After six years, he saw his son's killer sentenced to prison. Now, a
Yardley man waits for the day his son's body is found. He told others at a
meeting last night to never give up.

By George Mattar
Courier Times
gmattar@calkinsnewspapers.com

Jim Dunn of Yardley remembers the phone call from a woman who
described herself as his son's live-in girlfriend.

"She told me she was worried about Scott (Dunn's son). He was
missing," Dunn recalled her saying eight years ago.

Dunn spent the next six years, countless hours of detective work and
600 hours of telephone calls with a forensic specialist before he finally
found some closure.

Later, he learned the woman on the phone was Lesha Hamilton, who in
May 1997 was convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 years in
prison for killing his son, Scott Dunn.

Last night before 35 people who agonize over similar unanswered
questions, Dunn recounted his story at the second meeting of Bucks
County Families of Unsolved Murder Victims.

He relayed his story, in part, to offer hope to murder victims' families
and tell them they shouldn't give up.

Dunn described how he flew back and forth to Texas to work with
Lubbock police, who couldn't solve the case. The district attorney
wouldn't pursue the case because there was no body.

Even now, Scott Dun's body hasn't been found.

But beginning with a three-foot section of missing carpet from beneath
a couch in his son's apartment, Dunn began an investigation that took
him to Texas, New Mexico and then close to home in Philadelphia.

Exhausted in a New Mexico motel room, Dunn caught a segment of the
television show "48 HRS," which reported on the Vidocq Society of
Philadelphia.

"I had just about given up. But I figured here was a group that could
maybe help me right at my back door. I went home and contacted
them," he recalled.

He enlisted the help of the society, a 150-member group of law
enforcement officials, Internal Revenue Service investigators,
psychologists, prosecutors and forensic specialists, who pool their
talents to investigate unsolved crimes -- mostly murder.

Through them, Dunn met Richard Walter, considered the top forensic
specialist in the world.

"He told me to stop being the grieving father and get madder than hell.
He told me to go out and get the guy who killed my son. I vowed never
to give up," said Dunn, as some in the audience began to cry upon
hearing the story.

Dunn got the Lubbock police department to get involved. Upon arriving
at his son's apartment, he found more than a half dozen detectives
combing the living room.

They determined his son was murdered because black lights showed
blood all over the ceiling, walls and under the couch. The carpet was
missing because it was blood-soaked. And the killer had gotten rid
of it.

After years of work and phone calls, Walter came up with connective
tissue from the blood samples, which were sent to Scotland Yard.
Detectives there proved a murder occurred in the apartment.

Hamilton, after two grand juries, was convicted.  Her accomplice and
new boyfriend goes on trial in Texas in June.

"We did prevail and, as a result of hard work, the opportunity is there,"
he said.  "You just can't ever give up.  Now I want to find my son's
remains and properly bury him."

Webmaster's Note: Hamilton's boyfriend was convicted of first-degree
murder and then, inexplicably, sentenced to 10 years' probation.  Scott
Dunn's remains have yet to be found.
 

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