A jury took just 45 minutes to convict a woman and her hitman of first-degree murder in the shooting death of a Philadelphia-area teacher last year as she sat in a Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru with her 11-year-old son.
Julie Jean, 35, and Zakkee Alhakim, 34, were sentenced to life in prison without parole on March 21 for the premeditated killing of Rachel King after a love triangle involving her fiancé turned sour, prosecutors said.
Following the verdicts, sheriff’s deputies surrounded the defendants and led them away in handcuffs.
King was murdered in cold blood on April 11, 2023, when a hooded gunman approached the driver’s side of her Ford Edge SUV and opened fire multiple times through her window at 7:39 a.m.
The boy was not wounded, however, his mom — a popular teacher at Grover Cleveland Mastery Charter School — was dead at age 35.
At the time of the killing, King was engaged to be married to William Hayes, who had been cheating on her with Jean for 10 months behind her back.
Before the romance reached a full year, Hayes suddenly broke it off, telling his jilted lover that he wanted to fully commit to King, the woman he still intended to marry.
The breakup devastated Jean, who felt desperate to keep Hayes with her, prosecutors said.
And as her new reality set in, prosecutors said she became vindictive, leading to the murder plot, District Attorney Kevin Steele said in his closing argument.
Alhakim soon joined the plan as the triggerman.
Prosecutors said Jean knew Alhakim as a relative of the father of her children and entrusted him to carry out King’s murder so she could potentially rekindle her romance with Hayes.
“Vengeance can be a terrible thing,” Steele told the jury, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. “Vengeance in this case was deadly. Vengeance in this case took a life, the life of someone who did nothing wrong.”
King’s family was seated in the courtroom and wept as the verdicts were announced.
A few relatives read impact statements before the judge sent the killers away for life.
“It is a terrible thing to apply a permanent solution to a temporary problem, and that’s what took place,” said Allen King, the victim’s father. “Any disagreement you have with another person, you can walk away from. I just wish we could’ve talked first.”
Family members recalled King’s vibrant spirit and gregarious personality, saying she was dedicated to her career.
They expressed gratitude that Jean and Alhakim were brought to justice for the crime.
The evidence presented in the case revealed how much planning and forethought Jean and Alkahim put into the murder plot.
Text messages retrieved from Jean’s phone revealed that she traveled to Kensington to meet Alhakim and shared pictures of Rachel King with him.
Investigators also found a Google Maps screenshot on Alhakim’s phone, showing King’s address and hand-drawn instructions on how to access the woman’s apartment complex.
Jean gave Alhakim $500 the day before he purchased an untraceable “ghost gun” for the murder, and he texted Jean a picture of the gun a few hours later, prosecutors said.
As part of the plot, Jean also bought a used Mercury Sable, which prosecutors said Alhakim drove to Rachel King’s apartment days before the murder to scope out an ideal place to gun down an innocent Black woman.
The same car was seen following behind King on the day she was ambushed and murdered while ordering coffee and donuts with her son, authorities said.
When Jean became a suspect, she attempted to conceal her connection to the crime by deleting text messages and call logs from her phone and by erasing news articles about the killing that she had looked up and saved on her browser, prosecutors said.
During defense arguments, Jean’s attorney, Shaka Johnson, accused prosecutors of concocting a “fake narrative” and maintained the evidence did not support the charges against his client.
“The Commonwealth started off painting a picture for you … of a woman scorned,” Johnson told the jury. “She is so hurt. She is so completely devastated because Will Hayes won’t deal with her anymore that she wants everybody associated with him dead. This is the theory they want you to believe.”
Johnson argued that Hayes’ testimony during the trial, where he expressed love for King and described her as his “rock,” was insincere and designed to portray himself in a positive light.
In reality, Johnson said Hayes was duplicitous to both women as neither was aware of each other.
Somehow, though, Jean found out about his infidelity and contacted King to see if she could get to the bottom of Hayes’ lies, Johnson told the jury.
The defense suggested that Jean’s decision to call King was a natural response to being “two-timed,” indicating that Jean was also unaware of Hayes’ double life.
This occurred as Jean moved to Lynnewood Gardens, the apartment complex in Elkins Park where Hayes resided.
Johnson suggested that the prosecution’s evidence against Jean was primarily circumstantial and didn’t directly implicate her, but the jury rejected this.
Meanwhile, Alhakim’s attorney, Benjamin Cooper, pointed out that surveillance video of King’s murder did not positively identify the gunman, nor did other videos of the Mercury Sable leaving the area after King was shot.
“Suspicion doesn’t count. Whether you like the guy doesn’t count,” Cooper said. “You have a guy sitting in jail for murder. I submit to you there’s not any evidence to support that.”
Cooper argued that none of the evidence linked Alhakim to the shooting or proved that he was the one who drove the car to and from King’s apartment on the morning of the murder.
But Steele, the district attorney, insisted that the evidence pointed to a “murder for hire” scenario, citing too many “coincidences” in the case, including GPS records from Alhakim’s cellphone that showed him traveling from West Philadelphia to Cheltenham on the morning of April 11, then circling back moments after King was killed.
“How does he know Rachel? How does he know her address?” Steele urged jurors to consider. “That’s not all the evidence you have in this case. But it would be enough.”
King’s son, Jalen, who was sitting in the back seat and witnessed his mom being shot to death, was not physically hurt but remains traumatized and struggling to cope nearly a year later.
Family members said the boy was heartbroken that he never had the chance to hug his mom one last time.
