Felita Bailey let the shower melt away the sweat and grease from her long shift on the packing line at Tyson Foods. The beef plant could be an assault on the senses. Cows are slaughtered in-house, then processed, pre-cooked, and packaged before being loaded onto trucks.
She was lucky to get a job at the end of the line, away from the worst of the gore. Her grandmother and namesake, Felita Jovon Bailey, had been a presence at the Amarillo plant for decades; her recommendation was 24-karat. The younger Felita didn’t intend to be at Tyson’s long-term like so many family members. She’d collect a few more paychecks and finish her dental hygienist certification. Then she planned to head back to Dallas, where her mom, Odessa Bailey, lived.
In the meantime, she’d stay with her grandmother and save as much as possible. Still, the stale sweetness of the meat and oil that soaked into her work shirt took getting used to. Felita wanted to break out of her routine and have fun that night. So she let the day’s work wash down the drain.
It was the end of August 2024, the Friday of Labor Day weekend. And her cousin Demajiae Bibles was turning 27.
They’d agreed to skip their normal post-work “Martin” reruns and movie marathons to go out drinking. Demajiae arrived as Felita finished getting ready, leaning on her tiptoes to apply her eyeliner in the mirror. She picked out a black and white dress and coordinated her makeup.
By 10 p.m., they headed to Mulligan’s Sports Bar, not far from downtown Amarillo. Afterwards, they met up with Kanye Bailey and two more cousins, and barhopped on Polk Street, where dives and nightclubs offer a respite from the tedium of Yellow City.
Less than 200 feet down the strip, over speakers blaring 2010-era party anthems, another group of friends gathered at Bodegas. At the center was La’Toi Johnson, whose notoriety had followed him from his days as a varsity cornerback for the Tascosa High School Rebels (yes, that type of rebel).
There, too, was Dylan Zane Black, a white friend of La’Toi’s, better known to many as DZ. And the Marrero brothers, who’d offered their house on Avondale Street for an afterparty.
Unlike La’Toi and Dylan, Felita was an outsider. She was more of a Dallas suburbanite, despite family roots in the Panhandle. Beyond the bars, Felita couldn’t see the faultlines. Or the lingering effects of a time when Black folks, especially Black women, weren’t welcome after dark.
By sunrise, Felita was dead. She was shot in the back. And Dylan was the primary suspect.
Police found video evidence of Dylan holding a gun and talking about shooting someone, according to a criminal complaint filed in district court and obtained by The Barbed Wire. Police also found the gun, and wrote in the complaint that it matched the four shell casings found at the scene. The police complaint alleged that Dylan lied to officers.
Yet, two days later, the murder charge was dropped. An assistant district attorney cited insufficient evidence. By March, Dylan was officially cleared of all suspicion. The Amarillo Police Department’s new target in the case is a Black man, a relative who none of the 15 people interviewed for this story — including family members and eight witnesses at the party — ever brought up as a suspect before his arrest.
“In Amarillo, Black women die and no one bats an eyelash. And Dylan Black is getting away with killing my daughter because he’s white and has connections through his family on the inside,” Odessa, Felita’s mother, told The Barbed Wire. “It’s as simple as that.”
***
In early November, sources began to tell The Barbed Wire about Felita and her family’s concerns about the investigation into her death. Buzz on the case had made its way to Dallas, where Odessa kept a drum beat of calls for justice. She and other family members were (and remain) infuriated by Dylan’s release from jail, and suspicious of the police department and prosecutor’s office.
The Barbed Wire spent more than six months with Felita’s family, and with witnesses in Amarillo. Reporters made multiple requests for public records. Most records received contain little in the way of explanation for why evidence presented in the criminal complaint against Dylan would result in the dismissal of the charge for insufficient evidence.
Police have refused to provide investigative records, and provided a statement when asked about allegations from the family:
“We are aware of the concerns raised by the Bailey family, and we understand the grief they are experiencing during this difficult time.”
“As we’ve shared in previous responses, the Amarillo Police Department conducted a thorough investigation into this case and has presented the findings to the District Attorney’s Office for further review and consideration. Barring any new information or developments, our role in the investigation is concluded”.
“We are aware of the concerns and allegations being circulated publicly. While we understand the emotion surrounding this case, we categorically deny any suggestion of bias, misconduct, or impropriety by members of this department. APD investigates all cases—regardless of the race, background, or connections of those involved—with professionalism, fairness, and integrity.”
“As the matter is now in the hands of the District Attorney, and in keeping with our responsibility to protect the integrity of the process and those involved, we will not be providing additional public comment or further responses to questions on this case.”
Dylan and his family declined to comment on this story. La’Toi’s attorney did not respond to inquiries.
The Barbed Wire reconstructed other pieces of this story from hospital records and an autopsy report, copies of which were provided by the family.
