Slayer of Ex-Wife Gets 27 Years to Life : Former College Official Clearly Intended to Kill, Judge Says

Former Saddleback College assistant dean Donald E. Dawson, who had sobbed incessantly when he returned with jurors to the El Toro home where he killed his ex-wife, was expressionless Thursday as a Superior Court judge sentenced him to 27 years to life in prison for the murder.

Dawson, 48, was convicted of first-degree murder more than a year ago for the Sept. 15, 1984, shooting death of Dona Dawson, 46, who was chairwoman of the health services department at Saddleback College.

His sentencing was held up for more than a year, however, after he first fired his trial attorney and then sought a new trial, which Thursday was denied.

Dawson and his wife had been divorced for two years, but evidence showed that he had repeatedly tried to win her back. He shot her on a morning after she had spent the night at her new boyfriend’s house.

Prosecutors tried to convict Dawson of “lying in wait,” which would have meant a life-without-parole sentence. The jurors, however, agreed with Dawson’s lawyer, Ronald G. Brower, that the shooting did not begin until he was in the victim’s sight.

Dawson, however, was reportedly angry and bitter about the jury verdict, and accused Brower of incompetence.

But Thursday, Judge Kathleen E. O’Leary disagreed. She declared from the bench that the evidence was clear that Dawson had gone to the woman’s house with the intention of killing her.

Dawson’s own statements to police show that he went to his ex-wife’s fashionable, lake-front home soon after seeing her and her boyfriend together at a restaurant.

Dawson left the restaurant and headed to his wife’s house with two guns, several boxes of ammunition, some rope and a pair of handcuffs. He then waited in her bedroom upstairs. His car was parked around the block.

Dona Dawson arrived home about 9 a.m. and fled the house after Dawson fired several shots at her from the top of the stairs with a .38-caliber pistol, but missed. He then switched to a .45-caliber pistol and, with a single shot, felled her on the sidewalk in front of a house two doors away.

Witnesses say he then approached her and fired four more shots into her body as she lay on the sidewalk.

A neighbor, Judy Kearnes, had testified at the trial that she tried to help Dona Dawson as she lay on the ground. Kearnes said Donald Dawson told her: “Judy, I had to do it.”

“Most husband and wife shootings are crimes of passion, the spur of the moment,” said Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. James G. Enright on Thursday. “If Dawson had dropped her with a shot and said, ‘Oh my God, what have I done?’--maybe. But he stood above her as she lay helpless and fired several more shots, which killed her. That’s first-degree murder.”

Attorney Testifies

Judge O’Leary agreed. She pointed out to Dawson, who sat impassively before her Thursday, that his own statements show he had smoked a cigarette outside his ex-wife’s home after he got there, so she could not detect the smell of smoke in the house and be warned that he was there.

Dawson claimed in a 39-page statement to the court that he did not go to the house to kill his ex-wife. But Brower, called to testify at the hearing on Dawson’s new trial motion, said Dawson had admitted to him that he went there to kill her.

Dawson, a former police officer in Long Beach and Santa Ana, specialized in teaching criminal law before becoming an assistant dean for Saddleback’s division of technology and applied science in 1983.

Dawson appeared calm throughout his trial in November, 1986. But when Judge O’Leary took the jurors and other parties in the case through the house during the trial, Dawson broke down and cried.

Brower said following Dawson’s conviction on Nov. 19, 1986, that the college dean was extremely remorseful over killing his wife but upset that jurors did not recognize it was a crime-of-passion manslaughter.

Difficult Relationship

“All the doctors have told us that he has a history of rejecting responsibility,” Brower said.

Dawson and his ex-wife had met when they were teaching at Rio Hondo College in the mid-1970s. They were married in 1977. It was a difficult relationship, according to several witnesses, because Dawson would constantly leave his wife for someone else, then return to beg her forgiveness.

Dawson will be sent to Chino Institution for Men where he will be evaluated for placement within the prison system. He will have to serve at least 13 years of his sentence before becoming eligible for parole.