The Execution of Ronald Dale Yeatts

"The Last of Her Generation"

By Robert A. Waters

Seventy-year-old Ruby Meeks Dodson lived life on her own terms. She stayed alone, in her remote country home near Ringgold, Virginia. An avid reader and introvert, she retired after working many decades as a sales clerk at Belk-Leggett, a department store. Her husband, Alexander, had died five years earlier. She had no children and the local newspaper called her "the last of her generation." Her poodle, Benji, kept her company.

Although she was not one to join clubs or just call and chat, Ruby had a small circle of friends and relatives. Because of arthritis, she could barely walk so friends would often drive her to the grocery store or to run errands. According to the Danville Register and Bee, the teenagers at the "Ringgold Baptist Church sort of adopted Dodson. The Sunday before Dodson died, the group brought her a sunshine basket." The teens also regularly mowed her lawn.

Two middle-aged men, Charles Michael Vernon and Ronnie Dale Yeatts, lived vastly different lives than Ruby. They existed only for the next high. They'd both been arrested numerous times on charges including illegal drug possession, burglary, writing bad checks, and other such crimes. Yeatts had recently been accused of at least one rape, although he hadn't yet been charged.

September 23, 1989 was a typical day for the friends. Court documents state that they spent the morning drinking beer and smoking marijuana and crack cocaine. In the afternoon, Yeatts noticed their stash was quickly becoming depleted and asked Vernon if he knew anybody who had money.

Vernon never hesitated. He said he and his father had once installed a water filter for an old lady named Ruby. He noticed she paid them in cash. "She's got lots of money in her home," he said. 

They wasted no time driving there. During the trip, Vernon handed Yeatts a pocketknife with a three-inch blade. Pulling into Ruby's driveway, they raised the hood of Vernon's 1981 Plymouth. It took a few minutes, but Ruby hobbled outside.

Court documents describe what happened next: "Ms. Dodson 'stepped out' and asked what the two men wanted. Yeatts told her they were having car trouble and asked 'something about the phone.' Yeatts then requested a glass of water, and when Ms. Dodson brought it to him, he handed it to Vernon, who poured it out. Yeatts asked for another glass of water, and, as Ms. Dodson stepped inside to get it, Yeatts followed her into the house. Vernon also entered the house and went directly to the bedroom, where he 'assumed [Ms. Dodson] kept her money,' and began searching through drawers but found nothing."

As Vernon searched the bedroom, Yeatts guided Ruth into the kitchen. Vernon, who later  claimed he didn't know Yeatts had murdered the widow, grabbed Ruth's purse. After a short time, he and Yeatts left. Vernon told investigators that "when we got in the car, I noticed that there was blood on Ronnie. And I said, 'Did you kill her?' He said, 'She's dead. Don't worry about it.'"

For the two losers, it was a huge score--$1400 in cash. The thieves casually split the money, then threw away the purse and bloody knife. Vernon later said Yeatts told her he had to kill Ruby because she could identify him. 

In typical fashion, they immediately drove to the "projects" and spent all the money buying more drugs.

Jean Wright, a friend, discovered Ruby's body. The Bee and Register reported that "Wright had come over to give Dodson her mail that Saturday." After discovering her friend's bloody remains on the kitchen floor, Wright called police.

An autopsy established that Ruth had been stabbed 13 times and her throat cut.  

It didn't take cops long to figure out who committed the murder.

Yeatts (pictured) eventually confessed. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. Because Vernon testified against his cohort, he received a life sentence with the possibility of being released after twenty years.

On April 19, 1999, Yeatts received a cocktail of drugs and casually drifted off to his eternal sleep. It was certainly not as painful as the torture he inflicted on Ruby Meeks Dodson. 

Was justice served?

Career Burglar Taken Down in Overbrook

 Ashley Mundy

Machete-carrying Home Invader Shot

By Robert A. Waters

The weather in Overbrook, Kansas was mild on October 8, 2015, in the 40s that night. Shortly after midnight, Ashley Mundy lay asleep in her bedroom when she heard glass breaking. She later testified in court, saying, "Oh my gosh. There's someone in my house. Like, I could hear shuffling in the basement. I sat up listening. Then I jumped up and grabbed my phone and my gun."

Her four-year-old son, Braedyn, lay sleeping on the bed next to her.

Mundy owned a 9mm semiautomatic pistol. She loaded it and "went down the hallway to see if I could see anything. I got my gun ready to shoot and then saw a stranger walking from the dining room to the living room."

At first, he had his back to her and was fumbling with her home security system. She said she thought he was trying to disable it.

Then, about four feet away, he turned toward her. As soon as she saw his face, she fired. She knew she had hit him. "When I shot...blood's going everywhere [and] he threw his hands in the air," she testified. She yelled at the stranger to leave and "he ran screaming through my house. Once he was out of the house, I secured the door and called 9-1-1."

