Devious Dixie

Mel Dyson was a 30-year-old accountant who also worked with computers. He and his longtime partner, Dixie, who used his last name, lived in a secured complex in Huntington Harbour, a waterfront neighborhood of Huntington Beach, California. Dixie, about ten years older than Mel, was secretly involved with Enrico Vasquez, a repairman.

Overnight on November 17–18, 1984, Mel was stabbed to death in the couple’s bedroom. Dixie told police a masked intruder had sexually assaulted her and then forced her to drive him out of the complex to a shopping center. Detectives found problems with her story: the gate guard’s log didn’t match it, and a drugstore receipt placed her at that same intersection hours earlier. Investigators also intercepted a 1986 letter she wrote to Vasquez in New York, begging for money and a way out. Prosecutors said she wanted Mel’s money and life insurance, and that Vasquez had recruited George Ira Lamb to carry out the stabbing.

Dixie was arrested in December 1986, and in 1988 an Orange County jury convicted her of first-degree murder. Only then did she name her accomplices and testify against them, and her conviction was reduced to second-degree murder with a sentence of 15 years to life. Vasquez was convicted of murder and conspiracy, and Lamb of conspiracy to commit murder. Each was sentenced to 25 years to life.