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| “ | It's gonna be a lot more than that, and ain't no one gonna care. You, all of you, are expendable. None of you matter! You are the enemy! | „ |
| ~ Dickerson's racist breakdown and some of his final words. |
Billy Wayne Dickerson. also known as The Lake Castor Sniper, is the overarching antagonist of the Jess Keeler Mysteries novel "Blood Red Summer". Henderson is a deceased local veteran of the small Virginia town and a racist serial killer of black Americans in the South Side of the town in 1984.
History[]
Dickerson was an expert sniper with a history of service in the Vietnam war. Returning with PTSD, Dickerson became an enforcer for the Vandals biker gang which stole many of its members from the Blood Ravens. A ruthless group, Dickerson shared records with them for assault, vehicular theft, and intoxication. The Crimes Against Persons division of the Virginia State Bureau of Investigation already had an agent, Martin Jancowicz, infiltrating the gang under the alias "Charles 'Charlie Chains' Wilcox", successfully ingratiating himself to the gang. The leader of the chapter, Edward "Digger" Crowe, wanted to kill local career bootlegger and illegal gambler Jem Fosskey for refusing to work with him. Digger lied to his accomplices he only wanted to scare them all, and he made sure Dickerson and Jankowicz were high before they made the drive to Fosskey's apartment. One of the gang's trafficked women, Delilah McNaughton, ex-wife of former Blood Raven Caleb McNaughton, was the lure to get Fosskey to open the door. Once he spoke to Delilah, Digger and Dickerson violent beat, stabbed and shot Fosskey and two of his affiliates, Mel Kimble and Felton Loe. Jankowicz crouched in a corner in terror because he couldn't stop the murders without blowing his cover, but he did let a witness, Clarence "Uncle Meaney" Moulton, run for his life. Delilah also ran, changing her name to Lila Dennis and hiding in Emerald Isle, North Carolina with her husband and stepchildren. Hal Broadstreet agreed to take the request of Jem's brother Wilbur to investigate the killings, but the local police and circles of the gang refused any cooperation or interest in the murders. Jancowicz, however, was terrified of getting caught, and with superiors ordering him to tie up loose ends and cover up where their operations went wrong, he used Dickerson's racism and paranoia to manipulate him into killing the witnesses.
As Lake Castor's South Side, known at the time of the murders as the "Back Back", was disregarded whenever crime attacked the black community there, Dickerson began shooting black man in the streets of the South Side to over up the murders Jankowicz was intending. Perched in a concrete grain silo with an M40A1 rifle, Dickerson killed four men with shots clean through them over the course of a month. Ronnie Daye, an enforcer for Frank "Superfly" Lucas in the Lake Castor chapter, was killed first to ensure no one cared to investigate. COlelge student Quincy Williams was shot next while out playing basketball with friends. As Broadstreet got the truth from Moulton so quickly, he was killed next. Dwight Fontenot was then shot at the gas station where he worked. But when Gary Mock narrowly survived being shot at a grocery store, the locals caught Dickerson and, in spite of Deputy Ennis Worthy, from the Deeton County Sheriff's Department, trying to intervene, a group of them beat Dickerson to death while he screamed and spat racist profanities at them. To prevent a full on race war, Dickerson's killing was buried.
Jankowicz, in spite of his consequential PTSD from his experiences, killed Broadstreet in his home and pretended the "Lake Castor Sniper" was at large and responsible. A local schizophrenic black boy, Ricky Lee Patience, whose orthodox mother didn't reciprocate the need for his getting treatment, was arrested and falsely convicted to frame him for the crimes, with a planted shell casing and a false confession. Decades later, Ricky's nephew, Martin Potts, came to true crime podcaster Jess Keeler and told her about the killings, in the hopes Ricky would be exonerated and released. She was coordinating with Storytime Productions, a German-based production company that wanted to throw out the case if it couldn't be romanticized and propagandized. Even now-Sheriff Worthy and his colleague, deputy-turned-sheriff Lorne Axel, tried to divert the investigation by making Jess and the company focus on the Fosskey apartment massacre. But Jess knew there were more answers to look for, as Broadstreet was killed with a different rifle, an M82, than Dickerson used, and Jankowicz was positively identified as Charlie Chains, by Axel, who arrested the bikers for weapons possession shortly after the murders, and Lila, who returned to be questioned by Jess. Jancowicz's handler shot him in a staged suicide to bury his involvement. Jess gave up on unveiling the corruption, but with the new information, she did successfully secure Ricky's exoneration and release.
Victims[]
- The Fosskey apartment massacre
- Jem Fosskey
- Mel Kimble
- Felton Loe
- Ronald "Ronnie" Daye
- Quincy Williams
- Clarence "Uncle Meaney" Moulton (previously attempted to kill at the apartment massacre)
- Dwight Fontenot
- Gary Mock (attempted, but survived)
Trivia[]
- Dickerson is inspired by multiple real-life serial killers:
- John Mark Richardson, a racist serial killer of black men in Greensboro recently arrested and convicted for three such murders.
- James Swann, a.k.a. "The Shotgun Stalker", a black serial killer of people in D.C. thriugh drive-by shootings in historic neighborhoods with marginalized communities.