As Ashley waited, police and paramedics arrived. Overbrook Police chief Terry Hollingsworth testified that he "saw a male subject laying in the road and EMS was working on him." The wounded man, whom the chief recognized as Bruce Jolly (pictured), a forty-nine-year-old frequent visitor to the local courts, had wounds to his left wrist and abdomen.

Jolly had also called 9-1-1, reporting that he had been shot. He was transported to Stormont Vail Hospital and released two weeks later.

Jolly lived near Mundy, and police quickly obtained a search warrant for his home. Officers testified that they found large quantities of blood in the residence. "The safe had blood all over it," Investigator Bryan Johnson told the court. A bloody knife was also found in the safe.

The Osage County News reported that "Johnson testified that Mundy had told him the intruder was holding a red object when he was at her house and had a handled object his his waistband. The investigator said he collected a machete from Jolly's home, which matched the victim's description of the object in his waistband. He said a weed-eater that matched the description of Mundy's was also recovered from the Jolly's garage."

Investigators learned that Jolly had run home after being shot and attempted to hide the objects he was carrying. Then he ran out to the street and called for assistance.

Jolly was tried a year later and sentenced to four years and nine months in the state prison.

Before breaking into Mundy's home, he'd had numerous convictions for offenses such as aggravated burglary, narcotics possession, criminal possession of a firearm, criminal use of a financial card, 11 convictions for vehicle burglary, and others.

"I was there alone with my child," Ashley said. "My dad encouraged me to get a conceal and carry, and I just felt that was the right thing to do at that moment."

"[Jolly] had meth in his system," Ashley said. "At the time, everyone was like, how did he survive that? I think, at the time, the drugs were what allowed him to survive the shot because [the bullet] was a hollow tip."

Ashley said, "I think when something like this happens, you think the worst. I worry about Braedyn every day and with that situation, I can't imagine what he could have witnessed."

Ashley, who felt unable to continue living in her home, packed up and moved to a new place.

Armed Homeowner Saved Lives of Numerous Cops

Ambush Designed to Commit Mass Murder of Lawmen

By Robert A. Waters

NOTE: Had this massacre actually occurred, it would have made national and international headlines. Because it was stopped before it began, it received little coverage. 

The trailer in the backwoods of Dixie County, Florida was a haven for Wayne Pert (pictured above) and his long-time girlfriend, Kaye Murr. They used it to get away from the city, and as a hunting and fishing cabin. Jared Blohm, of U. S. Concealed Carry Association, wrote that "the two-track driveway to the mobile home stretches about 120 yards between fenced cow pastures, and the aluminum-sided, off-white trailer sits another 100 feet from the end of the lime-rock lane."

In the early morning of February 23, 2022, the couple began to stir. Ryder, their 55 pound blue heeler, suddenly made a beeline to the front door and began growling. Kaye cracked it open to let him out when she spotted a strange man inside the screen door on their porch. The man, dressed for somewhere north of Florida, wore thick gloves and a heavy army coat.

Kaye screamed.

Still wearing his shorts, Pert raced to the door. "Can I help you?" he asked the stranger.

The man said he'd run out of gas on the main highway and coasted to the trailer. Pert knew that was impossible. It was a quarter mile away. He saw the man's gold Chrysler Sebring convertible parked next to his own truck. "I didn't like the way he was acting, moving around or talking," Pert said. "And I didn't like his attire, the way he was dressed. Nothing added up with him."

Pert told the stranger to wait while he went back inside and dressed. He told Kaye to keep Ryder inside. As he dressed, Pert holstered his Taurus semiautomatic 9mm pistol. It contained six rounds in the magazine, but none in the chamber. He opened the front door again, and indicated that the man should step back, to give Pert some space.

As the stranger moved away, he turned back toward Pert. In a surprise move, the man pulled a handgun from beneath his coat and fired four quick shots at the homeowner. Blohm writes: "The stranger (later identified as Gregory Ryan Miedema) fired the handgun four times from barely out of arm's reach. He hit Pert twice: once in the left shoulder above his collarbone and once in the left wrist. Pert, who says time seemed to slip into slow motion around this point, fell forward--down the steps about 3 feet--and onto the concrete porch. The final two shots whizzed past his head."

Miedema calmly walked into the house. Seeing Kaye, he placed his gun against her face. Pert said, "I was just so afraid that he was fixing to pull that trigger when he had that pistol between her eyes." 

Still lying on the concrete, Pert rolled onto his back and drew his own weapon. Then he remembered there was no bullet in the chamber. But even with his shattered left hand, he racked a round into the barrel. 

Before Miedema had a chance to shoot Kaye, Ryder confronted the intruder. Growling and biting at his feet and ankles, the dog distracted him. Miedema looked down and aimed his gun at Ryder, giving Kaye the opportunity to escape. She ran into the bedroom. Locking the door, she grabbed a shotgun and began trying to load it.

