The Murder of Roger "Scott" Dunn

I told you I would get away from Kentucky this time!! Now I have moved on to Texas. I have seen this case covered on many crime shows including one of my favorites, Forensic Files. I am sure most of you have watched that show but for those of you who have not you should check it out. It is on several different streaming channels. It is a short thirty minute show that focuses solely on forensics. They do not have time to be overly bias one way or another in my opinion and is just long enough to give the facts.

I am also in the middle of reading a book that was written in 2005. It was written by Scott Dunn's father Jim, in collaboration with Wanda Evans and is called Trail of Blood. I already know that the book ended technically I guess we can say before the case actually did. It was said that Jim reportedly said after writing the book he was giving up his “obsession” with finding his son's body and it was time to just accept the inevitable, that his son was dead and had been murdered. But, by that time two people had been tried and technically convicted for Scott's murder and that is one of the reasons this case is most interesting. I have found conflicting evidence but I can for sure tell you that Scott's murder was the first “no body” case tried in Lubbock but it may have actually also been the first case without a body in the entire state of Texas. It was said that at the time of his murder in 1991 Texas had a law about having to have a body. We will get into that in a bit but for now lets just say that authorities were able to convince prosecutors they really did have a body.

In May of 1991 twenty-four year old Scott Dunn was living in Lubbock. He had grown up in Texas and Lubbock was his father's hometown. I am unsure how old he was when his parents divorced but in 1991 his father, Jim, was remarried and he lived in Pennsylvania with his wife. Jim would say that the last time he had talked to his son he had mentioned he had planned to marry a girl named Jessica. He had met the girl a few years before and they had briefly dated and then she had gone off to school but apparently now she was back and they had rekindled their romance. It was said that he was planning to take her to Pennsylvania to meet his dad sometime soon. Prosecutors would say she was finally the girl “decent enough” to meet his family. Scott installed automobile stereo systems and it was said he was quite good at it. There had been many shows and competitions and he had won quite a few. In fact, the shop he worked at was preparing for one when Scott disappeared.

On May 14, 1991 Scott had gone to a party and while there he had gotten sick. He ended up spending the night on his bosses' couch. The following day it was said that Leisha Hamilton picked him up. Apparently Scott and Leisha had been living together for a few months but no one in his family knew anything about it or even about her, but we will get to that in a bit. According to Leisha after picking Scott up he continued to be sick and spent the day in bed. That night one of his co-workers had come by and talked with him for a bit. Scott's car, his cherished yellow Camaro, was still parked at the shop where he worked and Scott asked if the co-worker would come by the next morning and pick him up for work as he was feeling better. The next morning, Thursday the 16^th, Leisha says that she talked to Scott, asking if he needed a ride to work, and he told her no, that the co-worker was coming and then she left for her job as a waitress. She would say that she came home after work and not only was Scott gone, but so were some of things. She would allege later that a few days after that her home was broken into and again, things belonging to Scott were gone. And yet his keys to his car were still there and his car was still sitting at his work. The co-worker stated that he had gone to Scott and Leisha's apartment that morning to get Scott but there was no answer at the door so he assumed that Scott had gotten to work another way.

On Sunday May 19^th Leisha called Jim Dunn in Pennsylvania. Jim had never heard of her, let alone knew that his son was living with this woman. She claimed that she found his number on a phone bill and thought he should know that she had not heard from Scott in about four days. Jim did not know what to think. She had relayed the story about him being sick and her coming home on the 16^th and he not being there. She had also relayed the stories about how her apartment had been broken into but even on other occasions things of Scott's was missing. He sat on this information for a little bit. Keep in mind this was not a situation like today where Jim could just pick up his phone and reach out to his son on a cell phone. In Jim's mind initially since he had never even heard of Leisha, he just assumed if what she was telling him was true that Scott had just simply up and left. He figured he would give it a few days even though he was perplexed and a bit worried.

He kept in touch with Leisha and as time went on he began taping their telephone calls. He also called Scott's boss. Their first conversation was not a good one. His boss was angry. He felt as if Scott had just up and took off and left him hanging, not just with the shop, but also for the competition they had. This left Jim concerned also but he did not get really any answers from the boss since he was so angry. A few days after her initial call to Jim, Leisha called again and she mentioned that she had gone to pick up Scott's car at his job because his boss had insisted on it and was threatening to have it towed. Again, this concerned Jim. How did Scott leave and not take his car? Not to mention it was said to be a prized possession and Jim did not think there was anyway that Scott would have left it. Part of him knew he needed to call the Lubbock police and report Scott missing but another part of him not only did not want to believe that this was the case, he also wondered if Scott had not just left Leisha and would turn up in a few days.

