True Crime Vault: Deadly Dance in Texas

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This is the 2020 True Crime Vault.

I had always wanted since I was a little kid, I'd see these older couples dancing.

Every step was perfect.

They were one.

He was a wonderful dancer and he introduced himself to me.

My name's Joseph.

My dad went, I think on a lark, to a dance class and he got the mojo back like that.

She's around 49, 50 years old, smoking hot, looks younger than she was.

The next day she's like, hey, sorry, I'm in love with my dance partner.

I was like, really?

I think my

Dixon had an obsession with Rochelle Shatina.

He either wanted her to suffer or he wanted her back.

Ma'am, ma'am, what's going on?

Dr.

Sonia was found shot and stabbed to death.

There are police cars everywhere.

There's crime scene tape all around.

It was just absolute chaos.

It was an in-and-out job, a hit.

But who would be out to get this nice and happy man about town?

Rochelle Shatina felt that she was being followed.

Is there somebody that's actually watching the doctor and Rochelle?

To me, it was like it had to be like an ex-girlfriend or something.

This is the oldest story in the book.

This is revenge.

This is pride.

This is a huge whodunit.

This once convicted mastermind of a killer, he's out on the streets.

I cannot believe that they did this.

Let's go get these guys.

Lubbock is on the high plains.

When you fly in on an airplane, you can't help but notice the crop circles all around.

Lubbock is a blue-collar blue-collar town.

It's also a college town.

We get a lot of visitors from all over the world who live and die for Buddy Holly and just want to come and see where the music was made.

Going faster than a roller coaster.

The great thing about it is if you look west on any given night, the sunsets are absolutely to die for.

It's God's wonderful painting dumped on all of us for our enjoyment every day.

You can't see better sunsets and sunrises and thunderstorms and everything else coming in.

It's the people that drive it.

There's no better people probably anywhere in the world.

And one of the people who embodied the spirit of Lubbock was Dr.

Joseph Sonier.

Dr.

Joseph Sonier was a successful businessman, multi-millionaire.

Good looking guy, sharp dresser, likes to have a good time.

I think this is probably a guy that a lot of ladies would have their eye on in a hurry, and he was okay with that.

He was a single man in his late 40s with disposable income and an empty house.

He's living the single life and having a fun time.

So it wasn't about getting married.

I don't think he would have gotten married again.

He never did the whole dating scene in college.

He was married at 19.

He married his high school sweetheart.

Find the kind of love that people write about.

We all love Becky.

Hurry Christmas dad.

My dad was the most supportive person in my life.

My mom's our emotional support.

He was the one who was going to push us to succeed, push us to follow our dreams.

Joseph and Becky broke up when, after 27 years of marriage, Becky up and left him for another man.

She was the only person that he had ever been with and ever dated and ever fallen in love with.

When they got divorced, it was a shock to him.

Everything he'd worked for in his life was

evaporated in one second.

Becky remarried, and shockingly, her second husband murdered her

and then killed himself.

It was

just completely

unfathomable.

I mean,

unimaginable.

My dad, he came in after she was murdered and he became like our guide about how to handle this tragedy.

So Dr.

Sonye is 48 years old.

He's single.

He wants to do something new with his life.

He doesn't know what, but he wants to live and he takes a chance.

He went, I think on a lark to a dance class, ballroom and salsa and swing and things like that.

And within this dance community, he found his confidence again.

And as an added benefit, he started to meet beautiful single women who were also in his age range.

That's how he was able to start dating them.

And he got the mojo back like that.

So how did you feel about the women that he dated?

The truth is we liked most of them.

The Sonia children have a tradition with their dad.

They all go to a Texas tech game every fall together.

But one year, Dr.

Sonia brings someone new.

She's blonde, she's tall, she's gorgeous.

It's the first date, and he's bringing you around his family.

Which is, that's nerve-wracking for some people.

I mean, it was the first date.

It really wasn't a big deal to me.

I certainly wasn't nervous about it.

Rochelle Satina is a 52-year-old single mom of four boys.

She knew how to handle herself in a social situation around his sons, were tough critics, you know, and we gave her a thumbs up.

I thought that she was a very nice, lovely person.

My dad and her seemed to have a really good time together.

Rochelle and Dr.

Sonier traveled to California to visit Dr.

Sonier's grandchildren, and that seemed to make her very happy.

Where's your head?

She had a great time.

She came over to the house.

We played with my kids.

It couldn't have gone better.

I never could have

that.

She's a smart girl, aren't you?

It seemed like a good match.

They got along really well.

He seemed to be having fun, and he was starting his life anew.

She was stunning.

She kept in shape.

I think they had an incredible

sexual relationship.

I think that they were very much enjoying each other.

So he was smitten.

He was.

Dr.

Sonier, he may have been a little cautious about, you know, jumping to marriage right away.

It was constant pressure every step of the way following the LA trip.

In your mind, he was never going to put a ring on it.

That's right.

Some of the Sonia kids have said that their dad told them that you were pressuring him for marriage.

Right, and I've heard that as well.

All I can say is there was never a discussion about marriage.

So when they say she was pressuring dad to marry me, that's not true.

That's not true.

What I was looking for was a committed relationship with a good person,

and that was it.

That was absolutely it.

Dr.

Sonier for Rochelle's 50th birthday decided to take her on a really big adventure to Paris, the city of lights where you know love is everywhere.

And I told him to sit her down and have a direct conversation with her that Paris is not an engagement trip and that he is not going there to buy her a ring.

And he said, do I really need to do that?

And I said, I said, yes.

It was a birthday gift for my 50th birthday.

I was just over the moon.

It was really a dream come true.

You guys put a lock on a bridge.

It was a love lock.

Joseph wrote his name on it and I wrote my name on it.

It's romantic.

It's very romantic.

What do you think about when you think about that moment?

That moment,

it was very, very special.

It locked in that love that we felt at that moment for me.

The tradition is you write your names on the locks and you put it on the bridge and you throw the key into the Seine River and that locks in the moment forever.

Rochelle talked about that moment on the Paris Bridge as if their love would last forever.

But a few weeks later, the unthinkable happened.

Police were first alerted to something terribly awry having happened at Dr.

Sonia's home when a landscaper that he had for his home called 911.

Evil followed me straight to Joseph's door, and like it or not, Evil followed me right there.

911, what's the emergency?

Somebody has broken a window

in the back, and the doctor did not show up for work today.

On a hot July morning, Joseph Sonier was found dead in his home.

Oh no!

Ma'am, ma'am, what's going on?

His landscaper found him shot and stabbed multiple times.

There was a bullet that was laying on the ground.

I need somebody to hurry.

Yes, ma'am.

Zach Johnson, a homicide detective with the Lubbock Police, heads to the scene.

Dr.

Sanya's neighborhood, what kinds of crimes would typically happen there?

In my experience, it's been residential burglaries, prowler calls, suspicious persons, stuff of that nature.

Not murders, right?

Not murders, not violent crime at all.

But this neighborhood had to be freaked out by this killer.

They were.

They were very scared because this doesn't happen, especially to somebody that's so esteemed.

When I first covered this case, Detective Johnson took me to the crime scene.

As soon as Zach Johnson walked into the house, he knew immediately that this was not a robbery gone bad.

This is Dr.

Sonia's house.

