Two men in Montgomery jail named persons of interest in Clarke County trucker’s murder

JACKSON, Ala. — Two men currently jailed in Montgomery are persons of interest in the murder of a 72-year-old trucker found shot to death near Jackson, Jackson Police Chief Jerry Taylor confirmed Thursday. Hikeem Edmond and Kylyn Taylor were already in the Montgomery County Detention Center on unrelated kidnapping and robbery charges, though authorities have not detailed those cases.

The victim, identified as Thearthor Dixon, was found shot beside his log truck near Walker Springs Road in the early morning hours of Jan. 28. An employee located Dixon and called 911. Investigators have said they believe robbery was the motive in the killing, and police believe the two men now being called persons of interest could also be linked to a robbery at a Clarke County convenience store on Dec. 31, 2020. The store where the suspected robbery occurred sits on Gainestown Road near Jackson. Kylyn Taylor is said to have an address on that road, and Edmond has a Bessemer address. Police have not publicly connected the two crimes, and investigators stress that the store robbery and the murder remain officially separate cases.

The discovery of Dixon’s body brought a swift and sobering response to this small Clarke County community, where a log truck on a rural road is a familiar sight. Logging is a backbone industry across south Alabama’s pine belt, and truckers like Dixon often begin their routes before dawn, hauling loads from timber landings to mills while most of the area is still asleep. That early-morning schedule is what put Dixon on Walker Springs Road in the dark, and it is also what made the discovery of his death so jarring for the residents who travel the same road every day.

Persons of Interest, Not Suspects

Chief Taylor’s announcement was careful in its language. Edmond and Kylyn Taylor are described as persons of interest — a term investigators use for individuals whose connection to a case they want to explore, but who have not been charged with the murder. Both men remain in the Montgomery County Detention Center on unrelated kidnapping and robbery charges, which means they are already in custody while detectives in Clarke County continue building their picture of what happened on Walker Springs Road. Persons of interest who are already jailed present investigators with a practical advantage: there is no flight risk, and detectives can follow up on leads, records and witness interviews at a deliberate pace.

That caution also reflects the realities of prosecuting a rural homicide. In a county like Clarke, where communities are small and connections run deep, investigators know that a premature identification can taint witness recollections and complicate a later trial. The distinction between “person of interest” and “charged suspect” matters enormously in the courtroom, and police here have been careful to preserve it. What authorities have publicly established is a set of possible links: an address associated with Kylyn Taylor on Gainestown Road, the same road where the convenience store that was robbed on New Year’s Eve sits, and a possible pattern of robbery-related crime that could tie the men to the area around Jackson.

The Bessemer address associated with Edmond points to the Birmingham metropolitan area, roughly 150 miles north of Clarke County, and the kidnapping and robbery charges that already hold the two men in Montgomery keep their alleged criminal activity spread across multiple jurisdictions. Detectives working rural murders routinely pull together records from every agency that has touched a person of interest — jail records, court filings, prior police reports — to map movements and associations. Whether any of that maps onto Dixon’s last hours is precisely what the Clarke County investigation is trying to establish.

The Night Dixon Died

What is known about Jan. 28 is grim in its simplicity. In the early morning hours, Thearthor Dixon was shot beside his log truck near Walker Springs Road, outside the city limits of Jackson, the county’s largest city and seat of government. The person who found him was an employee, not a passing motorist by chance — a detail that suggests Dixon’s work brought someone else to the same spot that morning, or that a scheduled meeting turned into a nightmare. The employee’s 911 call brought deputies from the Clarke County Sheriff’s Office and investigators from the Jackson Police Department to a dark, rural stretch of road, where they found the 72-year-old dead at his truck.

The robbery motive investigators have cited frames the case in a way that resonates across rural Alabama. Truckers carry cash, drive alone at odd hours, and stop in isolated places — conditions that criminals in other rural counties have exploited in similar crimes. A 72-year-old working a pre-dawn route speaks to the economics of the logging trade, where experienced drivers are valued and retirement ages run late. Within days of the discovery, word of the killing moved through the timber community, and any log truck driver in the region understood that one of their own had been killed at work.

The Dec. 31, 2020 convenience store robbery on Gainestown Road, though not officially connected to the murder, gives investigators a second thread to pull. Store robberies generate their own evidence — surveillance footage, register records, witness statements from clerks — and when a later violent crime occurs near the same location, detectives re-examine everything. The Gainestown Road corridor runs south and west of Jackson through a rural landscape of timber tracts, small farms and scattered homes, and it crosses the general area near Walker Springs Road. Whether the two cases share actors, or merely geography, remains an open question that police have explicitly declined to answer.

What Comes Next

For now, the case sits with Clarke County investigators, supported by the Jackson Police Department and, almost certainly, partners at the district attorney’s office and state investigative agencies. Murder cases built on circumstantial links to jailed persons of interest move slowly, and officials have given no timeline for charges. If the investigation does connect Edmond and Kylyn Taylor to Dixon’s death, the murder charge would be prosecuted in Clarke County, with the men transported from Montgomery custody to face the court here once warrants issue.

Residents with information about Dixon’s death — anyone who was on Walker Springs Road or Gainestown Road in the early hours of Jan. 28, or who recalls activity around the convenience store on Gainestown Road around the New Year’s Eve robbery — can provide tips to the Jackson Police Department or the Clarke County Sheriff’s Office, with anonymous options available through regional tip lines. In a rural county, the smallest details — a vehicle seen idling, a conversation remembered weeks later — have historically broken cases like this one. Nearly a year after the New Year’s Eve robbery and weeks after Dixon’s killing, investigators are counting on exactly that kind of community memory to close the distance between persons of interest and charges.

The victim’s name — Thearthor Dixon, 72, a trucker found beside his log truck — has become the marker by which this community measures the case. Until investigators are ready to say more, his death stands as a reminder of the risks that come with the pre-dawn work that keeps south Alabama’s timber economy moving, and of the patience a small county must exercise while a murder investigation runs its course.

A Rural Case in a Timber County

Clarke County is one of south Alabama’s most heavily forested counties, and the log trucks that roll through Jackson, Walker Springs, Gainestown and the county’s other rural crossings are a daily feature of life on its two-lane roads. Timber remains a pillar of the county’s economy, supporting landowners, logging crews, trucking companies and the wood-products mills scattered across the region. Drivers like Dixon occupy the connecting link in that chain, and they log long, solitary hours well before the rest of the workday begins. Residents here understand the rhythm of that trade — loaded trucks on the move at dawn, empty rigs returning through the afternoon — which is part of why the discovery of a trucker shot beside his rig struck the community as it did.

Investigating a homicide across a rural county brings its own set of challenges. Coverage areas are large, neighbors may have seen something without realizing its significance, and surveillance cameras are far sparser than they would be in a city. The Jackson Police Department, which serves the county seat, and the Clarke County Sheriff’s Office, which covers the unincorporated stretches where Dixon was found, typically combine resources on cases like this, and the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency can assist with forensic services. Weeks into the investigation, the work now looks less like an emergency response and more like a methodical accumulation of records, phone data and interviews.

The fact that both persons of interest are already behind bars on unrelated charges allows that methodical approach. There is no urgency of pursuit, no active danger to the public tied to the murder investigation, and no pressure to arrest before the evidence supports it. Prosecutors know that juries in rural Alabama expect a case built on solid connections — not assumptions based on addresses or associations — and investigators have given no indication of when, or whether, charges will follow. Until then, the department’s Thursday confirmation stands as a status update to a community still waiting for answers about a 72-year-old man who died at work in the dark beside his truck.