MOBILE COUNTY, Ala. — The call that came into the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday, Sept. 3, was unusual even by the standards of a department that works homicides regularly. A caretaker at Gethsemane Cemetery, at 2850 S. Shelton Beach Road, reported a body lying between two gravesites.
Deputies arrived to find 22-year-old Vanol Lucky — known to friends and family as “Babsco” and “VL” — dead of a gunshot wound among the headstones.
Nearly two weeks later, Sheriff Paul Burch has put a name to what investigators believe happened there, and it is not a robbery gone wrong or a dispute that escalated. It is, in the sheriff’s words, something colder.
“This is basically a murder-for-hire type case,” Burch said.
The man deputies want in connection with the killing, 22-year-old Deanta Kiesun Dubose, has not been found. He remains wanted on a murder charge, and the sheriff’s office has asked the public for help locating him.
What Deputies Found at the Cemetery
According to the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office, deputies responded to Gethsemane Cemetery after receiving a report of a deceased male found between two gravesites. The victim was located suffering from what the agency described as a fatal gunshot wound.
The cemetery sits on South Shelton Beach Road in the Prichard area, a corridor that runs north out of Mobile through some of the county’s most densely settled neighborhoods. It is not an isolated stretch of road. That a shooting could occur there, and that a body could lie undiscovered until a caretaker happened upon it, is part of what has unsettled people who live nearby.
Investigators interviewed witnesses in the days that followed. Through that work, the sheriff’s office said, Dubose was established as a suspect and is now wanted for Lucky’s murder.
Burch described the relationship between the two men in plain terms.
“He’s reportedly a longtime acquaintance of the victim,” the sheriff said.
A Mother’s Account
Lucky’s mother, Eva Kemp, learned what had happened from family members. Her description of that moment is unsparing.
“I just fell to the ground, like on my knees. I was just screaming,” Kemp said. “I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t talk. I was shaking.”
Kemp said her son was shot once, at close range, on the right side of his head. The detail matters to her because of what it suggests about the final moments.
“I don’t think he knew that was about to happen,” she said. “He would have never knew that was about to happen. If he knew somebody was just gonna sneak him and shoot him in his head like that, he wouldn’t have walked round there.”
The phrase “walked round there” is literal. Kemp said Dubose lives around the corner from her family, and that the two young men had once been friends. Her doorbell camera, she said, captured Lucky walking toward Dubose’s home on the day he died.
“He walked round there to smoke a blunt with him. They was getting high, smoking a blunt with him, talking to him,” Kemp said. “I know my son wasn’t perfect, but he wasn’t no bad kid either. I’ve been prayed for him and gave him to God a long time ago.”
Kemp said Dubose had recently been released from custody and that the two had reconnected.
“I don’t know why he out of jail, but they let him out,” she said. “So my son, thinking they was cool, you know, they was talking because when he got out of jail, my son was on the phone with him on FaceTime.”
She has also begun to fear for the rest of her family, and she has a message for the man deputies are looking for.
“You will be caught. You can’t run and hide forever,” Kemp said. “They’re gonna catch you, and justice will be served for my son.”
The Suspect’s Record
Dubose is not unknown to law enforcement, and the sheriff was blunt about it.
“He doesn’t need to be wandering around in society, especially our community,” Burch said.
Court records show Dubose pleaded guilty in September 2024 to attempted murder and first-degree robbery in connection with a 2023 shooting at a Quick Stop on Overlook Road. A judge sentenced him to 20 years in each case, to run concurrently, split to serve three years followed by five years of formal probation supervised by Mobile Community Corrections. He received credit for more than a year already spent in jail.
The practical effect of that structure is what has drawn attention. A 20-year sentence that is “split” commits the defendant to serve a defined portion — here, three years — with the balance suspended so long as the terms of probation are met. With jail credit applied, Dubose served roughly two years before release, and he was on probation at the time of the cemetery shooting.
“Those are very serious charges. They’re both violent offenses,” Burch said of the earlier convictions.
The sheriff has made no secret of where he lands on the policy question that follows.
“It’s controversial, but I’m a big believer in minimum mandatories,” Burch said.
What “Murder-for-Hire” Means Under Alabama Law
The sheriff’s characterization, if prosecutors adopt it, carries significant legal weight in Alabama.
Most intentional killings in the state are prosecuted as murder, a Class A felony. But Alabama law sets out a specific list of aggravating circumstances that elevate a murder to capital murder, the only offense in the state that carries a possible death sentence. One of those circumstances is a murder committed for money or other valuable consideration, or pursuant to a contract or for hire.
In other words, a killing that a jury finds was arranged and paid for is treated as a categorically different crime from one that grows out of an argument. The law also reaches the person who does the arranging. Someone who hires another to commit a murder can face the same capital exposure as the person who pulls the trigger.
No one other than Dubose has been publicly named in the case, and the sheriff’s office has not said whether investigators believe others were involved in arranging the shooting. The charge currently outstanding against Dubose is murder. What prosecutors ultimately present to a Mobile County grand jury may differ from the charge on the warrant, as it often does once an investigation is complete and forensic results are returned.
A Case That Lands in the Middle of a New County Effort
The timing places the case squarely within a debate Mobile County officials have been having all summer about violent defendants who cycle back through the system.
In July, Mobile County District Attorney Keith Blackwood and Presiding Circuit Judge Wesley Pipes announced the creation of a dedicated docket for repeat violent offenders, with the stated aim of moving those cases from arrest to trial within a single year and resolving probation revocations alongside the new charges rather than after them. Circuit Judge Vicki Davis was appointed to oversee it, and the first defendants began appearing on that docket this month.
Blackwood has framed the effort as a message.
“I think that sends a message to violent repeat offenders that we’re not playing around,” the district attorney said this week of the new docket. “We are gonna prosecute them to the fullest extent.”
Defense attorneys have questioned whether a specialized docket addresses the real bottleneck. Mobile attorney Will Alford, who represents a defendant on that docket, has pointed to the months-long waits for the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences to return DNA, toxicology and ballistics analysis — delays that a reassigned judge cannot shorten.
The Lucky case has not been assigned to that docket, and it cannot be until there is a defendant in custody to assign.
The Search Continues
The sheriff’s office has released a description of the man it is looking for. Dubose is described as a Black male, 5 feet 11 inches tall, weighing approximately 160 pounds, with tattoos on his neck and arms.
“If you have any information on Dubose’s whereabouts contact Mobile County Sheriff’s Office,” the agency said in a statement.
Anyone with information is asked to call the sheriff’s office at 251-574-8633. Tips can also be submitted anonymously through the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office website.
Investigators have not said whether they believe Dubose is still in the Mobile area. In cases where a suspect is named publicly and remains at large for an extended period, agencies routinely coordinate with neighboring jurisdictions and, where warranted, with federal fugitive task forces.
A Family Waiting
For Eva Kemp, the legal machinery is secondary to a simpler fact: her 22-year-old son walked around the corner on an ordinary afternoon and did not come home. She has spent the days since describing him to anyone who will listen — not as a case number, but as a young man who was not perfect and was not dangerous.
The investigation remains open. Dubose has not been convicted of any charge in connection with Lucky’s death and, as with any criminal defendant, is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.
South Alabama News will update this story as the investigation develops.