Ex-College Dean Weeps at Murder Scene

Donald E. Dawson, former assistant dean at Saddleback College, could not stop the tears Tuesday as he was led in handcuffs on a jury visit to the El Toro house where he is accused of fatally shooting his ex-wife two years ago.

Dawson fired six shots at Dona Mae Dawson as she ran away from her home on Sept. 15, 1984, the prosecution alleges, adding that he then changed guns and killed her with five more shots two doors away.

A neighbor, Judy Kearnes, testified later that she came running out after the shots and Dawson told her, “Judy, I had to do it.”

Mrs. Dawson, 46, headed Saddleback College’s department of nursing. Dawson, now 47, was assistant dean of Saddleback’s division of technology and applied science. He resigned after the shooting. The Dawsons had been married eight years before their divorce in 1982.

After viewing the shooting scene, the jury heard the first testimony Tuesday in the murder trial. The prosecution is seeking a sentence of life without parole for Dawson, who is accused of lying in wait to kill his ex-wife. Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. James G. Enright said his office is not seeking the death penalty because Dawson has no previous record.

Dawson’s attorney, Ronald G. Brower of Santa Ana, says his client does not dispute the basic facts about the shooting as laid out by the prosecution.

“The only real issue in this case is Mr. Dawson’s state of mind at the time of the shooting,” Brower told Superior Court Judge Kathleen E. O’Leary before the trip to the scene.

Dawson has entered an insanity plea.

But Enright contends that the defendant slipped into the house while his former wife was out and lay in wait for her in an upstairs bedroom overlooking the garage.

Dawson and his ex-wife both came to Saddleback from Rio Hondo College in Whittier. Her teaching career had been in nursing and his was in criminology.

Dawson is also a former police officer who worked for the cities of Long Beach and Santa Ana and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

Speaking to the jury Tuesday, Enright described their marriage as “stormy” and said Dawson had moved out of their home many times. He would return for a few months, then leave again, Enright said.

But Enright claimed that Dawson began a persistent attempt at reconciliation when Mrs. Dawson began dating Robert Baker, whom she had met through her church. Dawson became jealous, the prosecutor contended, and kept trying to win her back.

The night before the early-morning shooting, Mrs. Dawson and Baker had gone to a California Angels baseball game, then to a Black Angus restaurant in Mission Viejo where she ran into Dawson, the prosecution said. Dawson reportedly upset her, and she spent the night at Baker’s home, the prosecutor said.

During the night, prosecutors contend, Dawson parked his car two blocks away and used an extra key kept under a flower pot to slip into the house.

He had with him a .38-caliber pistol, a .45-caliber pistol, about 40 rounds of ammunition, handcuffs and several pieces of rope, Enright said, claiming that Dawson went upstairs in the house and waited for his wife to return.

When she walked into the house from the garage, carrying a cup of coffee, he fired six shots with the .38 from the stairs, Enright said, but none of the shots struck her.

Dawson then followed her to the sidewalk, switched to the .45-caliber pistol and fired one shot that knocked her to the ground, Enright said. Then, according to witnesses, he shot her four more times while she was on the ground.

Kearnes, one of two witnesses who heard the shots, testified that she heard Mrs. Dawson screaming, “Oh, God, No! No!” Kearnes said she called police, then ran out to try to help the victim. Dawson approached them, then waited for police to arrive a few minutes later.

On Mrs. Dawson’s telephone-answering machine were several messages from Dawson, which were recorded after the encounter at the Black Angus, Enright said.

Also recorded was a call from Baker, which was answered by Dawson.

“Baker says, ‘Where’s Dona?’ and the defendant answers, ‘I just killed her,’ ” Enright told jurors. “The entire conversation was recorded, and you will hear it.”

During the visit Tuesday to the scene of the shooting, Dawson sat in a deputy marshal’s car with his head down as he waited for jurors to leave a bus in front of the lakeside home on Toledo Lane. When he got out, he was sobbing. After walking through the house with jurors, Dawson came out still sobbing and shaking.

Defense attorney Brower has not yet made an opening statement to jurors. But he said his defense will rely primarily on psychiatric testimony.