Nearly 28 years after Kathleen Dawson's charred body was discovered in her torched car in Somerset County, state police arrested her husband in Jacksonville, Fla., saying he beat his wife with a blackjack and made it look like an accident.
John David Dawson, 59, was arrested late Monday and was jailed in Jacksonville pending an extradition hearing today, Somerset County District Attorney Jerry Spangler said.
Ms. Dawson was 30 when she was killed on Nov. 9, 1981, while returning home from her nursing job at Windber Hospital.
Her husband, who has long been a suspect, was charged after a cold case squad uncovered new information linking him to a blackjack found at the crime scene.
State police said Mr. Dawson, a manual laborer for most of his life, struck his wife in the head before putting her in the back of her car on Soap Hollow Road and burning it, making it appear as though she had crashed.
He then returned to his home about eight miles away and called 911 "in an effort to establish an alibi," state police wrote in a criminal complaint.
Police say Mr. Dawson had ample motive to kill his wife. The couple were "suffering from financial hardships," and, on the day of her death, Mr. Dawson changed an insurance policy to ensure his wife was covered if she were hurt or killed in a car crash, the complaint said. He was also having an affair with a woman, and moved to Florida with her within three months of his wife's death.
Family and friends who gathered at Mr. Dawson's house after the killing recalled "an awful smell" of burnt flesh, the complaint said, and noticed burn marks on Mr. Dawson's face, for which he offered at least four different explanations.
Conemaugh police, who investigated the case until state police took it over in 1982, also noticed the marks but didn't thoroughly investigate Mr. Dawson's stories about them, Mr. Spangler said.
Police in recent weeks learned that Mr. Dawson's brother-in-law was known to carry a blackjack for personal defense during his employment at the steel mills in Johnstown. The brother-in-law's blackjack disappeared about the time of his death in 1977, when Mr. Dawson was living with him.
The Rev. Don Eller, a close family friend, told police he held the blackjack and "played with it" during a visit to Mr. Dawson's house.
According to the complaint, the Rev. Eller's statement contradicts comments Mr. Dawson made at an insurance deposition in 1982, where he said "I don't even know for sure what a blackjack looks like -- that's honest."
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