She got her husband from jail; he killed her
Leon Thomas pleaded guilty to second-degree murder charge in exchange for a 60-year prison sentence
Debra Dunbar needed protection from her abusive husband, who had hit her in the face and tried to blow up her SUV. In the summer of 2019, the West Palm Beach woman who worked as a security guard applied for a court order shielding her from Leon Thomas.
“I am in fear of my life, because his behavior is escalating, and I don’t sleep at night, because I don’t know when he is coming to the house,” Dunbar, 59, wrote to a judge.
Two months later, the marriage of seven years came to a violent end when he repeatedly bashed her head and neck inside the home they had shared. On Tuesday, Leon Thomas pleaded guilty to a second-degree murder charge in exchange for a 60-year prison sentence.
At age 56, it is essentially a life sentence for him, and a measure of relief for the victim’s loved ones, who will not have to endure a trial.
“May he rot in hell,” said Dunbar’s younger brother, Wayne Dunbar, after he watched the resolution of the case on a Zoom video connection. “Only God has the last say so on him now.” Dunbar, who lives in Ocala, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel he plans to pay a visit to his sister’s grave in the nearby small town of Lady Lake.
“Justice is done now,” he said of why he supported the prosecution’s plea offer. “Now I can see her and let her know she can rest.”
Assistant Public Defender Elizabeth Ramsey said her client loved his wife and regretted his actions, and accepted his punishment. She explained that Thomas suffers from a permanent spinal injury and mental problems resulting from a neardeadly 2010 shooting in Tennessee.
“The damage to his physical abilities and emotional stability quietly but steadily damaged his marriage,” Ramsey said.
But Katherine McDonald, who long considered Debra Dunbar a mother figure after her own mom died, says Thomas had held down a job as a chef and didn’t seem mentally troubled.
Yet while she urged Dunbar to stay apart from Thomas after he became violent, she didn’t realize how much danger Dunbar was in.
“I tried to keep her away from him,” McDonald said. “I never thought he would brutally murder her the way he did.” On Oct. 26, 2019, McDonald called 911 to report that she had not been able to reach Dunbar. She went to her house in the 900 block of 34th Street, peered through a window and saw blood on the kitchen floor and walls.
Officers forced their way inside, observed pools of blood, and in one of the bedrooms they found Dunbar’s body wrapped in a blue tarp and comforter with melted ice packs.
During the investigation, detectives learned that Thomas had been released from Palm Beach County Jail the previous day after serving time on a domestic battery charge for hitting his wife. Yet it was Dunbar who had picked him up that morning, even though he was not supposed to be near her.
“She believed he could change,” McDonald said of a conversation she had with her mom a few days prior. “She picked him up and that was the end of it.”
When investigators asked Thomas what happened he initially denied being in the home, but later admitted that he returned to the residence with his wife.
“Thomas stated once back at the house a heated argument ensued, he reared back with all his might, and he pushed her head” into a wall, a police report stated. “Thomas did state several times she was breathing when he left the residence.”
During Tuesday’s hearing, Chief Assistant State Attorney Adrienne Ellis told Circuit Judge Rosemarie Scher that Thomas had hit his wife with a “blunt force object” until she was dead. Dunbar didn’t have any of her own children but treated McDonald and McDonald’s three children, ages 9, 8 and 6, as her own family.