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SIDETRACKED: The Betrayal and Murder of Anna Kithcart
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Man who killed Kingston teenager in 1988 released from prison
KINGSTON, N.Y. >> The man convicted of murder in the strangulation and bludgeoning of a 19-year-old Kingston woman in 1988 has been released from state prison and is back in Ulster County, according to the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. Jeffrey Allen Dawson, 58, was released from state prison Monday after serving more than 28 years and was assigned a parole officer in Poughkeepsie, according to the corrections department.
Dawson, a Kingston resident at the time, was convicted of second-degree murder on Jan. 19, 1989, in the death of Anna Kithcart.
Kithcart was killed on July 12, 1988. Her body was found on railroad tracks behind what then was called Kingston Hospital. She had been strangled and hit in the head with a brick, authorities said. corrections department spokesman Patrick Bailey said Thursday that Dawson is living in Ulster County, but he would not be more specific.
Bailey said Dawson was denied parole five times previously and that the appearance before a parole board that led to his release occurred in September.
Then-Ulster County Judge Francis J. Vogt sentenced Dawson on Feb. 25, 1989, to 25 years to life in state prison, calling the killing “as brutal a thing as I’ve seen in my 30 years” in the court system.
Noting that Dawson had been in and out jails for much of his life, Vogt said, “Why this happened might be of interest to a sociologist, but as far as I’m concerned, he represents a clear and present danger to this community walking around free.”
Dawson was on parole from a burglary sentence when he was arrested on July 16, 1988, for Kithcart’s death.
The Kithcart killing, which happened about eight months after the high-profile alleged attack on Tawana Brawley in 1987 in Dutchess County, briefly raised suspicions of a racial motive because the letters “KKK” had been scratched into Kithcart’s thighs with a sharp object. Police later said a mentally disturbed passerby probably scratched the letters after discovering, and then sodomizing, the young woman’s corpse.
Kithcart was black, as is Dawson. Authorities ultimately concluded Kithcart was killed during an alcohol-fueled argument with Dawson.
Brawley, who also is black, was 16 and living in Wappingers Falls when she alleged in November 1987 that she had been raped by a group of white men, including people in law enforcement, and that they had scrawled “KKK” on her torso in charcoal.
Brawley’s claim was determined to have been fabricated, and she later was sued successfully for defaming the people she accused of attacking her.
Brawley advisers Al Sharpton, Alton Maddox and C. Vernon Mason came to Kingston during the brief period that the Kithcart killing was thought to be racially motivated.