Harry Jaffe
Shaquita Bell’s killer deals himself a light sentence
By: Harry Jaffe
Examiner Columnist
November 23, 2008
The murder of Shaquita Bell has a number of tragic story lines. There is her disappearance 12 years ago. A mother of three working as a bakery clerk at a Giant supermarket, Bell vanished in 1996. There was no body and no witnesses, yet every June near the date of Shaquita’s disappearance, her mother, Jackie Winborne, came to police headquarters and pleaded to heat up the cold case.
When Cathy Lanier became police chief, she took the Bell case to heart. “If we recover Shaquita,” she said on cable TV last month, “it’ll be the best day in 18 years of law enforcement for me.”
But for me, the back story is how Bell’s killer gamed the system. Fingered as her murderer back in 1996, Michael Dickerson has been let off again and again. Even in admitting he killed Bell, he copped a deal to reduce his sentence and avoid prosecution in another murder.
Back in the 1990s, Dickerson was a drug dealer and stone-cold killer. When Sean Thomas and a friend showed up one day to rob drug dealers in Dickerson’s turf in Anacostia, bullets flew. Wounded in the leg, Thomas fell; Dickerson shot him dead.
Dickerson and Shaquita Bell were living together at the time, but their relationship was on the rocks. Months later, she left him and told detectives that she had overheard him talking about killing Sean Thomas.
Based on Bell’s tip, police stopped Dickerson on June 13, 1996. Cops found a 9 mm handgun in his 1986 Cadillac. They charged him with possession of a firearm. They questioned him about the Thomas slaying.
Then they let him go.
Let me repeat: Despite the fact that Dickerson had a gun, and they had a tip he was a murderer, and they asked him about it — they set him free. Dickerson even told detectives, “I knew she’s the one that called the police on me,” according to affidavits.
Two weeks later, Dickerson shot Bell, wrapped her body in a rug and buried her in a wooded area in Prince George’s County.
Dickerson was later jailed on a previous charge of assaulting Bell and on the weapons charge. But though detectives believed he had killed Bell, they never got enough to charge him. One witness, Jonathan “Jody” Shields, even admitted to helping Dickerson bury Bell; Shields was killed in 1999.
Lanier credits two prosecutors, Glenn Kirschner and Amanda Haynes, with adding up the old evidence and charging Dickerson with the Bell murder in January. Dickerson said he would admit to killing her and lead them to the burial place, with conditions: The lawmen must agree not to prosecute him for killing Sean Thomas, and they could make him serve no more than 15 years on the Bell rap.
Dickerson took Lanier to some woods in Prince George’s County. Cops dug. No body.
“We are still looking,” Lanier says.
So — no Shaquita Bell, and her killer gets off scot-free for shooting Sean Thomas.
Is that justice?
E-mail Harry Jaffe at hjaffe@washingtonian.com.
When Cathy Lanier became police chief, she took the Bell case to heart. “If we recover Shaquita,” she said on cable TV last month, “it’ll be the best day in 18 years of law enforcement for me.”
But for me, the back story is how Bell’s killer gamed the system. Fingered as her murderer back in 1996, Michael Dickerson has been let off again and again. Even in admitting he killed Bell, he copped a deal to reduce his sentence and avoid prosecution in another murder.
Back in the 1990s, Dickerson was a drug dealer and stone-cold killer. When Sean Thomas and a friend showed up one day to rob drug dealers in Dickerson’s turf in Anacostia, bullets flew. Wounded in the leg, Thomas fell; Dickerson shot him dead.
Dickerson and Shaquita Bell were living together at the time, but their relationship was on the rocks. Months later, she left him and told detectives that she had overheard him talking about killing Sean Thomas.
Based on Bell’s tip, police stopped Dickerson on June 13, 1996. Cops found a 9 mm handgun in his 1986 Cadillac. They charged him with possession of a firearm. They questioned him about the Thomas slaying.
Then they let him go.
Let me repeat: Despite the fact that Dickerson had a gun, and they had a tip he was a murderer, and they asked him about it — they set him free. Dickerson even told detectives, “I knew she’s the one that called the police on me,” according to affidavits.
Two weeks later, Dickerson shot Bell, wrapped her body in a rug and buried her in a wooded area in Prince George’s County.
Dickerson was later jailed on a previous charge of assaulting Bell and on the weapons charge. But though detectives believed he had killed Bell, they never got enough to charge him. One witness, Jonathan “Jody” Shields, even admitted to helping Dickerson bury Bell; Shields was killed in 1999.
Lanier credits two prosecutors, Glenn Kirschner and Amanda Haynes, with adding up the old evidence and charging Dickerson with the Bell murder in January. Dickerson said he would admit to killing her and lead them to the burial place, with conditions: The lawmen must agree not to prosecute him for killing Sean Thomas, and they could make him serve no more than 15 years on the Bell rap.
Dickerson took Lanier to some woods in Prince George’s County. Cops dug. No body.
“We are still looking,” Lanier says.
So — no Shaquita Bell, and her killer gets off scot-free for shooting Sean Thomas.
Is that justice?
E-mail Harry Jaffe at hjaffe@washingtonian.com.
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