In an interview with the head of Amarillo’s homicide unit this spring, The Barbed Wire asked repeatedly for clarity on who killed Felita, and on the evidence uncovered in the investigation. The officer’s response was blunt: “You’re welcome to come up to the trial.”
***
After last call at the downtown club where they’d been drinking with their cousins, Felita and Demajiae stopped at the Toot ‘n Totum convenience store for snacks before heading back to their grandmother’s house. Felita’s phone buzzed with a text and an open Facebook invite to the party on Avondale Street. As they debated whether or not to go, another customer overheard and said they were on their way to the same party.
Felita and Demajiae didn’t know either of the Cuban brothers who lived at the modest ranch home encircled by cars by the time they arrived. Kanye was already in the kitchen. As she leaned against the counter to talk with her younger cousin, La’Toi approached, getting up close to her.
Josue Marrero had asked La’Toi to help kick out the 40 or so people who’d shown up, according to court records. The Marreros did not respond when a reporter visited the house, and have not responded to subsequent attempts to reach them for comment.
La’Toi had started confronting people in the kitchen, witnesses told The Barbed Wire, when he turned his attention to Felita. He blocked her path as he told others to leave. He said that she could stay, according to witnesses.
Felita bristled at the encroachment, according to Demajiae, who described La’Toi’s actions as harassing. Demajiae said he could tell it was time to leave, and walked with Felita towards the door. La’Toi followed, Demajiae said. Within moments a fight broke out.
In a Snapchat video obtained by The Barbed Wire, Demajiae can be seen in a corner, positioning his body between Felita and a growing crowd bashing bottles, lamps, and tabletop decor. Kanye looks on from the side, leaving the frame with a bottle of tequila before Demajiae walks in front of the camera, away from the brawl, blood trickling from a gash on his forehead.
A figure in a black New York Yankees hat, Chicago Bulls hoodie, and a ski mask pulled over his face skulks behind the fight in the footage. This was Dylan, witnesses later confirmed.
The motion-activated Ring doorbell camera of the Marrero house also caught bits of the fight, according to the criminal complaint against Dylan. On it is Dylan with the butt of a gun sticking out of his waistband. “His right hand is on it the entire time in the Ring video,” according to the complaint. “He says something about shooting someone.”
La’Toi told police he was assaulted after confronting people about leaving the party, and that he was dragged outside where the assault continued. Demajiae also said the fight continued, briefly, in the front yard before he crossed the street to his car. As his vision recalibrated, he realized Felita wasn’t with him.
There were flashes. Gunshots. Then screams.
Demajiae said he saw Felita being dragged by her cousins to their car, then got in his own sedan and drove himself to the hospital about four miles west, past I-40. On the street, Felita’s blood was fresh enough to hold a shine in his headlights.
***
The scars of racism and anti-Black policing go way back in the Bailey family tree to the enslavement of ancestors. They’re picked open by every new generation’s encounters with its modern incarnations.
Felita’s mom, Odessa, recounted memories of being strangled by a police officer in the 1990s after a fight with a group of girls at Palo Duro High School. She said she was handcuffed and then lifted in the air by her throat. Her sister, La’Ronda, tried to get the officer to let her sister down — only to be warned to step back.
Odessa’s brother Christopher was shot when police fired seven rounds outside a club after they said a burglary suspect shot at them. A bullet hit Christopher, a bystander, in the buttocks. Doctors determined it was safer to leave the bullet in place, according to the Amarillo Globe News, which meant it was impossible to tell whether it was fired by police or the suspect. A grand jury cleared the officers of wrongdoing, and according to the Globe News report, finding that even if officers fired the bullet that hit Christopher they were acting in self-defense. Christopher was 18 (not 28, as the newspaper reported).
Historically, racism in Amarillo was tied to the prominence of Klan No. 141, which worked through infiltration of the upper ranks of the Amarillo Daily News in the 1920s to repair the Ku Klux Klan’s image and promote politicians such as Earle Bradford Mayfield. At the time, the county sheriff and county attorney were also Klansmen.
In 1921, Klan knights proudly marched up Polk Street. The sheriff and chief of police handled crowd control “during the parade,” the Daily News wrote, which ended without violence.
Two years later, a Black railroad worker was whipped, tarred, and feathered by masked men. Six Klansmen were charged with “white capping” or vigilante threats — a rarity that exposed the Klan’s brutality. Before he could testify, the worker said the sheriff drove him to a ravine where white-hooded men warned him to leave town. He stayed and a jury convicted the Klansmen.
Afterward, Klan membership declined.
Members of the Amarillo Klan resurfaced in 2006 to protest immigration, but have kept out of the public eye since.
More recently, to families like the Baileys, racism in Amarillo has been reflected in unsolved murders of Black women.
In 1997, Linda Jackson was found dead after being hit by a car. Gloria Covington was found after being stabbed to death in the same year.
