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Sarah Dillon spent part of Tuesday praying at her son's gravesite, asking for a last-minute miracle.
Her request was simple: That convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad would finally admit he shot and killed her oldest son in 2002 before he himself was executed in Virginia Tuesday night."I need to know something," said Dillon, 62, of why her son, Billy Gene Dillon, was killed in Denton County. "I still don't know why this happened."Authorities have said her son may have been among those left dead during a three-week shooting spree that killed more than a dozen people in Washington, D.C., and potentially nine other states including Texas by Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo.Sarah Dillon still remembers the morning her son died.She had driven him to work in rural Denton County one May 2002 morning and when it started raining, she went back around noon to pick him up. That's when she learned her son had been killed around 10:30 a.m., apparently shot from a distance by a high-powered rifle – similar to the slayings in Washington.Dillon has said she believes Malvo has admitted killing her son but he doesn't want to formally declare it because he doesn't want more charges brought against him."Somebody is going to be charged for this," she said, adding that she wrote Muhammad and Malvo letters asking them to say something before their executions if they did indeed take her son's life. "There was something precious they took from me."She and her family now live in Collinsville – about 75 miles northeast of Fort Worth – because that's where they buried her son, next to his daughter, at the Collinsville Cemetery in Grayson County.Every day, she visits the cemetery where she bought a plot to someday be buried near her son. She prays and leaves gifts – usually a balloon – for her son.Last Monday would have been his 45th birthday, so she took fresh flowers, toy cars and plastic dog with puppies to add to other decorations already at his grave.Bobby Dillon, her youngest son, said he doesn't know if his family will ever find peace."We have to wake up every day, wondering," said Dillon, 34, who also lives in Collinsville and visits his brother's grave about once a week. "His grave isn't even two miles from the house."I wish I was there for the execution, to twist (Muhammad's) neck off," he said. "This messed my whole family up."ANNA M. TINSLEY, 817-390-7610
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