In 1995, Dana Satterfield was a 27-year-old mother of two who owned a successful hair salon & was found brutally murdered in her Roebuck, South Carolina salon. The case would go cold for ten years until unbeknownst to her daughter, she would inadvertently help solve her own mother’s murder.
Dana was born in Spartanburg, South Carolina on November 16, 1967. She was a kind, friendly person who was known to be quick to assist others & easily made friends. She was also a dedicated, hard working woman. During her time in high school, Dana met a boy in high school who she ended up marrying & gave birth to a baby girl named Ashley, shortly after graduation.
After the birth of her daughter, their relationship quickly crumbled & they divorced. Dana went on to marry Paul Michael Satterfield, otherwise known as Mike & the couple had a son named Brandon. Mike owned & operated an air conditioning & heating company.
While her children were young, Dana stayed home to care for them & picked up odd jobs to increase their income. As her children grew, she decided it was time to pursue her own dreams & went on to open a salon in Roebuck, South Carolina. Dana was an exceptionally hard worker & Monday through Friday she would be at the salon from 8 am & stay until as late as 9 to 10 pm because inevitably, there was another customer who would call & ask Dana if she could fit them in & she would never say no.
Dana designed the salon inside an old mobile trailer with the help of Mike, who supported his wife in fulfilling her dream. As part of the process, Mike installed the hot water heater for the salon since this was his specialty. However, after seven years of marriage, Mike & Dana decided to amicably separate since they were no longer on the same page in life.
On Monday, July 31, 1995, customer Patty Taylor arrived at the salon at 6:30 pm for a hair appointment. Right around this same time, a traveling salesperson from Charlotte named Diane Harris, stopped into the salon to sell Dana cleaning products. Dana purchased a bottle of cleaning product from Diane who then headed out & continued on to other businesses on foot. Dana began working on Patty’s hair at about 7 pm & finished at 8 pm. She told Patty that she had some clothes in the dryer & Patty offered to stay with her until she locked up the shop, but Dana told her she would be leaving shortly behind her since the clothes had only five more minutes to dry. Patty left the salon sometime between 8:10-8:15 pm.
Diane Harris, who had been going door-to-door to sell her products, walked back through the parking lot at 8:10 pm & saw Dana through the window & waved at her as she continued on to sell additional products. Twenty minutes later, at 8:30 pm, Diane headed back to the location of Dana’s salon to wait for her ride & noticed that the lights were still on inside but the blinds were down.
As Diane stood out front, waiting on the sidewalk the sun set & day began to turn to night, when she heard thumping sounds coming from inside the salon. As she looked around, she was surprised to see a young man wearing jeans & a gray shirt come bounding out of the window.
Diane was startled & began to run, leaving her cleaning products behind. As she ran around the building in one direction, the man ran around the other way & the two came face-to-face on the other side of the building. Diane quickly ran to the street & began to scream. She raced to a nearby house where she locked herself inside & yelled for the residents to call 911, screaming that someone needed help. When the 911 call came through, it was reported as a robbery.
When Spartanburg County sheriff’s deputy J.T. Burnett received a call reporting a breaking & entering at about 8:45-8:50 pm & responded to the Roebuck Beauty & Tanning Salon on Highway 221 just before 9 pm. He noticed that the lights to the salon were off, the window was open & the screen had been pushed out & was lying on the ground & the only door to the building was slightly ajar. As he gained entry into the salon, he announced his presence in case the perpetrator had returned. The officer immediately noted the salon’s state of disarray. As he made his way to the back of the salon, he made a horrifying discovery in the combined bathroom-laundry room. Dana’s body was hanging from a strap around her neck that was connected to a hot water heater; her feet were suspended about an inch off the ground. Her face & hair were covered in blood, she had multiple cuts & bruises over her body & her tongue was protruding from her mouth.
Homicide detectives were immediately dispatched to the scene & they noted that Dana wore a blood-soaked white t-shirt & she was naked from the waist down, her pants still on her left ankle. Her head was said to be “dramatically cocked to one side.”
The detectives ruled out a robbery gone wrong because no cash or merchandise had been taken & Dana’s purse was in plain view with her credit cards untouched; between the salon’s cashbox & her wallet, $200 was present. Detectives concluded that the crime had been sexually motivated. Fingerprints & hair samples were collected from the crime scene & based on evidence, investigators deduced that the murderer was an inexperienced killer.
The scene revealed that all of the blood was contained to the bathroom area where Dana had been found. The room showed evidence of a struggle. Dana’s autopsy noted a deep abrasion to her forehead as well as superficial bruises & abrasions throughout her body. Her hyoid bone was fractured & proved that considerable force had been applied to Dana’s neck which could have been caused by manual strangulation as well as the use of a ligature & the pathologist believed that Dana had been strangled in both manners. Her brain also showed extensive hemorrhaging caused by blunt force trauma. The violence of the attack made the investigators believe that it was personal.
Diane worked with a sketch artist since she was the only witness to have seen the killer. Her initial description was “white & looked crazy.” The man was between twenty & thirty, small in stature with light-colored hair. Once completed, the composite drawing was released to the media within hours of Dana’s murder. In the meantime, the scene was processed by a forensic team for fingerprints, hair samples & body fluids which were sent to the lab for analysis.
Police worked with profilers to try to find Dana’s killer & they theorized that her killer would likely separate himself from the community after Dana’s murder to avoid being detected since the composite sketch was made, he would be demeaning, controlling, manipulative & physically abusive toward women in his life & would likely be in a relationship with a more submissive person. They also believed that the killer likely knew Dana & could have been infatuated with her.
