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"Back in the year we graduated, we were having a problem with
some other kids at high school. One of these standoffs ─ you
throw something at my car, I throw something at your car. But
nobody ever throws a punch. One night, one of the other guys
kicked his car. Tom pulled out this gun and took a shot at this
guy. I asked him this: 'Did you really mean to hit him?' And he said,
'Yes, I meant to hit him.'
"I used to go out hunting with him because we were gun
enthusiasts. In the beginning, it was all pretty legitimate ...
But then we started hitting these dumps in southern Stark County. We'd
go down there hunting rats and things.”
"I remember we ran into a couple of scraggly dogs one time.
They were all diseased. They were sick. I remember they had open
sores. Tom said, 'Do you think I ought to kill them?' And
I said, 'Well, you'd probably be doing them a favor.' I remember
him shooting them. I didn't think too much about it, wild dogs can be
vicious.
"Then he started shooting dogs, just dogs along the road.
I said, 'Tom, shooting a wild dog is one thing, but that dog doesn't
look very wild to me.' He said, 'You can't let them damn things
be running around.' I let it go by once or twice, but then I
said, 'Tom, you got to quit it. Or I won't go out with you.
Those are somebody's pets. Somebody loves them. It's just not
right to do that.'
"We used to discuss serial killers too," Fry added.
"Especially Ted Bundy. Tom was fascinated by Bundy.”
In time, Fry said, Dillon became more sadistic.
“Once, while driving back from Atwood Lake in Carroll County, Tom
pulled off the side of the road and pulled out this gun and started
shooting at this farmer. Apparently the farmer was a good
way off ─ two, three hundred yards. One of the others in the car
protested, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Dillon explained
that he couldn't hit a target at that distance with a pistol, so I'm
just plinking at him," Fry said.
"I just didn't have anything more to do with him, in fact, if
I'd see him someplace, I didn't even wave to him or talk with him.
“I ran into Dillon again in Newcomerstown in southern Tuscarawas
County in about 1986. This was the first I'd spoken to him in a
long time. I said, 'What in the world are you doing clear down
here?' He said, 'Oh, just driving around, this and that.'
"When I saw him in Newcomerstown, I thought, 'He's moving
farther south because he's still up to his old ways.'
"They moved the Ohio Gun Collectors Association gun show up to
Cleveland, and I wasn't a member, so Dillon invited me to be his
guest. He said he had stopped killing animals, so I said, 'I
guess we can be friends again.'
"I remember one time … he and I were driving and he said,
‘Do you realize you can go out into the country and find somebody
and there are no witnesses? You can shoot them. There is
no motive. Do you realize how easy murder would be to get away
with?’ I said, 'Yeah, but why would you do it?'
"On a trip to a gun show last summer we were talking about Ted
Bundy and how can a guy get away with all that. Tom said, 'Do
you think I've ever killed somebody?' The question really caught
me off guard. I said, 'No, I don't think so.' And he said
‘that just proves you don't know me very well.’ The way he
said that to me was really scary. I'd never seen him like that
before. I thought to myself, 'Has anybody been shot?'"
Fry went on to say that Dillon lived with his family in Magnolia,
about 75 miles from where Jamie Paxton was murdered.
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Thomas Lee Dillon's home
(David Lohr) |
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