In 2000, Shamika Scott was found dead at the Wagon Wheel Motel. In 2008, Crystal Booker was found dead by a man walking his dog.
Their cases remain cold.
***
Demajiae asked for Felita after walking through the sliding doors of Northwest Texas Hospital’s emergency room. He didn’t see her, and he didn’t get a response. Instead, he said later, he was met by police and taken to a backroom where he continued to shout: “Where’s Felita?”
Yards away at the ambulance bay, Felita was unresponsive and gasping for air as nurses pulled her out of her cousin’s car and onto a stretcher, according to hospital records. Minutes later she had no pulse. Emergency room staff performed CPR, gave her oxygen, epinephrine, bicarbonate, a chest tube and blood transfusions. Still no pulse.
Over on the north side of town, a phone call awoke LaRonda Bailey, Demajiae’s mother. She pulled into the parking lot of the hospital a little before 4 a.m. Anxiety hung in the air as she was joined by Felita’s grandmother, father, and aunts.
Medical staff told them that Felita was stable and waiting for the doctor. Demajiae was told the same, but not why he was being held in a locked room away from his family.
“I had to get 15 staples in my head. My jaw was broken. Just blood everywhere, and it’s all my blood,” Demajiae told The Barbed Wire. “They had my family waiting in the waiting room as well for three hours, telling us that she’s stable the whole time.”
The family settled into the visitors lobby across from the Johnsons who were there in support of La’Toi, who’d been shot in the leg. The Baileys knew the Johnsons — but not Dylan, who joined shortly after.
He had on a similar hat, pants, and shoes to the ones he was seen wearing at the party, minus the hoodie and ski mask. Dylan told an Amarillo Police Department officer who was collecting statements that he hadn’t been at the party, that he’d gotten a call about La’Toi being shot and had come straight to the hospital.
“He stood out because there’s two Black families here, and there’s one white boy amongst the other Black family,” LaRonda said.
His closeness with the Johnsons didn’t sit well with LaRonda. At one point, she said, she and Felita Sr. overheard Dylan refer to a woman with the Johnsons as “mom,” furthering their confusion over his relationship with the family.
“They’re buddied up with Dylan, who’s buddied up with the cops, and I’m like, What is the deal with this kid?” LaRonda remembered thinking. “I’m like, What is it about him?”
Around 6:50 a.m., Sgt. Cole Thurman pulled the Bailey family aside to break the news: Felita was dead. Hospital staff recorded her death three hours earlier.
LaRonda was in shock — Why had they assured her Felita was fine? — and asked if the family could see her. However, Thurman said Felita’s body was already being taken to the mortuary.
“Shortly after — like, not even five minutes — he came and said, ‘I need y’alls help,’” LaRonda told The Barbed Wire. “And I’m like, are you serious? You just came and told us that she’s gone, and you want [us] to talk to you?”
What Thurman said next was one of her most vivid memories of the night: “At the height of tragedy, the truth comes out.”
“That means that was the truth that night,” LaRonda said later in an interview. “Sure enough, he told me the story gonna be different tomorrow.”
“When the sun comes up, the story will be different. And I’ll be doggone.”
***
Black parents in Amarillo still bring up Dorien Thomas as a cautionary tale. The nine-year–old was last seen riding his bike around sunset in 1998. “If it’s after six and you’re Black, you better not be in South Amarillo,” is the warning passed down through generations of Black families in the county, including the Baileys.
Potter County and its more than 900 acres of High Plains — where Amarillo serves as the seat — is one of dozens of known or suspected “sundown towns” in Texas. The Panhandle is dotted with them, according to a database maintained by Tougaloo College.
Heather O’Connell, a sociology professor at Louisiana State University who specializes in race, spatial demography, and social stratification, has studied the phenomenon of sundown towns extensively.
“These are places that established either formal or informal laws about who is allowed to be in those places. And typically that was based on ideas about race,” O’Connell told The Barbed Wire.
“So, exclusionary — usually with violent means, either through threats or realized physical violence — to maintain a large-scale level of segregation. And that didn’t always happen throughout the day. That’s how they get their name ‘sundown towns.’”
Today, “sundown towns” are understood as a reaction to migration away from the South and slavery. But they were also tied to labor. Black people often were allowed to work in segregated areas during the day — a necessity for local economies — then signaled to leave by dark, O’Connell said.
Potter County was formed in 1876. Per the 1880 Census, only two of the 28 residents were Black. For years, the wife of Amarillo’s mayor was the only female resident on record. All were outnumbered by cattle.
Farming was the dominant economic activity in the Panhandle throughout the 1900s, with sharecropping common among Black residents. Black cowhands also played a significant role in the cattle industry. Though dangerous, cattle driving was more profitable than sharecropping.
