lead to date when she discovered Candice’s diary in October 2011 while packing to move to a new home. As she read the diary, she made a startling discovery. She read the names of two teenage boys who had allegedly assaulted her daughter,

Marshae Hickman and Jermaine Robinson. On October 11, 2011, Candice’s mother called Ashley Melvin. She was restless and rushed to the police station with Candice’s diary. In her diary, they found out that Candice had sneaked out of her house one night to meet two boys. Over three months before Candice’s disappearance, she had survived an attempted sexual assault on her. On January 5, 2010, Candice snuck out of her house to meet up with two boys at an abandoned house. As Candice entered the abandoned house, one of the boys hit Candice in the head with a rake and choked her, while the other blocked the door to prevent her escape. One of the boys groped Candice while choking her and tried to hold her down on a mattress. Candice's mother returned home from work, and Candice was not there, and she wasn't answering her phone after subsequent calls from her mother. “Then, on one call, she did pick up the phone, and it sounded like somebody tried to wrestle the phone from her,” Her mother and her fiancé went looking for Candice, stopping in front of a number of abandoned houses on their street. While the attack was taking place, Candice’s mother drove up to the abandoned house that Candice was in. When the boys saw the lights of the car, they let Candice go. As she ran away, they threatened to kill her if she told anyone what happened. Candice ran up to her mother's car and jumped in. She was “in a panic” and told her mother, “somebody tried to rape me,” but she managed to escape when they saw the car approach the abandoned house. Despite her mother’s insistence, Candice didn’t go to the police about it either. Sadly, more than three months later, she suddenly disappeared, with her body being found in November 2010.

As Police reviewed the dairy, they found that Jermaine and Marshae had called Candice in a secluded house. She wrote about her horrible experience in her diary but did not have the courage to tell others that two friends had sexually assaulted her. As police looked into the pair, they found that Marshae was in jail for burglary already in Clayton county and decided it was time to pay him a little visit.

During the interview, Marshae said that he did not harm Candice and that he had seen someone following her to the woods the night she disappeared. Marshae described a heavier-set man, Hispanic, with some blackish hair. Now this made police pause as they interviewed another man in this case that fits this description. They knew Artemio was already in jail for murder and was known to be close to this area. But then the police questioned Jermaine, who confessed that Marshae had killed Candice. He called him crazy and put all the blame on Marshae. He stated that he had no involvement in the night at the abandoned house or the killing. The police knew that there was more to this story and decided it was time to play a little game of cat and mouse. The police went to interview Marshae for a second time, but this time, they made Marshae believe that they had found his DNA on Candice’s body. As soon as he heard this, he knew he was caught and confessed to killing Candice. Lets backtrack just a little bit. Now, after the attack happened, Candice didn't just tell her mother what had happened; she also confessed to one of her close friends, Danny Jackson, about the incident. After hearing about what the boys did, Danny approached Jermaine and warned him to stay away from Candice. When Jermaine told Marshae that Candice was telling others about the attempted rape, he told him not to worry and that he would handle it. The boys were scared that Candice would keep telling people about what had happened that night.

April 28, 2010, it started as any other day. Candice's mom was off at work, and Candice decided to take a stroll around the neighborhood when she ran into Marshae at the basketball courts. She was walking along a trail which led from his apartment complex to her subdivision; He stated that he walked up beside her and put his arm around her neck, talking to her and slowly squeezing, and she “fell limp;” He said he check to see if she was still alive, but she did not have a pulse. He then carried her into the wooded area and covered her with a mattress. Court records provide a startling account of what happened after Candice disappeared, raising more questions about Hickman’s alleged motive. Police believe they were together at some point on a wooded trail behind the apartment complex at 482 Sylvia Drive in Forest Park – just two blocks from where Candice lived with her mother. An autopsy showed evidence that Candice had been stabbed, but Marshae, a 6-foot-tall, 250-pound teen, admitted only to having strangled the petite girl. From the time Candice disappeared, police records show that Hickman – or possibly someone working with him apparently made every effort to cover his trail. Text messages were sent to Candice’s mother from Candice’s cell phone within days of the disappearance, telling her Candice had left the state and trying to calm the worried mother. “He texted my phone about 3 o’clock the Wednesday she went missing and said, ‘I’m in Tennessee,’” Hyatt said. “And the Thursday night after she disappeared, I got a text again that said, ‘am OK.’”

In interviews with police, the affidavit says Hickman was dodgy at first, telling investigators he had encountered Candice in the woods around the time she disappeared in April 2010 and that he had moved the mattress from the trail so he could ride his bike through. Both events were ploys to explain away Hickman’s DNA being found on Candice’s body or the mattress. And Hickman said he threw away a pocket knife he had when questioned about possibly stabbing her, according to police. Police said Hickman eventually told investigators that he kept tabs on Candice’s body shortly after her death, looking periodically to make sure her body hadn’t been discovered. “He … went back to the scene the next morning,” the affidavit reads. “It was at this time he observed her feet hanging from under the mattress, and he tucked her feet back under.” Investigators said that even after he moved away from the area, Hickman returned. “After Thanksgiving of 2010, he went back to the scene of the murder and noticed that the mattress and Candice Parchment’s body were no longer there”

Marshae Hickman's trial began on April 8, 2013, and Jermaine Robinson testified against him. The prosecution argued that Hickman killed Parchment to prevent her from reporting the January assault. The prosecutor cited Hickman’s apology letter to Parchment’s mother as his admission of guilt, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It’s times that I think back and wish I could rewind time back, so this would have never happened,” “I pray every night that you and everybody can forgive me. I just don’t know what came over me at the time.”

The jury returned its guilty verdict just four days later. On April 26, 2013, the judge sentenced Hickman, who was 21 years old at the time, to life in prison without the possibility of parole for malice murder, along with an additional 70 years for the other charges. “She convicted him in her own words,” Candice’s mother told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution of her late daughter following the verdict. “It’s like she was inside that courtroom.”

Hickman filed a motion for a new trial in May 2013 but was denied in March 2015. After filing an appeal the following month, the Georgia Supreme Court also denied his request in June 2016. Hickman is currently serving his life sentence at Telfair State Prison in Helena, Georgia, and will turn 31 in this year. Since Jermaine had sexually assaulted Candice, he was sentenced to 10 years. The defense had claimed Jermaine was likely the killer because he knew more about the crime, especially as he’d once talked about Candice being stabbed. Furthermore, Marshae’s attorney claimed her client was coerced into a confession and interrogated for extremely long hours. Yet, in the end, the evidence spoke for itself, leading to him getting sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole plus an additional 20 years. Jermaine has been released from jail, and from my research, he has kept himself out of trouble and maintained a low profile, with his last known location being Forest Park, Georgia.

Outro

That brings us to the end of this episode! As always, thanks for listening to Murder By Nature. If you enjoy our show, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any streaming platform you are currently on, and be sure to come back Saturday for our new episode. Until then, I am your host, Jazmin Hernandez, don’t forget to stay safe! Don’t get murdered or murder people, you lovely humans!

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