Nine years ago this past May, Springfield police were called to the intersection of Fifth Street and South Grand Avenue by a report of a man lying in the roadway not breathing.

The man turned out to be Alfred W. Dixon, 49. He had suffered two gunshot wounds but managed to survive another four days at the hospital before dying.

Police say they still have no motive for Dixon’s murder, and the case continues to haunt Sgt. Brian Oakes.

“It’s been nine years. I was the original detective, and it’s something I think about every single day for at least a minute or two,” Oakes said. “There is something that reminds me, something I see on TV or something I drive by that triggers the memory. I always wonder what I could have done differently, or is there somebody else I could have talked to who I wasn’t aware had witnessed the incident. It’s heavy.”

To help solve Dixon’s murder, Crime Stoppers of Sangamon and Menard Counties is featuring the crime as its latest cold case. It’s the seventh installment of a program that offers an enhanced reward of $5,000 for tips in some unsolved homicides that ultimately lead to an arrest.

Oakes and Detective Bryan Henson hope the extra exposure will lead to tips that will breathe new life into the Dixon investigation.

“There is no information to go off of,” Henson said. “We don’t have that one piece that we need in order to run with it and try to figure out what happened.”

A friend to all

Dixon was originally from the East St. Louis area and moved to Springfield after he had gone through rehabilitation for alcohol addiction.

The detectives said nobody they interviewed had a bad thing to say about Dixon, who was always going out of his way to help people.

Patricia Greenwood, Dixon’s older sister who lives in the East St. Louis area, said he was always kind and helpful, but he really flourished when he came to Springfield.

“When he went to Springfield, it kind of disturbed me because I couldn’t see him every day. It kind of weighed on my heart a little bit,” Greenwood said. “Once I saw how well he was doing, and how he had blossomed, it was like, ‘Is this my younger brother?’ He was like a totally different person as far as the drinking.”

While Dixon didn’t have a lot of money, he was always willing to give someone a few dollars to help them out, his sister said. That went for people in his support groups or people he encountered while walking down the sidewalk.

“He would tell them, ‘I can give you a couple of dollars, but you can’t buy drugs or liquor. You have to buy something to eat. Do something good with this money,” Greenwood said.

Police said that when he was found, Dixon still had his wallet, money and credit cards.

“It’s the strangest thing,” Greenwood said. “He had a little money on him and little bit of jewelry on him. Nothing was taken.”

Greenwood said her brother didn’t have any enemies that she knows of, which makes the tragedy of his murder even harder to understand.

“For somebody to do that to him – it’s like they came from out of nowhere, killed him and disappeared,” Greenwood said.

Still searching

When he was gunned down at 3:48 a.m. May 22, 2007, Dixon was wearing his McDonald’s uniform and was walking to work at the restaurant at 501 South Grand Ave. E. He wasn’t scheduled to start until 5 a.m., but he would often show up an hour early to clean up around the outside of the building.

If there is anybody who might have overheard someone talking about the homicide, Oakes and the other detectives want them to call Crime Stoppers and share what they know.

“People have a tendency to talk about things. It’s very rare for people to keep quiet, especially about a story of this magnitude,” Oakes said. “Somebody may have already heard the story and not realized what it was. If anybody remembers somebody telling a story they think might be related, we’d love to hear from them.”

Like Oakes, Greenwood said she and her family think about Dixon every day. He was one of six siblings, a twin, and a natural when it came to entertaining children.

“He was a very loving and caring person. There’s not a day that goes by that we don’t talk about him,” Greenwood said.

The family hopes the cold case program will lead to an arrest.

“To murder somebody like that in cold blood, and nobody has said a word, I don’t get that. I don’t understand it at all,” Greenwood said.

Anyone with information can leave it on the Crime Stoppers tipline at 788-8427, or at cashfortips.us, or by text using the keyword TIP672 followed by the tip information, which should then be sent to CRIMES (2-7-4-6-3-7).

All anonymous information must be submitted to Crime Stoppers before Sept. 30 to be eligible for the enhanced reward of $5,000. After that, the reward for this and other homicide tips will revert to the $1,000 maximum.

–Contact John Reynolds: john.reynolds@sj-r.com, 788-1524, twitter.com/JohnReynoldsSJR.