An Elkins Park woman and the hitman she hired to kill a romantic rival will spend the rest of their lives in prison

It took a Montgomery County jury just 45 minutes Thursday to convict two people of first-degree murder and conspiracy for coordinating and carrying out the “assassination” of an Elkins Park woman as she and her 11-year-old son were stopped at a Dunkin’ drive-thru in Cheltenham last year.

Rachel King’s family, all dressed in orange, her favorite color, wept as Julie Jean, 35, and Zakkee Alhakim, 34, were sentenced to life in prison.

Alhakim was the gunman, District Attorney Kevin Steele said in his closing arguments Thursday. And Jean was “the connection, the accomplice and the reason this happened,” putting King in the crosshairs in the violent end of a bitter love triangle.

For 10 months, Jean had been having an affair with King’s fiancé, William Hayes. When Hayes broke off the affair and chose to commit fully to King, Jean became angry and obsessive, Steele said, and began plotting the killing with Alhakim, who is related to the father of her children.

“Vengeance can be a terrible thing,” Steele said. “Vengeance in this case was deadly. Vengeance in this case took a life, the life of someone who did nothing wrong.”

In statements during Jean and Alhakim’s sentencing, King’s family remembered her as full of life and laughter, and dedicated to her students at Grover Cleveland Mastery Charter School in Tioga. They were grateful, they said, that her killers faced justice.

But there were no “winners,” Rachel’s father, Allen King, said after Jean and Alhakim were led away in handcuffs by sheriff’s deputies.

“It is a terrible thing to apply a permanent solution to a temporary problem, and that’s what took place,” King said. “Any disagreement you have with another person, you can walk away from. I just wish we could’ve talked first.”

Evidence pulled from Jean’s cellphone showed her travelling to Kensington to meet up with Alhakim and providing him with pictures of King. On Alhakim’s cellphone, detectives found a Google Maps screenshot showing King’s address, with hand-drawn instructions on how best to enter her apartment complex.

Prosecutors also alleged that Jean gave Alhakim $500 the day before he purchased an untraceable “ghost gun” to use in the murder. He sent Jean a picture of that gun hours later.

Jean also purchased a used Mercury Sable that, prosecutors said, Alhakim drove to King’s apartment days before the murder to “scope it out,” and then used it to follow and ambush her on the day of the murder.

Jean later deleted text messages and call logs from her phone reflecting those purchases, as well as news articles about King’s killing.

But her attorney, Shaka Johnson, dismissed Steele’s “fake narrative” and insisted that Jean was innocent. Prosecutors, he said, invented a motive that was not supported by evidence.

“The Commonwealth started off painting a picture for you ... of a woman scorned,” Johnson told the jury. “She is so hurt. She is so completely devastated because Will Hayes won’t deal with her anymore that she wants everybody associated with him dead. This is the theory they want you to believe.”

Johnson said Hayes’ testimony during the trial about his love for King, saying she was his “rock,” and the woman he wanted to marry was “self-serving.” In reality, he said, Hayes was living a double life that neither woman knew about. Jean discovered his infidelity and called King to discuss it.

That call was a natural reaction, Johnson said, for someone who was being “two-timed,” even as Jean moved to Lynnewood Gardens, the Elkins Park apartment complex where Hayes lived.

Johnson called the “mountain of evidence” presented by Steele circumstantial, and said none of it directly implicated Jean.

“How much does it prove Julie Jean is a psycho who killed Rachel to have Hayes to herself?” Johnson said. “I think if you look at this critically, academically, without emotion, the only verdict you can render is not guilty.”

Benjamin Cooper, Alhakim’s attorney, similarly rejected the charges against his client. He said surveillance video of King’s murder did not positively identify the shooter, nor did other videos of the Mercury Sable fleeing the scene.

“Suspicion doesn’t count. Whether you like the guy doesn’t count,” Cooper said. “You have a guy sitting in jail for murder. I submit to you there’s not any evidence to support that.”

Cooper said none of the evidence in the case directly tied Alhakim to the shooting, and did not prove he was the one who drove the car to and from King’s apartment that morning.

But Steele, the district attorney, was adamant that there were too many “coincidences” in the case to explain what happened any other way than what he described to the jury as a murder for hire. Cellphone GPS records showed Alhakim traveling from West Philadelphia to Cheltenham on the morning of April 11, then returning shortly after King was killed.

“How does he know Rachel? How does he know her address?” Steele said. “That’s not all the evidence you have in this case. But it would be enough.”

Later Thursday, King’s older sister, Ahyana, said she looked forward to giving her nephew, Jalen — King’s son — a hug and telling him the outcome of the trial.

Since his mother’s death, the boy, in his grief, had said he regretted not being able to give his mother one last hug, his aunt said.

“I get to hug him and tell him that the people who murdered his mother in cold blood were held accountable and will never get out of prison,” she said. “That will be the greatest hug.”