The discovery of a gas field northwest of Amarillo in 1918 — the largest in the world — changed the local economy forever. Like heads of cattle or acres of ranchland, oil and mineral ownership became common among the very wealthy in the Panhandle.
Then in the ‘60s and ‘70s, beef processing exploded in Amarillo. IBP (acquired by Tyson in 2001) built one of the country’s largest slaughter houses in 1973. The beef plant is still one of the city’s largest employers, behind a federal nuclear service facility and the local school district.
Though the plant has historically provided jobs for Black and immigrant workers, they’re often perilous, and plagued by racist practices. In 2011, Caviness Beef Packers in Amarillo agreed to pay $600,000 in back wages to settle with the U.S. Department of Labor, which found it had discriminated against job applicants based on race and gender.
***
Felita was pronounced dead at 3:53 a.m. on Aug. 31 — minutes after her family arrived at the emergency room.
An autopsy found much of her body was unremarkable. Her fingernails were long and clean with pink acrylic tips. Her toes were neat and painted white. She wore a gold anklet and a nose ring with a white stone.
Her organs and tissue were normal for a 25-year-old — except for the bullet wound from her back through her right shoulder that had perforated her lung and fractured her clavicle. The space between her lung and chest wall had filled with blood, causing her death.
A form authorizing the hospital to release Felita’s body to the mortuary was signed a little before 6:30 a.m. On a signature line labeled “next of kin” appears to be the signatures of two nurses. Under it, on a line for “witness,” is a printed name: “Felita Bailey – Grandmother.”
Except, Felita Sr. maintains that she never signed it, nor witnessed anyone else signing it, and for three hours, she had never left the waiting room lobby.
The Bailey family believes someone forged the form. When reached by phone, hospital administrators said they weren’t sure how to trace who signed it, and didn’t recognize the name of the attending physician, who was unable to be contacted for comment. The hospital responded with a statement when contacted by The Barbed Wire:
“Northwest Texas Healthcare System offers its deepest condolences and sympathies to the family as a result of this tragic event. Due to patient privacy laws and hospital policy respecting the privacy rights of its patients, we cannot provide any specific information about the care and treatment provided during this encounter. All efforts were made by the clinical team in the Emergency Department, but they were not able to save the patient’s life.”
LaRonda, Felita’s aunt, said they never had the chance to tell the hospital where to send her body, let alone see her.
“They sent her off to some funeral home [where] we didn’t know the people. They finally told us the name of the funeral home, and that’s when we went like, ‘Hey, who are you? What do you have? We’re on our way to come see her,’ and they’re like, ‘No, don’t come up here. We can’t, can’t let y’all see her,’” LaRonda said.
As Sgt. Thurman notified the family of Felita’s death, other Amarillo Police Department officers were at the scene at Avondale Street, where they found only a few remaining witnesses and four spent cartridge casings from a 9mm handgun.
***
The next day, Sept. 1, Amarillo police officers knocked on the door of a home in the nearby suburb of Bushland. Laura Savage, Dylan Black’s mother, answered and allowed officers to search her house.
Through his attorney, Dylan declined to comment for this story. Laura Savage also declined to comment when reached by phone.
At their home in Bushland, officers found a hat similar to the one Dylan was wearing in video taken at the party, and three 9mm handguns. Dylan agreed to go to the police station for an interview with Thurman and Sgt. Adrian Hernandez. Over the course of several hours, he provided details that Hernandez wrote in a criminal complaint were later “proven to be false.”
“He lied about what he wore several times until confronted with the video evidence,” Hernandez wrote.
“He lied about having a gun until he was confronted with the video evidence.”
Dylan said a friend named “Dax” gave him a grey and black Taurus handgun to hold onto, then asked for it back shortly before shots were fired. However, no one at the party identified or even mentioned someone named “Dax,” Hernandez wrote.
Dylan said he was next to La’Toi when he heard gunshots, then helped La’Toi into a car. Except, La’Toi didn’t mention Dylan in his account to police.
Dylan changed his story several times: He said there could have been two shooters. He said he couldn’t provide a description of them. He said it could have been a Black man with dreads. He said he waited in his friend’s car after the shooting, until they went to the hospital. He said the clothes he changed into had been under his original clothes. He said he left the other clothes in his friend’s car.
However, after SWAT officers located the friend, she told Hernandez that she took Dylan to another house — which Hernandez confirmed through a location-tracking app on her phone — and when Dylan came out he was wearing different clothes. At the house, a witness referenced as E.A. in the criminal complaint said Dylan came over around 4:30 a.m. Dylan asked to borrow a shirt and asked E.A. to hold onto a silver and black Taurus handgun. E.A. said there was one unspent casing in the chamber, which he took out and put into the magazine, then said he placed the gun under a drawer. Inside the house, officers found a backpack with the Chicago Bulls hoodie. They found the gun outside. E.A. had dropped it out a window when the officers arrived.
