Florida woman admits hitting, strangling, killing, burying older man in backyard, cops say
Clio Marcia Trice was up front about the string of atrocities she has been accused of committing.
First, the Miami Gardens woman told her neighbors she hit the older man she had been living with for the past 14 years in the head with some sort of object, according to police. Then, she said, she strangled him until he was dead. Alarmed, the neighbor called police.
When police arrived they made a gruesome discovery: An 81-year-old man buried in a shallow grave under a plank in her backyard, the area swarming with flies at the partially decomposed corpse.
“Clio Marcia Trice admitted to killing and burying the victim,” police wrote in her arrest affidavit. “She also advised that she had been planning to turn herself in.”
Trice, 50, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. She was denied bond and is being held at the Turner Guilford Knight correctional center. Police haven’t released the victim’s name. They said he was 81 years old.
Miami Gardens police believe the bizarre incident ended tragically for the man at about 8:30 p.m. last Friday. It’s likely that Trice told them that, because they weren’t alerted to the incident until late Monday afternoon by Trice’s neighbor, according to her arrest report.
That’s when police received a 911 call from someone who said Trice shared the details of how the older man was murdered. On Tuesday, it remained unclear just what the relationship was between the duo whose age differential is more than three decades. A neighbor told WPLG Channel 10 that they were married.
“I usually see her husband outside on the veranda. But then a couple days, I haven’t seen him,” neighbor Carlos Savizon said to the television station. “Apparently, she couldn’t keep the secret much longer.”
Police, though, aren’t so sure. They said Trice told them she had been living with the man since 2008. She said at first they just dated. But the longer it went on, it became more like a father and daughter situation. Miami-Dade marriage records don’t show anyone matching Trice’s name as married.
Police said they first made contact with Trice in the front yard of her home at 270 NW 194th Ter., late afternoon Monday and that she immediately admitted to killing and burying the man. They found him in a shallow grave, police said.
She told them, police said, that when the couple argued in the past, she would just walk away. No motive for the alleged murder was offered.
This story was originally published May 17, 2022 at 8:28 AM.
