Judge Rebecca Stern orders Hamilton County Deputy's, left, to escort Adolphus Hollingsworth from the courtroom following Friday's jury decision of guilt in the death of his wife in 1997. Hollingsworth was convicted of the second-degree murder and will be sentenced in March.When the jury foreman read the verdict, Dakeya Carr leapt up. She felt her aunt there with her, in the courtroom, 17 years after Victoria Hollingsworth was stabbed to death.
Carr cried out, "Yes!" She thought, 'Thank God." At the judge's request, an officer escorted her out of the courtroom.
It was about 10:30 Friday morning and a sequestered jury had just convicted Adolphus Hollingsworth of second-degree murder. The verdict marked the close of a case nearly two decades in the making. Victoria Hollingsworth disappeared from her Duncan Avenue home early on the morning of Aug. 18, 1997. Her remains were found buried under tires and plastic on Billy Goat Hill, in East Chattanooga, in May 1999.
"I'm happy that justice is served, and I'm happy that her case is no longer cold, and that she can rest in peace and we can finally gain closure with our life," Victoria Hollingsworth's son, Wesley Carr, said by phone from Nashville.
Prosecutors took a day and a half to present their case. Hollingsworth did not testify during the trial, and his attorneys called no witnesses. Jurors deliberated throughout the day Thursday and for about 90 minutes Friday morning.
At trial, investigators testified that Hollingsworth was one of three people who filed missing persons reports when his wife disappeared.
But he also bought a truck the day she went missing, a clue prosecutors said was incriminating. He was interviewed by Chattanooga police but wasn't charged until January 2014.
Sgt. Bill Phillips, now the city's cold case unit supervisor, was one of the original investigators into Victoria Hollingsworth's disappearance and death.
Dakeya Carr reacts aloud with a "yes" after hearing the jury's decision of guilty in the death of her aunt Victoria Hollingsworth Friday in Judge Rebecca Stern's courtroom. Carr was immediately banished from the courtroom by the judge for her outburst. "With the resources I had hoped we could put into it, I felt that we could solve this case," Phillips said during trial.
But those resources apparently weren't available until 2010, when major crimes detectives began digging into the case again. They reinterviewed Carr and tracked down several of Adolphus Hollingsworth's ex-girlfriends, Phillips said. One of them would testify that Hollingsworth once mentioned Billy Goat Hill to her.
And when the television show "Cold Justice" asked for cases the department thought would be suitable for the show, Phillips put the Hollingsworth case at the top of the pile.
"It just struck me as, 'Hey, these are the resources I've been waiting on all these years,'" Phillips said at trial.
"Cold Justice" also paid for the department to retest a sample of bloodstained carpet from Vicki Hollingsworth's car that tested positive for her blood. Defense attorneys questioned the TV show's involvement at trial, as well as the lack of evidence directly linking Hollingsworth to the car, the Duncan Avenue home or Billy Goat Hill.
Prosecutors painted a scenario that jurors ultimately found plausible. They said Hollingsworth stabbed his estranged wife while she was supposed to be taking him to work in her Mustang, then buried her body and bought a truck so he could drive himself to work after her death.
Prosecutors pointed to brush stuck in the bumper of the Mustang that was from a type of bush located in Hollingsworth's yard, tire tracks leading to that bush and the blood sample found in the car as evidence of that scenario.
Hollingsworth will face between 15 and 25 years in prison and will be sentenced on March 30. Vicki Carr's daughter, Kujorah Beasley, said that sentence isn't tough enough.
"I'm not happy with that, but at the same time I'm just happy that he's being put away," Beasley said. "He won't treat anybody else like that."
Contact staff writer Claire Wiseman at cwiseman@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6347. Follow her on Twitter @clairelwiseman.