A former Baltimore County man was convicted Wednesday of second-degree murder in the death of his wife, nearly a dozen years after he reported her missing to police.

County prosecutors said that Michael Amick, 57, killed his wife, Roxanne, in their Perry Hall home in September 2006 and dumped her body in a wooded area a few miles away.

Amick, who later moved to Hilo, Hawaii, wasn’t arrested until the fall of 2016, when county police said new DNA evidence bolstered their case.

Jurors deliberated for about two hours.

“I think justice has been served,” prosecutor William Bickel said after the trial.

Judge Jan Marshall Alexander revoked Amick’s bail after the verdict was announced. Amick was handcuffed to be taken to the county detention center.

Jurors acquitted Amick of first-degree murder. He faces a maximum of 30 years when he is sentenced on June 22. He could have been sentenced to life without parole if convicted of first-degree murder.

His defense attorney, Joseph Murtha, said he was “disappointed with the outcome,” but relieved that Amick was not found guilty of first-degree murder.

In closing arguments Wednesday, Bickel acknowledged that the state’s case was circumstantial. He pointed to marital turmoil as a possible motive and alleged that Michael Amick attacked his wife from behind with an unknown object in their Necker Avenue home and beat her.

Bickel asked who else would have killed Roxanne Amick. The couple had two young children. “She wasn’t robbed, she wasn’t sexually assaulted,” Bickel said. “What happened to her?”

Michael Amick called police on the morning of Sept. 14, 2006, according to testimony in the trial. He told detectives his wife had left in his minivan at about 2 p.m. the day before to go shopping, and hadn’t returned.

The afternoon of the call, the van was found behind the Perry Hall Crossing Shopping Center, near the Amicks’ home.

A man found Roxanne Amick’s body in a wooded area near Belair and Perry Hall roads the next day. It was wrapped in blankets that belonged to the Amicks.

For prosecutors, a key piece of evidence was a rash on Michael Amick’s arms, starting just above his wrists. A botanist testified that the area where Roxanne Amick’s body was found was covered in poison ivy. There was also a small amount in the Amicks’ yard.

“Look at his arms,” Bickel told the jurors Wednesday as he showed them a photograph of Amick’s reddened skin.

Police said advances in DNA technology helped finally crack the case. Prosecutors said new techniques helped amplify DNA material found on work gloves discovered in the van and on the bottom of shoes that Michael Amick wore the day his wife vanished. Bickel said the items contained DNA of both the Amicks.

Murtha called the DNA evidence “meaningless” and asked why authorities waited a decade to charge Michael Amick. Murtha said it made sense for both people’s DNA to be on items stored in a shared household.

He called the state’s emphasis on the DNA “a ruse.”

alisonk@baltsun.com

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