Man convicted in slaying of Cal Poly Pomona student
3:43 PM Wed, Mar 19, 2008 | Permalink
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Posted by: PE News
A 35-year-old man was convicted today of capital murder for the August 2001 slaying of a Cal Poly Pomona student who disappeared on her way to a fraternity party and was found the next day with her throat slit.
The Pomona Superior Court jury deliberated about three hours before finding James Winslow Dixon Jr. guilty of first-degree murder for the killing of 20-year-old Christina Burmeister, whose body was found in her pickup truck on San Gabriel Canyon Road north of Azusa on Aug. 18, 2001.
Jurors found true the special circumstance allegations of murder during a robbery and murder during a kidnapping, and convicted Dixon of raping two women in July 1996.
Jurors are due back in court Monday for the start of the trial’s penalty phase, in which they will be asked to recommend whether Dixon should be sentenced to death or life in prison without the possibility of parole.
His wife, Markeisha Dixon, and co-defendant Henry Arnold Singer each pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in exchange for a 25-year-to-life prison term as their trial was set to begin last November.
Burmeister disappeared after stopping in Pomona to buy cigarettes.
DNA taken from a cigar butt found in or near her truck tied James Dixon to the crime, sheriff’s Detective Philip Guzman said in 2005.
Surveillance video from a Washington Mutual automated teller machine in Montclair showed a hooded woman using Burmeister’s ATM card to make three withdrawals — two for $100 and one for $200.
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