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Texas Executes Leon Dorsey for the 1994 Murders of Two Blockbuster Video Workers in Dallas

A cold-case squad tied Dorsey to the killings while he was serving 60 years for the murder of a store manager in Ennis. He was convicted of three murders.

Published

Illustration of razor wire and a prison guard tower silhouetted against an orange sunset sky. Not an actual scene from the case.

In April 1994, two young men were shot dead during a robbery at a Blockbuster Video store in East Dallas, and the case went unsolved for years. On August 12, 2008, Texas executed Leon David Dorsey IV, 32, for their murders.

James Armstrong, 26, and Brad Lindsey, 20, were working at the store when Dorsey, who called himself "Pistol Pete," robbed it of $392 and shot them. Five months later, he killed Hyon Suk Chon, 51, at the convenience store she managed in Ennis, south of Dallas, and he was serving 60 years for her murder when a Dallas police cold-case squad reopened the Blockbuster case in 1998. Authorities had the store's security tape analyzed by the FBI, and Dorsey confessed when he was questioned again. He was sentenced to death in 2000, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld his conviction and sentence earlier in 2008.

"I love all y'all. I forgive all y'all," Dorsey said in his final statement. He was the seventh prisoner executed in Texas that year.

The Associated Press quoted Dorsey's last words as "See y'all when you get there," while the Texas Department of Criminal Justice recorded them as "See you when you get there."

Sources