Who Is Clarence Dixon And Who Was His Victim?

Clarence Wayne Dixon was a convicted murderer in the United States. He was convicted of the murder of Deana Lynne Bowdoin, 21, on January 7, 1978, in Tempe, Arizona.

Dixon, who was serving a life sentence for a sexual assault conviction in 1986, was convicted of Bowdoin’s murder and sentenced to death on January 24, 2008. On May 11, 2022, he was executed by lethal injection, the state’s first execution in nearly eight years, following the botched execution of Joseph Wood in 2014.

Deana Lynne Bowdoin, a 21-year-old Arizona State University senior, was murdered in her apartment on January 7 1978. Bowdoin’s boyfriend returned to the apartment around 2:00 a.m. and discovered her dead body on the bed.

Bowdoin had been strangled to death with a belt and stabbed several times. Semen was discovered on her vagina and underwear, but it could not be positively linked to any of the suspects.

Bowdoin’s murder remained unsolved for over two decades, becoming a cold case until 2001 when the DNA collected from the scene matched Clarence Dixon’s DNA. It was later discovered that at the time of Bowdoin’s murder, Dixon had lived across the street from her.