GREENSBORO, N.C. (WGHP) — A man who was charged with murder seven years after it was committed has pleaded guilty almost three years later.
Jack Leon Coker was arrested in February 2020 for the murder of Paula Joy Nicks, then 33, of Browns Summit. She was found dead of blunt-force trauma behind God’s House of Deliverance Church on May 25, 2012.
It took almost four months to identify Nicks. Family members saw pictures of her in the media and came forward and her fingerprints were matched, leading to her identification in September 2012.
Coker was identified as a suspect years later, arrested and charged shortly after he was released from prison for a second-degree rape sentence in the eastern part of the state.
Coker pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on Monday and received a maximum sentence of 261 months in prison, with a minimum of 207 months.