Marshae O’Brian Hickman, ID’d By Victim Candice Parchment's Diary, Sentenced To Life Without Parole Plus 70 Years

April 8, 2013

A slain Forest Park teen’s diary helped lead police to a Clayton County man accused in her killing.


Marshae O'Brian Hickman, 19, has been charged with murder and concealing a death in connection with the death of Candice Parchment, a 15-year-old who went missing from her Forest Park home in April 2010.

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.

Candice Parchment, 15, left her Forest Park home in April 2010. Her remains were found months later hidden beneath a discarded mattress in a wooded area nearby.

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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April 26, 2013

A convicted Clayton County murderer whom police identified by his victim’s diary was sentenced to life in prison without parole plus 20 years.

Marshae O’Brian Hickman was also sentenced to a 50-year prison term to run at the same time as the murder sentencing for attacking and trying to rape Candice Parchment months before he killed her in 2010.

A jury found Hickman, 21, guilty earlier this month of malice murder, felony murder – causing a death by committing a felony – false imprisonment, criminal attempted rape, involuntary manslaughter, four counts of aggravated assault, aggravated battery and concealing a death.

In her diary, Parchment wrote that Hickman and Jermaine Robinson tried to rape her in an abandoned home in their neighborhood in January 2010, according to police records.

Robinson pleaded guilty to aggravated assault for hitting Parchment in the head that night, and he would later testify against Hickman.

In April of that year, Parchment disappeared. Her body was found the following November beneath an abandoned mattress behind the apartment complex where Hickman used to live.

An autopsy determined that she had been stabbed and strangled to death, a GBI medical examiner testified.

Nearly a year later, Parchment’s mother found mention of the January rape attempt with the names of both attackers in the teen’s diary and gave the book to police, who charged a then-incarcerated Hickman with murder.

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I've often wondered why they sentence someone to LWOP AND 70 years. So glad he w/never see the light of day!