A Casper man who maliciously killed his mother-in-law’s husband and tried to kill his mother-in-law will face between 40 years and life in prison after a jury convicted him Friday.
George Kevin Dickerson, 62, will be sentenced at a later hearing.
Dickerson was charged in January with second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder for stabbing is mother-in-law, 84-year-old Rose Dennis, nearly to death and stabbing her husband, Andy Martin, 75, killing him.
He turned himself in the morning of Jan. 8, calling 911 and telling law enforcement to send a patrol car to his in-laws’ address on Begonia Street “for a double homicide.”
The call came about 11 hours after Dickerson stabbed the pair. He told the dispatcher that he killed his mother-in-law and her husband the night prior after confronting Martin about “abusing Rose’s health care workers.”
“I just lost it,” Dickerson said.
“Rose jumped on me, and I knocked her up against the wall and it just went from there,” Dickerson is reported to have said, adding that no one else was in the house.
Unbeknownst to Dickerson at that time, Rose Dennis survived the attack.
The Bloody Room
Officers arrived at the couple’s home to find Martin and Dennis lying face-up on the master bedroom floor. Martin was dead, covered in blood, wearing only underwear and had several stab wounds to his body and neck.
Dennis had stab wounds in her neck and had been “severely beaten,” says the case affidavit.
Officers covered her with a robe, sat her up and started treating her while waiting for emergency medical services.
At the hospital, doctors identified a blow-out fracture to her head, a brain bleed and other injuries, the affidavit says.
Just before his arrest, Dickerson told Casper Police Department Officer Carson Lee, “I think my brain is broken.”
The Broken Brain Option
Dickerson’s jury had a few options on how, and if, to convict him.
For Martin’s death, the jury could have found Dickerson guilty of second-degree murder or not guilty — or not guilty by reason of a mental illness.
Alternately, the jury could have chosen to convict or acquit Dickerson for voluntary manslaughter.
Jurors decided he was guilty of second-degree murder.
And for Dennis’ beating and stabbing, the jury also could have chosen to acquit Dickerson or deem him too mentally ill to understand his actions and conform them to the law.
Jurors convicted him for attempted second-degree murder for the attack on Dennis.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
