Dr. Allan L. Branson, an adjunct professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, recently provided his unique perspective to Brenna Ehrlich, a reporter and chief research editor at Rolling Stone, for the article “Was This Sixties Musician the Victim of a Serial Killer?”

In the article, published Feb. 13, Richard Jones, a retired journalist, explains his examination of the murder of Frankie Little, Jr., a member of the R&B group the O’Jays, who went missing in East Cleveland in the late 1970s. Jones’s theory in the more than 50-year-old cold case is that Little was killed by Samuel Dixon, who was convicted in 2003 of murdering four people. Jones also contends that Dixon has been largely ignored by the media because of his race–Dixon is Black.

Branson–who published his doctoral thesis, “The Anonymity of African American Serial Killers: A Continuum of Negative Imagery from Slavery to Prisons” in 2016,–concurs that Black serial killers have gone largely unnoticed by the media, and for that reason, crimes may remain unsolved. 

“If you say that only certain people of certain cultures are capable of certain things, and then put blinders on, that doesn’t allow you to see the bigger picture,” he said. 

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