Roommate Had Violent Past Pair On Trial In Death Of Woman Found In Lake

Koralee Dixon didn’t know her new roommate very well. Prosecutors say that lack of knowledge killed her.

It happened one night last summer, when Dixon took a long bath, said goodnight to roommate Marcella Taylor and went to bed.

Hours later, her thin, nude body was sinking to the bottom of a Stevens County lake.

Swimmers found it nearly two weeks later, identifiable only by dental records. It took less time for police to find the suspects: Taylor, 23, and her boyfriend, Willie Richardson, 21.

Their murder trial began Wednesday in Spokane County Superior Court, with a prosecutor telling jurors about Taylor’s scheming, violent past - a history Dixon knew nothing about.

While she slept on the night of her June 16 murder, Taylor sat plotting in the living room with Richardson, according to Deputy Prosecutor Dannette Allen.

“They were planning a robbery,” Allen said. “It was just part of a common scheme, a common plan that had been utilized by Marcella Taylor in the past. But in this instance, the plan went too far and the victim died.”

Allen said Taylor hatched the robbery plan after Dixon, 22, returned from a two-week stay in Reno, Nev., with more than $1,000 in cash and a new ruby ring with diamonds. It is unclear how Dixon came by the money.

Taylor convinced Richardson to help her by telling him she was pregnant with his baby and owed “dangerous people” some money, Allen said. Taylor was not really pregnant, the prosecutor added.

The two went to Dixon’s room, stuffed a bandanna in her mouth and wrapped duct tape around her eyes, mouth, hands and feet, Allen said. Then they stole her ring, cash and bank card.

Dixon was still alive when they left the apartment, said Richardson’s public defender, Scott Mason. He told jurors Richardson confessed to police about his part in the robbery shortly after Dixon’s body was found.

“But his part in the robbery did not lead to Dixon’s death,” Mason told the jury in his opening statement.

Richardson returned to the apartment after the robbery only to find Taylor already there, Mason said. Dixon’s body was wrapped in bedsheets and Taylor said her roommate was dead.

Without removing the sheets, Richardson put the body in a wicker clothes hamper, helped Taylor cover it with a mattress pad and tied it shut with shoelaces. He rejected Taylor’s suggestion to “cut the body up and put it in cement,” Mason said.

Instead, the couple drove to Red Lake near Tum Tum, where they pushed the hamper into the water, Mason said. When it didn’t sink, they used several rocks to weigh it down.

It was only after his arrest weeks later that Richardson saw photographs of Dixon’s body and noticed duct tape was wrapped all the way around her head, Mason said.

Only a small strip of duct tape was put on Dixon’s mouth when Richardson was at the apartment, which suggests Taylor added the extra tape that killed her, Mason said.

Taylor shook her head throughout Mason’s opening statement, glancing repeatedly at the jury but avoiding eye contact with her former lover.

Her attorney, John Rodgers, reserved giving an opening statement until later in the trial, which is expected to last through next week.

Allen promised evidence that Taylor has plotted robberies against friends and acquaintances before, including violent hold-ups that involved weapons.

She has a criminal record that includes convictions for car theft, burglary and assault.

In one case last spring, Taylor planned a meeting with several people at a North Side arcade but sent her boyfriend and two of his friends instead. The trio robbed the group at gunpoint, Allen said.

, DataTimes