Sally E.Bahner Photo
A former Branford resident posted a simple query about a tragic, horrific event that took place in his childhood home (pictured) more than 50 years ago. He wanted to know what happened. His curiosity prompted close to 450 comments; finally, he had some answers.
Bill LaRock, who now lives in Texas, posted his query on the Growing Up in Branford Facebook page.
“I’m hesitant to put this out here, but I really would like to know if anyone who has joined this page lived in Branford during the late 1950s – early 1960s? Or maybe your parents did? My mother purchased a home in Branford, I believe in the early 1960s in the Hills section. According to her this house was involved in a horrific crime… a murder/suicide. I wasn’t born yet but she needed an inexpensive house and a way to get my brother and sister out of apartment living in New Haven. Obviously a crime like this wouldn’t go unnoticed in a small community like Branford, so I imagine anyone living in the town at this time knew of this incident. Does anyone have any information about this event or the people involved?”
He said his own efforts via Google and other internet searches produced little information. “This story was often spoken of and yet I never got the details as a child. Any information or ideas that anyone has would be appreciated.”
It didn’t take long for the commentators on the Growing Up in Branford Facebook page to dig out the facts. Within days, they put together the pieces of the double murder-suicide that occurred on Oct. 31, 1963. Their investigative efforts are a testament to the power of the Internet and its ability to bring people and events together.
The Dixons’ Stormy Marriage
The story begins after Edward and Lola Dixon (pictured here) were married in West Virginia in 1955 and moved to a small ranch house on Gilbert Lane in Branford. They moved in an effort to save their stormy marriage, which had all the hallmarks of domestic abuse fueled by jealousy. He was a mechanic at Wilson Ford (then located on Montowese Street where Caron’s Corner is today). She was a waitress at the Hi-Way Diner in New Haven. They were in their early 30s.
The efforts to save their marriage failed. They were divorced on Oct. 8, 1963, and Lola Dixon was awarded the house in lieu of alimony. On Oct. 31, 1963, Halloween night, Dixon arrived at the house and murdered his ex-wife and her gentleman friend, Oscar Jacobsen of Berlin (who was married with three children). Dixon used a .22 caliber automatic revolver purchased 11 days before the shooting. He pumped six bullets into Jacobsen’s face and five into his ex-wife’s body. Then he called police, and said, “I just murdered my wife. Send an officer.” By the time Branford patrolmen Arthur Howe, John Kelly, and Donald Austin arrived, Dixon “was breathing his last” (according to the Hartford Courant).
When police found him, he was on the divan with his ex-wife and had left a suicide note saying that he was sorry he killed her and loved her very much, but was very angry. According to the Sunday Herald (out of Bridgeport), Edward Dixon’s 18-year-old brother Gary testified in the divorce action to the violence in the marriage. He testified that he heard arguments every night during the two months he lived there; Edward was living with him in New Haven after the divorce, but apparently made regular visits to his ex-wife. She said at the divorce hearing that she had seen a doctor for a broken nose, and that she had been beaten and choked regularly when Edward came home drunk.
The Nov. 10, 1963, edition of the Sunday Herald reported on these details of the murder-suicide and the couple’s marital problems in graphic detail. Articles were also published in the Nov. 8, 1963, Branford Review and the Hartford Courant on Nov. 1.
LaRock, the Growing Up in Branford poster, was aware of only of a few of the murders-suicide details, since they took place before he was born. His mother, Alice Affinito, had purchased the Gilbert Lane house on or before Christmas that same year, about 1 ½ months after the murders occurred. She was about the same age as the Dixons and desperate for an inexpensive way for her and her two young children to move from their apartment in New Haven. She told them that presents would be slim; her rent was $45 and the monthly mortgage on the new house was $215.
LaRock, 42, who now lives in Houston, said she pulled the blood-soaked divan out to the back yard in the middle of the night and burned it. He said she scrubbed the blood from the hardwood floors for days and plugged up the bullet holes. She told people about the house, he said, because she was very proud of it and how she had obtained it in the aftermath of a tragedy.
She remarried in 1964 to James LaRock, and Bill was born 1971. She lived there until 1990. To the family the double murder-suicide was a part of living on Gilbert Lane, but many details of that night were missing.