Some information says that Scott went missing on May 31^st and not on the 16^th but I think the confusion lies with when he was reported missing, which was almost two weeks after he was actually gone. In fact, his tombstone has the date of May 16^th as his death. I was quite surprised that even the website for The Charley Project used the May 31^st date. I do not use that site a lot because most of the cases I research do not start out as long term missing person cases which is a lot of what they are involved with. But, it had come up and I thought I would take a look.

Whether Jim finally reported Scott missing on the 31^st or not is unclear but that date does coincide with Scott being gone about two weeks. Jim contacted the Lubbock police department and they admitted later that initially they did not take the report super seriously. In fact, they had another case at the time of a missing person that they thought was in more danger than Scott Dunn. A few days later the other man showed up unharmed. The investigator would later say that looking at that case and the case of Scott Dunn they had misjudged which one was the more serious.

Investigators made their way to the apartment that Scott shared with Leisha. Pretty quickly they knew they were behind the eight-ball in this case and that something was not right. It is not completely clear whether Leisha pointed out to the investigators a spot under her couch or that they discovered it themselves. But, a piece of carpet had been cut out. She would claim that since Scott had left she had slept on the couch and had a sheet over it and had not noticed it but she had also told Jim Dunn of two nights since Scott had left that she had men over for the night. One was a co-worker and the other was a man by the name of Timothy Smith. Smith lived in the same apartment complex and Leisha seemed wishy-washy and inconsistent about just what their relationship was.

The investigators asked Leisha's permission to search the apartment and the other rooms and she agreed. While one stayed in the room with her talking to her, the other went into the bedroom. There was little to no furniture in the bedroom and Leisha had already told them that a blanket spread out in the corner of the room was the last place she had seen Scott. She claimed that she had not disturbed anything in that room in the two weeks he had been gone. That alone seemed suspicious but even more so when the investigator in the bedroom lifted the blanket and saw the piece of carpet cut out of the living room carpet patched into the carpet in the bedroom. They were able to easily pull the piece up. They were able to tell that it had been put down with basically duct tape and saw a dry, dark color in the padding and the floor. They immediately called in a forensic investigator to take a sample to be tested. They needed to know if the substance was blood and if so, was it human.

In the meantime they decided to take Leisha down to give an official interview. When it was over they asked her if she could remain out of her apartment for a few days so that they could investigate more and she agreed. Fairly quickly they learned that the substance they found was blood and it was human. It was decided to take a team inside the apartment and investigate more. They were able to spray luminol, a substance that will glow when it comes in contact with blood, even when it has been washed away or cleaned up. When they sprayed luminol on the carpet and the walls of the bedroom and waited to see if it glowed, to say that it did would be an understatement. Samples were taken of the areas and it was tested again. It was determined that the blood was type O.

Investigators were not sure what motive Leisha Hamilton would have had to harm Scott Dunn, nor were they sure she could have done it alone. By her own admissions Leisha kept up bring up Timothy Smith. To investigators she seemingly kept trying to push the idea that Smith had a motive to harm Scott. Jim Dunn called the Lubbock police every single day to see how the investigation was coming and it was said that investigators were beginning to feel like Leisha was calling just as much. She “remembered” something about that time or Smith had done something or said something “odd.” At one point she brought a bunch of notes and letters to investigators that were addressed to her and from Timothy Smith. Sadly those letters came to them after they had all but lost their chance to really interrogate Timothy Smith.

Investigators had gone to his home early on. According to the book I am reading he had already moved into another, bigger, apartment in the complex when they talked to him but my research for this blog indicated that he was preparing to move but had not done so yet. Either way when investigators went to talk to him one of them noticed a roll of duct tape sitting out. They went into another room and when they came back the tape was gone. Finding this even more suspicious they asked him where the tape had gone and he “played dumb.” Finally he pulled the tape out from beyond some books in a bookshelf. They tagged and bagged it for evidence. He then voluntarily went to the police station for an interview. He did not provide a whole lot of information but they did determine that Smith was very much in love with Leisha.

Investigators had already asked Leisha to take a polygraph test and she had agreed. They now asked Tim Smith. He also agreed and the investigators set up times for both of them with the polygraph expert. Leisha did show up for hers. She had been told that there would not be questions such as “Did you kill Scott Dunn,” but more along the lines of “Do you know what happened to Scott.” I never officially heard what her results were but I got the impression through the book that while she proclaimed to have passed investigators indicated she had failed in certain questions such as her knowing what had occurred. As we know polygraphs are not allowed in court and results are used more as an investigative tool, but they weigh heavily with investigators and help them know their next moves. Between the time of his first interview with investigators and the time for his polygraph Timothy Smith retained a lawyer and then declined to take the polygraph. Investigators were upset they had not pushed him harder when they had him and now they faced a brick wall. They were also getting all of this new information from Leisha pointing to him.

