On Wednesday, Clarence Dixon, 66, died by lethal injection at 10:30 a.m. at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence. Dixon was convicted of killing a college student, Deana Bowdoin, in 1978.
On January 7, 1978, 21-year-old Deana Bowdoin, an ASU student, was raped, strangled, and stabbed to death in her Tempe apartment. Police couldn’t find her killer, and her case became cold. About 20 years later, a Tempe Police Detective re-opened the case and, with the technological advancement of DNA profiling, was able to identify a suspect. Dixon was already serving a life sentence in an Arizona prison for a 1986 sexual assault conviction. Dixon was indicted for Bowdoin’s murder in 2002. A jury found Dixon guilty and sentenced him to death.
There are approximately 112 inmates on Arizona’s death row, 23 have exhausted all their appeals. Many of their crimes go back to the 1970s and early 80s.