More than three years after a woman’s body was found in Wayne County, her husband has been convicted for killing her and sentenced to life in prison.
Eric Scott Holifield was found guilty of murder in the first degree last month after jurors deliberated for only a half-hour or so after hearing testimony and seeing evidence during a four-day trial in Wayne County Circuit Court. Judge Bo Bailey sentenced Holifield to life in prison.
Holifield was convicted of killing 47-year-old Kimberly Nanette Holifield, who went missing in July 2020 and her family filed a report. Her remains were found by ATV riders on Tokio-Frost Bridge Road about a week later and sent to the state crime lab in Pearl.
Her husband was taken into custody and charged with murder.
The couple had been married for about 10 years, said Lt. Don Hopkins of the Waynesboro Police Department, who led the investigation.
Numerous motions were filed in the case and it went to trial earlier this year only to have a mistrial be declared by the judge when a bailiff inappropriately spoke to a juror about the case.
Investigators with the WPD and Wayne County Sheriff’s Department worked together on the case along with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.
Shortly after the arrest, Hopkins told the Wayne County News that the suspect “tried to give an item with blood and hair on it to another person,” who then alerted investigators. Investigators Jerome Jackson, formerly of the Laurel Police Department, and Don Rogers of the WCSD were the investigators on the original call, when it was a missing-persons complaint.
“The family have also been a great help in this case, even with all they are going through right now,” Hopkins told the paper. “They have been very straight forward and forthcoming and have helped us any way possible.”
— Paul Keane of The Wayne County News contributed
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