[tense music]
This is a killer who picks his victims at random,
a sniper who leaves no evidence.
♪
A killer who has no regard for human life,
who hunted his victims like animals
and left them to die alone in the wilderness.
♪
There's no connection.
There's no pattern and you don't know when he's gonna hit.
The problem is, how do you hunt the hunter?
[eerie, suspenseful music]
♪
[gentle music]
Southeastern Ohio is a rural area,
you know, small towns.
Great place to be an outdoorsman.
There are thousands and thousands and thousands
of acres of public land for hunting and fishing.
If he were off work,
typically you could see him out hunting.
[tense music]
It was on a Saturday morning,
and the sheriff's office dispatch
contacted me at my home.
They told me that we had a male individual
that was laying on the roadway that was deceased.
♪
It was in a very rural area.
When I arrived at the scene,
the body was on the paved portion of the roadway.
And I observed that there was a bullet
protruding from the left side of the individual.
The bullet passed through his arm
and into his chest area.
A .308 caliber round.
It appeared that he was shot with a high-powered rifle.
At that point, a lot of deputies and myself
walked that area looking for
any kind of evidence, tire tracks,
shoe prints, anything.
♪
And we found nothing.
We did find deer tracks that could have been
maybe related to someone shooting a deer.
We really didn't know at that time.
Maybe it was a hunter that fired an errant shot.
And it just happened to hit the victim and kill him.
So the only piece of evidence that we had from that scene
was actually the bullet.
A passer-by gentleman called Jack Green
actually knew who the victim was and where he lived.
The victim was Donald Welling.
He was a 35-year-old white man.
He lived alone about 6/10 of a mile
from where his body was found.
So I went to Don Welling's residence.
There was no sign of any type of struggle.
His wallet was laying on the table.
It looked like he just happened to be out for a jog
or just a casual walk when he was shot and killed.
♪
We made contact with Mr. Welling's parents.
His father was very, very upset about it.
My father-in-law came out to our house,
and when I opened the door,
he just said, "Donnie was shot."
It was just unbelievable.
Don was a fun-loving,
carefree guy.
He drove trucks for a living.
Donnie had a lot of friends, so he was well loved.
I mean, it was just so sad.
How could this happen here?
We began talking
to all of Donald Welling's friends and associates.
He was apparently just a kind individual
that a lot of people liked.
We also received some calls from people
that gave us information.
In one of those calls,
there was allegations that Mr. Welling
was having an affair with the wife of Jack Green,
the person that identified the victim.
So that got our attention.
We approached Jack Green about it.
He didn't know about an affair,
and he denied that he had shot Mr. Welling.
We interviewed his wife and talked to her
about allegations of her and Mr. Welling
having an affair.
But she told us that was not true.
There was no proof that Jack Green had any part
in Donald Welling's shooting.
We'd followed up everything that we had
and there was nothing new to work on.
So it just came to a standstill.
It's very frustrating.
I initially thought that it was a homicide,
but we didn't know for sure.
What we really knew is we had a dead man that had been shot.
♪
On November the 10th, 1990,
I was notified that a father and son
were just driving down the road
and they saw this body laying in the weeds.
So naturally, they called the sheriff's office
to report this.
Drove to the scene--
rather isolated area.
The body was approximately 100 feet from the roadway
in the high grass.
A young white male
in his early 20s
had been shot three times.
It appeared the first shot hit him in the chest,
the second shot hit him in the knee,
and the third shot hit him in the backside.
We did not see any evidence
of where anyone had disturbed the grass.
So it appeared as though he was shot and killed
from some distance with a high-powered rifle.
Clearly, this individual was murdered.
Detectives are thinking this is pretty unusual.
We found a vehicle parked on the roadway.
And we identified the decedent from his driver's license,
and from the license plates of the vehicle.
We had a 21-year-old young man
by the name of Jamie Paxton.
Inside the vehicle, we found a crossbow.
We theorized at that point
that Jamie was out looking for deer.
But the search itself was rather disappointing.
No shell casings at the scene,
no witnesses--
just wasn't really anything for the sheriff's office
in Belmont County to go on.
♪
So now we had two cases
that occurred in these counties
that were not connected.