There was...

artwork in the home.

There were very expensive pieces of furniture.

There was iPads, all kinds of things just kind of laying around, you know, nothing was taken.

It was an in-and-out job.

Whoever came in this house came in to kill the doctor.

In the dining room is an initial scene where you have the windows pushed in and you have a trail of blood.

And that crime scene was very succinct.

It wasn't spread out.

You had the overturned chair, you had the glass on the floor, and you had the casings.

So you knew that he was shot right here.

Investigators see now a Gatorade bottle and a shell casing with the hole blown out of the Gatorade bottle suggesting somebody came up with the idea of a crude silencer, which I can tell you doesn't really work.

We were dealing with something that was a hit of, you know, of sorts, that somebody had come to this house and to kill this person specifically.

To me, it was just mind-boggling.

You know, why is this man dead?

He's a well-respected citizen in this community.

Why is he dead?

The Sonia children are devastated.

I mean, first their mother is murdered, then their father is murdered.

This just doesn't happen.

It doesn't happen.

Forget about the coincidence of it all, the statistical likelihood that both parents would be murdered separate occasions is unfathomable.

I got the call the day before the two-year anniversary of my mother's death.

I thought maybe it had something to do with her death.

That's how out of left field and

completely out of nowhere this was.

We started racking our brains, well, it's got to be some type of girlfriend situation.

If it's not a robbery, it's somebody he knows.

His housekeeper, Fran, called me

and

she said that something was going on at Joseph's house.

The police were there and they wanted me to come down.

When something like this happens, the first person police talk to is the closest loved one, and that would be Rochelle Shatina.

I was in shock.

I was devastated.

This is Rochelle.

Meeting with Rochelle that very first time, I don't know a lot about her.

In the very beginning, you always have to consider people the closest because 90% of the time, it's going to be the people that are closest to our victims that commit the crime against them.

How would you describe your relationship with Dr.

Sonia?

He's the love of my life.

There were a couple of things that were mentioned by her that struck me as odd.

Rochelle Shatina had felt a little uneasy in the previous weeks before the murder took place.

That someone was watching her.

Maybe she was being followed.

Something didn't seem quite right.

I'd gone in to work out and I pulled into the parking lot and there was this big creepy looking guy sitting there

and

at the door like he was looking for someone or watching someone.

It gives the investigators another sort of perspective.

Is there some sort of surveillance or somebody that's actually watching the doctor and Rochelle?

It's dark outside and Joseph and I both saw a flash from the outside.

We laughed and kind of joked about, you know, maybe somebody was following us.

Right from the beginning, Rochelle's attitude is pointing the fingers at all kinds of people.

She starts offering a laundry list of potential candidates.

There's just, you know, some girls that he dated.

Joseph would get this, these horrible

text messages, you know, calling him,

you know, you're such a and whatever.

Rochelle starts telling Johnson about different ex-girlfriends in Joseph Sonier's life as people who could possibly hold a grudge against him.

I got a letter in my mailbox.

It was from this girl who said that she met Joseph on the internet.

and that

they had sex for money basically and he said I you know this is obviously someone trying to drive a wedge in between us.

Was there a sense of who might be trying to drive a wedge between the two of you?

To me, it was like it had to be like an ex-girlfriend or something.

But Johnson has an idea that maybe it's somebody in Rochelle's past that has it in for Dr.

Sonia.

So there

could be somebody that

you think we need to look at.

A couple of people.

Okay, tell me about one of them.

Dr.

Thomas Michael Dixon.

He's a plastic surgeon in Amarillo.

Hello, I'm Dr.

Mike Dixon.

If you're considering plastic surgery, make sure your surgeon is certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgeon.

He had a med spa in Amarillo, and I went there to get Botox injections.

What attracted you to him?

He was funny.

He was very witty.

And he was enjoyable.

It was, you know, if it can be enjoyable to have somebody put needles in your face, you know, I guess that's about as enjoyable as it could be.

Rochelle and Mike Dixon had dated for about a year and a half, and then they broke up.

And then Rochelle started dating again soon after seeing Joseph Sonia.

Did he know about your current relationship?

He knew that I was dating Joseph.

He called him by name

in a series of text messages trying to get me to go out with him and to meet him for coffee.

So he wanted you to see him on the side, basically.

He wanted me to come back to him.

I told him no.

But the real question is, was Dixon the kind of man to take no for an answer?

Johnson wants to know what Dixon knows.

So he jumps in his car and drives two hours to Amarillo, Texas to talk to Mike Dixon, secretly recording him when they start talking.

Hi, I hate to come bugging you at your house in all hours of the night.

What's going on?

Well, we've had a homicide in lubbock texas today i told him it was rochelle's boyfriend and his first thing was oh i don't know anything about him i don't know anything about him i haven't talked to her in months and months zach johnson knows someone's lying the question is who's lying

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I've got a guy that is dead in his house.

It looks like a burglary, but there's nothing stolen.

One of the things that we're trying to establish is: okay,

why is Dr.

Saunier dead?

The crime scene pretty much is a little disorganized.

And there was evidence at the crime scene that suggested it was a hit.

I'm not dealing with a professional hitman.

So we have to figure out, okay, what's going on in this man's life?

And we talked to Rochelle, and all of a sudden, we may have a reason why it all kind of came together and he was murdered.

Rochelle, having told Detective Johnson about her former boyfriend, immediately sent up red flags.

Was there somebody else part of this whole craziness?

It's Dr.

Thomas Michael Dixon.

He's a plastic surgeon in Emerald Lubbock.

Hello, I'm Dr.

Mike Dixon.

So you have this information from Rochelle.

Could have been Mike Dixon.

So I'm still trying to figure out what's going on and I knew, well, we're going to get a little bit more insight into this thing.

We talked to Dr.

Dixon.

Well, we've had a homicide in Lubbock, Texas today.

I told him it was Rochelle's boyfriend.

And his first thing was, oh, I don't know anything about him.

I don't know anything about him.

I haven't talked to her in months and months.

And I was like, okay, well, that's a little odd because in our interview with Rochelle, she told us that he knew about the relationship.

You know, I'll be honest with you, I love, love, love that woman.

I really did.

He was obsessed with Rochelle.

He's had a lot of problems getting over this breakup.

He just couldn't seem to let her go.

I really had fallen head over heels.

In fact,

made a lot of life changes for her.

We've learned that he's already had a divorce as a result of this affair with Rochelle, but he's not quite over her yet.

You know, I've learned that he still loves her.

He's got a lot of feelings for her.

He's very upfront about, yeah, I wanted her back.

There probably was a very close relationship there between Mike Dixon and Rochelle Shatina.

They grew apart because Mike wasn't interested in marriage.

Rochelle seemed to think that at one point Dr.

Dixon was probably going to propose to her and there was a build-up leading to her birthday and she thought it was coming and maybe there's a ring and instead it's a subscription to the Tea of the Month Club.

And she went ballistic and said well it didn't.

I mean I remember clearly it's not a big f ⁇ ing rock and I said no it's not like a wedding ring.

When Dixon talked to police, he talked about how he gave you this Tea of the Month Club birthday gift and it really really angered you.

If it wasn't about the fact that it was tea.

Tea is lovely.

I don't happen to drink it.

It wasn't the gift that upset me.

