Suspect arrested in bicycle path stabbing
Detectives have arrested a suspect in the fatal stabbing of a man who was found dead on the North Diversion Channel bike path last September. Charles Ziegler, 35, was already in jail on other charges and is now being booked on an open count of murder in the death of Eric Hicks. In jail and court records he is also referred to as Charles Zigler.
Hicks, 33, was found near the North Diversion Channel bike path off Candelaria near Richmond NE on Sept. 15. In an interview last year, Albuquerque Police Department’s then-homicide sergeant, Elizabeth Thomson, said detectives were investigating whether Hicks and two other homeless men who were found in similar positions over a period of four months earlier in the year were killed by the same person, or group of people.
Four months before Hicks was killed, on May 20, Eric Manning, 37, was found stabbed to death in the North Diversion Channel. Then, on Aug. 9, Lonnie Whittle, 51, was found stabbed to death in the parking lot of an empty warehouse parking lot. Thomson has said there were similarities in the ways that the three men were killed and how they were found. APD spokesman Simon Drobik said Monday night that he has been told “it’s an open, ongoing investigation,” but he doesn’t know if detectives are still investigating a connection. According to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court, hours after Hicks’ death his girlfriend told detectives she believed he stole “a large back of meth” from a drug house a couple of weeks earlier. She said a man called “Texas” or “Solid” told him to watch his back. Then, in early December a woman told detectives Ziegler, who is also homeless, was responsible for Hicks’
death. She said he had confided in her that he and two friends had lured Hicks under the bridge and he had stabbed him in the back, ribs and shoulder, and stole his belongings. She said Ziegler also goes by “Texas.” “(The woman) stated that Charles admitted to her that after the stabbing, he broke a knife into three pieces which he snapped and destroyed the handle,” the detective wrote in the complaint. “Charles told her that ‘a person’ told him not to shoot Eric because of the noise and he should stab him instead.” When detectives interviewed Ziegler he said he did not even know Hicks was dead, according to the complaint. But in jail calls he seems to hint that he at least knows about the killing. “If they come and talk to you, don’t tell ’em (expletive),” Ziegler said on the phone, according to the complaint.