When the officers presented Dylan with the gun, he identified it as the one given to him by “Dax.” To Hernandez, that proved Dylan’s “story about obtaining and giving the gun to ‘Dax’ was false.”
Sgt. Thurman, who’d notified the family of Felita’s death, fired the gun found at E.A.’s house and the three guns found at Dylan’s house to test their functionality, and entered them and the cartridge casings found at the scene into the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN). Over Labor Day weekend, an Amarillo police officer asked the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which runs the ballistics network, to compare the casings.
“The casings from the Taurus matched the casings found at the scene,” the criminal complaint reads. “This showed the only four casings found at the scene (S Avondale) were fired by the gun that Dylan gave to E.A. to hide for him. The shots fired resulted in a fatal injury to Felita and a non-fatal injury to La’Toi.”
Police obtained a warrant for murder, and Dylan was arrested on Sept. 2, less than three days after the shooting. He was booked by the Potter County Sheriff’s Office and held with a recommended bond of $500,000.
***
After learning of her daughter’s death, Odessa made the trip from Dallas to Amarillo. She unpacked at her mother’s house, where school photos hang on the walls between well-worn furniture, Dallas Cowboys merchandise and religious ornaments. Family, God, and the Cowboys: a typical working-class Texan household.
On Sept. 5, Odessa finally saw Felita’s body.
At the same time, unbeknownst to the Bailey family, Potter County Assistant District Attorney Meredith Pinkham signed a motion to dismiss the charges against Dylan, citing insufficient evidence. Pinkham did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Barbed Wire.
The next day, the Amarillo Police Department issued a press release: “Due to newly developed evidence and information, it was discovered that there will be a second shooter involved in the Avondale homicide from earlier this week,” it said. “Dylan Black who was arrested on 09/01/2024, remains a suspect in this incident, but the decision has been made to drop current charges until further information and evidence has been reviewed.”
At her house, Felita Sr. channel surfed before settling on a news report: She watched Dylan on the screen, waiting for his ride home from the jail. He’d been released. When the ABC News 7 crew asked Dylan if he wanted to share his side of the story, he said “all I know is bullets passing by my head too,” then a deputy gave him a ride to his mom, the TV station reported.
Thirty minutes later, police knocked on Felita Sr.’s door.
Sgt. Thurman and Sgt. Hernandez were there to provide an update Odessa had requested. During the housecall, Odessa said Thurman apologized for not notifying her directly regarding Felita’s death. Then, she said, he stated with certainty that Dylan killed Felita and would face punishment for it.
“And he made a promise to us. And the way that other detective [Hernandez] looked at him,” she said, “…like maybe he said too much.”
It was the last time they said they spoke with Thurman.
The Amarillo Police Department denied a request to speak to individual officers, and did not answer questions on allegations from the Bailey family regarding their interactions with officers.
After the police left, Odessa went onto Facebook. “AMARILLO POLICE COULD POSSIBLY BE COVERING UP TO PROTECT WHITE BOY SHOOTER,” she wrote.
***
On Sept. 7, the TV in the living room blared a “Martin” rerun as Odessa folded laundry. She was interrupted by a knock at the door.
Odessa’s heart pounded as she spoke to the two Amarillo police officers on the other side about why Dylan was released. Sgt. Hernandez was there, this time with Lt. James Clements, the director of the homicide unit.
“And my mother, I asked her over and over and made sure, she said she never signed anything. She never identified my daughter,” Odessa told The Barbed Wire she said to the officers.
“Why would they do that? Forge my mother’s signature like that on the paperwork? And why did it take us so long to see my daughter’s body? It took five days for me to see my daughter.”
Clements did most of the talking, Odessa remembered. “Miss Bailey, look, we don’t owe you anything,” she recalled Clements saying. “We did our jobs.”
He explained that they could not be certain that Dylan murdered Felita and stated they were seeking out a second shooter, according to Odessa. Having given the update Odessa requested, they left.
The laundry went unfolded until the morning.
During the following month the police began corresponding with the family through Hernandez. In one interview with Hernandez, Felita Sr. said she mentioned overhearing Dylan in the hospital calling a white woman who was with La’Toi’s uncle “mom.” Hernandez cut in to correct her, Felita Sr. and Odessa remembered, stating that Dylan’s mother “does not date Black men.”
After a pause, the women recall Hernandez adding, “I know that family very well.”
***
Under felony murder, the charge brought against Dylan Black, the state doesn’t have to prove intent the way it would under capital murder. The Texas Penal Code states that a person commits murder if, while committing or attempting to commit another felony, they act in a way that’s dangerous to human life and that causes someone’s death.