He could have shown up at my doorstep and given me a hug and said, happy birthday.

I am so glad to be here with you today.

And I would have been the happiest girl in the world.

He was not present in any emotionally supportive aspect of my world.

Despite the breakup between Dixon and Michelle, they stayed in contact with each other.

They texted, they went to dinners together, and they even planned a weekend getaway.

She was like, hey, you want to put this back together?

I was like, yeah, I did.

And so, let's plan a trip, blah, blah, blah.

They had agreed to go on a trip.

All she had to do was go up there.

The next day, she's like, hey, sorry, I'm in love with my dance partner.

Okay.

Whatever now.

And I was like, really?

But boom, she drops the hammer on him and says, oh, by the way,

I'm in love with my dance partner.

Some would say, well, you're throwing it in his face a little bit.

Well, no, I wasn't throwing it in his face.

There was, you know, an ugliness from him to me.

And it's like, you know what, if you want to have a getaway, enjoy it.

Go, enjoy your getaway.

I don't want to be a part of it.

After Rochelle ended the relationship with Dr.

Dixon, he started dating a medical student who was a couple of decades his junior.

This young medical student, Ashley Wolbert, actually happened to be his alibi because they were having sushi the night of the murder at a restaurant in Amarillo.

What has he told you about Rochelle?

She was his ex-girlfriend.

She was really pretty.

They dated.

When him and his wife were separated, they started dating.

Johnson is just stumped.

The alibis of Mike Dixon, of Rochelle, and of Dr.

Sonia's ex-girlfriends, they all check out.

There's still the stalker that Rochelle thinks is following her, this big burly man that Rochelle saw in the backyard.

There's something not right here, but

that's all that I have.

This is a huge whodunit.

What was it that broke this case wide open for you?

When Paul Reynolds called the police department.

My name's Paul Reynolds.

I think we got a crime that happened down here in Lubbock.

It's a homicide.

Who is Paul Reynolds?

Believe it or not, there are good people in the world, and Paul Reynolds is one of them, and he was scared.

Paul Reynolds is an aspiring nurse who's fallen on hard times.

So he's crashing on the couch with his friend in Amarillo, who then tries to commit suicide by cutting his wrists and taking pills.

And then that friend starts talking about murder.

I'm in with this friend of mine.

He said he went down there, he said he shot the guy.

What is your

roommate's name?

His name is Dave the Shepherd.

S-H-E-P-A-R-D.

And that was a name that Detective Johnson had heard before.

We have Dr.

Mike Dixon.

We have Paul Reynolds.

We have Dave Shepard.

He's quick-witted and kind of sexy-smart.

A picture is starting to emerge.

How could they possibly be related to the murder of Dr.

Sonia?

Detective Zach Johnson has just gotten his biggest lead in the murder of Joseph Sonye.

And that suspect's name is Dave Shepard.

The divorced father of three unemployed salesmen with a criminal record.

That was a name that Detective Johnson had heard before when he was talking to Mike Dixon's girlfriend, Ashley Woeber.

He said that Dave was going to come over because he had some cigars for Dave from

Bermuda.

He's just a common criminal and you know I don't know how to put it any other way.

David Shepard has a very long list of people that he's wronged over the years.

David Shepard had been convicted of stealing $30,000 from a business that he was involved in.

Dad didn't have money.

Dad wasn't good at keeping money.

I was 17 working part-time after school and he borrowed money from me.

As the police look into the background of Dave Shepard, they quickly learn that his new best friend is Dr.

Mike Dixon, the former boyfriend of Rochelle.

These two were an odd couple.

I mean, you got the down-and-out con man and the respected doctor, but they did have something in common.

Shepard was going through a divorce.

Dr.

Dixon was going through a divorce.

That relationship formed over the shared experience.

This entire situation began, as police found out, when these two men, Mike Dixon and Dave Shepard, bonded over cigars and martinis.

Dad wanted to be Mike.

Buy the nice house that's right outside of town.

In the canyon, it's all private, like the whole nine yards.

Mike had it all.

And he would always promise us, one day I'm going to get you these things and we're going to live in the big house and you're all going to have your own rooms.

You're going to paint it however you want.

You get whatever you want.

And he wanted that.

Mike had it.

So he wanted to live the dream life of this wildly successful person, it sounds like.

But was he willing to do the work to be that person?

No.

And Paul Reynolds had been living with Shepard for a few weeks.

So he gives police insights into who this guy is as well.

Personally, I think he's just got super low self-esteem.

I think he's just out there trying to find anybody that will

convince him that he's something.

Detectives are beginning to believe that Mike Dixon found the perfect person to help him get back with Rochelle.

Yeah, I'll be honest with you, I love, love, love that woman.

And if not get back with her, disrupt her new love life.

Something happened between these two

that

made Dave

think that he needed to avenge Mike.

And apparently Dixon was not only going along with it, but he was going to pay him to do it.

In the minds of investigators, Dixon, they think, is a puppet master and Shepard, the puppet.

It's around this time that police learned that Dave Shepard recently had a financial windfall.

Dad had money out of the blue.

He didn't ever have money.

We asked, how do you have money?

He said, I'm doing some work for Mike and he paid me early.

With the hotline tip from Reynolds linking Shepard to Sony's murder and with the recent evidence that Dixon made a payment to Shepard, Zach Johnson's investigation kicks into high gear.

And so we move on to arrest warrants.

Who do you bring in first?

We went and we brought in David first

and he goes, I want my attorney.

Dr.

Dixon, do you have anything you want to say?

Dr.

Dixon comes in.

And of course, he's madder than a hornet.

I mean, this is...

You're under arrest at 2.15 in the morning, you're under arrest, correct?

And this is probably your only opportunity to tell me what happened.

I want an attorney then.

Shepard and Dixon are both arrested, and each is held on $10 million bond.

Neither one of them talks until the investigators offer Shepard a deal.

For three months, he stays silent.

Finally, they say to Shepard, if you confess to this murder and you do it on tape, we in turn will take the death penalty off the table.

It was real important for us in the Sonia family to figure out what happened.

And so it answered a lot of questions for a lot of people.

What do you want me to call you?

Dave, David?

That'd be fine, sir.

What he tells us is pretty chilling because it's very cold.

This whole thing was like this stair step.

We knew where it stopped, stopped with the murder, but it had been building for months.

Tell me about Chump's relationship, how it evolved.

Two Two or three years ago, we were at a smoke shop.

He's quick-witted, I'm kind of sassy-smart, and we just kind of hit it off.

Smoking cigars is a very sociable thing, and we just connected and hooked up.

When was the first time that he ever mentioned to you

this

Rochelle Shatina?

My best estimate is September, October.

She's around 49, 50 years old, smoking high, looks younger than she was, thought she was great.

And he pretty much wanted to break up Dr.

Sonia and Rochelle.

They had this book, a complete book of dirty tricks that they were trying to execute on Dr.

Sonia.

What were some of the things they came up with?

They were going to get this porn subscription, like child gay porn, and they were going to send it to Dr.

Sonia's office.

They gave me one suggestion to go to an adult bookstore and buy the most obscene, nastiest man-boy love association book he could and buy him a subscription and send it to his office.

Because I said, that's a gift that I'll keep giving.

They were thinking that was going to ruin his reputation, his professional reputation.

