Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Murder trial postponed


Trial continued until November.

Justice will wait a few more months.

Trial for murder suspect postponed

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The trial for a Comal County woman charged in 2008 for the murder of an 82-year-old woman was postponed for nearly three months on Monday.

A jury trial for Janice Marie Vickers was scheduled for this week in the 207th District Court of Judge Jack Robison. Her defense attorney, Mark Clark, motioned to reschedule the trial to Nov. 2. The motion was granted.

Information made public in the case of the 47-year-old Vickers has been scant, with little detail released about the incident since Nov. 3, 2006 — the day police allege Vickers ran over and killed Shirley Lindenbaum.

According to the Comal County Sheriff’s Office, a 911 call came in about 9:30 on that November night. The caller, an emotional Vickers, told dispatch she struck a pedestrian with her Chevrolet Tahoe in the 500 block of White Oak Drive near Startzville.

When deputies arrived on scene, they found Lindenbaum’s body, but CCSO Detective Sgt. Tommy Ward said at the time there was something about the scene that raised his suspicions.

“The scene as she reported was not consistent with evidence we found and was not consistent with the investigation,” Ward said.

A Travis County Medical Examiner’s autopsy cited impact trauma as the woman’s cause of death.

“(Lindenbaum) sustained massive injuries to her upper body,” Ward told the Herald-Zeitung about a week after the incident.

Investigators studied clues for two years and presented evidence to a Comal County grand jury in the months leading up to Vickers’ Dec. 11, 2008 arrest on murder charges.

She was released Dec. 15, 2008, after posting a $100,000 bond.

If convicted, Vickers could face a prison sentence of five to 99 years or life.