“They don’t have to prove who shot her. And they’re acting like that’s the be-all, end-all of this case,” Ryan Brown, a civil rights attorney who previously worked with the Innocence Project, told The Barbed Wire. (Brown knew about Felita’s death, and had reviewed public records from the case, but was not involved with it when The Barbed Wire first interviewed him in January. He has since started representing another defendant in the criminal case.)
“[Dylan] pulled out a gun, someone shot, someone died. That’s a felony murder,” Brown said.
Per the charge brought against Dylan, the underlying felony was deadly conduct, discharge of a firearm. Meaning, the state doesn’t have to prove Dylan intended to kill Felita, only that he committed another dangerous criminal act — in this case, shooting a gun in the direction of an individual or individuals that caused Felita to die.
The same strategy was employed to convict Nahryah Hilesta Ines Hayes, a Black resident of Amarillo, of murder after driving the getaway car in a recent mass shooting on Polk Street. Britt Crinson Cave, who is white, was sitting in the backseat and was charged with public intoxication.
“When I saw that there was a video of Mr. Black at this house party with a gun, that he said he was going to shoot someone, that he had a mask over his face,” Brown said, “and the fact that he lied and said that he wasn’t there when he was, he was hiding something… All those things are plenty of evidence, I would think, to keep him for murder.”
“My initial thoughts when I saw that he was let out was that he knows someone in the police department, the DA’s office, has some other connection to the local government and power structure,” Brown said. “Or he’s a snitch.”
***
Dylan Black grew up in a different Amarillo than the one the Baileys inhabited — one with families more likely to own land, and industries built upon it, than to work it.
In 1999, Amarillo-based EnergyNet emerged as an online auction site for oil companies. “Like Ebay for Oilfields,” the company hired Jim Black in the early days as a director, before he later moved up to COO and CFO.
Jim Black’s niece, Laura Black, had Dylan in 2002. As a single mom, Laura began dating Brandon Savage. The two married in October 2008, and eventually, Dylan’s step-dad worked at EnergyNet, too.
Working with the Texas General Land Office — a partnership Dylan’s great uncle helped to establish in 2016 — EnergyNet auctions off government land for drilling rights. The arrangement has been a boon for both parties — the state’s most recent sale’s lease bonus totaled around $25 million, and over the years, EnergyNet’s revenue has almost doubled. An audit of EnergyNet from 2022 shows a revenue of more than $18 million.
But Dylan got to know local government officials through a different context.
In January 2020, Dylan used a rock to shatter the glass door of the U.S. Nails in Teckla Office Park. He and an accomplice proceeded to ransack the business, according to police records, making off with Louis Vuitton bags and a set of Gucci sunglasses still in their case. The two were arrested after fleeing from the police and hiding in a dumpster in a nearby alley. Dylan was still holding the rock used to shatter the glass pane and a latex glove. He received two years of deferred adjudication and a $3,500 fine.
By 2023, Dylan was wanted for violating his parole. He was listed as Amarillo Crime Stoppers’ “Fugitive of the Week” before he was arrested at the Holiday Inn Express where he worked and burglarized hotel rooms. According to the incident report, Sgt. Hernandez had requested to be contacted upon Dylan’s arrest. “Sgt. Hernandez asked me to take Dylans [sic] cell phone,” the arresting officer wrote in the incident report. “I requested the passcode to Dylans [sic] phone and advised him it was being taken for further investigation for a separate case.”
He served 12 days in jail.
***
On Sept. 9, Lt. Clements sat down in his office for an interview with ABC 7 News about Felita’s murder. He told the reporter that they were still waiting on ballistics.
“We want to make sure that we know what happened exactly on that scene 100% before we charge anybody with any kind of a charge. We want to be 100% accurate,” Clements said.
However, Dylan had been charged seven days prior and dismissed shortly after. The criminal complaint against him stated conclusively that the only shell casings found at the scene matched the gun Dylan was captured in video holding in his waistband at the party.
Clements told the reporter there were new leads, but it was an ongoing investigation and not much could be shared.
Odessa also gave an interview.
“I just refuse to let my daughter’s case go unsolved,” Odessa said through tears. “That’s just not going to happen. I’ll fight. I can’t even grieve because I have to fight. This my only child.”
***
After Felita’s death, her family started a GoFundMe page, and engaged with activists who took an interest in her case. Odessa had been active on Facebook previously — engaging in discussions on racism and violence circulating in the news sphere. On Sept. 30, she began sharing details of her own story.
“The police department nor the hospital notified me of my daughter’s death,” she said on a Facebook live video. “I pretty much found out through the news… When I asked why wasn’t myself or her father notified, detectives told me, as long as they told someone in that emergency room, it was fine. That they owe me nothing.”
“The police are not trying to help,” she continued. “The detectives didn’t even know my daughter’s name. They could not tell me anything about my daughter. Nothing. I showed them a picture of my daughter, they didn’t even know who she was. No detective contacted me, I had to contact APD myself, then they finally sent detectives about three or four days later, to speak with me about the death of my daughter.”