He asked me if I knew of a girl in Lubbock

that

would mind making $1,000 to cause a problem.

He was asking me if I knew somebody that would pretend to be like a sugar baby of Dr.

Sonia.

I think Mike would have been embarrassed to tell me he was doing that because he knows I would have told him, quit being a dummy.

You know, this is ridiculous.

Why are you wasting this time?

He said, we have to follow him.

Let's take a little trip to Lubbock.

We drove down to Lubbock.

He was already trying to tell me where they'd go and that kind of stuff.

Pretty soon, Dave Shepard is taking trips to Lubbock on his own.

And police, well, they think that's at the direction of Mike Dixon.

And he paid for everything, paid for my gas, paid for my

And so

when you went to his house, tell me about getting out and actually going back there to do the recon.

Don't know exactly the first time I'd done it.

Enter his backyard,

opened the gate, took a picture, closed the gate, and left.

It looked like a camera flash.

And we kind of shrugged our shoulders and said, that was weird.

Did you ever ask Michael Dixon, what are we doing?

What's the next course of action?

We were at a club in Amarella.

Somebody volunteered.

I said, hit him with a board.

I said, you can probably kill him.

And Doc went.

We'll talk about that later.

So they're having drinks one night, and so far it's been nothing more than casual pranks, but you're talking about what comes next.

And you got to outdo what you did the last time.

And now the talk turns to something a little bit more sinister.

What he says about the last moments of Dr.

Sonia's life would surprise even investigators.

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Here you are.

If you need a bathroom,

when you have a suspect who literally provides you in a very straightforward manner.

He was saying, well, I'd just like to cost him some problems.

Play by play, frame by frame.

He said we have to follow him.

Of a crime that's occurred from the very beginning.

How could this get any better?

David Shepard is singing like a canary, implicates Dr.

Dixon in the plot, said he had to get even with this guy for basically taking his girl away.

And he pretty much wanted to break up Dr.

Sonia and Rochelle.

Shepard tells police that while they're drinking the whiskey and sharing the cigars, they are now in the midst of developing a plot to actually commit murder, the murder of Dr.

Sonye.

He wanted him hurt and then it gradually developed into having him killed.

I asked him,

you sure you want to do this, Mike?

I said, if you ever

If you kill somebody, that'll affect you for the rest of your life.

You'll have nightmares.

It'll bother you.

And he goes, doesn't bother me.

They plan and they plan for months and months and months.

As this plan developed between Mike and me, the plan was laid out.

The best way to carry forth his objective was to stay down in Spike Yard, wait for him to come home.

Let's talk about the actual day that this happened.

Yes, sir.

I believe it was a Tuesday.

Tuesday, July 10th.

Today in Lubbock, cooler temps that will dip into the upper 70s and lower 80s.

Shepard makes the drive from Amarillo to Lubbock, Texas.

A two and a half hour drive and gets to Joseph Sonier's house at around 4 o'clock.

Hugged the fence down the alley and entered his backyard.

Pulled a chair from his outdoor dining table.

He has a curved brick fence by its driveway.

On the west side, there's a tree by that fence, and I sit underneath there.

And were you still having contact with Michael Dixon during that time?

Yes, sir.

Michael's encouraging, keep the faith, be patient.

Be patient.

He'll be there eventually.

For Dave Shepard, the only person he can trust and go to with any issue in this case is Dr.

Dixon.

In Dr.

Dixon's mind, Shepard's the perfect guy to carry out this mission because Dixon's like the boss.

He's the prominent physician, and Shepard is essentially a loser.

And the Patsy's ready to do whatever he's told.

And he's waiting for two and a half hours, and the guy falls asleep.

He's awoken by the sound of someone knocking on the window from the inside, and it's none other than Dr.

Joseph Saunier.

I wave at Dr.

Saunier and get up.

I walk to the window.

He has lowered the window about this far, from the top down.

What happens at that point?

I point the weapon with the bottle at him,

discharges several times.

After three or four discharges, he's backing away, he trips on his feet, falls to the ground.

Shepard admitted that he had used a Gatorade bottle to try and muffle the sound of the gunshot and that he had learned that technique by watching a movie that starred Stephen Seagal.

So I push in the window and crawl in.

Go around the corner.

As I turn around, down the hallway, right into the garage, he's laying on the floor.

Not moving, not breathing, nothing.

I check his pulse and his neck.

He's dead.

And

what happens?

I pull the knife on my back and I

step him in the vital organs or three, four times.

I find that bizarre.

It's like he is so determined to make this right for whatever his relationship might be with Dixon that he wants to complete the task.

According to Shepard, after he kills Dr.

Sony, he then drives back to Amarillo.

So, did you recount for Michael Dixon the events?

Yes, sir.

He was happy about it.

He was fine with it.

He said, I sound like you got away claiming.

And the very next day, he's caught on camera having a meal with Mike Dixon.

Shepard told police that Dixon became extremely rattled by the fact that detectives had come over to talk to him about the death of Dr.

Saunier.

He was nervous, so I had to get out of town.

Dixon recommended that David Shepard get the heck out of Dodge, that he leave the area, which would, in Dr.

Dixon's mind, keep him from being investigated by Lubbock police.

But David Shepard seems to be overcome by what has happened and maybe his role in this.

He attempts suicide, cuts his wrist.

If you can imagine the disgust

you can feel with yourself

being involved with what I did, then I pull out a filet knife and try to cut myself.

It's bleeding like a stunned pig.

First person he calls after that, Mike Dixon.

Dixon and Shepard are caught on surveillance, heading into Mike Dixon's office, where Mike Dixon stitches them up.

Dave Shepard has basically given you a roadmap as to what happened, and you see how he directly ties Dixon into planning this murder.

You now clearly have built a case against Dr.

Dixon.

Two suspects are in custody in connection with the murder of a loved one.

One doctor is dead, and two people are on the cushion.

Police arrested Dr.

Thomas Dixon and David Shepard

and stabbed to death in his living room.

I cannot believe

that they did this.

It makes me so angry.

A low-life scum

and a piece of doctor.

Like it or not,

Mike Dixon is an evil man

and David Shepard is an evil man.

It seemed like like a slam dunk for prosecutors.

They had the man who admitted to killing Dr.

Joseph Sonia as a witness.

As they say in West Texas, everybody thought this case was done and dusted.

But is the case against Mike Dixon too good to be true?

You've got to remember, the prosecution's star witness is Dave Shepard.

I mean, this is a guy with a history as a con man and a swindler.

Shepard is known for telling all kinds of tall tales.

Dave Shepard is a con artist of the ultimate magnitude.

The prosecution painted Mike Dixon as this puppeteer.

If he was that manipulative, this was the dumbest planned murder in the history of the United States to choose David Shepard.

What he ends up doing in the courtroom just turns this case upside down.

He made jaws drop in that courtroom.

This is the kind of moment that you typically see in a movie.

The case is going to blow up in the prosecutor's face and a convicted man walks free tonight.

This is the oldest story in the book.

This is revenge.

This is pride.

So there was some kind of a triangle things going on.

He knew that I was dating Joseph.

He wanted me to come back to him.

I told him no.

What did they have on this prominent doctor?

Maybe he was in love.

Maybe he was in lust.

Whatever, did that make him a killer?

