Woman accused of hiding weapon in Bertram murder case accepts plea deal
BURNET — A mother whose boyfriend went to prison after he was convicted of fatally stabbing her son pleaded guilty Oct. 16 to charges she tried to hide the bone-handled knife used in the crime.
Investigators said they found the blade in a freezer when they went to the Briggs home where the homicide occurred.
Suzanne Dowdle, 67, accepted five years deferred adjudication, a form of probation, and a $1,000 fine in the Nov. 22, 2009, slaying that led to a charge of tampering with evidence, a third-degree felony.
Dowdle appeared before 33rd state District Judge Guilford "Gil" Jones to learn her fate. She is the mother of attorney and mediator Angela Dowdle, a Republican who unsuccessfully ran for the District Attorney’s Office and lost during a July 31 runoff.
Angela Dowdle was not in the courtroom Oct. 16.
According to investigators and prosecutors, Suzanne Dowdle’s boyfriend Dwayne Edward Nash, 51, stabbed Dowdle’s son Coy Dowdle, 39, at the Briggs residence Nash and the mother shared.
Coy Dowdle apparently arrived at the home in the 700 block of FM 2657 following a distraught call from his mother, according to testimony during the murder trial.
Coy Dowdle and Nash got in a scuffle.
Nash stabbed the 39-year-old man in the heart with a bone-handled knife, testimony revealed.
Investigators found the knife in a freezer at the residence, investigators said.
In June, a Hays County jury found Nash guilty of murder in Dowdle’s death and sentenced him 75 years in prison. He is serving his sentence in the William G. McConnell Unit in Beeville.
The Texas Attorney General’s Office prosecuted both the tampering with evidence case and the murder case because the victim’s sister, Angela Dowdle, at one time worked in the Burnet County District Attorney’s Office, though not at the time of her brother’s death.
Nash’s trial originally was scheduled for December 2011, but state District Judge Doug Shaver ordered it moved to Hays County, saying it would be difficult to select a jury in Burnet County.