She added on the video: “I speak on these type things that happen, and I never in a million years thought this would happen to me. I’m asking people to stand with me to fight with me. If you love me you will because this my daughter.”
“Amarillo has a thing of unsolved murders when it comes to people that look like myself and my daughter, they sweep it under the rug,” she said.
Afterwards, Odessa reached out personally to witnesses, and was reportedly told that police had been frantic in their search of another potential suspect. One witness, who was an unrelated guest at the party, confirmed this.
“They had questioned me on my cousin cause he’s got priors,” the witness told The Barbed Wire, requesting anonymity due to fear of retaliation. “They were like, ‘Have you ever known your cousin to be violent or do something like this?’ And after that, they damn near harassed me about it. They were leaving messages on my phone trying to get me to come to the station. I was like, ‘I already told you everything I know.’”
“They trying to find any other Black person they can,” Demajiae said. “Because the thing is, he is the only white boy out of all these little dudes.”
Angie Betancourt, a friend who worked with Felita Sr. at Tyson’s, said that the community isn’t fooled.
“It breaks me because, how do you let something like that sink in? And just because this kid carries this big name … it doesn’t give him the right to kill her and it doesn’t give him the right to get away with it,” Betancourt told The Barbed Wire.
“I’m not God, I don’t pass judgement,” she continued. “But murder is murder. Somebody’s innocent life got taken so young. Somebody’s granddaughter that I cherish. And it pisses me off.”
In October, the Baileys held a protest outside the police station. They wore pins with Felita’s image and t-shirts with “Justice 4 Felita” displayed across the front.
Later that month, the family organized an event to mark what would have been Felita’s 26th birthday. Invitations were shared on Facebook and Instagram. There, again, they discussed getting justice for the woman they said lit up every room. Then they released purple balloons.
***
On Oct. 11, Demajiae sat in the lobby of the doctor’s office as “Titanic” played on the corner-mounted tube television. The more persistent effects of his injury had subsided significantly since the night he had sustained a concussion — the night that Felita died. The dehumanization of being detained alone in a hospital room with a bleeding head wound took longer to process.
He eventually was treated and given information from a victims’ advocate on steps to receiving victim’s compensation, including doctor visits. His initial application was approved, according to a letter from the state attorney general’s office reviewed by The Barbed Wire. This was his last required appointment. Bills were due and he needed the money after medical payments and time off from work left his finances drained.
“DeMaJay?” the nurse called. That’s not his name, but he was used to this by now. His examination went, for the most part, the same as every single preceding time. Once it was over, a relief washed over him.
His anxiety rose in the following weeks, though, as the victim’s compensation never came.
He finally received a response from the Amarillo Police Department: the compensation was denied due to “poor cooperation” on the night of the party. His heart pounded as he tried to make sense of the message, growing uneasy like tides in a storm. The appointments, the paperwork, none of it mattered, he thought. Compensation would’ve been withheld regardless.
By November, Demajiae lost his job and apartment. He moved in with family.
December came, and the Baileys stopped receiving updates from the police regarding the investigation. Following an activist’s post on Instagram featuring Potter County Assistant District Attorney Meredith Pinkham’s photo in crosshairs, and a directive to contact her office, Odessa received a call from Hernandez’s phone number. “Hello, Miss Bailey. This is Meredith Pinkham,” Odessa remembered the woman on the other line saying.
“Why are you calling me from Officer Hernandez’s phone?” Odessa recalls asking.
“That’s not important.”
Pinkham asked Odessa why she had been conferring with local organizers in Dallas.
She also asked for more information on any individuals assisting with shedding light on the case, and why Odessa was disclosing information on the case to other parties. Odessa said she responded with her own question — Why were the charges against Dylan dismissed? — only to receive the same answer given by the police: there’s not enough evidence.
Odessa said Pinkham continued, telling her that Dylan was one of the shooters, but they weren’t sure if his bullet was the fatal bullet.
Around 1 a.m. on Dec. 28, police responded to a fight outside MJ’s Saloon & Grill. Dylan was there, drunk, with a gun. Police said he argued with officers and refused to leave. He was charged with unlawfully bringing a gun into a bar.
Odessa shared a link to a local news story about the incident on Facebook. “HAD DYLAN BEEN A BLCK MAN WITH A GUN ARGUING WITH Amarillo Police Department HE WOULD BE DEAD BY NOW,” she wrote.
In February, Dylan was arrested again. He was charged with assault of a pregnant person. Police say he bit the arm of a 17-year-old girl that he knew was pregnant, according to an arrest report and criminal complaint.
“BEGGING Amarillo Police Department TO NOT WAIT UNTIL HE KKKILLS AGAIN,” Odessa wrote on Facebook.
