Julie Jean is the woman accused of hiring the hit man who killed Rachel King at a Dunkin’ Donuts, prosecutors said April 26.
Julie Jean, who is charged with first- and third-degree murder and conspiracy, was upset that Rachel King had been in a years-long relationship with a man named William Hayes, who at the time was dating Julie Jean on the side for about a year, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
When King ordered Hayes to end things with his lover, Jean plotted her revenge.
Holding a grudge against King, Jean conspired with a gun-for-hire Zakkee Steven Alhakim, which prosecutors are saying the two know each other, and she arranged for him to drive a Mercury sedan to pull up to King’s SUV, which had her son sitting in the back seat.
Alhakim is supposedly related to the father of Jean’s children, the affidavit said, and was gifted a car by Jean to carry out the hit.
Leading up to her execution, Alhakim followed Kings for days, even following her car as it was leaving her complex, surveillance footage reveals.
As previously reported, King, the mother of an 11-year-old who was riding with her in a car stopped at the coffee shop, was killed April 11 at a shopping center in Cheltenham.
Rachel, 35, worked as a teacher in the Grover Cleveland Elementary School community, according to a GoFundMe page dedicated to her. “Her loss has left a deep void in the lives of her family, friends, colleagues and students,” the page reads.
As of this writing, the page has nearly reached its intended goal, more than $106,000 out of $120,000.
The gunman who shot and killed King at point-blank range as she drove her son Jalen to violin practice was captured and arrested the same day as Jean’s arrest.
On that day, Alhakim was approached by police officers during an attempted traffic stop. As he tried to speed away from the officers, Alhakim crashed into a fence.
Philadelphia Police Homicide detectives discovered that the car matched the description of the getaway vehicle from an unrelated killing in the city on April 7, and authorities found a 9mm gun. Using the national ballistics database to get a positive match, those shell casings were compared with ones taken from the crime scene in Cheltenham. It was determined that they came from the same gun, authorities said.
Alhakim is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy and related offenses and is being held in Philadelphia. He allegedly used a ghost gun, a gun assembled which makes it an untraceable firearm, and he received a payment from Jean after the execution, FOX Philly reported.
The murder of King in front of her child was so outlandish that it disappointed a district attorney who had previously spent about 25 years as a sworn prosecutor.
“I’ve seen a lot of horrible, even horrific, evil homicides in my career as a prosecutor,” Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele said. “Suffice it to say, I’m struggling with this one.”
The district attorney’s office feels confident about the probable cause for Jean’s arrest because there is evidence of Jean harassing and threatening Rachel King via phone calls and texts, showing up unannounced at Hayes’ apartment, and calling King while the teacher was at work about her relationship with Hayes.
Montgomery County detectives interviewed Jean, who denied knowing anything about King’s execution. However, a search of Jean’s cell phone revealed that the stalker had deleted 787 text messages, including all interactions with Alhakim, before the interview.
In another interview with detectives, Alhakim denied being in Cheltenham the day of King’s shooting, as well as knowing Jean, and said he was selling drugs in Kensington, the affidavit said.
That contradicted what he said in text messages with Jean, who shared a Google Maps screenshot of King’s apartment, the document said.
