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Silent DC sniper mastermind Muhammad executed
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Sarah Dillon spent part of Tuesday praying at her son’s gravesite, asking for a last-minute miracle.
Her desire: that the killing of her oldest son in 2002 would somehow be solved before convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad was executed in Virginia on Tuesday night. It didn’t happen. Muhammad was unemotional and didn’t respond when authorities asked whether he had any last words, officials said."I need to know something," said Dillon, 62, whose son, Billy Gene Dillon, was killed in Denton County. "I still don’t know why this happened. It’s very hard."Authorities have said her son may have been among more than a dozen people whom Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo killed during a 2002 spree in the Washington, D.C., area and as many as nine other states, including Texas.News reports in 2006 indicated that Malvo had told authorities that he and Muhammad were responsible for Dillon’s homicide, but charges were never filed. The Denton County case remains open.Sarah Dillon remembers the morning her son died. She had driven him to his job doing yard work in rural Denton County one morning in May 2002, and when it started raining she returned around noon to pick him up. That’s when she learned that her son had died about 10:30 a.m., apparently shot from a distance with a high-powered rifle — similar to those who were fatally shot in Washington.Dillon wrote Muhammad and Malvo letters asking them to speak out if they indeed took her son’s life. She never got an answer. "I don’t think they have any remorse about them. There was something precious they took from me, " she said.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. Nov. 2 would have been his 45th birthday, so she also took fresh flowers, toy cars and a plastic dog with puppies to add to other decorations at his grave.Bobby Dillon, her youngest son, said he doesn’t know whether his family will ever find peace — or a true answer as to who killed his brother."We have to wake up every day, wondering," said Bobby 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 miss him."I wish I was there for the execution, to twist [Muhammad’s] neck off. This messed my whole family up."ANNA M. TINSLEY, 817-390-7610
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