JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Early one morning in 2022, someone living in The Palms at Ortega apartment complex took their dog for a walk.
During the walk, behind a dark apartment building in the Ortega Farms neighborhood on the Westside of Jacksonville, they discovered the lifeless body of Timothy Dixon, 16.
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Dixon had been shot once in the head, investigators said, and a single 9mm shell casing was found on the ground near his body.
The murder of Dixon launched a nearly two-year investigation that eventually resulted in the arrest of 17-year-old Shane Payne Jr., who is not only now charged with the murder of Dixon, his “very close friend,” but for the murder of his father, Shane Payne Sr., three days earlier.
According to an arrest warrant and other documents obtained by News4JAX, it was that single shell casing that first started to unravel the case.
This casing was submitted to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office firearm laboratory and it came back with a National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) hit indicating a match to a shell casing recovered from the murder of Shane Payne Sr.
Payne Sr. was executed on Aug. 3, 2022, while he lay in his bed inside a home in the Devinston housing development on the Northside. Investigators said there were several people inside the home at the time of the 11:30 p.m. murder, including children ranging from 4 years old to young teenagers.
Police said the shooter showed up at the house, walked straight to the back bedroom, shot Payne Sr., ran out of the house and drove off in a stolen Hyundai with “distinct damage.”
One of the teens interviewed that night was Shane Payne Jr., who was 15 years old at the time.
He told investigators he didn’t know who the shooter was, but gave a description of a man who was wearing a “shiesty mask,” a face and head covering similar to a ski mask that was popularized by rapper Pooh Shiesty.
Then a few days later, after Dixon was found dead, they started to realize that Dixon’s murder might be connected to the murder of Payne Sr.
Connecting the dots
As JSO was investigating the murder of Dixon, it started looking at Dixon’s phone records. They revealed that Dixon received four phone calls from Payne Jr. within an hour of when he was believed to have been shot, around 1:30 a.m.
JSO said Dixon and Payne Jr. were former neighbors and close friends.
While searching the phone, JSO also found a recent internet search for a “shiesty mask” as well as various screenshots of him getting GPS directions to the home where Payne Sr. was murdered. It also revealed that the device had logged a connection to the Payne Wi-Fi network early in the day on Aug. 3, the day Payne Sr. was killed.
According to JSO, Dixon’s cell site data showed that he got a phone call from Payne Jr. that day before his phone disconnected from the network. When the phone reconnected, its location was on the Northside, where the Payne home was located, and the subsequent data showed the device moving away from the Payne home back towards The Palms at Ortega apartment complex.
A JSO detective then reviewed residential surveillance footage and said it clearly showed what appeared to be a practice run of the eventual murder of Payne Sr. around 5:50 p.m. the day he was killed.
JSO said call records from Dixon’s cellphone records also revealed a large amount of communication between him and Payne Jr. on the day of Payne Sr.’s murder. Notably, there were two phone calls between the two less than 10 minutes before the murder took place, and the first call placed by Dixon after the murder was to Payne Jr.
Then on Aug. 13, investigators caught a big break.
On that day, about 10 days after Payne Sr.’s murder, and seven days after Dixon’s murder, JSO responded to a shooting off A. Phillip Randolph Boulevard.
The shooter was seen on video firing into a crowd of people. Luckily, no one was hit.
The investigation revealed that the shell casings recovered at that scene were linked to the murders of Payne Sr. and Dixon.
The shooter was eventually identified as Payne Jr., and he later pled guilty on Jan. 12, 2023, to carrying a concealed firearm during the shooting.
Arrest made
As JSO detectives started putting everything together, they interviewed Payne Jr. again in 2023 about the death of his friend after he was arrested in December in connection with an alleged home invasion robbery and kidnapping.
Payne Jr. told detectives that he did speak with Dixon the night he was killed, but went into his cousin’s apartment to get his hair cut. In the middle of their conversation, he said he went to use the bathroom and decided to be picked up by his mom when he was done. He said that he did see Dixon while on the apartment complex property, but when he left, Dixon was “alive and well.”
When he saw reports of a shooting at Ortega Farms, Payne Jr. told JSO he “knew” it had to have been Dixon.
Detectives spoke with Payne Jr.’s cousin who confirmed he did cut his hair but could not remember if he was at his home on that specific date, meaning the alibi was unconfirmed, JSO said.
But JSO saw that Dixon’s final incoming call before his death was from Payne Jr. at 1:20 a.m., and Payne Jr.’s phone records showed a phone call to his mother eight minutes later. There was also another outgoing call from Payne Jr. at 1:34 a.m. and witnesses on the neighborhood canvass during the initial response recall hearing a gunshot at 1:30 a.m., JSO said.
Between the phone calls, the cell tower data, the shell casings found at all three of the shooting scenes, and the close relationship between Dixon and Payne Jr., investigators now felt like they had everything they needed to establish probable cause that Payne Jr. plotted with Dixon to kill Payne Sr., and that Payne Jr. killed his friend three days later. Investigators allege it was actually Payne Jr. who let Dixon into the house to kill his father.
On Wednesday, JSO announced that Payne Jr., who was already in jail, has been charged with two counts of second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
What is not included in all of the documents obtained by News4JAX, which are lightly redacted, is a motive. It’s not clear why Payne Jr. allegedly killed his father and his longtime friend. And that’s something that may never come to light.
Payne Jr. is being held without bond and a court date for the murder cases has not been set.