Timothy Smith was described basically as an “odd duck” who had not had a lot of relationships with women. But, he seemed to be obsessed with Leisha. Investigators would basically come to believe that this was by Leisha's doing. They read letters that Smith had written to her basically telling her that he felt she was stringing him along. There was mention of Scott, although not by name. Tim indicated that she was having a sexual relationship with them both at the same time.

Now, when you look up Scott Dunn you will see things that say things like he was a “lady's man” and talks about the fact that he was seeing “several women” at one time and engaged to one of them. I cannot say for certain that anyone knows anything about any other woman besides the Jessica that his dad mentioned early on in the investigation about his last conversation with his son. But, even if true, it does not appear that Leisha was much better. Since few people knew she even existed in Scott's life prior to his disappearance I think it would be safe to say that even fewer knew the dynamics of their relationship. I never found anything that discussed what Scott may or may not have thought about or said to anyone about Leisha. To be fair, I also did not hear anything about any other women except what his dad stated about his conversation about Jessica.

Speaking of Jessica, when Leisha first talked to Jim Dunn she indicated as if she had never heard of Jessica or even knew her name. Later she would comment that she herself had called Jessica after he disappeared, although that is not clear. What is clear is it was said that shortly before he disappeared Jessica had called the apartment and Leisha had answered. I am unsure what conversation they ended up having or what either woman had to say to Scott about it. My point in all of this is that the only person that gave information about their relationship was Leisha and she from the get go seemed to be saying she knew nothing, but basically if something happened it must have been Timothy Smith's doing.

Investigators suspected that Leisha, along with Timothy were involved in Scott's disappearance and they were convinced that it was more than a disappearance considering how much blood was in the apartment but they could not prove anything, especially without a body. The residents of the complex as well as the manager and the community at large were questioned about what they may or may not have seen around the time Scott disappeared. One nearby resident talked about seeing something odd at the dumpster in the complex. Investigators spoke to the people at the landfill to determine where the dumpster had been dumped around the time of his disappearance. Cadaver dogs were taken there but nothing was found. Many years later people would ask why those dogs had not been taken to the apartment and around the complex. Texas law at the time did not allow them to file murder charges against anyone without a body and this hindered investigators despite the fact that were all but certain, especially as time went on, that Scott had been murdered inside his own apartment.

In 1992 Jim Dunn, who lived in Pennsylvania heard about an organization called The Vidocq Society. It was a group of over eighty criminologists, some even from Scotland Yard, that was based in Philadelphia and they investigated cold cases as a hobby. Jim was able to convince them to look at Scott's case. After reviewing the evidence at hand and knowing the Texas law the Vidocq Society was finally able to convince the prosecutor in Lubbock that the “sheer volume of blood constituted a body” and they decided to dig in the case even further and eventually in 1997 they would charge both Leisha Hamilton and Timothy Smith with the murder of Scott Dunn.

I could find very little concerning the trials of the defendants. I did learn that they had separate trials. The prosecution theory was that Leisha had been involved and murdered Scott because either she had learned he was not faithful or he had told her he was planning to marry Jessica and was leaving her. Their theory as far as Timothy seemed to be that he too was involved because he wanted Scott out of the picture so he could have Leisha all to himself. I was able to determine that aside from knowing that the blood that had obviously been cleaned up, they were able to determine that the duct tape found at Timothy Smith's home came from the same roll as the one used to tape the piece of carpet down in the bedroom. They also found two hairs on the used tape, none belonged to Scott, but there were hairs belonging to both Leisha and Timothy. They had learned that Leisha had in fact gone to work on the 17^th of May, the day after it is suspected that Scott was murdered, but Timothy did not. Reality is that it was Leisha's apartment in which all of this happened. There was massive blood in that house and there is no way that it happened without Leisha knowing about it. I was never able to hear exactly how prosecutors theorized things happened or how much either was involved for certain. But, knowing what I have determined in this case it sounds as if they believed Scott was murdered on the 16^th (although without a body they were unsure how) and that at the very least Timothy Smith was involved in the clean up, if not also the murder. We all have to remember that Scott was gone for four days before Leisha even called his father, across the country, and it was almost two weeks before investigators got inside to look around.

