The state's Supreme Judicial Court issued a unanimous ruling today that will clear the way for the alleged killer of a Malden woman to finally face trial for her 2004 murder. Shabazz Augustine, 36, has been awaiting trial since his indictment and arrest in 2011. Prosecutors say that Augustine killed his former girlfriend, Julaine Jules, in his Sydney Street apartment before wrapping her in plastic and dumping her body in the Charles River. Jules, 26, was missing for three weeks before her remains were found. It was a brutal act that shocked the city and the Haitian-American community in particular and remained open for seven years.

Today's decision by the SJC reversed a judge's order that would have kept cell tower records out of evidence in the trial. The 20-page, unanimous decision overturns a Superior Court judge's earlier decision that ruled that State Police did not have probable cause to secure the cell tower records. Now that this decision has been overturned, prosecutors will begin a new trial schedule soon.

Julaine Jules"Investigators took every appropriate step in obtaining this evidence, and the high court made the right call in reversing its suppression," said District Attorney Dan Conley in a statement. "In 2004, some 10 years before it was legally required, they provided a judge with a detailed affidavit that would have supported a search warrant even though, at the time, they were obliged to meet a significantly lower standard."

Augustine was arrested on a warrant issued after the Boston Police Cold Case Squad began probing the Jules murder in 2011. He was a suspect early in the murder investigation, but according to prosecutors, his arrest was prompted by "incriminating remarks" that he allegedly made after the killing.

The Dorchester man, who had been working at a dental clinic before his arrest, was taken into custody at his workplace in Roxbury in June 2011.

Jules was a pretty, Haitian-American woman who worked as a secretary at the Children’s Museum at the time of her death. She was missing for more than a month before her decomposed body— wrapped in plastic garbage bags— surfaced on the Cambridge side of the Charles River on Sept., 19, 2004.

Prosecutors say that Augustine was upset after learning that Jules — whom he had a romantic connection to— had been spending time with another man in the days before her disappearance.

Augustine— furious at Jules— “enlisted one of his cousins to concoct a ruse” that prompted Jules to drive to the suspect’s apartment at 137 Sydney St. on the evening of August 24, 2004, according to Assistant District Attorney Mark Lee, who spoke at Augustine's 2011 arraignment.

“An argument ensued and [Augustine] suffocated and subsequently killed her by asphyxiation," said Lee, adding that “we may never know” precisely how Jules was murdered.

Augustine is then alleged to have disposed of Jules’ body in the river before driving Jules’ car to a strip mall on the Revere-Malden line, where he torched the vehicle.

Lee said in court that Augustine has made a “series of incriminating statements” over the years that implicate him as the murderer, including “an admission that he killed her.”