I'm kind of a sassy smart, and we just kind of hit it off.

These two men, Shepard and Dixon, it's a very, very strange romance.

Think of the goofiest buddy film that you can, and here's these two guys.

Dad wanted to be Mike.

Mike had it all.

Once Dave Shepard got in that chair and started speaking, he made jaws drop in that courtroom.

This once convicted mastermind of a killer, he's out on the streets.

So we think the case is closed?

Not even.

It's October 2014

and you can feel that fall chill starting to roll into Texas.

But at the Glubba County Courthouse, things are starting to heat up.

Got anything to say, Dr.

Dixon?

Likely one of the bigger murder trials that this city has seen in a long, long time.

The gallery was packed.

Everybody was there to see how this trial was going to go.

This prominent plastic surgeon, Dr.

Michael Dixon, accused of hiring a hitman, friend, and business partner, David Shepard.

This case is nothing short of surreal.

First, you have the victim, Dr.

Joseph Saunier, a very prominent pathologist.

Then you have another prominent physician, Dr.

Mike Dixon.

And he's accused of placing a hit on Dr.

Sonier.

And in the middle of all of it, you have a beautiful blonde named Rochelle Shatina.

Going after someone I loved would hurt me, and that's what he was going to do.

He wanted to hurt me as badly as he could.

I think Mike Dixon had an obsession with Rochelle Shatina based on the evidence.

I don't think there's any doubt about that.

And ultimately, that cost Dr.

Sonia's life.

I promise I won't be told to go.

I don't cause any problems.

Dave Shepard is sort of the oddball friend of Dr.

Dixon, and he tells police that Mike Dixon paid him in advance to do the hit.

He wanted to be hurt, and then it gradually developed into having

kills.

I think Mike Dixon controlled this situation.

I think David Shepard was the perfect Patsy.

I think he loved the lifestyle that Dr.

Dixon could give him.

I think he likes the expensive cigars and expensive scotch and everything else that came with being a buddy of Mike Dixon.

Many people make the argument that Mike Dixon never laid a hand on Dr.

Sunny.

He's just controlling the knife.

Dave Shepard's just another instrument for Mike Dixon.

What was your mindset going into that trial?

Let's go get these guys.

We knew they had the right guys.

In my mind, there was no other possibility.

There's always two sides of these kinds of cases.

And on the other side,

You have Andrew Dixon, Mike Dixon's son, who has a very different view of this case.

He was a good dad.

He did dad things, you know, kind of American dream kind of stuff.

Go camp and hike and play baseball and football and all those things.

They're trying to prove him guilty, you know, and he's fighting for his life.

I mean, it's just terrifying and so sickening.

I've known Mike Dixon for 25 years.

He's as solid as they come.

There was no intent to kill him.

I know that with all my heart.

He's harmless.

But in courtroom 72 of the Lubbock County Courthouse, the prosecution paints a far different picture of Mike Dixon.

Somebody who was arrogant, somebody using Shepard as a pawn

to keep up with Rochelle and Dr.

Sonia's relationship, and goodness knows what else.

This is the oldest story in the book.

This is vengeance.

This is revenge.

This is pride.

One of the big pieces of evidence that Lubbock prosecutors used against Dixon was this.22 caliber pistol, which David Shepard told police that he used to shoot Dr.

Sonia.

Prosecutors presented evidence that the gun that was used to kill Dr.

Sonia was given to him by Dr.

Dixon.

Circumstantial evidence, pretty strong stuff.

David Shepard tells us that he told Dixon, I don't have a gun.

And Dixon says, don't worry about it.

I got that covered.

I have a gun.

He says, it belongs to my brother.

He gave it to me.

And it's clean.

Police divers were seen pulling something from the lake.

Shepard was on hand to point police to areas in the lake to search.

He said he'd thrown the gun into a lake in Amarillo behind Dr.

Dixon's office.

Also prosecutors have a wealth of text messages between Shepard and Dixon when Shepard was stalking Shatina and Sonye.

When he was arrested the SWAT guys told me he had actually jumped into a swimming pool and tried to ruin the phone.

The problem was the man had plugged the phone in and backed it up to his computer.

So all of the stuff that he thought was not going to get him in trouble was backed up to his computer.

Prosecutors here are saying that they found text messages from Dixon Shepard urging Shepard to kill.

We're talking text messages like, go get him, whip and spur,

get her done, and put it on him.

If you look at the text messages, put it on him, you know, those types of things, there wasn't any doubt in my mind what they were talking about.

A real eyebrow raiser is how the payoff supposedly happened to the alleged hitman here.

Three silver bars and a box of cigars.

It's hard to find a good Cuban cigar, but the silver bars are worth some $9,000.

According to prosecutors, one of which was sold to this pawn shop in Amarillo, Texas before the murder and two after the murder, sold by none other than Dave Shepherd.

What was he like?

Do you remember any of his affect?

He was a pretty good-sized guy.

He seemed

just like a a normal guy to me.

I didn't notice anything different about him.

In terms of demeanor, he didn't strike you one way or the other, it sounds like?

Not at all.

So he sold you something just like this.

Yes.

It's heavy.

Very similar, yeah.

He leaves.

A couple days later, he's on the front page of the paper.

Right.

Yeah.

It was kind of pretty much a shock.

I mean, I just, I was blown away.

All the evidence that prosecutors have against Mike Dixon is strong, but their primary piece of their case is Dave Shepard.

He pleaded guilty for a life sentence with no opportunity for parole.

And so after the death penalty was taken off the table, that's when Dave Shepard agreed to testify against his old drinking buddy, Mike Dixon.

It seemed like a slam dunk for prosecutors.

They had the man who admitted to killing Dr.

Joseph Sonia as a witness.

He had a chance to get up there, confirm his story,

point to that guy as the person who paid him to kill my dad, and end it all.

But what he ends up doing is an absolute shock to the prosecutors and to the family of the victim.

The star witness was about to blow up in the prosecution's mix.

Shocking testimony today at the Capitol murder trial for Amarillo Dr.

Thomas Dixon.

The prosecution's case against Dixon was very strong.

You've got a payoff to an alleged hitman.

You've got a murder weapon.

The circumstantial case here seems to have a lot of elements that would favor the prosecution.

Everything that the prosecution laid on the table was countered by the defense, including Shepard's access.

to the gun.

See, the defense claimed that Shepard stole the gun from Mike Dixon's house.

And Frank Sellers, one of the defense attorneys, showed me where he thought Shepard stole that gun from.

They came in here, they're picking out a cigar to smoke, and Shepard opens this drawer here, and it's a gun.

So that's how Shepard knew a gun was in that drawer.

Exactly.

The defense team admits, hey, the silver bars changed hands, but this wasn't to pay off some murder for hire scheme.

This was the seed money for some new business collaboration between the two.

Did Mike Dixon ever pay David Shepard in silver bars and cigars to kill Dr.

Joseph Sonia?

Absolutely not.

The defense said that the surveilling that David Shepard was doing was really only to get pictures of Dr.

Sonia out with other women so that he could show them to Rochelle and say, this guy is cheating on you.

Shepard's reporting back, oh, I couldn't find him.

And I think Mike became frustrated with it, and it's evident from the messages that he was sending.

So then go get him and whip and spur.

Go get who?

