NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — The last letter Lucy Fullerton wrote her mom arrived just a few days after the Tennessee Tech student was brutally murdered in October 1970. That irony has never been forgotten by her mother, Jeane Fullerton, now 97.
In her final letter, Lucy wrote she planned to marry Rodney Dobbs, a fellow Tech student. She had transferred schools to be with him. Her mother had a foreboding feeling this relationship wouldn’t work, particularly after Dobbs had accused Lucy of trying to poison him.
“The last thing I told his family was he better not hurt my daughter,” Jeane Fullerton said.
Dobbs proposed to Lucy on Oct. 7, 1970, her 22nd birthday. Two days later, Dobbs admitted to stabbing Lucy more than 20 times with a six-inch hunting knife. After the stabbing, he took her new Mustang and drove the curvy highway from Cookeville to Kingston to tell his parents what he had done.
Police records show Dobbs admitted to the crime and told investigators where to find her body.
While Lucy’s family buried her in a Memphis cemetery, Dobbs was sent to a psychiatric facility for evaluation. From 1970 until 1994, mental health providers swayed back and forth on his mental capacity to stand trial for first-degree murder. Dobbs was incompetent only to be found competent again — a two-step of sorts on his mental competency gliding back and forth.
Finally, in 1994, Lucy’s family was horrified when the case was dismissed. And now 30 years later, the Fullertons remain dismayed what happened to them is still happening to Tennessee families to this day. Twice this last November, two men — previously found incompetent by the court — are now accused of murder again. One man is accused of killing Belmont student Jillian Ludwig. The other is accused of killing his family member Josue Riscar Chirino.
Lucy’s family remains haunted and dismayed by one fact.
Dobbs still walks free.
What happened to Lucy?
It was supposed to be a good night for Lucy and Dobbs.
They were newly engaged. The two went to a party where Lucy was named the sweetheart of the Delta Tau Delta, Dobbs’ fraternity.
But the night of the party on Oct. 9, 1970, took a deadly turn. The duo returned to Dobbs’ mobile home off campus.
Police concluded from Dobbs’ confession that he stabbed Lucy to death, but no motive was ever established. Newspaper reporting from the Cookeville Herald-Citizen revealed she was stabbed multiple times all over her body. No alcohol or drugs were in her system, according to an autopsy report.
Her younger sister CJ Fullerton, only 18 at the time, had to tell her mother the tragic news. The family had recently moved outside of Washington, D.C.
“It took my breath away,” she said. “And I think: ‘How do I tell my mother?’ Your brain goes blank. We were in this remote functioning.”
She also carried the load of returning to a grisly crime scene, where police asked her to identify any of her sister’s items in Dobbs’ room. After visiting the crime scene, CJ Fullerton went on to pick out clothes for her oldest sister’s funeral, down to picking out her casket.”
“It was like I was living through a surreal dream,” said CJ, who now lives in Connecticut. “The way that she died was even more heart-wrenching because you just are stuck with imagining what she went through.
Throughout the decades, Lucy remains top of mind in the Fullerton family. They think about how she wanted to teach and have her own classroom, so close to graduation in 1970 after completing her student-teaching in Roane County.
To them, Lucy is still a pretty woman with a shining personality. She’s the same girl who loved Motown and the Righteous Brothers, borrowed clothes from her sisters’ closets, and who as a young girl, played on the dirt and sand during a ‘60s childhood on the Florida beaches.
She loved learning French. She was always surrounded by friends. She was built like her father. She was a fantastic swimmer.
“My gut feeling is she is just a number — a victim, a nobody,” CJ Fullerton said. “She was just murdered. And the court system went: OK, so what? She was a person, a valued person by my family. Every time her birthday comes around, I think about her. I think about what she would have been like and our relationship as sisters. That relationship was taken away, and I can’t explain to this day the reason why he did it.”
How the case ebbed and flowed
From the outset of the case, Dobbs’ competency and mental health were questioned.
Articles from the Cookeville Herald-Citizen showed Dobbs went to different mental health hospitals before eventually being declared incompetent.
It appears the courts simply let the case fall through the cracks.
By the time former Putnam County District Attorney Bill Gibson inherited the case in the ‘90s, he said he knew he couldn’t let this sit in limbo any longer.
Gibson grew up in Cookeville and knew about the case, remembering from middle school the headlines of a Tech student who was murdered.
“What happened was we realized that the case was still open,” Gibson said. “It had been indicted and been to court and continued. The best we could tell it fell off the docket. I said we had to get a resolution one way or the other.”
But Gibson faced one key problem before he brought it back to court.
While mental health doctors couldn’t agree on Dobbs’ level of competency, the hunting knife — the murder weapon — was lost.
At that point, Gibson said he couldn’t bring the case back up without a crucial piece of evidence.
“It had been in evidence but no one knew where it was,” Gibson said. “And then it was impossible to cobble together a trial. That wasn’t one of the happiest chapters as a prosecutor.”
Lasting impacts
It’s been 50 years, and Jeane Fullteron, who now lives in Florida, still thinks about her oldest daughter every day.
At 97, she said it’s not as though she sits around, dabbing her eyes to keep the tears away.
“Her two sisters and I are sad, but we are sad that nothing was ever done about it,” Jeane said.
The Fullerton family knew nothing could happen to Dobbs because of the question of his competency. And because the court waited so long to declare it one way or another, the Fullertons feel like Lucy’s case was lost to time and ineptitude.
After the case was dismissed, another prosecutor years later gave the Fullertons a nibble of hope. They might reopen the case. But as her mother remembers it, her hopes were dashed as soon as she arrived back to discuss it in Tennessee.
“They told me there was nothing they could do. They told me the state of Tennessee had failed me,” Jeane Fullerton said.
Since the time of Lucy’s death, her mother said she has tried to get successive lawmakers and governors to pay attention to the issue of mental incompetency.
“It wasn’t a hot political subject to bring up at the time is what I was told,” Jeane Fullerton said.
But in 2024, mental incompetency is a high priority for legislators in the Tennessee General Assembly. During an August special session, the Nashville District Attorney and lawmakers were working on a bill to address incompetency and the court system. The bill never reached the Senate.
Two months after that, Belmont student Jillian Ludwig was killed, only intensifying the push for a bill.
As written, HB 1640 would mean a person facing criminal charges who was deemed not competent to stand trial by a judge would be sent to a mental health facility and the individual would not be able to possess or purchase firearms. This comes from House Majority Leader William Lamberth, R-Portland. That person would have to continue outpatient treatment that the court keeps tabs on, according to an amendment passed by the House Criminal Justice Committee.
HB 1640 is now named in Ludwig’s memory.
Lucy’s family is wondering if that bill would impact a case like hers, but with the statute of limitations, it may not make a difference for their family.
But mostly — Lucy’s family hopes others don’t have to face a similar pain. They want others to know her life mattered, and it still does some 50 years later.
“This bill doesn’t bring her back in any way,” her mom said. “But at least other people who have been in this situation won’t be able to be out running around on the street like you and I.”
Journalism is at its best when we can shine a light on an issue that needs more attention. Once again, Hannah McDonald does this beautifully by highlighting the hardships of teens aging out of the foster care system. I learned something new in her reporting and am inspired by the work I AM NEXT is doing to make a difference. I think you will be too!
-Carrie Sharp