Law enforcement didn't really have the communications
that we do today.
Tuscarawas County did not know
about Belmont County's homicide.
Belmont County did not know
about Tuscarawas' homicide at that time.
In the late '80s and the early '90s,
there wasn't as much communication
between departments.
But it's really important to communicate
because if these two killings are related,
those departments need to know about it.
When our first victim is discovered,
he's lying down, he's on a open road.
And the first initial thought is,
"Is this a hunting accident?"
When the victim is actually examined,
they discover that this wound
is in the upper chest, center body mass.
This is where every marksman aims to shoot.
The second victim is wearing hunting gear
with a reflective vest.
This is no hunting accident.
This is intentional. This is murder.
If these murders are connected
and are the same individual, we have a sniper.
And a sniper poses
a very unique challenge for law enforcement
because these perpetrators often leave very little
evidence behind other than a bullet.
♪
We relayed the--the news to Mr. and Mrs. Paxton
that Jamie had been killed.
They were traumatized.
I spoke with Jean Paxton mother to mother.
Nobody could tell her why her beloved
21-year-old son had died.
They could find no known enemies,
no motives for why this guy would be killed.
So the case remained unresolved.
Jamie's mother, for a long time
after Jamie was killed in November of '90
would write to the newspaper in Belmont County
called "The Times Leader."
She felt that she needed to do something
to bring more attention to her son's death.
Just to read those letters would pull your heartstrings.
That's why I told Mrs. Paxton.
I says, "You keep it going.
It's affecting someone."
And then approximately
one year after her son's murder,
she wrote a letter
that the killer ended up responding to.
[dramatic music]
He says that he will continue to kill.
He had no remorse. [gunshot]
And then it came to our attention
that there was another similar homicide.
That really scared people.
[tense music]
On November 4th, 1991,
about a year after Jamie Paxton's murder,
the newspaper received an anonymous letter
from someone who had seen those letters written
by Jamie's mother
and they claimed to be the murderer of Jamie Paxton.
He described how he did it.
There's a .308 rifle that he used and that he had
shot Jamie three times.
It was very detailed information
only the killer would know.
We were all strongly believing
that the person authoring that letter
was, in fact, the killer of Jamie Paxton.
It was a typewritten letter.
We sent it in to our lab,
but we couldn't find any fingerprints.
Forensically, there was nothing that we could do
to positively identify the suspect.
In his letter, he describes his self
as being a serial killer
and that he has a strange urge
that he cannot satisfy until he kills a human being.
[eerie music]
He says that he will continue to kill.
It did alarm me.
I was thinking, "Is there more murders out there someplace
that we just haven't come across?"
♪
March 14th, my pager went off and they informed me
that they had a death that appeared to be suspicious
in the Wills Creek area below the dam.
I responded to the scene.
The body was in the process of being removed,
and he had been shot in the back
with what appeared to be a rifle round.
It appeared that he had been fishing there.
Learned his name was Claude Hawkins
through his wallet and driver's license
that were on his person.
His vehicle was parked above where he was at.
There was no evidence of any foul play
around Mr. Hawkins whatsoever
or around his vehicle on the roadway,
where it parked.
We never located any shell casings,
tire tracks, any foot tracks.
When the autopsy was conducted on Mr. Hawkins,
a bullet was found from a high-powered rifle
within the torso of his body.
And that bullet was later identified
as a 6.5x55 Swedish Mauser round.
♪
We started doing background on Mr. Hawkins.
Mr. Hawkins was married, had four children.
The family was devastated.
We learned that it was not uncommon for him
to get off his midnight shift job
and go straight to someplace to start fishing.
So at that point, you know, sort of like,
"Wait a minute.
"Did somebody just drive down this road
"and shoot Mr. Hawkins?
"Did he just happen to be a victim of circumstance
at that given time?"
And if that's the case, my mind said,
"He's probably not the first."
So I went home and I went through my files.
I can remember reading in one of our local papers
of a homicide that took place in 1989 in Tuscarawas County.
And of the Jamie Paxton homicide in Belmont County
that happened in November 10th of 1990.
I knew the detective in Tuscarawas County,
Walt Wilson.