Use of lots of Texas panhandle colloquialisms like get her done, put it on them, go get them.

He had a history of using that language with lots of different people.

And the reason they say Mike Dixon was so upset was they felt Rochelle Shatina was trying to throw the relationship with Joseph Sonier in Mike Dixon's face.

In court, the defense points to text messages between Shatina and Dixon when she backed out of that planned vacation.

She texts, I'm in love, enjoy your getaway.

When Dixon asks, who's the lucky guy?

Rochelle replies, new dance partner.

And so Mike, his ego was deeply bruised, and he wanted to show Rochelle that she was wrong.

So from your perspective, it was about Mike Dixon and his ego.

Right.

The defense really grilled you about these text messages.

Oh, yeah, they absolutely did.

They did.

Text messages that I hadn't seen in years.

It came out of the blue.

It was crazy.

Is there anything in this that you regret from these text messages?

To Mike Dixon?

No.

No.

Anything you wish you would have said differently?

I suppose if I went through each individual text message, yeah, maybe.

Mike is morally responsible for David Shepard being down here, but not for the purpose of killing Dr.

Sonia.

Mike Dixon never wanted that to happen.

Defense attorneys were really eager to make it clear that Shepard decided to become rogue.

And even though Dixon wanted him to surveil Dr.

Sonia and Rochelle, he just decided on his own to go down and kill this man.

But there's one big problem with that theory.

Remember, back when Shepard was talking to police, he said that Mike Dixon asked him to kill Dr.

Joseph Sonia.

I asked him,

you sure you want to do this, Mike?

I said, if you ever,

when you kill somebody, that'll affect you from the rest of your life.

You'll have nightmares.

It'll bother you.

And he goes, doesn't bother me.

When you saw the interview police did with him, were you thinking, slam dunk?

We got him.

I don't know if I've ever thought something's a slam dunk.

If you watch Dave Shepard on that interview, he's calm, he's relaxed, he's telling things that flow very naturally.

He's laying on the floor, not moving, not breathing, nothing.

We certainly believed it because it matched up the physical evidence.

Without Shepard,

you've got suspicion, you've got circumstantial evidence, but he's the one who can bring it all together.

Matt Powell calls David Shepard to the witness stand and the jury is about to hear, at least Powell thinks, that Dixon set him up to go down there and paid him to kill Sonia.

Shepard not only had to face the jury, but he had to face the victim's family and his three daughters, Rachel, Abigail, and Haley.

And they weren't there to support their father.

You were in that courtroom to get closure.

We were there more in support of the Sonia family.

Right.

Yes.

Our heart was broken for them.

And do you think that Mike Dixon paid your father to kill Dr.

Sonia?

Yes.

Yes.

There wasn't a single seat open in the courtroom this morning.

It was the moment many had been waiting for.

The courtroom filled with those wanting to hear testimony of the convicted killer, David Shepard.

Once Dave Shepard got in that chair and started speaking, he made jaws drop in that courtroom.

Shepard takes the stand and this bombshell drops.

No, I did it at my own choosing.

I'm the one who decided to co-kill Dr.

Sunkeeper.

It just flipped the whole trial on its head.

This is the kind of moment that you typically see in a movie where the star witness suddenly decides, I'm not going to testify against him.

That stuff doesn't typically happen in real courtrooms.

It was definitely easy today to see why District Attorney Matt Powell seemed a little little bit frustrated.

You begin to question him, what happens?

Well, he can completely digress from what his statement was to law enforcement and the fact that Mike Dixon didn't have any involvement in this deal.

What's going through your mind?

Okay, game on.

We impeached him with his prior statements where he's laying out in great detail what Mike Dixon did.

When he got up there on the witness stand and created that circus, I've never hated anyone more than I've hated him in my entire life.

The question now is how much damage did this full-on reversal do to the prosecution's case?

More importantly, what did it do to the jury?

When he got on the stand and changed his entire story, it just kind of threw me for a loop.

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The air has just been sucked out of courtroom 72 in a Lubbock courthouse.

A bomb has been dropped.

David Shepard was supposed to take the stand and say, Dr.

Dixon ordered him to kill Dr.

Saunier.

Instead, Shepard took all the blame for the murder and insisted that Dixon had nothing to do with it.

David Shepard's daughters were embarrassed, angry, and incredulous that their father would not finger Dr.

Dixon as the man who hired him.

It was cowardly.

He has a chance to make it right, and he completely ruined it.

Why do you think he did that?

He was trying to help out his buddy.

They took it upon themselves to go to the children of Dr.

Saunier and apologize for what their father had just said on the stand.

What did you say to them?

We are so sorry for what he has done to you and what he is continuing to do to you.

The three daughters, we have a mutual understanding, a mutual respect, mutual sadness.

We all know what happened.

They knew from day one they couldn't believe what their dad had done.

And I couldn't believe he put them in that situation.

So after David Shepard is taken back to jail, his daughters go to talk to him and confront him about what the heck did you just do.

They were emotional.

They were upset.

But daddy, you didn't tell the truth.

I did.

You didn't say anything.

You just kept saying that you wouldn't tell them.

But I did.

No part of this is right.

None of it will ever be right.

Nothing I could do.

No matter what you do.

They think I'm some kind of a monster.

You've made yourself a monster, Dad.

And you were literally breaking down in tears.

It was frustrating.

I felt like I was scolding a child.

Like,

I just want you to answer my question, and then you can go back to timeout.

The question now is, how much damage did this full-on reversal on the part of Dave Shepard do to the prosecution's case?

More importantly, what did it do to the jury?

Nobody knew how that might affect the verdict.

Everybody's on edge.

It was still sort of anyone's guess what the verdict would be.

But the damage was done.

I'm Brian Mudd.

And I'm Lauren Modern.

Thomas Dixon's accused of hiring another man to murder Lubbock Dr.

Joseph Saunier.

Years of work ending with a hung jury and a mistrial for Dr.

Thomas Dixon.

If Shepard's goal was to free his friend,

it worked.

The judge says, Mr.

Dixon, you are free to go.

Everybody is stunned.

Stunned.

It was devastating.

I mean, I had a moment of just, just

silence.

I couldn't breathe.

I couldn't think.

Do you think that he was the biggest factor to getting that home jury?

Absolutely, 100%.

Justice is a guilty verdict.

And when that doesn't happen, you know,

I feel disappointed.

I feel like I've let the family down.

I feel like I've let our team down.

I feel like I've let everybody down.

You have to ask the question, how could the prosecutors have let this happen?

The prosecutors have to bear some responsibility for calling a witness to the stand,

star witness, who does a complete 180 in front of the jury.

So, before the trial, how many times did you get to speak to him?

I talked to him one time.

I really don't spend a whole lot of time with witnesses, you know, getting them prepared and things like that.

In hindsight, do you wish that that could have been done differently?

I don't know if there was a way to do that differently.

We had no indication he wasn't going to tell the truth.

I was upset with the jury.

How could they not see?

You know, the evidence to me was very, very clear

that he was guilty.

He did this.

And that was the big question at that point.

What did the jury think of this?

When he got on the stand and changed his entire story, it just kind of threw me for a loop at first.

The prosecutor's face got red and veins were popping out of his neck.

Matt Powell was livid, but he was able to recover because he already had a videotape of Shepard confessing to the crime.

