Judge overturns 1995 conviction of Drexel guard accused of killing a student for her sneakers

At David Dickson’s trial for the 1984 murder of Drexel University student Deborah Wilson, the judge repeatedly remarked that the case was tainted by sweeping prosecutorial misconduct and a troubling reliance on an infamous jailhouse informant.

“If there is a conviction, it will certainly be overturned,” Judge Juanita Kidd Stout said at the 1995 trial. “There is no way, with all of this, that it can stand.”

Yet, it did stand — for 30 years — until Tuesday, when Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Jennifer Schultz reversed Dickson’s conviction, permitting him to plead guilty in return for his immediate release from state prison.

Dickson maintained his innocence, entering what’s known as an Alford plea to third-degree murder and robbery. It was an emotional moment for his siblings, nieces and nephews filling the courtroom who said they wanted his name cleared. But more than that, they just wanted Dickson home.

Now, Dickson will be starting over at age 65.

“You can’t try to make up for lost time,” his brother, Michael Avery, said. “That lost time is in the past. You gotta think about going forward.”

Dickson’s is at least the eighth murder conviction overturned in connection with misconduct by prosecutor Roger King, who died in 2016. A 2021 Inquirer investigation into Dickson’s case found King had repeatedly manipulated evidence, intimidated witnesses and made improper comments in court. At Dickson’s trial, King buttressed his informant’s testimony with days of evidence focused on Dickson’s martial arts training and his alleged sneaker fetish to support the theory Wilson was killed for her sneakers.

For the family of Wilson, the court proceeding was yet another chapter in a traumatic 40-year story that’s now left open-ended.

Wilson’s sister, Nancy Hughes, testified to that impact, describing Wilson as kind, generous and optimistic, with big dreams and a keen intellect.

“Mr. Dickson’s conviction was a comfort to my family,” she said. She said she still believes Dickson killed her sister “with his black belt karate hands.”

Wilson’s murder, late at night in a computer science building on the Drexel campus, had gone unsolved for eight years before police arrested Dickson, an Army veteran who had been working overnight security at the building where she died.

The breakthrough came when a homicide detective presented the case to the Vidocq Society — an organization cofounded by Richard Walter, who, according to a New York Magazine profile, falsified his credentials as a criminal profiler and testified in at least three murder cases that were later overturned. It was Walter who came up with theory that the killer had a foot fetish.

King ran with that salacious theory, which attracted intense news coverage.

But the only direct evidence was testimony by John Hall, a prolific jailhouse informant who became known as “the monsignor” for his supposed knack for obtaining confessions to high-profile crimes.

On Tuesday, the District Attorneys’ Office stipulated that it had withheld evidence proving Hall lied in some or all of the nine murder cases he cooperated on in Philadelphia. Hall fabricated those stories with help from his wife, Phyllis, who worked as his research assistant gathering news clippings and visiting crime scenes. After Hall’s 2006 death, Phyllis Hall told the Inquirer that when it came to the Dickson case, “nothing [Hall] said was true.”

“The prosecutors knew and considered this information false,” Assistant District Attorney Jessica Attie Gurvich said, adding that Hall had repeatedly provided testimony that contradicted physical evidence. “Mr. Hall was the only direct evidence tying Mr. Dickson to the crime.”

Dickson was not available for comment on Tuesday.

Jennifer Merrigan, Dickson’s lawyer, said her client has a flawless prison record — a rarity — and an honorable discharge from the Army. His plea deal includes eight years on probation. Given his advanced heart disease and his ailing father, who was in the hospital while Dickson was in court, he didn’t feel he had a choice.

“It’s bitter for him to have to take a plea,” Merrigan said. “It’s bitter that justice wasn’t done — because it should have been done 40 years ago, when this case was investigated.”

Two of Hall’s other victims were in court Tuesday to witness Dickson’s resentencing. Walter Ogrod served 23 years on death row for the 1988 murder of 4-year-old Barbara Jean Horn, based on Hall’s testimony and a coerced confession, before being exonerated in 2020. And Herbie Haak, Hall’s stepson, was acquitted in 1997 of the 1995 “Center City jogger” murder of Kimberly Ernest after Hall admitted that he’d tried to fabricate evidence linking Haak to the crime.

After Haak discovered a cache of letters almost 20 years ago from Hall to his mother discussing the plans to frame Ogrod and Dickson, he turned them over to journalist Tom Lowenstein, and the cases began to unravel.

Haak said it was surreal to reunite with Ogrod and Dickson 30 years after all three were in jail together fighting Hall’s allegations. Haak said he’s still rebuilding from the damage Hall caused.

“I’m trying to live, and I’m hoping Walter and David and all the other people affected can do the same thing,” he said.