Ronald Blanchard Murders a Local Celebrity
(“Garden of Evil,” Forensic Files)
Gardening offers a break from the stress of commuting, worrying about money, and listening to your boss hear himself talk.
The city of Hampton, Virginia, provides community gardens for locals who want to rent a parcel of land for growing flowers or vegetables.
For Debbie Dicus, once a popular radio host on WWDE-FM in Norfolk, Virginia, the plot she used to grow vegetables in the community garden was probably a nice change from the sterile confinement of the studio.
Bad seed. Ronald Earl Blanchard enjoyed open spaces, too, but he paid homage to them in a different way.
When a housing development in Poquoson threatened to crowd out the woodlands around the trailer park where he lived with his grandparents, he and an associate set fire to one of the offending homes, the Daily Press of Newport News, Virginia, reported on April 8, 1988.
He got himself a suspended sentence for that stunt, a surprisingly meager punishment in light of the fact that Blanchard, his two brothers, and their father, Joseph, were well known to local law enforcement.
Young felon. But nothing suggested that Ronald Blanchard would turn into a murderer and would-be rapist until May 9, 1987, when Blanchard either happened upon, or set out to ambush, Debbie Dicus as she was tending to her vegetables in the community garden.
Blanchard was barely out of his teens when he committed the homicide, so for this week, I checked to see whether he’s still in prison.
So let’s get started on a recap of the Forensic Files episode “Garden of Evil,” along with information drawn from internet research.
In May of 1987, Hampton police got a phone call reporting the body of a woman in a ditch near the community garden.
Violent struggle. The call came from Ronald Blanchard, a 20-year-old married father who said he stumbled upon the body while hunting for birds nearby.
First responders found Debbie Dicus, 31. She’d been beaten with a rifle and the wooden handle of a hoe and strangled. Some of her clothing had been ripped off, but she hadn’t been raped.
Dicus, a native of Greensboro, North Carolina, lived in downtown Hampton. She worked as a DJ for about three years at WWDE-FM and before that at station WTAR.
Sweet disposition. The late-night radio show that Dicus hosted was a mix of personal talk and music.
Her boyfriend, William Campbell, also worked as a DJ at the same station.
She liked her job but told friends she worried that one day a deranged listener would break into the studio and rape and kill her, according to Forensic Files.
When her murder premonition came true (except that it happened far from the radio station and it wasn’t clear whether the killer was a listener), it shocked locals in the friendly low-crime area around Hampton.
Dicus’ mother, Jean Reece Willison, heard the tragic news on Mother’s Day. She told the Daily Press that Debbie “loved everyone, people, animals, nature. She wouldn’t even kill a fly.”
Speedy police-work. Fortunately, investigators were able to solve the case quickly. A tracker dog named Rody sniffed the hoe handle used in the homicide and picked up the same scent on one of the bystanders near the crime scene: Ronald Blanchard.
Police arrested Blanchard four days after the murder, and a judge set bail at $130,000. A group of supporters came up with the money for Blanchard, whose own finances were a mess.
Thanks to the earlier arson incident, Blanchard owed Hartford Mutual Insurance $68,671 and he and his wife had to declare bankruptcy, the Daily Press reported on September 30, 1987. Paperwork listed the total value of the couple’s assets at $597.
Rape suspect. But Blanchard’s motive for the attack on Debbie Dicus wasn’t robbery. He didn’t steal the handbag sitting in her unlocked car.
He got to enjoy seven months of freedom between his arrest and the conclusion of the trial, which kicked off on October 27, 1988.
Prosecutors alleged that Blanchard intended to rape Dicus and killed her when she fought back. When he returned home to his wife, also named Debbie, she saw the blood on his hands and clothing, so he told her that he had found a body, and then called 911 to substantiate his story, prosecutors contended.
Odd demo. Investigators think that Dicus and Blanchard might have exchanged unfriendly words on at least one prior occasion. She once mentioned that she argued with a man about his hunting for birds too close to the garden.
To prove the prosecution’s theory that blood splatter on Blanchard’s white T-shirt came from beating Dicus, the prosecution performed a test using a hoe handle and a helmet with a blood-soaked sponge attached. Thankfully, the test took place outside and not in the courtroom.
Other evidence included fragments of the victim’s hair on Blanchard’s rifle, which police believed he used to beat her. They also found a broken-off piece of its cocking mechanism at the scene, more evidence of violence.
On the witness stand, Blanchard said that the damage to the gun happened when he dropped it at the scene in his rush to help Dicus.
Plaintive request. His testimony didn’t impress the jurors. On April 8, 1988, they convicted Blanchard of first-degree homicide, attempted rape, sexual assault, abduction, and use of a gun in a crime.
Blanchard’s wife, Debbie, burst into tears and cried out, “Can I give him a hug?” as deputies escorted her 21-year-old husband out of the courtroom, the Daily Press reported.
Mark Dicus, the victim’s father, told reporters that Blanchard deserved the electric chair, according to the Daily Press/The Herald Times on April 9, 1988.
Hefty sentence. Virginia allows capital punishment, either by electrocution or lethal injection — the condemned individual gets to choose — but it wasn’t on the table in the Dicus murder case because the rape was attempted rather than completed.
Blanchard received the maximum allowed for his crimes, two life sentences plus 12 years.
Today, Blanchard resides in a State Farm, Virginia, prison.
Stay in the pen. He no longer looks like Heath Ledger, but he appears healthy and well fed at 5’8 inches and 190 pounds.
In 2006, Blanchard wrote a letter to Forensic Files producers that admitted his guilt in the murder and expressed regret for his crimes. Perhaps that explains why he hasn’t appealed his conviction over the years.
The possibility of parole remains, but it’s unlikely in the near future. In 2018, Virginia declined to grant Blanchard parole, noting his “history of violence” and “prior failures” while “under community supervision” and that parole would “diminish [the] seriousness of the crime.”
As far as updates for Debbie Dicus’ parents, there’s no recent information on her father, Mark, on the internet. As of 2009, her mother, Jean Willison, was living in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Her husband, Myron Willison — Debbie’s stepfather — died in 1997 at the age of 81.)
Good shepherd. Glennell Fullman, the K9 unit officer Forensic Files fans may remember from her appearance on “Garden of Evil,” has since retired.
Rody Von Braninck, the German shepherd who helped Fullman identify Ronald Blanchard as the killer, died at just 9 years of age, in 1989.
But Rody accomplished a great deal in his short life.
The 110-pound canine operative worked on 700 cases, according to a Daily Press article about Rody, which also notes that, although he learned to attack viciously on command at a Swiss academy, he was kind and sweet to humans and other animals while off duty.
He even rescued a baby rabbit that strayed from its nest.
That’s all for this week. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Amazon Prime
