Claire Rice, 65, was ordered held Wednesday on suspicion of shooting and killing her cousin,Anthony Garland Rice.
Anthony Rice’s body was found Dec. 17, 2012 near Marshall Elementary School in Northeast D.C.
Prosecutors argued Wednesday that there was a “high degree of planning that went into” the murder, adding that a gun was purchased under Claire Rice’s name 11 days before the murder.
According to charging documents in the case, a relative told police that that Claire Rice was with Anthony Rice, an electrician, to “facilitate a handyman job” between Anthony and a friend the day Anthony Rice was killed.
Rice, however, told detectives she had not been in contact with her cousin in three months, charging documents state. She later told police that she spoke to him the day before his death because he requested $150 from her for an outstanding debt to drug dealers, the documents state.
In a search of firearms or weapons in her home, detectives found “multiple items” including an antique firearm and a Maryland Police Training Commission Firearms Safety Course Certificate dated Nov. 4, 2012. The firearms registration section in Maryland completed a background check on November 28, after which she would be authorized to purchase a firearm.
Detectives linked the firearm Rice purchased to the bullets recovered from Mr. Rice’s body, both compatible with a red compound used in the gun and found in the bullet, according to the documents and evidence presented in court on Wednesday. They did not, however, find evidence that Claire Rice purchased this ammunition.
Defense attorney Marlon Griffith said Claire is a manager at Applebee’s and lives in Silver Spring, Md. She has not been arrested in the past 40 years, he said.
“We need something more than ‘I dropped him off and I lied about dropping him off’ as evidence that she was the shooter,” he said. “She has lived for over 25 years in the community with no record whatsoever, and the decedent is actually her cousin.”
Rice is expected before Judge Ronna Beck for a preliminary hearing at 9:30 a.m. on March 20.
