Aisha Dickson: Bangor’s Lost Baby
Aisha Mariah Dickson - The night of the murder
Three adults were in the house the night 8-month-old Aisha Dickson was beaten to death.
According to her mother, Sarah Johnson, this is what happened.
On Friday, January 6th, 1995, Sarah had been at school all morning while her baby was at home with her father DeShawn and her grandmother June in their apartment on Bald Mountain Drive in Bangor, Maine. After returning home from school, Sarah and her mother June took baby Aisha took a bus to the Airport Mall to buy a new television. At the time, Sarah noticed Aisha was fussy but brushed it off as hunger.
Later that afternoon at home, Sarah played with Aisha before giving her a bottle and putting her to bed upstairs for the night. Again, she took note of Aisha’s persistent fussiness. A friend and her young son came over while Aisha was sleeping, and they watched some TV together while her mother lay on the couch. DeShawn was upstairs playing video games. At some point, Aisha woke crying. To soothe her, Sarah gave her another bottle. Aisha usually held her own bottles, but this time she didn’t even grab for it. Sarah had to feed her the entire time. Before putting her back to bed, she put her in her walker, thinking it would comfort her. Once she stopped crying, Sarah put her back to bed, returned to the living room, and bid her friend goodbye. Around 9:30PM, she took a shower before locking up the apartment for the night. Her mother still reclined on the couch. Before turning in, Sarah checked on the baby.
Aisha’s crib was against the wall, and she was laying on her stomach. Sarah later said that the baby initially looked as though she was sleeping peacefully, but she momentarily realized that didn’t seem to be breathing (and had thrown up some formula). Sarah panicked and paced between the bedroom and bathroom until running downstairs to tell her mother something was wrong with Aisha and to use the phone to call 911. As the emergency operator told Sarah what to do, DeShawn gave Aisha CPR. When the EMTs arrived, they also tried to resuscitate her. A few minutes later, neighbors watched as the infant’s limp naked body was carried out to the waiting ambulance—she was still breathing. Aisha and Sarah were taken to St. Joseph Hospital, where the baby was pronounced dead an hour later.
Autopsy findings
Dr. Kristen Sweeney performed Aisha’s autopsy on Sunday. The baby’s body showed signs of blunt force injuries, and Dr. Sweeney ultimately determined the cause of death to be a blow to the head. And her postmortem examination revealed more than the damage done Friday night. The medical examiner discovered scars going back to when Aisha had been just two months old. While her most fatal injuries were fresh, she also showed signs of healing from past wounds. Nearly every major bone in her body had been broken at some point in her short life except for her spine.
Aisha, too, was severely underweight. She weighed 11 pounds at her death, but an average female 8-month-old baby should weigh 18 pounds. A typical baby is 11 pounds by their second month of life. Aisha’s weight was alarming.
This examination raised some questions: had the accumulating injuries Aisha had suffered caused a slow death over the last few weeks? Or did she die because of one particularly violent incident that Friday night?
Who were Aisha’s parents?
Sarah Johnson was 21 years old when she gave birth to Aisha. At the time of her daughter’s death, Sarah was attending the Penobscot Job Corps part time. Since 1964, it was a program for at-risk high schoolers and young adults to train for careers in technical fields such as healthcare, manufacturing, and hospitality. It was at Job Corps that Sarah met DeShawn Dickson, who was in the welding program. They moved in together, and when Aisha was a few months old they’d moved to the apartment on Bald Mountain Drive. Earlier that winter, Sarah’s mother June moved in with them. Before Aisha died, Sarah had been trying to go back to school full time at Job Corps after getting Aisha on their daycare waitlist.
Brian and Shirley Stormann, the adoptive grandparents
Brian and Shirley Stormann of Bangor had only known Aisha for the six weeks leading up to her death, but for that brief period they were a constant presence in her life.
Brian, who was 50 years old, taught Sarah at Job Corps. His wife, Shirley, was 45 years old, and they lived together in a 2-story single-family home in a well-kept neighborhood on the west side of Bangor. Shirley and Brian had raised her son, but by 1994, when they met Aisha, he was in his mid-20’s and was on his own. Brian and Shirley lived by themselves.