He showed that to the jury, and that was enough to convince some of the jurors.

The video of Dave Shepard's confession was a revelation, I thought.

Shepard's just pretty much giving us all the information right there.

It really tied together a lot of the facts we had heard in testimony.

And so there was little doubt in my mind at that point of guilty for me.

During our deliberations, we had two jurors that were not able to really come to the same place that we were.

I felt, how do they have any doubt when the evidence was all there in my eyes?

It only took two of those jurors disagreeing to make this a miss trial.

And those two jurors had never talked publicly before about why they voted the way they did.

Until now.

Almost five years.

I know, can you believe it?

I knew what we had signed up for, and I did not take any of it lightly.

I felt like it was my job to go in there and look at everything.

We did see the video testimony of Dave Shepard

and for that to be in such stark contrast of what his in-court testimony was raised a lot of red flags for me.

The problem is that the judge specifically said to the jurors,

you can use this video, but only for the purpose of determining whether this witness is telling the truth, but not as substantive evidence to convict.

For these two jurors, they apparently felt there just wasn't enough without it.

I never felt like he was pushing him to kill.

I felt like he was pushing him to take photographs.

There were a couple text messages that Matt Powell had mentioned,

like whip and spur, get her done.

Yeah, get her done.

And I think that the effort there was to make those sound a little bit more malicious than they actually were.

I always thought that, yes, he probably did give him silver bars, but that doesn't mean he gave him silver bars for murdering somebody.

I just feel like that we had so many people from the time we were supposed to make our decision, and there was no discussion.

They said he was guilty and they weren't going to talk about it.

It's frustrating, especially those of us who had our stand and how we believed and for all that seemed like for nothing.

After the trial was over, there was still that question.

Why did David Shepard go back on his deal and completely burn the prosecution?

To get that answer, I went to a maximum security prison where Dave Shepard was serving a life sentence to sit down face to face with the man who murdered Joseph Sonier.

You said that Mike Dixon

was a part of this.

Right.

Why did you tell them that?

After Dave Shepard's flip-flop in court, everybody wanted to know why.

Why did he change his story?

I went to a maximum security prison in West Texas where Dave Shepard was serving a life sentence, and I sat down face to face with him.

This is a mountain of a man.

I mean, he's got to be 6'7, 6'8, maybe 300 pounds.

He is intimidating.

How you doing, David?

I put myself in a bad position, and I've got no one to blame but myself.

I asked him point blank, right off the bat, what happened inside that house.

And his claim wasn't a cold-blooded killing.

It was a tragic accident.

I'm in his backyard.

He knocks on the window and I waved it, waved it, walked walked to it.

I said, I'm showing you some stuff.

He goes, oh, and I list stuff up and then the world went.

Things got out of hand.

Unintentionally,

gun fired.

I'm leaning in to see if he's okay.

I fall in the window, and then he's getting up and going around.

I'm running around to see what's going on.

I said, Dr.

Sonia, are you all right?

I don't hear anything.

Go in the garage.

He's laying prone.

I hear his last breath.

I reach down.

There's no pulse.

Did you stab him?

I did stab him a couple of times.

I can't reconcile the number that the prosecution says.

11, I think they've said.

I had Dr.

Sonia's phone in my hand, and I considered dialing 911

just to call the authorities, and I didn't.

And I put it back in,

mutilated his bodily remains, and tried to cover it, make it look like something else.

Do you consider yourself a cold-blooded killer?

No, absolutely not.

An idiot, you know, know, careless.

I mean, but no,

no.

Remember, in David Shepard's interview with police, he told them that when he notified Dr.

Dixon that he in fact carried out the murder of Dr.

Sonia,

Dr.

Dixon was very pleased to hear the news.

He was happy about it.

He was fine with it.

I said, Mike.

Things didn't go like I hoped.

He goes, what are you talking about?

And then I broke the news to him.

And he's like,

so you're, are you telling me?

I said, yeah.

Yeah.

I said, Mike, I'm just telling you what happened.

And I said, I almost called the police.

I should have.

I didn't.

I'm thinking now I should have, and I didn't.

And he goes,

well, we'll just have to see what happens.

He goes, I don't know.

I don't know.

But why wouldn't he have shared all that with police who were then coming by his house, talking to him hey i just you'll have he didn't even mention your name you'll have well probably try to keep me out of that situation so they wouldn't even know about me i don't know you'll have to ask dr dixon about what his thinking is what shepherd told me was totally at odds with what he told police he told police that dixon told him i want you to kill sonia you wanted him hurt and then it gradually developed into having him guilt Did Mike Dixon ever ask you to kill Dr.

Joseph?

Absolutely not.

Absolutely not.

When the police interrogated you, you said that Mike Dixon was a part of this.

Right.

Why did you tell them that?

I embellished.

I felt that's what I had to do because I had already had an agreement with Mr.

Matt Powell.

He was the DA,

to get rid of the death penalty.

So in your mind, you made up the story that Mike Dixon was involved in.

You got to get the death penalty off the table.

Yeah.

Shepard said that Mike Dixon told him just to keep tabs on Michelle and Joseph, just to take pictures, follow them around, and see what they were up to.

Why'd you help him with this?

Seems kind of silly.

Looking back, I didn't want to offend anybody.

I don't want to hurt anybody, and I sometimes have a hard time saying no, I guess.

There were all these text messages that Mike Dixon was sending to you.

Go get him, whip and spur.

So those text messages were referring to...

I would assume staying on target so you can get him a picture of him with another girl besides Rochelle.

I didn't mean to kill Dr.

Sonia.

I have nothing against Dr.

Sonia or his family or Rochelle Shativa.

I have nothing against any of them.

I really don't.

What would you say to them right now if they were watching?

I tell them that I'm very sorry.

I took your loved one.

You get on the stand, you see Mike Dixon there, you see your family there,

you change your story.

What was that moment like for you?

It was antagonizing.

It was very hard.

Your daughters told us that they were so upset that this was your chance to get up there and to tell the truth and that in their mind you lied.

Yes.

How does that make you feel?

Pretty bad.

They know me, they should know when I'm telling the truth and when I'm not.

And I was telling the truth on the stand.

Do you miss them?

Oh,

every day.

I'm sorry.

The damage is done.

There's not anything that's going to repair our relationship.

There's nothing that can fix it or make it right, even if he were to get out.

Do you think your dad should spend the rest of his life in prison?

Absolutely.

We have absolutely, you know,

accepted it and proven that we can move on and we can be better and we can absolutely overcome it and be stronger because of it.

Despite what happened with David Shepard's extraordinary turnaround, the prosecution was not about to give up.

One year later, they're back in court, ready to try Dr.

Dixon one more time.

Matt Powell, without blinking, he says, we are going to get this guy.

We are going to do this again.

Don't you worry.

I've got you.

And that's all I needed to hear.

Amarello Dr.

Michael Dixon is back on trial for capital murder when the witness list comes out for the second trial.

David Shepard's name is not to be found.

But on the list is his his daughter, Haley.

The number one most important thing from this second trial was the unbelievably courageous testimony of Haley Shepard.

But what Haley would say about just a simple steak dinner would turn this case on its head.

What did you say on the steak of time?

Amarello Dr.