Facebook Group Goes to Work
That changed when LaRock posted his query with the Facebook group. Members went to work and pulled together a trove of information – not all of it pertinent to the Dixon-Jacobson matter. They pulled up references to a couple of other long ago murders in town, including one that involved the owner of the Summit House, a popular local restaurant located on Branford Hill where the Firestone Auto Center is now located. They surmised that Lola Dixon and Oscar Jacobson may have met there, given the distance between Branford and Berlin.
Jenny Groome (whose mom was a columnist for the Branford Review in the ‘70s) found a series of murder-related articles in the Hartford Courant, and finally hit upon the one reporting the Gilbert Lane murders-suicide. She left it to LaRock to share the details with the group, which was holding its collective breath in anticipation. The Courant’s headline read: “Man Kills Wife, Date, Then Takes His Own Life.”
Holly Lu Conant Rees found the explicitly detailed article from the non-defunct Sunday Herald with grainy photos of the Dixons. The headline screamed: ‘Please God, Forgive Me,’ Killer of Wife, Lover Prays.
The murders-suicide made the front page of the Branford Review with the more sedate headline “Gun was bought 11 Days Before Triple-Slaying.”
Vital Stats on Victims and Killer
LaRock then found some vital statistics on the trio.
From the West Virginia, Marriages Index, 1785 – 1971 about Lula (Lola) Clorine Moss, Gender: Female, Spouse’s Name: Edward J Dixon, Spouse Gender: Male, Marriage Date: 1955.
And from state file #19045: Lula C Moss, Death Date: 31 Oct 1963, Death Place: Branford, New Haven, Connecticut. Age: 30 Years, Birth Date: about 1933, Marital Status: Divorced, Spouse: Edward Dixon, Residence: Branford, New Haven, Connecticut, Gender: Female, Race: White.
From the same state file #19045 about Lola’s date that night: Oscar Jacobson, Death Date: 31 Oct 1963, Death Place: Branford, New Haven, Connecticut, Age: 35 Years, Birth Date: about 1928, Marital Status: Married, Spouse: Josephine Peplau, Residence: Berlin, Hartford, Connecticut, Gender: Male, Race: White
And from state file #19037: Edward J Dixon, Death Date: 31 Oct 1963, Death Place: Branford, New Haven, Connecticut, Age: 31 Years, Birth Date: about 1932, Marital Status: Divorced, Spouse: Lula, Residence: New Haven, New Haven, Connecticut, Gender: Male, Race: White.
As part of the Eagle’s inquiry, we asked the Branford police for the police report from 1963. We were told it was not available. A spokesman for the Branford Police Department said that records go back only as far as 1973 because they’ve moved so many times. The records appeared to have been destroyed.
Murder has no statute of limitations, so the fact that the police have no murder records before 1973 is one of the more unusual facts to emerge from this long ago case.
Longtime residents may recognize names such as Police Chief Leo Morawski, Det. Rudy Marroney, and Patrolmen Arthur Howe, John Kelley and Donald Austin as on the police force at that time.
The LaRock Family Recalls No Ghosts
Once the pieces of the puzzle fell together, members wondered about the details of the lives of the Dixons and Oscar Jacobson. They marveled at the strength of Alice LaRock and what she went through to create a better life for her family. Although the Internet was instrumental in piecing together the story, much of the information predated it, and yet the collective effort helped uncover details connected to the 50-year-old case.
One member said she was glad that LaRock got out of the house unscathed by the ghosts that were probably there. He replied, “not one strange or weird thing ever happened, and my mother or siblings never mentioned anything either.”
Again, it came back to the determination of Alice. As Diane Hubley McDade posted,“The house had the potential to become a haunted mess with all that angst and anger. Bill La Rock’s mother’s love and dedication cleared up more than blood and bullet holes. It was so strong, it cancelled all the bad!”
A native of Vermont, Alice lived in Florida after the house was sold in 1990. She died in Wilmington, Del., on Nov. 11, 2011.
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Thank you, Sally for an amazing article, and for putting it all together.... 50 years later and almost every last question was answered. I'm so happy to be a member of the page "Growing up in Branford" on Facebook and I'm so thankful to all of the members who joined in the search and helped us find out what really happened on Gilbert Lane in late 1963.