A D.C. man charged with killing his girlfriend and setting her body on fire, ordered another man at gunpoint to help move her body and hide bloody bags of evidence, police said in court documents.
Thomas Fields Jr., 36, is charged with premeditated first-degree murder in the killing of 24-year-old Marquita Lucas. Her charred body was found set on fire in a wooded area off Crain Highway in Bowie, Maryland, on Aug. 17.
After killing Lucas, Fields woke up the other man — who lived in the same house on Horner Place in Southeast D.C. — pulled out a semi-automatic handgun and demanded his help disposing of her body, police said in court papers filed in D.C. Superior Court.
The man told police he complied because he feared for his life and for the life of his children, who were still sleeping upstairs. The court documents do not detail the relationship between Fields and the man, who is identified only as W-1, or Witness 1.
The man said Fields first ordered him to go buy three containers of gasoline. When he returned to the house, he said he helped Fields wrap Lucas’ body in several blankets, gathered up three trash bags full of blood-soaked items from the bedroom where she was killed, and drove her in the back of his truck to a “country road” in Prince George’s County, where Fields set her body on fire.
After Lucas’ body was set on fire, the witness told police that Fields directed him to drive to several apartment complexes in the county and Southeast D.C. to dispose of the bags of evidence.
When police searched the dumpsters later, they said they found bloodstained magazines, towels and other items.
The man told police that Fields admitted to stabbing Lucas with an ice pick and beating her with a sledgehammer.
As for a potential motive in the gruesome killing, the man told police that Fields, who had been in a volatile three-year relationship with Lucas, blamed her for the overdose death a few weeks before of another woman with whom Fields had a child.
He also said Fields told him he had been smoking PCP for several days before the killing. Other witnesses reported Fields was “rambling and talking crazy” on the day Lucas was killed.
The witness called 911 the next day to report Lucas’ killing and detailing his own involvement in trying to destroy evidence.
In the court documents, police said they were able to corroborate his account based on surveillance camera footage from the gas station where he bought the gas and one of the apartment buildings where evidence was thrown away.
It turns out Fields was arrested Aug. 19 — two days after Lucas was killed — in an unrelated assault case, after a woman said he had twice pulled out a gun and pointed it at her inside the house on Horner Place.
Fields was already in police custody when he was charged earlier this week with killing Lucas.