Police reached back out in early March, according to Odessa. They asked about her nephew, Kanye. After refusing to support or validate suspicions expressed by police, she said she heard nothing from the department for about a week.
***
On March 13, a grand jury indicted Merron Kanye Bailey for felony murder of his cousin Felita.
He was arrested by U.S. Marshals in Dallas and transferred to Potter County Detention Center on a bail of $1 million — doubled from Dylan’s amount when he was arrested for the same charge in the same woman’s death seven months earlier. Police issued a statement to the press saying evidence obtained after Dylan’s arrest identified Kanye “as the armed suspect that fired the fatal round,” and that Dylan had been “eliminated” as a suspect. The grand jury testimony is sealed to the public; court records reviewed by The Barbed Wire in Kanye’s case contain no evidence behind the charge against him. Police have also declined to answer questions on evidence leading to the indictment.
Kanye has no criminal record. Witnesses who spoke with The Barbed Wire said Kanye has never owned a firearm, and that they’ve never seen him with a gun. What’s more, they said, he wasn’t involved in the fight with La’Toi and Demajiae.
When police arrested Kanye, The Barbed Wire had been reporting on Felita’s death for more than six months. In that time, no one who spoke with The Barbed Wire brought up Kanye as a suspect. Conversely, nearly everyone, including eight who attended the party, said they believed it was Dylan who killed her.
On March 17, shortly after Kanye’s arrest, Dylan was released from Potter County Detention Center, where he’d been booked on the charge of assaulting a pregnant person.
In the time since The Barbed Wire first interviewed Ryan Brown, the civil rights attorney, Brown agreed to represent Kanye. In late March, Brown submitted a motion to take over as counsel from the public defender Kanye was originally assigned. Kanye pleaded not guilty and agreed to waive an arraignment, according to court records.
At publication time, Kanye was still in jail, where he’d already served three months. A trial date had not been set, but Brown filed a motion to reduce Kanye’s bail. A hearing is set for July 24.
***
On April 25, Lt. Clements gave an interview to The Barbed Wire. Asked what evidence the department found against Kanye, Clements said he would not release a lot of information over the phone, “because, one, I don’t know who you are, and I know we’ve had a lot of controversy over this case from a lot of activists down in Dallas.”
“It’s not just one piece of evidence,” Clements said. “It’s a multitude of a lot of video, a lot of ballistics, a lot of witness information, a lot of different things, that’s come to that conclusion.”
When asked about the criminal complaint against Dylan that said all four bullet casings found at the scene matched the gun Dylan was seen in video holding at the party, Clements said “that’s a rumor that was started by the activist down in Dallas.”
When pressed about why it was in a public record, Clements said the information in the complaint was “incorrect.”
“Here’s the issue that happens. Whenever, whenever you’re out on a scene of a homicide, and that’s going to be any homicide, that you’re working, things change. Okay, you may go to a scene and you may develop evidence, and then later on, that evidence may develop something different, or things may change, or stories may change, or people lie to you, or you know evidence is always. Evidence is true and factual, but the times where that evidence brings different types of information to you,” he said.
“So just because a complaint is written out in the initial complaint doesn’t mean that things can’t change, or things, people lie to you, or things that misinformation that you’re given that’s not correct and it’s changed sometimes. So homicide investigation, of course, is a very fluid type, and it’s just unfortunately, sometimes we get misinformation or incorrect information and it has to be changed.”
Clements went on to say that only one of the four casings recovered at the scene was initially tested and matched the gun Dylan was seen holding, and that the other three casings were assumed to have matched but did not match. He later admitted that a gun matching the other three casings has not been recovered, nor has the bullet that killed Felita, nor a gun owned or possessed by Kanye.
When asked about the Ring camera video, Clements said: “I never heard [Dylan] say he’s going to shoot somebody.
TBW: “It says that here on the [complaint]. On the Ring camera, there was a recording of Dylan saying that he was going in to ‘shoot someone.’”
Clements: “You might send that when I redo that one, because Dylan Black is not going to be charged with murder.”
Clements then confirmed that Dylan did shoot a gun that night: “He fired a gun at the scene, but he did not cause the death of Felita Bailey.”
“Dylan Black was taken into custody due to the information that we previously had received that night, and he was charged with murder because it was first assumed that all four shell casings matched,” Clements added.
“Things change. New information is received. The information, once that’s received, we, the district attorney is not going to file on somebody, including he wouldn’t if you accidentally fired, not accidentally, but fired a gun at the scene. Do you want to go to jail for murder when we can’t prove that it was you? Now we have proof that there’s another shooter out on the scene, because there’s other shell casings that don’t match.”
When pressed on what informed the indictment against Kanye, Clements said: “Because he caused the death of Felita Bailey.”
TBW: “But there’s a reason for that though, that you think that. So we would love — the public would love — to hear that. The public would love to know.”
Clements: “The public would love to know a lot of things.”