Branda Mae Delight Basham, a 22-year-old White/Caucasian woman from Charleston, West Virginia, was killed during the early morning hours of July 12, 2014, in a murder that investigators ultimately determined was retaliation for her cooperation with law enforcement. Her body was discovered later that morning along railroad tracks on Charleston’s West Side near the Breece and Madison streets area.
Police quickly classified the death as a homicide, and an autopsy determined that she had been shot three times.
In the months before her death, Basham had been working as a confidential informant for the Metropolitan Drug Enforcement Network Team, commonly known as MDENT. As part of that cooperation, she participated in controlled heroin purchases from Marlon Dewayne “Ice” Dixon, a Charleston drug dealer who already had several felony convictions. Authorities said Basham made three controlled heroin purchases from Dixon during May 2014. On May 21, investigators executed a search warrant at Dixon’s residence on Delaware Avenue. Dixon was not there when officers arrived, but after learning of the search he began to suspect that Basham had been cooperating with police. The following day, Dixon spoke with an MDENT detective and learned that officers had conducted controlled heroin purchases from him. He told the detective that he intended to spend time with his family before returning to jail and promised to surrender after the Memorial Day weekend, but he did not do so.
According to the federal case against Dixon, sometime after midnight on July 12 he persuaded Basham to meet him on a secluded stretch of railroad tracks on Charleston’s West Side, near the 700 block of Breece Street. At approximately 3 a.m., Dixon confronted her about being a confidential informant. He later acknowledged that Basham admitted she had been working with police and had participated in controlled drug purchases from him. Court records recount Dixon saying that once Basham mentioned the name of an MDENT detective, he became certain that she had been responsible for setting him up and decided to kill her.
Dixon displayed a 9 mm handgun as Basham pleaded for her life. According to the account he later gave detectives, she attempted to escape and he fired at her. After she fell, she asked him to call an ambulance and continued pleading with him, but Dixon fired additional shots, including one at close range into her face. Medical findings documented three gunshot wounds, including wounds to her right cheek and chest. Federal prosecutors later described the killing as deliberate and premeditated, committed both to punish Basham for helping investigators and to prevent her from continuing to provide information or potentially testify against Dixon.
After the shooting, Dixon went to a residence on Madison Street, where investigators said he cleaned himself and disposed of his clothing. A woman later told police that Dixon had appeared at the residence around the time of the killing and asked that his clothing be washed. Surveillance footage obtained during the investigation showed Dixon wiping down the residence’s front door and carrying bags away. Detectives executing a search warrant recovered a pair of shoes associated with Dixon, and laboratory testing determined that bloodstains on the shoes contained Basham’s DNA. Investigators also found evidence of communications between Basham and a telephone number associated with Dixon shortly before she was killed, while witnesses connected the two during the hours preceding the shooting. One witness told police Dixon had been carrying a black handgun and had said Basham was killed because she had worn a wire and worked with law enforcement.
Within a day of the discovery of Basham’s body, Charleston police publicly identified Dixon as a person of interest. He was already wanted on an unrelated heroin-distribution charge, and investigators began searching for him while gathering evidence linking him directly to the homicide. During the days that followed, police said Dixon posted messages on Facebook and sent text messages to investigators while avoiding capture. By July 17, authorities had obtained enough evidence to charge him with first-degree murder. Dixon surrendered to Charleston police that day and was initially jailed without bond. After waiving his Miranda rights, he confessed to killing Basham and admitted that his purpose was to retaliate against her for cooperating with police and to prevent her from providing further evidence against him.
The prosecution soon expanded beyond the original state murder charge. On October 28, 2014, a federal grand jury indicted Dixon on seven counts arising from his heroin trafficking and Basham’s killing. The federal allegations included three heroin-distribution counts, witness tampering by killing, witness retaliation by killing, firearm-related charges connected to the murder, and allegations based on Dixon’s status as a convicted felon. Federal prosecutors alleged that he had killed Basham with premeditation because of the information she had provided to law enforcement and because he wanted to stop her from communicating further with investigators. The potential penalties were extraordinarily severe, and prosecutors initially considered pursuing the federal death penalty before the Justice Department ultimately decided not to seek it.
There was ultimately no murder trial because Dixon admitted responsibility. On November 9, 2015, he pleaded guilty in federal court to witness tampering by killing. As part of the factual basis for his plea, the government laid out how he had arranged the meeting with Basham, confronted her about cooperating with police, shot her repeatedly, attempted to conceal evidence afterward and then confessed following his surrender. The federal court subsequently determined that the facts supported a finding that the killing constituted first-degree murder, including the required element of malice aforethought.
On June 13, 2016, U.S. District Judge Thomas E. Johnston sentenced Marlon Dewayne Dixon to life in federal prison for killing Basham. The sentence ensured that Dixon faced the most serious consequence available after federal prosecutors elected not to pursue capital punishment. The case closed with Dixon’s own admission that Basham had been targeted specifically because she had assisted investigators against him, turning what had begun as a drug investigation into a deliberate witness-retaliation murder.