Pert said, "I just emptied my gun right there. I wasn't going to stop until he fell." Hit five times in the back, Miedema collapsed onto the floor. He then attempted to stand up, but dropped his gun in the process. Pert climbed to his feet and staggered inside. With his own weapon out of ammunition, Pert picked up Miedema's gun and placed the barrel against the stranger's head. A final shot killed the intruder.

The bloody scene looked surreal. Moments before, Pert and Murr had been planning a fishing trip. Now they had barely survived a nightmare. Kaye called a nephew who lived close by and he called 9-1-1.

An ambulance transported Pert to Shands Hospital in Gainesville. Blohm wrote that "at the hospital, doctors discovered that the bones in Pert's left wrist were badly shattered and that the bullet that entered his left shoulder had lodged near his neck after hitting an artery and shattering his fifth vertebrae." 

Eventually, doctors decided to "leave both bullets in his body because they feared removing them would do additional damage."

A few hours earlier, at about 9:30 P.M., in nearby Taylor County, another nightmare had unfolded. Deputy Troy Anderson made a routine traffic stop of a Chrysler Sebring convertible. He called in the license tag number, then approached the vehicle. Suddenly, a barrage of gunshots rang out. Anderson went down, hit in the hand, jaw, and neck. He managed to notify dispatchers that he'd been shot. 

As lawmen from various agencies raced toward the scene, Taylor County Sheriff's Office released a "Florida Blue Alert," designed to apprise Floridians that a law enforcement officer had been shot. It was broadcast on cell phones, local television and radio stations, and the internet.

Neither Wayne Pert nor Kaye Murr had heard the alert.

The suspect, Gregory Miedema, was a registered sex offender from Lee County, Florida.  He had served a Federal sentence of six years for raping a 15-year-old girl. Now he had more warrants on him for several violent crimes. Cops knew he had nothing to lose. But after the shooting of Deputy Anderson, searchers lost track of their suspect.

Then they received the call they had been waiting for.

When lawmen from Dixie County, Taylor County, the Florida Highway Patrol, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement arrived at the Pert residence, they made a chilling find. 

On the hood of Miedema's car, hidden beneath a blue blanket, cops found the following weapons: three 9mm handguns; a 5.56X45 NATO handgun; a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun; a .30-30 lever-action rifle; a .22 rifle and dozens of rounds of ammunition. They also found two tactical vests, a leg holster and a wooden bat with metal spikes along with a machete.

An FDLE spokesperson stated that she believed Miedema had scouted out the Pert property earlier when the couple was not there. Law officers said he planned to hide there and set up an ambush of law enforcement personnel. 

With the fenced pastures, cops had one way in and one way out. It acted as a funnel and would have been easy for a sniper to kill anyone who came onto the property. Dixie County Sheriff Darby Butler told reporters that Miedema's "thought process was to kill and destroy innocent people and, fortunately, he did not succeed in that.

Pert and Murr survived the shooting, but not without consequences. Murr, suffering from PTSD, has been unable to return to work. "This was my safe haven," she said. "This is where nothing was supposed to happen. Now I can't even stay there. In a split second--I'm alive, thank God--but I lost where it was safe."

Pert is still recovering from his injuries. "The wounds, they heal, but the inside stuff takes a little longer," he said. "You lose trust in people."

Deputy Anderson's wounds are also slowly healing.

Ryder, the blue heeler, got a steak dinner after helping to subdue Miedema.

NOTE: Much of this information came from a story Jared Blohm wrote for USCCA. In addition to that wonderful article, I used numerous local newspapers to gain additional information. This amazing story never received coverage in major news outlets.

Burglar Shot Dead--His Accomplice was an Illegal Alien

See the News Conference by Manatee County, Florida Sheriff Rick Wells

"This is Florida. If you break into someone's home, you should expect to be shot."

Prosecutors recently filed murder charges against an illegal alien who broke into a Lakewood Ranch home near Bradenton, Florida. On December 26, 2024, Michel Soto-Mella, 39, and Jorge Nestevan Flores-Toledo, 27, allegedly used a crowbar-type instrument to pry open the window of a residence in the 6700 block of Hickory Hammock Circle at about 9:00 P.M.

Flores-Toledo, wearing a mask and gloves, entered the home first. Soto-Mello, also masked, began climbing through the broken window. 

The 57-year-old homeowner, who wished to remain anonymous, was alerted by a security system. After telling his wife to hide in the bedroom, he retrieved a 9mm semiautomatic handgun. Confronted by Flores-Toledo, the homeowner fired three shots. Flores-Toledo later died at Sarasota Memorial Hospital. Soto-Mella fled when the shots rang out, but was later tracked down by the Sheriff's Office K9 unit.

Flores-Toledo had been arrested in Illinois for residential burglary but was released on parole. At the time he died, the felon had an active arrest warrant.

Soto-Mella, originally from Chile, arrived in California several months ago and was granted a 90-day work visa. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that "he was supposed to return to his country in September but did not."

The homeowner was not charged with any crime.

Please check out the 8-minute video. Manatee County Sheriff Rick Wells describes the sequence of events that led to the shooting.