The Bitch Turn Me In

Facing the needle tonight -- Picture courtesy of Texas Department of Criminal Justice

by blogSpotter
Tonight at 6PM, Texas death row inmate Leon Dorsey will die by lethal injection. The 32 year-old black man was already serving a life sentence for killing a 51-year old convenience store clerk in 1998 when he was strongly implicated in another horrible murder in Dallas, Texas. It seems a few years earlier, in 1994 two Blockbuster Video clerks were found dead in the store office at Casa Linda Village in East Dallas, after hours. They had been slain execution-style, brutally. Dorsey apparently told his girlfriend about it; when she found out he'd gone out on her a few years later, she turned him in to the police. His famous words of remorse were:

"The bitch turn me in".

Let’s never mind the questionable morals of a girlfriend who would keep Dorsey’s gruesome secret for any misguided sense of devotion. Dorsey gave a full confession -- it turns out that it was a violently escalated robbery. The video clerks gave Dorsey $392 out of the register; he was angry at the small amount. They were unable to open the store safe, and that's when Dorsey blew them into the next world. After his girlfriend turned him in, Dorsey gave an interview to a reporter. His consoling words were something to the effect of,

"They’re dead. That’s over and done with. Why are you going to sit there and worry yourself about that? Move on".

His cold, remorseless remarks have garnered him the name of "meanest man on death row" as well as "Pistol Pete". Apparently he has made threats to all the staff, set a fire outside his cell and even tried to stab one guard with a shiv. For these actions, he is the most highly secured, locked down prisoner -- somewhat like the fictional Hannibal Lecter.

I've lived near Casa Linda since 1991. I remember back then that Casa Linda Village was an upscale shopping center with GAP, Taylor Books, Chile's, Pier One Imports and Highland Park Cafeteria. If you drive by there today, you might see a Dollar Store, some no-name shops and a CVS pharmacy. Mr. Dorsey did a great deal towards killing the neighborhood -- not just the two men so heartlessly dispatched. Is that so hard to imagine, that people don’t want to be robbed or assailed?

The Casa Linda area has historically been a nice, upper middle class neighborhood situated close to White Rock Lake. There was (and is) a "red line" that's never spoken of, but still very much there. South of I-30 and Buckner is a very poor neighborhood of section 8 apartments and pawn shops. When housing ordinances changed in 1988, it was no longer legal to discriminate against families with children -- many singles apartments along Buckner became family units, accepting section 8 vouchers. The Buckner red line crept up to Ferguson Road, and with 1994's vile killing, all the way up to Garland Road. With each encroachment, you could see the "burn" line of boarded-up buildings, stores with burglar bars and Burger Kings converted to no-name convenience stores. The neighborhood was devastated as surely as if it were a war zone (and in some ways of looking, it has become one).

Dallas is still not out of the woods. It is one of the most divisive racially, divided cities in America. Both the whites and blacks tend towards antagonistic behavior which has led to a rigid North-South divide along the Trinity River. Our weak-mayor system of governance fairly guarantees that self-interested multidistrict bickering will prevail. Without concessions from either side, the problem continues. The Dorsey story continues. Two South Dallas youths recently rode the Dart Rail to Garland. On the train they engaged two Christian missionaries in a 30 minute conversation, then shot them dead for a few dollars. A woman idling in her Ford pickup outside of North Park Mall was shot in the face by another South Dallas man who rode the Dart Rail northward. Is DART handling its security and fare-collection roles as well as it should be?

I can't, in any corner of my mind, fathom the thoughts or justification of these men. Dorsey is surely getting two scoops of what he deserves -- just be careful delivering such a dangerous man from his cell to the gurney. Dallas has many mountains to climb. We need to navigate political correctness and selfish motivations which together can create a toxic combination -- unbearable criminality that can't be discussed. Let's be civil, let's be polite and let's see why the city of Dallas is so screwed up.

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