The bone-chilling and atrocious details of Kim Dorsey murder will stay commemorated in the minds of all those who followed her case closely.
Even though the case is now more than a decade old, people still can’t seem to get it out of their thoughts and minds.
Kim’s husband, Derrick Dorsey, took it upon himself to fight the case till his last breath and get his deceased wife the justice that she deserved.
Three years after Kim’s brutal murder, justice prevailed, and the State of Florida sentenced the criminal, Lance Eugene Kirkpatrick to life in prison with no possibility of parole.
The decision was made by Judge Mark Hulsey. He acted upon the jury’s recommendation of convicting him but did not support executing him.
“You should lose your liberty, but not your life,” Hulsey said to Kirkpatrick as he imposed the sentence.
Dateline NBC, the show which is famous for covering compelling mysteries and unsettling murder cases, delved into the details of Kim Dorsey murder.
The episode titled ‘In Cold Blood’ revolved around the r*pe and subsequent murder of 38-year-old Kim.
In the special feature, Andrea Canning investigates the crime in her way. To give the episode a touch of reality, interviews of the victim’s husband and the lead detective have also been included in it.
‘In Cold Blood’ also explored Kim’s life before she was brutally murdered and the circumstances leading upto the horrific crime.
Derrick Dorsey said it was surreal watching the story of his wife’s murder unfold on national television.
It offers a thorough account of one of America’s most gruesome murders.
Kim’s case was so intriguing and fascinating that even Investigation Discovery covered it in one of their episodes titled ‘In Plain Sight.’
Although Kim’s not in this world anymore and her perpetrator has been adequately punished for his crime, let’s explore the details of the Kim Dorsey murder case one more time.
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What happened to Kim Dorsey?
Before she was battered to death, Kim lived a normal life with her husband, Derrick Dorsey, and her three children: Dexter, Gracie and Duncan, in Jacksonville, Florida.
Derrick worked as a firefighter, whereas, Kim owned her own construction business and worked as the Director of Training for the Quality Assurance Department of Inspection Depot.
According to her obituary, Kim was a kind, compassionate, and caring woman. Her loss, that too, in such a horrible manner, impacted all those who knew her greatly.
Kim Dorsey’s criminal killed her in her bedroom. Before slaying her, Kirkpatrick beat her with a pool cue, r*ped her, tied her up with zip ties and then slit her throat with a kitchen knife.
On October 28th, 2012, Derrick discovered his wife’s wounded body after returning home from a 24 hours long shift.
Kim’s lifeless body was lying on the pair’s bedroom floor. Undoubtedly, his world shattered when he saw his beloved wife and the mother of his innocent children in that state.
Derrick’s agony and misery multiplied tenfold when he got to know that the man who did this to Kim was someone he and his wife knew very well.
He was not a stranger who ended up killing Kim while trying to rob the house. Kirkpatrick, Kim’s abuser and murderer, worked for Derrick’s construction business.
Furthermore, he even stayed in the Dorsey family’s home for a brief time period when he was trying to get back up on his feet.
During the Kim Dorsey murder case trial, Derrick highlighted the fact that Kirkpatrick was someone whom he trusted. He treated him like a family member and had Thanksgiving dinners with him for three years in a row.
Before the authorities alerted Derrick about arresting Kirkpatrick, his naive self would have never suspected him to be the criminal.
At one point in the investigation, Derrick stated that Kirkpatrick, also known as LJ, would have taken a bullet for Kim.
Sadly, the world came crashing down on him when the details of the Kim Dorsey murder came to light.
The authorities charged and arrested Lance Eugene Kirkpatrick when they found his DNA inside the victim’s body.
Surprisingly, the perpetrator accepted killing Kim but blatantly said that it was an accident.
His lawyers defended him by saying that their client broke into the house because he wanted to steal something from the house to pay off a drug debt and killed Dorsey when she saw him.
Despite the prosecutor’s repeated emphasis, the jury did not believe in this being Kim’s cause of death.
During the trial, Derrick Dorsey acknowledged cheating on Kim Dorsey with multiple women and said that Kirkpatrick helped set him up with some of those women.
Lance Eugene Kirkpatrick stated that he was having an affair with the deceased Kim Dorsey, and the fight that led to her death began when Kim found out about his role in helping Derrick Dorsey meet and sleep with other women.
The prosecutors rejected the idea of a consensual relationship between the criminal and the victim.
Irrespective of all those claims, the jury accused Kirkpatrick of robbing the Dorsey family’s house. After going through the jury’s final decision, Judge Hulsey imposed three separate life sentences on the defendant for murder, r*pe and robbery.
Where is Derrick Dorsey now?
Dorsey still resides in the house where his beloved wife was killed, but he personally tore down and rebuilt the bedroom where his wife’s lifeless body was found to get rid of all the blood and bad memories.
Unfortunately, even after so many years, their house is still known as the ‘murder house’ because of what happened.
Since Kirkpatrick stayed in the same house where he murdered Kim, Derrick, Kim’s husband, still receives mail addressed to him.
The mails remind Derrick of all that happened to his wife.
Since then, Derrick Dorsey has retired from Jacksonville Fire and Rescue and now runs New Hope Family Services with his new wife.
They offer mental health services including grief counseling and therapy. He says he feels it’s his responsibility to help others going through tragedies.
“Mental health is fractured. It is taken for granted. There is a stigma to it. I have no problem telling people my story and telling them don’t try to do it by yourself because you are just fooling yourself.”
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