Brian had met Sarah in his classes and recognized her as a new and inexperienced mother. She seemed uncomfortable with Aisha. Brian shared his observations with Shirley and encouraged her to reach out to the new mom. Shirley was around kids all the time in her job as a kindergarten and first grade teacher at Downeast Elementary and was confident and capable with children. Shirley offered to help Sarah, and she accepted. Aisha stole their hearts, and Brian and Shirley took on symbolic roles as Aisha’s foster grandparents.
Shirley: “He came home one day and said, ‘I have this student at Job Corps. She’s a young mom. The dad is kinda questionable.’ Brian was not a fan of DeShawn’s... Had seen a few things with DeShawn pushing Sarah around in the hallways. I just really think that she could use some help... some support... parenting this baby. She had asked repeatedly, ‘Can I come over some time? Can I come over some time?’ So we eventually invited her over to dinner. And she pretty much spent the next three weeks with us, excluding sleeping time.”
Taking Sarah under their wings, the Stormanns would have her and her daughter over to their home a few times a week for dinner. They were concerned about Aisha and tried to help Sarah become a better mother.
Shirley: “She was an awkward mother. She didn’t have, what I would consider to be, that natural mothering, nurturing instinct. Once I met June, it answered a few questions. I don’t know if Sarah ever had a nurturing mother either.”
Aisha’s father, DeShawn, was opposed to Brian and Shirley’s involvement in their lives, and interacted with them as little as possible.
Shirley took Aisha to church with her on Sundays—a non-denominational church in Brewer.
Just weeks after they connected, Brian and Shirley had Aisha and her parents over for Christmas at their home.
The Stormanns start noticing problems
In that brief period of time, Shirley immediately noticed problems with Aisha’s development. She was not a normal healthy baby.
Any time that she was picked up, she would fuss—as though she was physically in pain—no matter who was carrying her.
Shirley: “I had concerns... She would cry really hard any time that you changed her position. Like if she was laying down and you picked her up. Obviously knowing what we know now... She hurt.”
Shirley got her a baby bouncer/walker and Aisha couldn’t make it move. She had no motor skills. Shirley later had baby twins that were bouncing all over her house at 6 months old.
They noticed injuries to Aisha and began writing them down. On December 18th, they wrote that she had bruises on her forearm and right cheekbone. On December 23rd, they noticed that Aisha had bruises the size of quarters on both sides of her head. Shirley thought it looked like someone had jammed her head between the bars of a crib.
Sarah told Shirley that her mother, June, was watching Aisha when these injuries happened. And June said that Aisha tipped her bouncer/walker over, hurting herself. But that didn’t sit make sense to Shirley: Aisha couldn’t even make the thing move, much less topple it.
Shirley believed that part of the explanation of Aisha’s delayed development was neglect. She was never given the stimulation to thrive and was left in her crib or car seat for hours and hours all alone.
Shirley noticed bruises on Sarah as well, and suspected that DeShawn was physically abusing her.
Shirley: “I’ve seen bruises on Sarah. [She’d say] ‘Oh, I bumped the door case,’ or ‘I fell,’ or ‘I tripped going downstairs.” And I asked her outright, ‘Is DeShawn hitting you? Is he abusing you?’ And she said, ‘No, no no.’ So yeah, I do believe she was [physically abused].”
Brian and Shirley sensed something disturbing was going on. They contacted child protective services, but were told by DHS that there was insufficient evidence to warrant action—so they kept watch, themselves, as best they could. We asked Shirley what DHS told her.
Shirley: “It was always the same thing. They’d take the call. They’d discuss it with a supervisor. The supervisor would make the decision if it was going to be investigated...”
Shirley: “Because I did it anonymously, I was always fearful that Sarah would figure it out and estrange me from her and the baby. To my knowledge that never happened, which led me to believe that DHS never investigated.”
Years afterward, Brian struggled with feelings of guilt that he didn't do more to protect Aisha. “I just wish I had taken her and run,” he said. “I should have just grabbed her and gone.”
1995, the January 5th incident
Thursday, January 5th, 1995, the day before Aisha’s death, Shirley made another entry in her log of injuries. Shirley spoke with Sarah on the phone that evening, and Sarah said that Aisha had blood in her mouth, but said it was nothing to worry about. “We think she’s fine.”
