Fellow Crime Watch Group Members "Betrayed" By Accused Rapist
DALLAS COUNTY (CBSDFW.COM) - An accused serial rapist is back in North Texas. Deputies with the Dallas County Sheriff's Department brought Van Dralan Dixson back from Baton Rouge, Louisiana on Thursday.
Connected by DNA, Dixson is accused in four of the nine rapes that happened in a south Dallas neighborhood – one that once trusted him to help fight crime.
Van Dixson is spending his first night in the Dallas County jail. He didn't answer questions when deputies escorted him into the jail in shackles.
But the 38-year-old has some explaining to do to a group of people who trusted him and now feel betrayed. On the day Van Dixson returned to Dallas, his crime watch group met, still in shock that the man who sat among them just last month could be a serial rapist.
One neighborhood watch member said, "I looked at him on TV today and I'm still trying to figure out what the devil was wrong with him. He's got three kids."
Dixson was a volunteer who attended monthly meetings with Dallas police, while allegedly committing up to nine sexual assaults in his Fair Park area neighborhood. Other members of the group now wonder if the now captured suspect intentionally infiltrated the group to stay ahead of the investigation.
"When you do all this kind of stuff the bad guy knows too and they look at ways to infiltrate that to find out information," someone from the group suggested.
After reading a crime blog, police urged the Mill City Neighborhood Watch Group to remain vigilant even though a man considered a violent predator is off the streets.
Women who live in the area around the rapes are breathing a sigh of relief. "It's hard to believe that a serial rapist was in this area, the Fair Park area," resident Karla Flynn said adding, "and it's good that they caught him before the [State] Fair started."
Investigators told CBS 11 News they will make an effort to question Dixson now that he's in a North Texas jail.
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