Witnesses said Long’s anger exploded in November 2015, when she sent threatening videos to a couple of Ciccone’s friends and created fake Instagram accounts disparaging Ciccone. In one of the videos, Long was heard saying, “If she wants to live, I better not [expletive] see her. “I’m going to [expletive] her [expletive] up real [expletive] bad.”

Investigators also recovered a Dec. 3, 2015, text from Long to one of her friends in which she wrote, “some people just need to get popped and she’s one of them.”

The evidence also showed that during the week before her death, Ciccone was contacted by Deandre Scott about getting a half-pound of marijuana for him. He offered to pay her a couple of hundred dollars to broker the deal. Ciccone contacted a couple of drug dealers before making arrangements to get the marijuana from Williams and deliver it to Scott. After several false starts, Scott came from Dahlgren to Spotsylvania to meet Ciccone the night of Dec. 6, but she never showed up.

Mehaffey argued that Williams used the would-be drug deal to set up Ciccone’s slaying. He said Long convinced Williams that Ciccone had given them a sexually transmitted disease and that Ciccone was working with the police against Williams.