So I picked up the phone immediately and said,
"Hey, Walt, did you ever solve that crime up there?"
Captain Dane Shryock contacted me
about the Donald Welling killing.
He informed me of their shooting
at the Wills Creek dam.
I said, "Did you ever have any suspects?"
And he said, "No." I said, "Was there any chance
he was shot with a high-powered rifle?"
He said, "Yes. Why?"
So I said, "I think we need to talk."
[suspenseful music]
Dane Shryock contacted myself
and Walt Wilson from Tuscarawas County.
Dane suggested that we'd had the same problem he had had,
was some unsolved homicides.
It was Coshocton, Belmont, and myself from Tusc.
We all brought our files and we sat down
and we just talked openly about,
you know, what all our cases involved.
All the victims were doing something outdoors,
and they were by themselves in an isolated area.
There were no witnesses to any of it.
They were all shot with a rifle.
And Fred Thompson had indicated
that the mother of their victim, Mrs. Paxton,
had received a letter
that was allegedly from the killer of her son.
♪
We needed to find out if there's other homicides
around this area, so we set out a request
for information from other departments.
And then it came to our attention
that there was another similar homicide in Muskingum County
and that case was unsolved.
November 28th,
about 18 days after Jamie's homicide,
there was an individual by the name of Kevin Loring
and he was with a hunting party.
And in the afternoon, they decided to split up.
They were supposed to meet back at their cars,
but Mr. Loring never showed up.
Kevin Loring was found the next morning.
He had been shot right below the left eye
and it came out the back of the head.
He was shot and killed by a high-powered rifle.
They found no shell casings, no witnesses.
You know, they just couldn't find any reason
why somebody would want to kill Mr. Loring.
And so that case remained unsolved.
We made a determination
that in all likelihood, these four homicides,
Donald Welling, Jamie Paxton,
Claude Hawkins, and Kevin Loring
were connected.
The chance of one person doing all of these killings
made a lot of sense,
but it was shocking to realize
now you're after a serial killer.
[dramatic music]
At this point, we had four victims killed
with a high-powered rifle...
either hunting or fishing in remote areas.
There were no witnesses.
So we pretty much figured out that they might be connected.
We decided that we needed to get together
and basically start a task force.
We knew the task was gonna be daunting
and looked at the FBI at this point for some guidance.
Mr. Ankrom at Quantico of the behavioral science unit
prepared a profile for the shooter.
They had received a letter from an individual
claiming to be the killer of Jamie Paxton.
The words that he used in it
were somehow more complex.
He made reference to poetry.
So all of that together led me to believe
that he was at least a high school education or higher.
It was apparent to me that he's most likely a white male.
He was at least 30 years of age.
He's capable of being employed.
He probably didn't have a lot of close friends.
He was something of a loner.
We believed that we had a serial killer responsible
for four homicides over a period of several years.
Right after we started forming this--this task force,
there was a fifth homicide that came to our attention.
♪
On April 5th of 1992,
we heard from Noble County,
which is, again, in this general area,
southeastern Ohio,
an individual had been shot and killed.
He was identified through his driver's license
as Gary Bradley from Williamstown, West Virginia.
He was fishing in a remote area when he was shot.
He had been shot once in the back
with a high-powered rifle
and then once in the backside.
His vehicle was parked in the area,
and there was no other witnesses that we're aware of.
It was quite evident that whoever was doing the killing
was being very careful that he was not leaving
any shell casings, any tire tracks.
The Bradley killing fit these other homicides.
And it was very troubling
because we have a serial killer on the loose,
and what are we going to do and how are we going to stop him?
And then the autopsy revealed
that the rounds recovered from Mr. Bradley
were from a Swedish Mauser
very similar, if not exact,
to the round that was used to kill Claude Hawkins.
And it was determined the last two homicides
may have been committed using the same firearm.
[suspenseful music]
We were devastated when we had another case.
We felt under the gun to get this resolved
as quickly as possible because we had people dying.
So we now have five different murders
in five different counties in rural Ohio.
He seems to be intentionally going to different areas,
maybe knowing that the police departments
don't talk to each other,
knowing he has a better chance of getting away with it
if he kills in different counties.
