Local News

Justice Delayed In Oakland Serial Murder Case

OAKLAND (CBS 5) ― Sometimes the wheels of justice move so slowly they seem to have stopped. CBS 5 Investigates found a multiple murder case in the Bay Area that's dragged on for over two decades.

Marsha Dixon remembers her 13-year-old daughter Talita as "a funny, funny child. She used to make jokes and play games and stuff and just make you laugh," Dixon recalled.

On October 5, 1985, Talita left her home to walk to school by herself for the first time. Her mother says, even then, an unexplainable feeling of sadness overtook her as she waved goodbye to her daughter.

"I guess that was me knowing that was the last time I would see her alive," Dixon said.

Three days later, a jogger found Talita's body near a walking path in the Oakland Hills.

Her killer had raped her, stabbed her repeatedly, broken her neck and ripped an arm from her body.

Police soon found that Talita wasn't the only victim. A serial killer terrorized the community in late 1985, raping and murdering five girls and young women.

But Oakland police were stumped as to the killer's identity until police in nearby Emeryville began investigating a series of rapes against prostitutes.

Those attacks were "vicious", said Emeryville Chief of Police Ken James, who was a sergeant during the time of the investigation.

The killer "was playing a cat and mouse game," James said. "He would give them the opportunity to think they were getting away, and then come back and stab them."

Fortunately for Emeryville police, those prostitutes survived and gave descriptions of their attacker that led police to their suspect, 32-year-old Anthony McKnight. He was an enlisted man at Alameda Naval Air Station.

But James, the Emeryville police sergeant at the time, had a hunch that McKnight might also be Oakland's serial killer. He says he told his lead detective, "Go down to Oakland, sit down in the captain's office, let him know what you have, and don't leave until they recognize that this may be a connection."

Police arrested McKnight. And the killings stopped. But police say they did not have enough evidence to charge him with murder. Instead, he was convicted for the attacks against prostitutes in Emeryville and sentenced to 63 years in prison.

For Marsha Dixon, it seemed there would be no justice for Talita.

No justice, until June 1999. DNA technology, which was new at the time, gave police evidence that they announced tied McKnight to the murders of Talita Dixon and the four other victims.

After 14 years, prosecutors charged him with five counts of murder.

Marsha Dixon said she felt relieved. "When they had the DNA testing to prove that it was him, then I thought we were gonna move forward with the case" she said.

It seemed everybody was ready to go. Prosecutors filed the case and McKnight entered a plea of not guilty.

But that was eight years ago. And still, Anthony McKnight has yet to stand trial for those 1985 killings.

CBS 5 Investigates wanted to find out why.

Officials now involved with the case would not talk to CBS 5 on camera, but court records show delay after delay.

In fact, CBS 5 Investigates counted 46 court appearances over the past 8 years.

Those records show attorneys assigned to the case often getting replaced with new attorneys who asked for more time. And judges seemed in no apparent hurry to push things along; they readily granted continuances.

Meanwhile families of the victims say they're left in the dark.

"Emotionally you gear yourself up, thinking, at last we're going to move forward with this, at last you're going to do something, at last justice is done," said Dixon. "And then you're slapped in the face with, 'Well Marsha, we have to put the case back, I'm sorry, we have another case that has to come before this one.'"

Ken Bryant says he wants justice for his older sister Beverly Ann Bryant, the last of the five victims. "He's still alive, she's not," Bryant said.

The Oakland resident says until McKnight faces a jury, there can be no decision as to whether he deserves the death penalty.

And Bryant believes the victims and their families deserve better than to wait.

"All those people he killed, whatever, was--you know--was just nothing," he said. "Their lives were worth nothing."

Dixon says she's had to endure seeing McKnight in court more than once, including one occasion that particularly disturbs her. "He looked at me and laughed in my face," recalls Dixon.

Anthony McKnight will appear in court on Friday and prosecutors promise to bring him to trial next year. But 22 years after her daughter's death, Marsha Dixon says the promises sound empty.

"I will feel a sense of justice when this case is resolved and I see that he is sent to the electric chair for what he has done," Dixon said.

(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)