On the cold night of January 6, 1991, Sheilda Dixon, a 36-year-old mother of two from Queens, New York, was heading home after enjoying a wedding. Sheilda, a Black woman, was walking in the Hollis neighborhood when her path crossed with a man who would cut her life tragically short. The joy of the evening turned to terror as she was attacked, her ankles and mouth bound with tape. Her assailant then strangled her, leaving her body under the bleachers of a baseball field at Peters Park.
For nearly three weeks, her family was left to wonder and worry, until her body was finally discovered. The absence of identification delayed the heartbreaking news, but she was eventually identified by her husband, Eugene.
The discovery plunged her family into a devastating new reality. The loss of Sheilda, a loving mother and wife, was a blow from which they struggled to recover. The pain was so deeply rooted in their Queens home that Eugene eventually made the difficult decision to move with their two children to Virginia, hoping to escape the constant, painful memories of what had happened.
Sheilda’s murder was not an isolated act of violence. On February 23, 1991, less than two months later, another woman in southeastern Queens, 28-year-old Tracy Covington, was found murdered in a chillingly similar fashion. A former social worker, Tracy was attacked just outside her own home. Her mouth and ankles had also been taped before she was strangled. The striking similarities between the two cases immediately linked them in the eyes of the New York Police Department, sparking fear throughout the borough. A serial killer was on the loose, and police issued a public warning, urging women to be especially cautious.
The community lived in fear for months as the predator, who became known as "Justice," continued his attacks. The breakthrough in the case came in July 1991. A 29-year-old woman who had survived a brutal rape by the same man was riding in a police surveillance van when she spotted her attacker on the street. She positively identified him, and police moved in swiftly, arresting Lester Ford, a 28-year-old mail clerk for the NYNEX telephone company.
A search of Ford's home uncovered a.25-caliber handgun, which ballistics testing later proved was the weapon used to murder another victim, 20-year-old Sabrina Bost, who was eight months pregnant when she was shot in the face. Faced with mounting evidence, Ford confessed to the string of horrific crimes. During his confession to a renowned NYPD detective, he chillingly described himself as a "sexually determined young man." He admitted to killing Sheilda Dixon, Tracy Covington, and Sabrina Bost.
In March 1992, to avoid a trial, Lester Ford accepted a plea agreement. He was convicted on three counts of second-degree murder and one count of first-degree rape. The court sentenced him to 40 years to life in prison. The legal proceedings were not without further drama; after Ford's arrest, his girlfriend and her friend confronted and assaulted one of his surviving victims, threatening her not to testify. They were subsequently arrested and charged with assault and witness tampering.
Lester Ford is currently incarcerated at the Elmira Correctional Facility in New York. While justice was legally served, the sentence could never undo the profound loss and trauma inflicted upon the families of his victims. For the family of Sheilda Dixon, her violent death left a permanent void, a story of a mother taken far too soon, and a life of memories that had to be rebuilt in a new place, forever shadowed by the events of that winter night in Queens.
