A Houston man who killed his girlfriend in 2016 in retaliation for her filing domestic violence charges against him was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison without parole, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced.

“Eight years is too long for anyone to have to wait for justice, but our Domestic Violence Division was able to get life without parole, which was the appropriate sentence,” Ogg said. “This case is horrible and shows exactly why we take every allegation of domestic violence so seriously — too often it escalates to homicide.”

Jarvis Earl Hickerson, 40, was convicted by a jury of capital murder in an eight-day trial for killing 32-year-old Amalia Alexander on Sept. 19, 2016.

Days before the murder, Alexander filed an assault charge and a protective order against Hickerson for assault because he hit her at a north Houston IHOP restaurant where they were eating.

Jurors in Hickerson’s trial heard evidence that he tried to persuade her to drop the charges and even proposed to her to keep her from testifying against him.

When those efforts failed, Hickerson killed her in her apartment and dumped her remains in a field in Montgomery County.

After she disappeared, Alexander’s family filed a missing-person report, and deputies with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office investigated. They found surveillance video of Hickerson leaving Alexander’s apartment at 5 a.m. the day she disappeared. She had been expected at work at 6 a.m.

Investigators traced the last known location of Alexander’s missing cellphone to a field in Montgomery County. There they found her remains in a shallow grave about two months after she disappeared. It is unclear how Hickerson killed her.

Investigators also pulled the call-detail records for Hickerson’s cellphone, which showed that he was in the same area as the field where Alexander’s remains were later found two days in a row after she disappeared. He was arrested for capital murder and later released on bond.

While free on bond, he tampered with his GPS ankle monitor and assaulted a different girlfriend by choking her. He was rearrested and remained in the Harris County Jail until his trial.

Assistant District Attorney Steve Walsh, a chief in the Domestic Violence Division of the DA’s Office, prosecuted the case with Mary McFaden, who is the division chief who heads the Domestic Violence Division.

“It was an eight-day trial with a lot of testimony, but there were several key pieces of evidence that were important,” Walsh said. “Those pieces included video of him leaving her apartment when she disappeared and his cellphone records showing that on two consecutive days after she went missing, he was in the area where her remains were later found.”

McFaden noted that retaliation against a witness is a felony, and because Hickerson intentionally killed Alexander in furtherance of that felony, it was capital murder.

“His begging and manipulation didn’t work — because Amalia was strong,” McFaden said. “At that point, he knew she was not going to back down, so he killed her in retaliation.”

Hickerson was automatically sentenced to life in prison without parole after he was convicted. He will never be eligible for parole and will never be released from prison.

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