Jessica Brandon, 36, a female White/Caucasian, was shot to death in the early morning hours of July 31, 2018, during a violent home invasion at the north Lincoln house she shared with her boyfriend. Police were called around 3:45 a.m. to the area near 19th 20th and Fairfield, where Brandon was found unresponsive with a gunshot wound; she was taken to a hospital and later pronounced dead.
Investigators said the break-in was targeted rather than random, with multiple intruders forcing their way in and firing several shots amid what authorities described as an attempted robbery. Inside the home, officers discovered people on the main floor bound with zip ties and duct tape, and later documented several pounds of marijuana and about $85,000 in cash that had been stashed on the property. Brandon s children were nearby during the ordeal, underscoring the brutality of the crime.
Detectives quickly gathered surveillance footage that showed several men casing the house before the attack and then forcing their way inside. Within weeks, Lincoln police announced arrests: Dante Williams, then 25, in Omaha; Damon D. Williams Jr., then 26, and Tawhyne M. Patterson, then 25, in Texas. A fourth suspect, Ira Morrow, 33, was later arrested after investigators identified him among the men seen on video. Court affidavits also chronicled how Brandon s boyfriend had hurriedly hidden drugs and cash as officers converged after the shooting, details that helped establish robbery as the motive.
Prosecutors ultimately charged Patterson and Damon Williams with a slate of federal offenses tied to the home invasion and killing. In February 2021, a jury found both men guilty on all counts stemming from the robbery that left Brandon dead in the basement of her home. That summer, a federal judge sentenced each of them to life imprisonment for committing murder with a firearm during an attempted robbery, along with additional time for firearms conspiracy; Patterson was identified in court filings as a Vice Lord gang member from Chicago, while Williams was from Omaha. News accounts noted there was no possibility of parole on the federal life terms.
The investigation and prosecutions stretched beyond the triggermen. In 2021, William Bill Boothe III, a 57-year-old Lincoln man, was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for helping plan and set up the attempted robbery that resulted in Brandon s death, with evidence at trial describing his role in orchestrating the crime. Collectively, the arrests and convictions detailed how a planned robbery sparked by the belief that large amounts of cash were inside the home spiraled into lethal violence that ended the life of a young mother and reverberated through her family and community.
