In August 2024 a Shelby County jury in Memphis, Tennessee, took about 45 minutes to convict Joshua Dotson of murdering his girlfriend, Jamesha Covson, 19, and the child she was carrying. He had taken the stand in his own defense, against the advice of his lawyer, and used the time to call himself a serial killer, to compare himself to Michael Myers, the masked killer of the Halloween films, and to confess to three more killings. Six months later he pleaded guilty to those three murders. The two sentences together came to 261 years.
The killings took place over about seven months, between November 2019 and June 2020, in three separate shootings in Memphis. The first two, the death of Divieon Parker and the shooting of Reginald Anderson and Renita Bennett, were not publicly tied to him until his own testimony and the charges that followed it.
He was 20 years old when he was arrested in June 2020, according to FOX13 Memphis and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation's wanted poster, which described him as 5 feet 11 inches tall and about 150 pounds. The U.S. Marshals Service noted his prominent facial tattoos.
At his sentencing in 2024, Judge Carlyn Addison said his criminal history went back to the age of 14, FOX13 reported. In 2018 a Shelby County grand jury indicted him for aggravated robbery. In August 2019 he pleaded guilty to robbery under a plea agreement that made him eligible for a diversion program, and he was given four years of probation, according to court records described by FOX13. FOX13 reported in June 2020 that records showed a judge could have revoked that probation several times.
He was released from jail in March 2020 while still facing charges in other violent cases. Early reports said the release was linked to concerns about COVID-19 in the jail; FOX13 later learned that a judge had placed him in a diversion program.
Divieon Parker was shot and killed in Memphis in November 2019. Law&Crime, reporting on the 2025 guilty pleas, gave the date as November 17, 2019. Few details of his life or of the shooting have been made public, and no one was publicly linked to his death until Dotson spoke of it at his 2024 trial. In February 2025 Dotson pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for Parker's death.
On May 24, 2020, Reginald Anderson was shot and killed in Memphis, and Renita Bennett was shot in the same attack, according to a U.S. Marshals Service release issued in June 2020. That release said Bennett had survived. By June 2020 Dotson faced a warrant accusing him of killing a man and shooting a woman on May 24, FOX13 reported, citing Shelby County General Sessions Court records.
In February 2025 Dotson pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for the deaths of both Anderson and Bennett, as reported by FOX13 and Law&Crime. When Bennett died has not been reported. He also pleaded guilty to three counts of reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon, charges that covered other people put at risk by the shootings.
Jamesha Covson was 19. She and Dotson had been in a relationship, and she was pregnant with his child; the U.S. Marshals described her as several months pregnant, and doctors at the hospital put the pregnancy at five to six months, according to the police affidavit as reported by Law&Crime.
On June 12, 2020, the two argued about a Facebook post and about the pregnancy, police said, and Dotson shot her in South Memphis. She died at a hospital. The child she was carrying did not survive. Under Tennessee law the death of the unborn child was charged as a separate murder.
About two hours after the shooting, Dotson posted a memorial to Covson on Facebook that told her to "Fly high," FOX13 reported. The Shelby County District Attorney's Office later said investigators saw the post as an attempt to distance himself from the crime, according to Law&Crime. At trial prosecutors said he killed her because she had informed on him in another murder; Dotson himself told the jury she knew about the people he had killed earlier, and offered that as his reason.
Memphis police obtained warrants within days. On June 17, 2020, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation added Dotson to its Most Wanted list. Its poster listed four counts of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder and two counts of employing a firearm during the commission of a felony, called him armed and dangerous, and offered rewards that together reached $13,500.
The U.S. Marshals Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force issued its own appeal the same day. It said he was wanted on Shelby County warrants for three counts of first-degree murder, two counts of possession of a firearm during a dangerous felony and two counts of attempted first-degree murder, and it named both the May 24 shooting and the killing of Covson. Crime Stoppers offered up to $1,000, the TBI up to $2,500 and the Marshals Service up to $10,000. U.S. Marshal Jeff Holt said the service was making it a top priority to bring Dotson to justice. Memphis police described him to FOX13 as a "cold-blooded killer."
Dotson was arrested in Nashville on Thursday, June 18, 2020, six days after Covson's death and one day after he was added to the list. He was taken into custody without incident, the TBI said. The arrest was a joint operation of the Marshals task force's Memphis office, the Memphis Police Department's homicide squad, the TBI, a Tennessee Highway Patrol SWAT team, the Nashville Metropolitan Police and the Marshals' Nashville office, FOX13 reported. He was 20.
In the Covson case he was charged at first with two counts of first-degree murder, possession of a firearm during a dangerous felony, and attempted first-degree murder, according to court records described by FOX13 on June 19, 2020.
