Former boyfriend of slain USC professor jailed for charging at Hawes in courtroom
A former boyfriend of Jennifer Wilson’s lunged at her accused killer as he was being led out of the courtroom in shackles and handcuffs Thursday, telling officers: “I just had to; I’m sorry.”
The confrontation occurred after nearly two hours of testimony about often explicit text messages exchanged between Wilson and her lover, Hank Hawes, now on trial for murder.
Matt Cronin was tackled by Cpl. Joseph Gravelyn before he had a chance to reach Hawes.
Judge J.C. Nicholson Jr. of Charleston immediately sentenced Cronin to six months in jail for contempt of court, saying he would not tolerate such behavior in his courtroom. Cronin then was taken to a hospital to be checked for injuries, said Curtis Wilson, a spokesman for the Richland County Sheriff’s Department.
Additional information about Cronin was not immediately available Thursday, but his name was mentioned during testimony earlier this week as being a former boyfriend of the USC professor and he has been sitting with friends and family throughout the four-day trial.
Thursday afternoon’s testimony covered intimate text messages, emails and computer documents written in private but read aloud in court as lawyers on both sides tried to characterize the relationship between Wilson and Hawes.
Wilson was brutally stabbed to death in her Shandon home on Aug. 28, 2011. Hawes’ defense attorneys are not denying that he killed Wilson but say it was a crime of passion, not murder.
John VanHouten, a computer forensics examiner for the Columbia Police Department, pulled all the data off their cellphones, extracting so many texts that when transcribed they were thousands of pages long.
As defense lawyer Fielding Pringle noted, Hawes tends to send multiple messages in a row, “rapid-fire text messages.”
In the exchanges from mid- to late August, the two were negotiating whether to see each other, whether to act on their desires, whether to attend a counseling session together. It was a time when, according to earlier testimony, Wilson had just returned from a yoga trip to Bali and was struggling to break things off with Hawes.
Prosecutor Dolly Justice Garfield had VanHouten read them aloud.
“Will love come over for a few minutes? It will be O.K.” Hawes texts in one example.
“I wish we could, but we bring out the worst in each other,” Wilson responds.
Other times, Wilson refers to being “too frightened” to see Hawes.
She says she’s finally had a night of sleep without nightmares, and asks Hawes not to push her.
He says he refuses to beg to see her.
There were many expressions of love, regret and loneliness by each of them.
In one document, titled “Dear Hank” and dated July 11, Wilson writes that she’s looking for the “sweet peaceful feeling” expressed in the Bible, in 1 Corinthians: “Love is patient, love is kind. ... It is not easily angered.”
She says she doesn’t want to be manipulated. They need to trust each other, she says.
In another document that Garfield cast as a “diary” entry from June, Wilson expresses frustration that Hawes “demands” he be allowed to stay over, then tries to “diagnose” her with diabetes, narcissism and attention deficit disorder.
In text messages highlighted by Pringle from earlier in the summer, the relationship seems more easy-going. More of them were about such everyday things as what to pick up for dinner, plans to go to church, making blueberry jam.
There was also talk about whether to start a family.
On Aug. 26, two days before Wilson’s death, he writes that he’s not feeling well. “Don’t be like the rest. This is no joke. I’m hurting and I don’t know who else to call. Help. Help. I’m headed to the emergency room pretty soon. I’ve been throwing up for days and having abdominal pain.”
The morning’s testimony included:
Photographer Tracy Glantz contributed. Reach Hinshaw at (803) 771-8641.
This story was originally published October 9, 2014 at 11:42 PM with the headline "Former boyfriend of slain USC professor jailed for charging at Hawes in courtroom."