Michael Dixon is back on trial for capital murder.

Is Dixon back in a Lubbock courtroom preparing for his trial?

Well today officials announced the start of the second trial.

Everybody thought going into the first trial that prosecutors had a pretty rock-solid case.

Second trial, everybody was wondering, what is the prosecution going to do this time around to make it so that they can get a conviction?

Our strategy was basically, we're going to let the facts do the talking.

We're going to show you what happened.

We're going to show you the relationship between these two folks.

And we're going to convince you that Mike Dixon is running this show and that he orchestrated this whole thing.

David Shepard had no reason

to kill my dad if it wasn't for Mike Dixon.

In a retrial, prosecutors can take any mistakes that they made in the first case, try to refine it, try to change it, and present an often stronger case in the second trial.

Clearly, they were not going to take any chances with David Shepard's testimony this time.

And lo and behold, who comes up but his daughter, who has information that could prove very damaging to Dr.

Dixon's case.

That was his chance to

make it right with them.

And

he threw it away.

The number one most important thing from this second trial was the unbelievably courageous testimony of Haley Shepard.

Haley Shepard testified and her testimony was extremely important in the fact she basically described her dad for everybody.

She told jurors that her father took herself and her two sisters out to dinner at a pretty decent steakhouse and had all sorts of gifts for them and she found that very suspicious.

He bought Haley a phone, he bought a new grill, he bought tires, and he never had that much money ever.

We all remember this same exact moment at dinner.

We all asked him, How do you have money?

And his words were, I did some work for Mike.

What would you do?

He wouldn't tell us.

Don't worry about it.

I just did some work for Mike.

Don't worry about it.

The Sonia family has some hope that that testimony was the game changer that didn't exist in the first trial.

The defense had its own star witness in Mike Dixon himself.

But having the defendant testify is always a risk.

It's a lot of times a defense attorney's nightmare because the prosecution sees that as red meat.

And now the jury gets to hear from the man who's in the fight for his life and his freedom at this point.

Our strategy was to show that there was a reason that Mike Dixon was asking David Shepard to be at Sonia's house and to follow him.

If the jury only has the text messages without any explanation about what they were about,

it's over.

Mike needed to say,

I was wrong.

I'm morally responsible.

If I hadn't have asked David to get these pictures, maybe it wouldn't happen.

But I did not intend for Joseph Sonia to die.

I didn't ask Shepard to kill him.

Part of the decision in whether to call a defendant to the witness stand is not just the substance of what he's going to say, but how is he going to say it?

What's his demeanor like?

Are the jurors going to like him or not?

Those are all relevant factors.

We learned from jurors that they didn't like Mike Dixon.

Not necessarily his testimony.

they didn't like him.

I thought he was his worst witness.

I would admit the longer he was on the stand, the harder he was to believe.

He had an ego that was larger than life.

And

anytime he starts talking about whether something is morally right or wrong,

I knew at that point

I could not believe what he

what he was testifying to.

The jury, they seemed to appreciate Haley's testimony.

Shepard's daughter,

that was tough to sit and

watch her have to go through this.

But they did what you would hope jurors would do.

It wasn't one thing.

They looked at all the evidence.

And you could tell Dixon was running the show.

I mean, there was no doubt when you go through the evidence that he was,

as Mr.

Powell stated, he was driving the school bus.

This time around, the jury did not take very long and there were no holdouts.

In just a handful of hours, they were back with a verdict.

And my hand was shaking like this.

The verdict is in.

Unanimous verdict.

Guilty on two charges.

At first, you're thinking, I didn't hear that right.

You really are.

You're thinking, there's no way.

You know, there's no way.

And it's unreal.

Second nightmare.

I'm disappointed in the justice system.

You know, I always thought they were supposed to be the good guys.

After a few minutes, I had to turn to my wife and I had to say, he said guilty, right?

He said guilty.

We've been waiting for that moment for over three years.

I cried.

I cried.

I burst into tears.

I was so relieved.

When you look at the photos of him, smug smile.

When you look at his mugshot from his arrest,

smug smile.

And it was so

great to be able to know that we finally wiped that smile off his face.

And I think he'll disappear into the prison system for the rest of his life.

We'll never hear from him again.

The jury's done its job.

The prosecution wins.

And there's at least some peace of mind for the family of Dr.

Sonier knowing that justice was served.

Case closed, not

even close.

People were floored.

They were like, this is unbelievable.

After his 2015 conviction for the murder of Joe Sonye, Michael Dixon is serving his life prison sentence at the all-red maximum security prison.

You would think in this case that justice has been served, but has it?

Thomas Michael Dixon gets a new trial.

This would all of us think this case is finished.

The Seventh Court of Appeals in Amarillo overturns the conviction.

People were floored.

They were like, this is unbelievable.

The defense listed something like 50 issues on appeal, and they succeeded on two of them.

The cell phone tower location information that was used in Dixon's trial was deemed inadmissible because it was obtained without a warrant.

And that the judge had closed the courtroom at times that he shouldn't have?

These are really big deals.

Do law enforcement get to just go grab anything they want from our personal lives and invade our privacy without probable cause to do so?

And the other matter is we don't have secret trials where we get to expel the public from the courtroom for whatever reason.

The Circuit Court of Appeals in Amarillo reversed Dixon's conviction.

He starts with a clean slate.

He's presumed innocent, so we start over from scratch.

He's now out of prison, living in the Amarillo area.

The second big bombshell is this convicted man is now out of prison.

His bond reduced from 10 million to 2 million.

He was thrilled.

He was really delighted and hopes to finally achieve his vindication.

He's doing good.

His spirits are high.

He got to see his grandson for the first time.

He wears an ankle monitor.

They keep an eye on him, and he has to let them know where he's going and what he's doing.

He can go all around Amarillo and do daily activities.

If he needs to go to Walmart, he can certainly do that.

There's a gag order which prevents family members from talking about this case.

But you can understand

why the Sonia family

would be furious.

In their mind, the man who ordered the hit on their dad, now he's walking free.

Mike Dixon and his family are victims too.

It's horrible that they're having to go through this over and over again until they can get a fair trial.

They had a rush to judgment on Mike.

Stop that train and do what's right.

Find justice, not just a conviction.

Banuloba County District Attorney, she's filed her own petition to get the conviction put back in place.

But if that's rejected, we're going to trial number three.

Mike Dixon is free right now.

Andrew Dixon has his dad.

On the other hand, his life is once again hanging in the balance as he faces another trial.

He could end up right back in prison.

The loss of such a dear and decent and good man is a tragedy beyond words.

This whole thing is nothing but darkness and evil.

To be at the center of all of that is,

it's horrible.

It wasn't a love triangle.

It was, Rochelle was telling Mike how great a person Sonia was.

And that's how all this snowballed into a horrible tragedy.

I challenge each one of us to focus on what he left behind and the man who touched us all.

I thank the Lord for every moment that we had with Joe.

My son was born after my father was murdered.

You will never know my father.

It's heartbreaking

and it's also a challenge to make sure that my son knows

what kind of man my father was and that I pass on

that legacy.

It's amazing the things that people will do for nothing.

Look how many lives have been destroyed by this over nothing.

Thanks for listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault.

We hope you'll join us Friday nights at 9 on ABC for all new broadcast episodes.

See you then.

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