The Covson case did not reach a jury until August 2024, more than four years after the shooting. Jury selection began on Monday, August 19, in Judge Carlyn Addison's courtroom in Shelby County Criminal Court. FOX13's preview of the week's trials listed four counts of first-degree murder and said, citing the district attorney's office, that it would be the tenth trial in Addison's court that year.
Prosecutors called ten witnesses, according to Law&Crime, and several said they had seen Dotson with a gun.
Against his lawyer's advice, Dotson testified. According to the Shelby County District Attorney's Office, as reported by FOX13 and WMC Action News 5, he admitted killing Covson and her unborn child, called himself a "serial killer," said "I am Michael Myers," and told the jury he was responsible for three other killings in 2019 and 2020. He demeaned Covson from the witness stand, prosecutors said, and he threatened a witness while testifying. Assistant District Attorney Regina Lucreziano later told the court that he had shown no remorse and had described himself as a serial killer who liked killing women.
The jury deliberated for about 45 minutes. On Thursday, August 22, 2024, it found him guilty as charged on two counts of first-degree murder. "Joshua got convicted as charged for both murders," a lawyer for Dotson told FOX13. At the time the district attorney's office would not give details of the other killings he had described, but a spokeswoman said charges had been filed: one case was a double homicide and the other a separate first-degree murder.
Sentencing, first set for September, took place on Thursday, October 31, 2024. Lucreziano asked for back-to-back terms. His lawyer, Juni Ganguli, asked that they run at the same time, arguing that Dotson had accepted responsibility and had not been required to testify.
Judge Addison ordered two terms of 51 years, one for each murder, to be served consecutively, a total of 102 years. In explaining the sentence she cited his lack of remorse and his confessions on the stand, his record from the age of 14, and his conduct in the county jail, which she said included attacks on staff with weapons and sexual and assaultive behavior. She remarked that he had appeared to sleep through parts of the trial, "getting his rest while we were getting justice." She called the case one of the saddest she had seen in her career, reminded him that he had called himself Michael Myers, and said he had "wreaked havoc" on the community long enough, FOX13 reported. According to Law&Crime, she told him, "The jury got it right."
He was handed over to the Tennessee Department of Correction at once. The district attorney's office said the sentence brought "a measure of justice for Jamesha Covson and her unborn child." FOX13 reported that other assault and murder cases against him were still pending in Shelby County.
On February 14, 2025, Dotson pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder, for the deaths of Divieon Parker, Renita Bennett and Reginald Anderson, and to three counts of reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon. He was sentenced to 159 more years, to run consecutively with the 102-year sentence, a total of 261 years for five murders, the district attorney's office said, as reported by WMC Action News 5 and FOX13.
"After five years, we are pleased to finally have justice for Dotson's multiple victims," Lucreziano said in the office's statement, according to Law&Crime. She added that while no prison term would bring the victims back to their families, the community would be safe from him.
As of February 2025 he was serving those sentences in the Tennessee prison system.
His own words. Dotson described himself as a serial killer and compared himself to a film character. Those were his words in court. In October 2024 WMC Action News 5 reported that the district attorney's office had yet to confirm his claims of three more killings. His later guilty pleas settled three deaths. No other killing has been publicly attributed to him by police or prosecutors.
Renita Bennett. The Marshals Service said in June 2020 that she had survived the shooting. By February 2025 he had pleaded guilty to her murder. No explanation for the change, and no date of death, has been reported.
The date of Parker's death. Law&Crime gave November 17, 2019. Other accounts give only the year or the month.
The sentence. Most reports give the Covson sentence as two consecutive terms of 51 years. FOX13 described the prosecutor's request as two 50-year terms, and one report also called the terms life sentences.
2018: A Shelby County grand jury indicts Dotson for aggravated robbery.
August 2019: He pleads guilty to robbery and receives four years of probation under a diversion-eligible plea deal.
November 2019: Divieon Parker is shot and killed in Memphis.
March 2020: Dotson is released from jail while other charges are pending.
May 24, 2020: Reginald Anderson is shot and killed in Memphis; Renita Bennett is shot in the same attack.
June 12, 2020: Jamesha Covson, 19, is shot in Memphis; she and her unborn child die.
June 17, 2020: The TBI adds Dotson to its Most Wanted list; the U.S. Marshals issue an appeal.
June 18, 2020: He is arrested in Nashville without incident.
August 19, 2024: Jury selection begins in Judge Carlyn Addison's court.
August 22, 2024: After he testifies that he is a serial killer, the jury convicts him of two counts of first-degree murder.
October 31, 2024: He is sentenced to two consecutive 51-year terms, 102 years.
February 14, 2025: He pleads guilty to the murders of Parker, Bennett and Anderson and to three counts of reckless endangerment; 159 more years, 261 in all.