I cannot tell you exactly what the charges were made against Leisha and Timothy. I can only tell you what at least part of the outcome of their trials were. They were both found guilty of at least something. Leisha got a sentence of twenty years. She was eligible for parole in 2009 but it was denied. The prosecutor vowed to make her serve out her sentence and it looks like that happened as she was not paroled until 2016. I cannot tell you what has become of her since. Timothy Smith is the one that I am most curious about. I am sure somewhere in the book I am reading this will be addressed but he apparently was found guilty of “something” because he received a sentence of ten years probation. I am going to gander to guess that it was something along the lines of tampering with evidence but I cannot say for sure. I suspect they could not prove that he was in the apartment when Scott was killed and probably believe that he was the one who came in and cleaned up the mess. This would make sense. Investigators and prosecutors already felt like Timothy was more like a puppet for Leisha and he did what she wanted him to do. It would make sense that she somehow killed Scott and then called Timothy to help clean it up the next day while she went to work. Considering the fact that his body was not in the home presumably it would have had taken two people to carry him out of the apartment especially since Scott was not a small man. Were those two people Leisha and Timothy or was there someone else involved?

In May of 2012, twenty-one years after Scott Dunn was presumed to be murdered some maintenance men for the apartment complex (now under a new name and ownership) were repairing a sewage line on the grounds when they came across the remains of a body. The body had been wrapped in a “blue vinyl type material” described as being like from a waterbed, a comforter and a sheet that was now in tatters. The body was found about 100 feet from the apartment once shared by Scott Dunn and Leisha Hamilton and in a shallow four foot by eight foot grave. Those who had been around over twenty years before, as well as investigators immediately believed that it was likely to be Scott Dunn. The body was not as decomposed as one would think as it was said that the material it had been wrapped in actually helped preserve it just a bit and kept insects and animals away. Still, it had been more than two decades so there is no way there could be a visual identification. But, there was a gold ring found near the body. Scott Dunn had a gold ring that his grandmother had given him. Scott's parents were both called before official identification and told of the body being found. It would be a few days before a positive identification would be made using dental records.... but everyone had been correct.... It was Scott Dunn.

Scott parents had long ago resolved that he was not coming back. In fact they had placed a tombstone at a cemetery in Lubbock never thinking his body would be found. But here it was 2012 and it was! It was said that 90% of his body was recovered and apparently all of his skull, that needed to be rebuilt. After doing so the coroner believed that the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. A blood splatter expert had testified at one of the trials and stated that based on the blood there had been a minimum of four blows given.

Scott's body was released to his family and on June 16, 2012, 21 years, and one month to day he died, he was placed in the grave where his headstone had long ago been placed.

There was talk in the very beginning that the investigators were going to hold a few things back for a bit until they determined what had happened. They wanted to be sure that they felt no one else was involved. They must have come to that conclusion later as they were quoted as saying they did not expect there to be any additional charges filed in the case.

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall wherever Leisha Hamilton (she was still in prison) and Timothy Smith may have been when Scott's body was discovered! The investigators were given a hard time that they had not taken the cadaver dogs to the complex and because it seems the grounds may not have even been searched. Surely if they had been a freshly dug grave would have been noticeable. On the other hand this case made history by being the first murder case presented without technically a body. I know what the Vidocq Society said, and I do not dispute the findings or the idea. It seemed rather obvious that Scott was killed in that apartment and had they not found a way to prosecute someone they would have gotten away with murder. It also set precedence which is something that can be good, or bad. In this case it was a good thing.

I absolutely believe that at the very least Leisha Hamilton killed Scott Dunn. I do not know that I can believe that Timothy Smith was also involved in his actual murder, but I do believe he was involved in the clean-up and the aftermath. If you believe Leisha's story then Scott was killed in the bedroom, the massive blood was cleaned up, the body was removed and aside from the carpet patches that she claimed to not notice anyway, which is ridiculous, nothing seemed out of place. She would claim some of his belongings were gone but nothing out of place. And all of this would have had to happen while she was at work that day. My theory is that either a fight ensued between Leisha and Scott or she already knew about the other women and had waited until the opportunity to strike Scott. I believe she caught him off guard, maybe when he was sleeping. No one ever mentioned her having any injuries, but then again by the time anyone saw her Scott had been gone for two weeks. That being said she did contact Jim Dunn four days later and so she could have been seen sooner by authorities if he had called sooner and she likely had no way of knowing that he would wait to call. I think when it was all over she made a phone call to Timothy Smith and told him what she did and come over. I think the two of them wrapped up Scott's body and got it out and buried in the dark of night and then she went to work the next day leaving Timothy there to clean up the rest. I think her plan was to set Timothy up to take the fall and for whatever reason she never thought they would suspect her. Boy, was she wrong!