Friends and family of Susan Vicars may finally be on the road to justice.
The man accused of killing the Harriston native began his trial in Florida on July 13.
Mohammed Javed was charged with second-degree murder in 2008 in the death of his wife, 26-year-old Vicars, who was also the mother of his two young children.
Prosecutors were trying to establish a motive during court proceedings late last week.
Vicars grew up in the Harriston area, attended high school in Palmerston and Mount Forest, then later moved to Kitchener’s west end.
She once lived with Javed in Kitchener, whom she met online. She then left Kitchener to live with Javed in the United States.
In April 2008, two men found her body in a bush, a few kilometres from her home in Lehigh Acres, Fla., where she was living at the time.
Detectives investigating the case said Vicars died of blunt force trauma to the head.
According to police reports, Javed left his home in the middle of the night, shortly after Vicars’ body had been found. He was later removed from a bus in Buffalo, N.Y., and arrested. He’d been on his way to Canada.
Javed’s roommate, Thomas Parker, has been charged with accessory after the fact. Parker said he helped Javed dump Vicars’ body and he will be a key witness in the case.
It was Javed who first reported his wife missing in February 2008. He told police she’d met a man online and had left to meet him.
Court heard testimony Thursday from Emil Gilbert, who was dating Vicars at the time. Roylene Peiffer, Gilbert’s mother, testified that Vicars had told her she’d met a North Carolina man on the Internet and wanted to go to live with him, or have him come live with her. Peiffer testified Vicars told her this around the time of her disappearance.
Almost two months later, two men found Vicars’ body in the wooded area.
Vicars had converted to Islam for Javed and the two had a son and daughter.
- With files from the Record