Shirley and Brian insisted, “We’re coming over.” Shirley told Sarah, “We’re going to the hospital.” Aisha was admitted at the ER and a pediatric doctor saw her. Sarah refused to let her into the room—Shirley speculates today that it was because she was worried what Sarah might say to the doctor. Sarah and Shirley both knew how serious a call from a doctor to child protective services would be for Aisha’s future. Sarah had bundled Aisha in two snow-suits which Shirley believed was to conceal how underweight she was. Sarah told the doctor that she believed that Aisha had cut the inside of her mouth with a rattle, but Shirley was skeptical—Aisha had limited mobility in her arms, how would she have been even holding a rattle.
We asked Shirley why she thought that Sarah would have put Aisha in two snow-suits.
Shirley: “Because, #1, I think she wanted her to weigh more. I don’t know if you’ve been to one of those pediatric clinic type places, but it’s just crazy busy. And I think that she was hoping that they wouldn’t take the time to totally undress her. If they saw bruises on the baby that were inexplicable, they would have to report, and that’s what she was trying to avoid... in my opinion.”
Shirley: “You know it’s the same reason that Sarah never let me change a diaper when she was [at the house] with the baby... EVER. I would say, ‘Oh my god, baby’s stinky! I’ll change her,’ and she would say ‘No,’ and take her to another room... Evidence of abuse that she didn’t want me to see.”
Shirley remembers the night of Aisha’s death
The Stormanns had no communication with Aisha’s family the next day until it was already too late.
Sarah called Shirley before she called 9-1-1.
Shirley: “She was very matter of fact. She said, ‘You know, we found the baby... I went to check the baby before I went to bed and the baby wasn’t breathing.’ And I’m like, ‘My god, Sarah! Have you called 9-1-1?’ ‘No.’ ‘You NEED to call 9-1-1.’ Then when she called me back she said, ‘The ambulance is going to come.’
Shirley: “I don’t know if she called me thinking I’d say... ‘I’ll come over...’ or ‘Don’t call...’ I don’t know what the purpose of that call was. That’s always puzzled me.”
Shirley rushed to the hospital before Aisha had died, and confronted Sarah. She asked, “Which one of you did it?”
Shirley: “[She responded] with her same rehearsed story that she always had. ‘We don’t know... we don’t know what happened... we didn’t do anything to her...’ And I told her that night, and I’ve told her any time I’ve had an opportunity since, ‘You’re lying. If you didn’t do it, you know who did.’”
DeShawn and June weren’t present—they were still at home.
When Shirley learned that Aisha was in critical condition, she called her pastor and asked him to come quick.
The doctor came into the waiting room and said, “We’ve done everything. She’s gone. Would you like to hold her?”
Shirley: “Sarah—to my knowledge—never shed a tear. And I remember thinking she was afraid... it was almost like it became more about her than the baby... like, ‘Oh my god, now what?’ It was just a feeling. And when the doctor came out and offered her an opportunity to be with the baby, or see the baby, she declined, and said, ‘Oh my god, gross! I don’t want to see her if she’s dead.’ My husband and I took the opportunity and went in. I went in and rocked her.”
Shirley said that there were police officers in the hallway. She told them, “They killed her,” and they replied, “We know.”
Announced as a homicide
On the Monday following Aisha’s death, Bangor PD held a press conference and declared her death a homicide. The autopsy, which was conducted Sunday, concluded she had died of a skull fracture and blunt force trauma.
Shirley: “Honestly, there was a little spot of relief because now that they’ve ruled it a murder, we’re gonna have a little justice here. I just hadn’t felt that there was a lot of support the last two days. I had asked a lot of questions of the police, and I was getting [a lot of answers]... and probably rightfully so, they’re not going to tell me every little thing they’re finding. But when I got news of the autopsy, I thought ‘Now there’ll be an arrest,’ but that never came. So that moment of relief didn’t last very long.”
