WASHINGTON - Michael Dickerson, 39, formerly of the 3200 block of G Street, SE, Washington, D.C., was sentenced today in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia by the Honorable Neal E. Kravitz to a stipulated term of 15 years in prison, without parole, for the June 1996 murder of his girlfriend, Shaquita Bell, announced U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor.

At a plea hearing in October, Dickerson pled guilty to Murder in the Second Degree. Dickerson has been in jail continuously since 1996 for a domestic violence case in which Ms. Bell was the victim.

At the October 16, 2008, plea hearing, Michael Dickerson admitted that back in 1996, he had learned, approximately two weeks before he murdered Ms. Bell, that she had told the police that he fatally shot a man in a gunfight. Dickerson admitted that he killed Ms. Bell, with whom he had a young child, to prevent her from testifying in both the murder investigation and a domestic violence case, then pending in Maryland. In describing the murder, Dickerson admitted that, during the early afternoon of June 27, 1996, he shot Shaquita Bell in his parents' backyard, wrapped her body in a blanket, put her in the trunk of a car, drove her to the woods, and buried her in a deep hole.

As part of the plea bargain, he also agreed to help police find her remains, and led investigators to a wooded area in Fort Washington, where the search is ongoing. Dickerson has also admitted his culpability for the fatal shooting which Ms. Bell reported to the police, that is, the murder of Sean Thomas, which occurred on February 17, 1996, in the 3100 block of Massachusetts Avenue, SE, Washington, D.C.

In announcing today's sentence, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor commended several officers of the Metropolitan Police Department, including Detectives Anthony Brigidini, Kenneth Williams, and Jeffrey Owens; Mobile Crime Technicians Grant Greenwalt and Tina Ramadhan; and Firearms Analyst Michael Mulderig. He also thanked Intelligence Specialist Lawrence Grasso, Victim/Witness Advocate Marcia Rinker, and Legal Assistant Mary Doster of the U.S. Attorney's Office. Finally, he thanked Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Haines, who investigated and prosecuted the case.