Sheriff says no agency has told him of confession; FBI not investigating D.C. links

09:29 AM CDT on Saturday, June 17, 2006

By DONNA FIELDER / Denton Record-Chronicle

Sarah and Billy Dillon wear buttons that proclaim "Billy Gene Dillon is a very important person."

They weren't so sure, until now, that anyone else thought so.

But on Friday their son's name appeared in newspaper articles nationwide, listed as a previously unpublicized victim of snipers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo.

The convicted killers have been linked to 27 shootings in the Washington. D.C., area, including 17 murders.

Billy Gene Dillon was mowing property just outside Denton for his employer on May 27, 2002, when a high-powered bullet struck him in the head. He died instantly.

The killer left no clues – not even a bullet in good enough shape for forensic tests. Denton County sheriff's investigators searched for an assailant with virtually nothing to go on. They made no arrests.

"It made me feel like he was just someone who died with only a nickel in his pocket," Mrs. Dillon said Friday at her home in Collinsville, in rural Grayson County.

Mr. Dillon, 37, had only 5 cents on him when he died, his mother said. He was a high school dropout with a suspended driver's license who lived with his parents.

His mother drove him to his job every morning and picked him up every afternoon.

He was a good man who had gone through a depression and a number of problems, Mrs. Dillon said. He didn't say much and people didn't understand him, she said.

Billy Gene Dillon

"Every night when I'd go to bed I'd pray to the Lord that his killer would be found," Mrs. Dillon said.

According to a report in The Washington Post, Mr. Malvo, 21, disclosed the Denton County shooting last month during an interview before his testimony at one of Mr. Muhammad's trials. The information came from anonymous sources, and Denton County Sheriff Benny Parkey said he has no confirmation that it is true.

"We're in contact with Maryland authorities, and we're trying to confirm the reports," Sheriff Parkey said. "We've checked with other federal and state agencies, and so far we have not been able to confirm that.

"We have not been informed by any agency that there has been a confession. I have not seen a confession, and I haven't talked to any law enforcement agency that has."

FBI Special Agent Lori Bailey, based in Dallas, said her agency is not involved in the investigation of Mr. Dillon's shooting death and any possible tie to the Washington-area snipers.

During Mr. Muhammad's trial last month in Maryland, state prosecutor Katherine Winfree alluded to Mr. Malvo's revelations about a number of shootings outside Maryland and Virginia.

At one point she asked Mr. Malvo whether he had discussed such "other matters" with investigators. Mr. Malvo acknowledged that he had.

And Mr. Muhammad, who represented himself during the trial, brought up the Denton shooting during his closing arguments. Over the objections of Ms. Winfree, he incorrectly suggested that the Denton shooting took place after the suburban Washington spree, rather than months before.

DRC

Billy and Sarah Dillon, along with granddaughter Billie Jean Dillon, 3, hold a picture of their son Billy Gene, murdered in 2002.

Through a Montgomery County, Md., spokesman Friday, Ms. Winfree declined to comment.

Mr. Malvo has previously made conflicting statements about the sniper shootings and acknowledged that when he was arrested he lied about details such as who the triggerman was in various shootings. But when he testified against Mr. Muhammad, Mr. Malvo insisted he was telling the truth.

Mrs. Dillon said she's afraid to hope that Mr. Malvo or Mr. Muhammad was her son's killer until the Denton County sheriff confirms it.

"If he done it," she said, "I want him brought back here to face it."

Four months after Mr. Dillon's death, sniper shootings erupted in the Washington area. After weeks of terror, Mr. Malvo and Mr. Muhammad were arrested. Mr. Muhammad has been convicted of murder in Virginia and Maryland and is awaiting execution. Mr. Malvo was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in Virginia without possibility of parole. He has agreed to plead guilty to six counts of first-degree murder in Maryland.

Mr. Malvo testified against Mr. Muhammad last month, and it was during pretrial interviews for that trial that he talked about the Denton County slaying and other previously unacknowledged attacks, according to The Washington Post report.

Other victims were Albert Michalczyk, who was wounded on a Florida golf course; an unidentified man killed in Los Angeles during a robbery that February or March; and John Gaeta, 54, who survived an Aug. 1 robbery and shooting outside a shopping mall in Hammond, La., near Baton Rouge.

Mr. Michalczyk, 76, of Oro Valley, Ariz., said the news answered his suspicions about who shot him on a Clearwater, Fla., golf course May 18, 2002.

"My wife immediately thought it was these guys," said Mr. Michalczyk, who was struck in the upper chest by a bullet that police could not recover. "We put two and two together, but we never came up with four. Now, we are coming up with four."

Clearwater police said they will investigate the new report, but spokesman Wayne Shelor said the department previously worked with the Washington-area sniper task force in hopes of solving the case.

"We have no evidence at all connecting our case to those," Mr. Shelor said.

Lt. Tommy Corkern said the Hammond, La., Police Department was in touch Friday with the FBI in New Orleans, trying to verify Mr. Malvo's statements in the shooting of Mr. Gaeta. If verified, police will take the case to prosecutors.

"We plan to bring charges as soon as we can," Lt. Corkern said.

Mr. Gaeta said Friday that he was shot after two men approached him as he was fixing a car tire that had been slashed.

"I said, 'What are you doing?' He lifted up the gun and shot me. Once I saw the weapon, my concentration was on that. And on dying. I thought, 'Is this how it's going to end?' " Mr. Gaeta said. The bullet struck his neck, and the shooter stole his wallet.

Mr. Gaeta could not positively identify his assailant, but like Mr. Michalczyk and Mr. Dillon's mother, he hopes charges are filed.

In January 2005, Denton sheriff's investigators looked into a possible connection between Mr. Dillon's death and a Denton man accused of a sniper shooting near his home, but they found none.

After the two men were arrested in October 2002, Denton County investigators sent bullet fragments from Mr. Dillon's slaying to federal authorities to try to determine whether they matched any taken from the sniper killings there. Tests proved inconclusive because the fragments were too small.

Billy Dillon's family has tried to keep his story in the news, hoping for new leads. Bobby Dillon, one of his three brothers, named his daughter Billie Jean in his memory. Billy Dillon was buried in Collinsville Cemetery, next to his daughter who died at birth. He had a son but was divorced from the boy's mother. It was that boy he saw little of that he talked about the morning he died, his mother said.

"He missed him so much," Mrs. Dillon said.

In late May, Billy Dillon's family held a candlelight ceremony for him on the property where he died, just as they have every Memorial Day since his death. His father said Friday that the family has suffered from not having answers as much as from losing him.

"It's been real hard. I keep to myself, and I don't express my feelings," Mr. Dillon said. "But he was my firstborn son."

Staff writers Tim Wyatt in Dallas and Alan Pusey in Washington contributed to this report, which contains material from The Associated Press.

E-mail dfielder@dentonrc.com