The Bangor Daily News called the house, got Sarah on the phone, and were told, “What happened to my daughter is nobody’s business.” They spoke to June as well, and she said, “Police have no reason to arrest the baby’s parents because they weren’t responsible for their daughter’s death.” The language she used—the baby and the baby’s parents—was odd and distancing. June was talking about her own daughter and granddaughter.
Stormanns’ anger
After the funeral, Brian and Shirley were consumed with anger. Shirley took matters into her own hands, calling the Bangor Police constantly, speaking out in the community, and even putting up signs in Sarah’s neighborhood that read, “Baby killers live at 41 Bald Mountain Drive.”
When DHS director Nancy Carlson said of Aisha, “Unfortunately, we never heard of her. There were no referrals made to us,” Shirley was enraged. She had called DHS multiple times about Aisha. They told her that her information was insufficient for them to take action. Aisha was killed before DHS took the complaints seriously.
Shirley said that Brian’s whole world turned to darkness and he took a very different approach.
She said, “It really changed who I was.”
Police investigation
Police immediately suspected Sarah, June, and DeShawn in Aisha’s murder. The investigation’s contact with the three adults was limited and sporadic; they immediately each hired separate legal representation and were uncooperative with police. When contacted by journalists, Sarah said her daughter’s death was “nobody’s business,” and June maintained the baby’s parents weren’t responsible. Investigators also had to consider people outside the family who had contact with Aisha in the days before her death, but nothing immediately indicated that someone besides Aisha’s parents and grandmother were involved. A few months after her murder, Sarah and June moved back to June’s home country of Honduras. Though Sarah returned to Maine after a few weeks, June stayed.
Aisha wasn’t the first to die in Capehart
A little more than a year before Aisha’s death, Capehart was rocked by what happened to another child, 5-year-old Tavielle Kigas. She had been starved to death by her mother, Tonia Kigas Porter. Tonia had locked her young daughter in one room in their apartment for an entire month. Neighbors were particularly disturbed at this shocking episode of abuse—they’d passed by the apartment several times a day, completely unaware of the horror taking place just a few feet behind the locked door. Tonia was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity and sent to a mental health facility.
Shirley was a teacher at the school that Tavielle attended, and wondered how this shocking tragedy went undetected.
Shirley: “I think any time something like that happens, you go, ‘What did I miss? What did we miss as a community?’ That that little girl was in her apartment, but nobody knew! Assuming there’s a window in her bedroom, was she not able to open that window and cry out for help? A lot of it was wondering, ‘What did we miss?’”
When Aisha was killed, the community was again enraged and riddled with guilt. Abuse leading to the death of a child had happened under their noses all over again. One woman who lived close to Aisha’s family said, “We all vowed to pull together when Tavielle died, and a couple of months go by and we all forget. It’s time that we stop acting like hermits and pretending that nothing is going on.” She had promised herself that she would never let anything like that happen to the children who lived near her. “Maybe I should have gone over there. We all say that we’re going to pull together and help out young mothers and families who get stressed. People should have helped,” she said.
Eleven days after her death, a small group of people gathered at the community center to discuss how to deal with this second death of a neighborhood child. But not everyone believed that the community could make a difference. A guidance counselor at the Downeast School told the frustrated and tearful attendees that there was probably little they could’ve done to prevent the tragic deaths of Aisha or Tavielle. While they had to accept that they couldn’t prevent every tragedy, they dedicated a community action team to better identify children in their low-income area who might be at risk. The committee focused on visiting parents of newborn babies to offer a helping hand or an ear for new parents who might be struggling. Instead of coming in as an unyielding authority, they wanted to be seen as a welcoming community, people who could be trusted and asked for help in hard times. The residents of Old Capehart had seen the consequences of keeping an arm’s length.
Even official organizations began using Aisha’s name as a rallying cry for increased community funding. The Department of Health and Welfare brought up Aisha’s case as one that could have been prevented. “We had identified this as a high-risk family,” a director told the city council. Staff had visited the home until October 1994 (when she was five months old) but stopped “because the family had decided they didn’t need our services any longer.”
