2008: Leon David Dorsey, the Blockbuster Killer
August 12th, 2011 Headsman
On this date in 2008, Leon David Dorsey IV died by lethal injection in Texas.
Dorsey was the “Blockbuster Killer.”
No, not Netflix. Just a small-time hood who robbed a Dallas Blockbuster (back when there was such a thing) of $392, and in the process wasted the two employees minding the till.* Something about it — the familiar ubiquity of video rental joints in the 1990s, maybe — really resonated. The Blockbuster murders were immediately notorious.
Though Dorsey was a suspect in this crime — because he told his girlfriend, and she ratted him out — police concluded that the man in the surveillance tapes was too tall. He wasn’t charged.
Dorsey actually got convicted (non-capitally) of a different murder and the Blockbuster homicides went unsolved — until a cold cases unit dug into the surveillance tapes, decided the telemetry fit Dorsey after all, and went knocking on his cell door. The guy was still foolishly willing to gab about it.
“They’re dead,” he would say dismissively of his victims in a pre-trial interview. “That’s over and done with. I could have came in here and been, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m so bad.’ But I don’t feel like that. That’s not being honest with myself.”
One doesn’t doubt that sentiment is shared by many malefactors great and small, but blithe narcissism is not quite the pose calculated to win a lot of sympathy from a jury when you’re on trial for your life.
Dorsey stayed “honest with himself” on death row to the tune of 95 disciplinary violations, including a stabbing attack on a guard, and he vowed to fight the team that came to take him to the gurney. (Texas officials reported that he didn’t actually fight.)
And two years after the Blockbuster killer got his … so did Blockbuster.
* The Blockbuster Corporation’s outreach to the families of its slain employees was considered a model stroke of public relations (Dallas Morning News, Nov. 2, 1994).
Part of the Themed Set: Branded.
On this day..
- 1469: Andrea Viarani - 2020
- 1335: Prince Moriyoshi, imperial martyr - 2019
- 1875: Joseph Le Brun, the last public hanging - 2018
- 1896: Mirza Reza Kermani, assassin of the Shah - 2017
- 1806: Josiah Burnham, despite Daniel Webster's defense - 2016
- 1895: Minnie Dean, the only woman hanged in New Zealand - 2015
- 1912: Sing Sing's seven successive sparks - 2014
- 1936: Manuel Goded Llopis - 2013
- 1469: Richard Woodville, father of the queen - 2012
- 1527: Jacques de Beaune, baron de Semblançay - 2010
- 1952: Night of the Murdered Poets - 2009
- 1833: Captain Henry Nicholas Nicholls, sodomite - 2008
Entry Filed under: 21st Century,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Disfavored Minorities,Execution,History,Lethal Injection,Murder,Pelf,Racial and Ethnic Minorities,Ripped from the Headlines,Texas,Theft,USA
Dorsey is the poster-boy for why the death penalty is a good tool to have within the justice system. This guy really needed killing, and it goes beyond the Blockbuster murders. He places no value for any human life (except, perhaps, his own), as can be seen in his knife attack in prison. Now that he is dead, it is one less murdering sociopath taking up space in our world.
Now, compare this guy with some out there who practically fawn over these folks. They declare these killers have “good” within them, they speak of the killer’s upbringing, and how that caused them to kill (what a hoot!), and they call the state evil for dispatching them to their eternal reward. Really funny!