So you're dealing with a calculated, highly organized,
sophisticated killer at this point,
which is a scary thing for law enforcement
to have to confront.
What's even more frightening is the use of a rifle.
Makes it very difficult to track someone
who kills from an incredible distance.
This is something that the police can't police.
It was determined that at this point,
we needed to go public to save lives
and make people aware of what was going on.
The profile was provided in that news release.
The press conference, besides making people aware,
created a lot of fear in the community
because there's a lot of people
that spend a lot of time in the outdoors.
It was terrifying.
And there was a clamor for law enforcement to get this person.
People reported to the task force possible suspects.
But these leads were not that strong
and it did not go anywhere.
[phone trilling]
And then, a number of months later,
we got a call from an individual
by the name of Richard Fry.
He said, "I think this information
"that's out there in the news
seems like it could be one of my best friend's."
He wanted to sit down and talk.
It was pretty obvious that he was nervous
about talking about this.
He told me his friend's name was Tom Dillon,
that they had gone to high school together.
They both very much liked guns and weapons
and going out and shooting.
But as years went by,
Richard Fry said that he kinda got away from his friend
because he started doing things that kind of scared him.
He would shoot out bank windows,
street signs, cars.
[foreboding music]
It was pretty obvious to Mr. Fry
that Tom Dillon's life was pretty much deteriorating.
He was drinking an awful lot.
Dillon read up on some different serial killers.
One of them was being Ted Bundy,
and he just was really interested
in what they did and how they did it.
And that really made Richard Fry highly suspicious
that something was wrong with Mr. Dillon.
There were a lot of leads that came in,
but this one made you wanna dig a lot deeper.
♪
We had no evidence at this point to stop him.
That was an extremely tense time
because we were so worried that he may kill again.
And the plane is telling us,
"Ooh, there's a female jogger on the road."
It was, like, "Please, God.
Don't let him shoot this person."
[tense music]
We're looking at five homicides.
These individuals were killed out in remote areas.
They were involved in either, you know,
some type of outdoor activity.
They're hunting or fishing.
We have to put it in high gear
and absolutely put a stop to it.
We started generating tips from the public
about possible suspects.
One of them was Thomas Dillon.
♪
All we had were suspicions.
So we had to find out as much information
as we could about Dillon.
He was a family man, had a wife, had a son.
We know from records
that Dillon had one or two fairly minor arrests prior.
Sometime in early August,
Mr. Dillon was found in a park
in Stark County, Ohio by a park ranger.
And he was found with a rifle with a silencer.
Silencer was illegal,
and that case gets turned over to the ATF.
And eventually,
Dillon pleads guilty to the charge
and he's placed on probation.
♪
We learned that Thomas Dillon worked for the city of Canton
as a draftsman for the water department.
We requested a copy
of Tom Dillon's prior work schedules.
And we found he was off on the weekends
of four of the homicides, and he was off
on the day of Kevin Loring's killing at Muskingum County.
Thomas Dillon rose to the top
as the number one suspect quite quickly.
We ended up putting him under surveillance to try to see
if we could find any evidence of him
being involved in these crimes.
We tracked Mr. Dillon all over Southern Ohio
for several months.
♪
During that time,
we learned he was committing minor crimes,
vandalizing electric meters, that type of thing.
He was burning old buildings and killing animals.
That was a great concern for the task force.
Burning old buildings and killing animals
was a big concern to the task force
because that's a red flag of a serial killer.
The reason why hurting or killing animals
is seen as sort of an early indicator
of potential psychopathic or serial killing behavior
is because there's essentially a graduation.
These individuals often start by hurting animals.
It's sort of a practice or a warm-up.
And they do that.
And when that no longer sort of fits the bill
or brings them the arousal that they want from it,
they move on to hurting and eventually killing humans.
So the police officers
have identified their primary suspect, Dillon.
The problem is there's very little evidence
to make an arrest.
And it's one thing to have probable cause to arrest.
But once you make that arrest, you better have proof
beyond a reasonable doubt 'cause that's what you need--
a much higher threshold for trial.
The only thing that they have to do at this point
is to place him under surveillance.
There are some moral and ethical issues
that come with this decision.