Shirley helped promote a gospel concert to raise funds for the Tavielle Kigas Scholarship fund just a few months before Aisha’s death. She had been a teacher at nearby Downeast Elementary, and the area’s children had a special place in her heart. She too expressed outrage at the crawling investigation and the horrors the abused child went through. Two years after Aisha’s murder she wrote,
“Her attackers were most likely a part of her world, people she should have been able to trust; who were supposed to love and protect her. Yet, instead of [that], she suffered at least six months of horrific physical abuse. Almost every bone in her body was broken. She suffered a skull fracture. At 8 months, she could not run and try to hide from her attackers. She could not tell anyone of the torture she endured. No one has ever been charged with her abuse and murder. Her parents have had two more children.”
Remembering Aisha
The Stormanns kept Aisha’s name alive within the community, visiting her little rosy gravestone and sending memorials on the anniversaries of her death to the local newspaper.
More than two decades have now passed since Aisha Dickson was killed. Brian and Shirley bought a bottle of champagne that they planned to open the day that the case was solved.
Shirley: “Still have it... Still have it. We bought that the day of her funeral, and said, when they solve this and arrest somebody and somebody’s in jail, we’ll pop it open. Still have it.”
We asked Shirley what she would say to Aisha’s killer.
Shirley: “I would probably say that they are very lucky that judgment and justice comes from God and not me. I truly hope that they burn in hell. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I’m not that one that gets to make that call.”
Shirley: “I would just hope that somebody someday before they leave this earth does the right thing. I wish that June had before she passed. I tried to encourage that. But I hope that someday—whether I live to see it or not—that somebody will do the right thing and there will be some kind of justice. I had said to the police, ‘Put them in separate rooms. [Tell one of them] she said you did it, etc.’ and he told me I watch too much TV. But I honestly don’t think that it was June because I could maybe understand Sarah covering for her mother, but DeShawn never would have. They did not have (from everything I was told) a very good relationship, and I think that if June had done it, and DeShawn thought he might take the fall for it, he would’ve given her up in a heartbeat.”
June, her grandmother, passed away in the early 2010’s. Sarah and DeShawn are no longer together. Sarah lives in Maine, and as of 2019, DeShawn was living in Texas. Shirley said she was last called about 4-5 years ago (2019) by a detective with the Bangor PD.
Aisha’s is one of three of Bangor’s unsolved murders. We reached out to the Bangor Police Department for comment, but they did not respond. They wouldn’t even give us the name of the detective assigned to the case. Even still, they are the custodians of this investigation.
If Aisha were alive today, she would be getting ready to turn 29 years old. But that life was stolen. It angers me that people don’t know her name. Please share this episode with other Mainers to bring more awareness to this unsolved case.
UPDATE: Since the release of this episode, the Bangor Police put out a press release on Aisha releasing the name of the detective, calling for tips, and replacing the old, fuzzy photo they had with the one scanned by Murder, She Told and shared on this blog. They also posted about her on Facebook for the first time in about 5 years.
If you have any information, please call the Bangor Police Department at 207-947-7382.
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Aisha Mariah Dickson
DeShawn Dickson, Sarah Johnson, Aisha Dickson
Brian Stormann, Shirley Stormann, Aisha Dickson
Brian and Shirley’s home on Manners Ave., Bangor, ME
Shirley Stormann, with Sarah Johnson’s son, Dylan
Brian Stormann, Shirley Stormann, and Sarah Johnson’s two surviving children (Monica and Dylan)
Sources For This Episode
Newspaper articles
Various articles from Bangor Daily News and the Portland Press Herald, here.
Written by various authors including Brooks W. Hamilton, Janet S. Duncan, Jason Wolfe, Susan Butler, John Silvernail, Linda Madsen, Beth Murphy, Maura MacDonald, Nok-Noi Ricker, Pamela R. Edwards, Renee Ordway, Roxanne Moore Saucier, Shirley J. Stormann, Tom Weber, and Victoria Brett.
Interview
Special Thanks to Shirley Stormann for taking the time to share her memories for this episode.
Photos
Photos primarily courtesy of Shirley Stormann. Some others from various newspaper articles.
Credits
Vocal performance, audio editing, and research by Kristen Seavey
Writing support, research support, and photo editing by Byron Willis
Written by Paige Quiñones
Research by Bridget Rowley
Murder, She Told is created by Kristen Seavey