Onetime Drexel University security guard David Dickson, Jr., who was convicted for the 1984 murder of Drexel student Deborah Wilson, had his conviction overturned on Tuesday after spending 30 years in state prison.
On July 22, a Common Pleas Court judge sided with the District Attorney’s Office to find that his sensational 1995 trial had been tainted by prosecutorial misconduct. Dickson took an Alford plea, meaning he pleaded guilty to robbery and second-degree murder charges in exchange for immediate release, while maintaining his innocence. There will not be a retrial.
The murder of 20-year-old mathematics major Deborah Wilson on Nov. 30, 1984 stunned the Drexel community, per The Triangle’s contemporary coverage.
“We will never be able to understand the meaning of this tragedy,” campus minister Dean Snyder eulogized at the time. Police tried to, but for all the sensational details that emerged – namely that Wilson had been discovered barefoot, in a stairwell outside Randell Hall – no leads or eyewitnesses were turned up.
Ultimately, the case would go unsolved until the 1990s, when the Vidocq Society – a group of volunteer veteran investigators – was recruited to review the case. Member and criminal profiler Richard Walter homed in on the missing sneakers to theorize that the killer had a foot fetish.
Paired with testimony from a jailhouse informant, police were then able to identify Dickson as a suspect.
Even at the time, the case was acknowledged to be wobbly – there was no physical evidence linking Dickson to the crime, and the jailhouse informant was known to be unreliable. However, after a first trial was declared a mistrial, prosecutors made their case a second time, and Dickson was convicted for the murder in 1995.
According to the Inquirer, presiding judge Juanita Kidd Stout, said, ‘“If there is a conviction, it will certainly be overturned… There is no way, with all of this, that it can stand.’”
Over the intervening three decades, crucial evidence would begin to unravel. Prosecutor Roger King and his informant, John Hall, would be linked to a string of false confessions and wrongful convictions. Additionally, profiler Richard Walter’s credentials were revealed to be falsified, and a 2022 petition revealed police reports indicating that the missing sneakers were seen near the body.
The petition also revealed a number of other possible suspects, including another security guard with a violent history. However, Dickson’s own testimony is shown to be inconsistent at best.
While the Wilson family remains convinced that Dickson is responsible for the murder, Dickson has maintained his innocence, and the overturned conviction does little to assuage the lingering questions about the case.