The Lubbock Police Department’s Metro Special Crimes Unit has helped solve a 26-year-old cold murder case.

During a 9 a.m. press conference on Monday, April 1st, Lubbock Police Chief Greg Stevens gave details on the now-solved murder of Sherry Ann Ragsdale Dorsey.

According to earlier reports, she was found beaten and strangled to death inside her apartment in 1993 in the 2400 block of Weber Drive. She was 28 years old at the time of her death and left three children behind.

According to Chief Stevens, in 1993, Hugh Doug Sutton was a homicide detective with the Lubbock Police Department and was the first one to identify a suspect in Dorsey’s murder, a man that Stevens identified as Kent Earl Taylor. He lived in Lubbock at the time of Dorsey’s murder.

In January 1998, a case against Taylor was presented to a court, but couldn’t be prosecuted due to lack of viable evidence. Taylor later died in 2007.

 

Chief Stevens told a room of reporters Monday that the LPD’s Metro Special Crimes Unit (MSCU) reopened the case in March 2017. With the help of the Department of Public Safety’s crime lab and the University of North Texas Science Center, the MSCU was able to process DNA evidence taken at the original crime scene. A match was then made with DNA that was found at a separate homicide that had occurred in California, but there was no identity to go with the DNA match.

On December 28, 2017, the MSCU took a voluntary DNA swab from Taylor’s mother and were able to make a biological match to the DNA found at both the murder scene of Dorsey and the crime scene in California.

Chief Stevens said that with that evidence, MSCU was able to obtain a warrant on March 5, 2019, to collect DNA from Taylor's body, buried at the Lubbock cemetery.

In March, forensic investigators collected 13 different DNA samples from Taylor’s body and were able to finally match it with the DNA collected at both crime scenes. It's now believed that Kent Earl Taylor was the man responsible for the murder of Sherry Ann Dorsey more than 26 years ago and after at least another homicide in California.

Chief Stevens added that he believes Taylor may have been involved in even more crime than that.

 

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