Woman testifies that she decapitated victim to free her soul
The Wichita woman on trial for the 2017 decapitation death of her ex-boyfriend’s mother told jurors Wednesday she cut off Micki Davis’ head “so her soul could get out and go to heaven.”
“These things in my head were, like, telling me that I didn’t have much time, you don’t have much time. Hurry up,” Rachael Hilyard said from the witness stand, testifying in her own defense.
The story she gave under questioning from both her defense attorney, Quentin Pittman, and Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett was at times confused and at times broken up by her sobs. Often she responded to questions by saying she didn’t know or recall certain parts of the chain of events that left 63-year-old Davis dead and her head in Hilyard’s kitchen sink.
She referred several times to what she called “things” that she said would give her suggestions or orders.
According to Hilyard’s testimony, Davis and her 9-year-old grandson arrived at her home at 1426 W. Rita around 1 p.m. April 9, 2017, to pick up some property that belonged to one of Davis’ sons, whom Hilyard had been dating. Hilyard was in her home when they got there. She said she let Davis and the boy in, they talked briefly about her dog, and she led them into the garage where the property was sitting.
After a short time, Hilyard and Davis retreated into the laundry room to look at some paintings that Hilyard wanted Davis to take.
Davis asked Hilyard if one of the paintings belonged to her son.
“OK, so you know I have been on edge up to this point,” Hilyard said from the witness stand. She said she told Davis to take the painting because she thought she had liked it.
Hilyard said Davis asked a second time if the painting belonged to her son, and “she flinched at me.”
“It was like she was coming at me, and then I just freaked out, and we were wrestling into the garage, and we got into a fight,” she testified.
Asked whether Davis was breathing after she was fell to the ground, Hilyard said: “I thought there was people watching me from my own eyes. I thought there was an app on somebody’s phone so they could watch me out of my own eyes.”
She claimed she didn’t punch Davis, thought autopsy photos show Davis had bruises on her head and cracked ribs.
When Davis’ grandson ran away, Hilyard said she followed him outside to Davis’ truck because she was “confused because he was so scared. I didn’t know why he was so scared.”
She went back into the house because “I just heard something say ‘House.’ So I went in the house.”
On the way to the garage, she said she stopped in the kitchen and grabbed a black-handled steak knife.
“These things in my head were, like, telling me that I didn’t have much time. ‘You don’t have much time. Hurry up,’” she testified.
Hilyard said when she got to the garage, Davis wasn’t moving. Hilyard thought she was dead, she said.
The county coroner and chief medical examiner found blood in Davis’ airways during an autopsy, a sign she was still alive when her throat was cut. Her cause of death was ruled sharp force injuries to the neck.
“And the things told me I had to hurry to let her soul out of there so she could go be free,” Hilyard testified.
Hilyard testified that she recalls severing Davis’ head from her body but that she “didn’t look at her … because they were watching out my eyes.”
She said when the steak knife’s blade broke off, she got another “to make sure that her (Davis’) soul got free.”
After completing the decapitation, she testified that she walked to the kitchen and left Davis’ head in her kitchen sink.
When police arrived after Davis’ grandson called 911, she was crouching in her bathroom, covered in blood.
Both prosecutors and the defense rested Wednesday. The jury will hear closing arguments and start deliberating Thursday. Hilyard is charged with first-degree premeditated murder in the case but her defense attorney is expected to argue that she should be convicted on a lesser charge.
This story was originally published February 5, 2020 at 5:45 PM.