How close do you let him get
before he actually murders someone?
We were very hesitant to do anything
that would let Dillon know that he was our suspect.
And we had no evidence at this point to stop him.
♪
It was very difficult to do surveillance
because of such remote areas.
I have notified the FBI's aviation unit
and requested assistance from them to provide aircraft,
to help us surveil Dillon.
We were out on the surveillance one day
and the aircraft was up.
FBI Agent Trombitas and I
are in the lead vehicle behind Mr. Dillon.
We're driving along,
giving Mr. Dillon some distance.
And the aircraft is calling out what he's doing.
And the plane is telling us, "Ooh, there's a female jogger
on the road that he's going to come upon."
[engine whirs]
And the aircraft says,
"Okay, he's coming up on the jogger.
He's slowing down."
Dane and I are looking at each other.
And I mean, we're-- you know, we're stressed.
Agent Trombitas and I sped our vehicle up
to try to get close to Mr. Dillon so he didn't have
an opportunity to commit any crime.
We have to be able to stop this from happening.
If we don't get there quick enough, someone's gonna die.
[tense music]
We had Thomas Dillon under surveillance.
We're following Mr. Dillon with an airplane.
And we're driving along,
giving Mr. Dillon some distance.
The aircraft is calling out what he's doing.
And then he says,
"Looks like there's a jogger in the road ahead of him."
[engine whirs]
And it was, like, "Oh, my God.
"Please, God," you know,
"Don't let him shoot this person."
We made the determination at that point
that we were going to speed up
onto the back of him very quickly.
[engine whirring]
And all of a sudden the plane says,
"Okay, Dillon is turning right.
He's going away from the jogger."
So we backed off.
Thomas Dillon never knew we were behind him.
We thought that Dillon most likely decided
this was not somebody that maybe he wanted to target.
To this day, it still gives me chills.
We felt under the gun
to get this resolved as quickly as possible.
I mean, if we're on him and we lose him
and he ends up killing somebody else that day,
how are we going to explain to that family
that we weren't there to prevent him from,
you know, killing your dad, or, you know, your husband?
We can't really afford to let him stay out much longer.
[suspenseful music]
On November 21st, 1992,
the surveillance team was following Thomas Dillon
when he went to a gun show in Tuscarawas County.
One of our task force officers,
they see Dillon purchase a handgun.
Dillon was out on probation
now for possession of a silencer,
and he wasn't allowed to purchase weapons.
They don't have enough to arrest him for murder.
They do have them on other charges.
So the question is, do they bring them in
on the other charges and hope maybe he'll talk
and incriminate himself about the murders?
This is a very troubling conundrum for them to be in.
They have to weigh the costs and benefits of
if it pays to keep him in jail
until they can get enough evidence,
or do they trail him and track him
until they have enough evidence,
but take the risk that he could,
you know, evade them and kill somebody else?
There's a time in every investigation
where you just have to roll the dice.
You have to make a decision.
You have to make the arrest,
and you have to let the chips fall where they may.
A decision was made that we would go ahead,
get him off the street
before he had an opportunity to kill anybody else.
We came up with a plan.
We knew that Dillon liked to go to this dairy mart
not too far from his home.
He would leave his residence about 7:00 in the morning.
It was prearranged with the ATF
that they would arrest him
for his probation violation for purchasing a weapon.
[dramatic music]
Everything is in place.
And sure enough, Dillon comes down,
turns into the dairy mart.
♪
I gave the signal to ATF.
They came in and made the arrest.
While they were patting him down,
they found a handgun on him.
So in fact, he did have a firearm on him.
And I said, "Mr. Dillon, I'm with the FBI.
We'd like to talk to you."
He looked surprised.
And he said, "I'ma call my lawyer."
They took him to Stark County jail.
♪
We obtained a search warrant for his residence.
The hope was when they search the home,
they would find physical evidence.
But unfortunately, they found next to nothing.
We never found any evidence of any guns, any bullets
that would connect him to any of the murders.
We still had the probation violation charge,
and the magistrate agreed that he was a danger.
So he was not given bail.
What we decided to do at this point
was go to the media and say,
"Tom Dillon is a person of interest in these cases."
They put out a widespread plea.
