Andrew Dotson was just 20-years-old when he was murdered by James Conway with a pickaxe, Extreme Measures examines this cold-blooded case.
Dotson had recently become a dad but he’d also veered off the straight and narrow, associating with local gangs. An incident in September 2001 led to police coming round to his house and questioning him. When news of the visit got out to his fellow gang members, his parents later told police their son was nervous.
October 2001, and Dotson’s decomposing body was found in a cornfield. He’d been stabbed twice in the chest and his face and upper body covered in lime, though the killer had mistakenly used the kind that preserved his body rather than hastening decomposition.
Police began investigating his gang connections right away and in April 2002 they questioned his friend Mike Arthurs, who implicated another man, James Conway, in the murder.
Arthurs said that Conway was nervous that Dotson would talk to the police about a shooting that Conway had been involved in. He decided to kill Dotson and asked Arthurs to help.
Arthurs described how they took Dotson on a drive out into the countryside but failed to go ahead with the murder. They then called Conway, who met up with them and took them to the cornfield just outside Galloway.
It was here that Arthurs said he pretended to choke Dotson to death, but left him alive. He testified that Conway then grabbed a pickaxe and went to where Dotson was lying and came back with blood on the head of the pickaxe.
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Police arrested Conway and whilst he was in prison an informant wore a wire that recorded Conway trying to hire him to kill Arthurs.
Conway was later found guilty of aggravated murder, kidnapping and other crimes related to the case. He was sentenced to death and his 2006 appeal was rejected by the Ohio Supreme Court, who upheld all his convictions.
Extreme Measures: The Boy With the Dragon Tattoo airs at 5:00 PM on Investigation Discovery.