Friend of Missing Athlete Is Arrested

A former Baylor University basketball player was arrested Monday night in Maryland and charged with murder in the case of Patrick James Dennehy II, his roommate, teammate and purported best friend, authorities said.

Carlton Dotson, 21, previously labeled a “person of interest” in the case, was charged with murder “with intent to harm,” said Chestertown, Md., police Officer John Beville.

Dennehy, a basketball player who transferred last year from the University of New Mexico to Baylor, disappeared June 12. His body has not been found.

Dotson was handcuffed and escorted into the Kent County, Md., court commissioner’s office, according to Chestertown officers. Dotson was taken to the Kent County Detention Center after the hearing, where he was ordered held without bond.

An extradition hearing to determine if and when Dotson will be returned to Texas will be held today.

The arrest came after Dotson contacted authorities for the second time in a week and requested to speak with an FBI agent, according to the police department in Waco, Texas, home of Baylor, which calls itself the world’s largest Baptist college.

Authorities in Waco issued the arrest warrant after Dotson’s conversation Monday with the FBI, said Chestertown Officer Zachary House.

Dennehy, 21, a 6-foot-11, 230-pound powerhouse, harbored dreams of playing professional basketball and seemed to have found a fresh start after the transfer to Baylor.

“I am just heartbroken right now,” said Debby De La Rosa, whose daughter Jessica had been dating Dennehy for two years. De La Rosa spoke in a telephone interview from her home in Albuquerque, where her daughter is a scholarship track athlete at the University of New Mexico.

“Doddy didn’t seem to be this kind of person,” Debby De La Rosa said through tears, referring to Dotson by one of his nicknames. “I just don’t understand it. I can’t believe what I’m hearing is true. And we’d still like to know where Patrick is.”

Her daughter, reached later, had these comments: “I don’t get it, this shouldn’t happen to anybody,” said Jessica De La Rosa. “We still don’t know where Patrick is and I need to know. There is no sense of relief. He told me he was going to marry me. We had plans, all these plans and they can’t exist without him. He is my life and my joy.”

No one answered the phone at Dotson’s family home in Hurlock, Md., 54 miles south of Chestertown.

“It is most unfortunate that police have come to the conclusion that there is a death,” Dotson’s attorney, Grady Irvin Jr., told Associated Press. “I am uncertain as to how they came to that conclusion, that Patrick Dennehy is now dead.”

Irvin said he had spoken to his client over the weekend but would not disclose what they had discussed.

The arrest comes two weeks after an unnamed informant told investigators that Dotson may have shot Dennehy in the head after the two had an argument while shooting guns together in a rural area outside Waco.

According to a Waco police affidavit, Dennehy, who was kicked off the team at the University of New Mexico because of what some described as a bad temper, pointed the gun he had been shooting at Dotson that afternoon “as if to shoot him,” the document said. Dotson “shot his roommate in the head with a 9-millimeter pistol,” the informant told police, the affidavit said.

According to investigators, Dennehy, who grew up in the Bay Area of California, had reported feeling threatened in the weeks leading up to his disappearance. He had been robbed twice and had recently purchased a gun, officials said.

The affidavit said Dotson “got rid of the guns” and drove home to Maryland. Dennehy’s sport utility vehicle was discovered the next week in a parking lot in Virginia Beach, Va., about 160 miles south of Hurlock.

The affidavit did not name the informant, but said he has “proven in the past to be credible and reliable.” The information delivered by the informant was gleaned from conversations between the informant and one of Dotson’s cousins in Delaware, the documents said.

Despite having what appeared to be a strong lead in the case, Waco police declined to label Dotson a suspect in recent weeks. With no body, no weapon and no motive, they said two weeks ago that they were effectively stymied, and said they were waiting for another telephone call that might explain the case.

Then, last week, Dotson, reportedly after being unable to sleep for several days, contacted authorities near his home in Maryland, where he traveled shortly after Dennehy’s disappearance. He spoke with an FBI agent without an attorney present and delivered a statement.

After that meeting, a Dorchester County, Md., sheriff’s investigator said in an interview that Dotson was “a citizen” who was not under arrest and could travel freely.

On Sunday, Dotson called 911 from a store in Chestertown, asking to speak with investigators a second time. He was treated overnight at a Maryland hospital for unknown reasons, then spoke to an FBI agent again Monday. Waco police issued the arrest warrant after his second conversation with the FBI.

“That’s wild. That’s just wild,” said Kyle Burton, 20, a Waco native, a Baylor student and one of Dennehy’s friends, when told about the arrest.

Like most on the close-knit campus in central Texas, Burton, who lives a floor above the $1,500-a-month, four-bedroom apartment Dennehy shared with Dotson and another student, had assumed that the shooting, if there was one, was an accident. Dennehy and Dotson were seen together nearly every day, often walking to a nearby basketball court for a pickup game.

“I guess it all pointed to this all along,” Burton said. “But the reality of it still shocks you. I’m in a state of shock.”