"If anyone sold him a gun or bought a gun from him,
please get in touch with us."
♪
Pretty soon, we get a call from an individual who says,
"I bought a Swedish Mauser from Mr. Dillon.
I recognize his face from the news media."
And then he says,
"You're welcome to come get the weapon."
And Dane volunteered to actually hand carry the gun
to Washington D.C. to the FBI lab.
The FBI performed a ballistics on the weapon
and we ended up getting a 100% match
on Gary Bradley, Noble County,
and about a 90% match on Claude Hawkins' homicide.
Concrete evidence that sealed the deal really
on those two cases.
So we're in a position where we believe we have enough evidence
to seek the death penalty on Dillon.
But we still could not prove
the remaining three murder cases.
And so we wanted to be willing
to drop the death penalty
in exchange for Dillon's admission.
Dillon's attorneys let us know
that he was willing to speak with us.
We were trying to get a confession from him.
This may be it. We're really close.
[dramatic music]
We sat down with Dillon to go through each of the homicides.
Thomas Dillon was very intelligent.
It was a game to him with investigators.
One thing that I think he struggled with
was how he ever got caught.
That really troubled him.
We spent several hours in an interview with him.
Finally, he realized at that point
that it was in his best interest to confess.
♪
He said on April 1st, 1989,
"I happened to be driving through Tuscarawas County..."
And he came across Donald Welling
walking in this remote area.
And he said,
"I just heard a voice that said,
'Do it, do it.'"
And he rolled down his window, shot him...
[gunshot]
With a high-powered rifle,
and drove on down the road.
The next incident was November 10th, 1990
with Jamie Paxton.
Thomas Dillon drove by him and saw him
about 100 feet off the road.
He said, "I heard that voice again,
telling me, 'Do it, do it.'"
He said that Jamie Paxton didn't even recognize
that somebody was pointing a gun at him,
shot him...
[gunshot]
The first round hit him in the chest.
He dropped to the ground.
He heard Jamie groan and he went down.
But he wanted to finish him off,
so Dillon continued to pump two more rounds into him.
The next case was the Kevin Loring case
that happened on November 28th, 1990.
Thomas Dillon had been deer hunting with some friends
and he left, started driving around,
came across Kevin Loring,
shot him from the roadway.
[gunshot]
We moved into the fourth one,
Claude Hawkins on March 14th, 1992.
Dillon said he was just driving around
and he saw a guy all by himself fishing.
He walked down about 50 feet into some pine trees.
Shot him square on the back.
[gunshot]
And then he moved on to the fifth homicide,
Gary Bradley,
roughly three weeks after Claude Hawkins.
He saw him fishing...
[gunshot]
Shot him from the roadway in the torso twice...
[gunshot]
Got in the vehicle and drove away
like nothing ever happened.
And he said it was like shooting,
you know, bottles at--at the dump.
That's how much it really meant to him.
You know, it's just awful.
[eerie music]
Here we have a sniper who hunts men.
Each one of these victims was doing something that they love,
having a peaceful day,
not even knowing that it's coming.
What makes this killer so twisted
is the simplistic motive behind his killings.
Anyone who's aimed at a target who shot a basket
knows the thrill in hitting the target or making the score.
And that's what happened with Thomas Dillon.
He didn't care whether his subject was a bottle,
a squirrel, or a human being.
To him, they were just targets
and he got the thrill just hitting his target.
He had a history of doing this
on sort of stressed-out days or bad days.
And so the very simplistic explanation
is he was having a bad day.
This was sport for him. This was blowing off steam.
Thomas Dillon entered a guilty plea
to these five aggravated murders
as we call them under our statute.
The courtroom was packed
and the judge sentenced him
to life in prison with no chance of parole
for 165 years.
It was so good to get this guy off the street
where he would never get out again.
But even with all of that,
you just can't replace the five victims that he left behind.
[somber music]
There's always a little part of me that
kind of thinks this whole family
was ripped apart because of him.
My father-in-law sat in a bar every day until he died.
And I think it was just grieving over his son.
♪
How many people would Mr. Dillon be responsible for?
It was a tremendous satisfaction
that we maybe have saved somebody else's life.
♪