Detectives started by speaking with Dana’s ex-husband, Mike, who told investigators that he & Dana were separated & living apart though they had spent the previous night of July 30 together with their children at home. They ate dinner & watched TV as a family. The next day, Mike & Dana scrambled to get out the door for work & made plans to have dinner together that night, but Dana never came home. Mike learned that something was wrong when a fellow church member called him at about 9 pm to say that officers were swarming the area of Dana’s salon.
When Mike got to the salon, deputies wouldn’t allow him inside or give him any information. When they spoke with him, they wondered if he was downplaying the nature of his separation from Dana & questioned if he could have been the person to commit the crime or possibly even hired someone. He insisted that he would never do anything to harm Dana.
When investigators informed Mike that they had found his fingerprint on the water heater next to Dana’s body.
Mike explained that he had been the person to install the water heater only two months earlier & because he served as the maintenance man in the salon, his fingerprints could be found everywhere. Mike was a very large man in stature & police could easily assess that he would not have been able to escape through the window of the salon as Diane explained the killer had. He also bore no resemblance to the man that Diane had come face-to-face with outside. Mike had an alibi for the night of the murder; he was on his way to his friend’s house about fifteen miles away to pick up his children & he also passed a polygraph test & he was officially removed from the suspect list.
Investigators had found a single bloody fingerprint in the restroom that did not belong to Mike. When the fingerprint was entered into the South Carolina database, no matches were found which meant that the killer had never been in the state’s penal system. The semen sample taken from Dana’s rape kit also found no source.
About two weeks following the murder, a man named Ken Smith, who was a customer of Dana’s, came forward to inform detectives that he had driven by the salon at about 8:40 pm on the night of Dana’s murder when he saw a man loitering outside the salon. The lights were off inside, but Dana’s car was out front. Ken explained that he had felt unsettled after he made eye contact with the man who then gave him an angry stare as he stood beside a white Ford Bronco with blue trim.
Other witnesses came forward to attest that they had also seen a white Ford Bronco with blue trim driving up & down the street in the hours before the salon closed. It appeared as if the driver was casing the area, but unfortunately, no one had gotten a good look at the driver’s face.
Authorities offered a $50,000 reward in hopes that this would lead to an arrest. As the tips poured in, investigators believed little helpful information was obtained. Early on, one caller who chose to remain anonymous, advised detectives to look into a 17-year-old male named Jonathan Vick.
Detectives sat down with Jonathan & his mother who just so happened to own a white Bronco with blue trim. Jonathan adamantly denied any knowledge of Dana’s murder let alone involvement. Authorities attempted to get a court order to obtain Vick’s DNA, but the request was denied because driving a car near the crime scene was considered insufficient proof. His mother vouched for his innocence & authorities allowed him to go.
The case soon grew cold until two years went by when a prisoner notified authorities that his cellmate, Russell Quinn, who was serving time for raping a woman & hanging her from a tree limb, had also bragged about murdering Dana Satterfield. He was also obsessed with Dana & carried her photo wherever he went.
Diane Harris was asked to view a photo lineup of potential suspects & when she saw a picture of Quinn, she chose him as the man who she had seen fleeing from the scene of the murder. Investigators felt confident that they had the correct man until his DNA ruled him out as Dana’s attacker. Police were back to square one & the case went cold for nearly another decade.
In 2005, ten years after Dana’s murder, Dana’s daughter Ashley was 18-years-old when she drove her Honda to a local shop for repairs. While she waited, she engaged in a conversation with a mechanic named Michael Pace. This innocent conversation ended up blowing the lid off her mother’s murder investigation.
After Ashley left the shop, one of Michael’s co-workers mentioned to him that Ashley was the daughter of the woman who had been found murdered in her salon years earlier. This was when Michael made the decision to place an anonymous call & informed the on-duty officer that he knew who was responsible for the death of Dana Satterfield. He added that he made the call since he felt he had to help the Satterfield family find peace.
Michael went on to say that his childhood friend, Jonathan Vick, was responsible. This was the 17-year-old that police had spoken with & quickly cleared after Dana’s murder. Michael explained that he had been with Vick on the afternoon of Dana’s murder, Monday, July 31, 1995 & Vick was wearing blue jeans & a light colored shirt. He bragged about the fact that he was going to have a date with Dana later that night. Michael was aware of Dana, who was a beautiful blond 27-year-old woman & laughed at the very idea that she would have any interest in a 17-year-old kid. This angered Vick who insisted that he believed he had a chance with her.
Michael recalled the raunchy remarks Vick made about Dana, detailing the graphic things he would like to do to her. Michael talked to Vick for about an hour that evening & agreed to give him a ride home. During their drive, Vick continued to speak about his intentions with Dana & Michael dropped him off at about 6:45-7 pm. When he dropped him off, Vick told Michael that he was going to get a haircut & Michael questioned who would possibly cut his hair that late at night. Vick explained that Dana kept her salon open late & would be expecting him.
Michael didn’t see Vick until a few days later at a pool hall where Vick aggressively bumped against him & threatened to kill him if he told anyone. It was three months later that Michael made the anonymous phone call naming Vick as a possible suspect. He contacted law enforcement a second time after the murder was featured on TV, again remaining anonymous & again for a third time.
As detectives spoke with Michael on the phone, they urged him to tell them his name, but he adamantly refused. He explained that in the hours after Dana’s murder, Vick threatened to kill him if he ever breathed a word of what he knew to anyone. Michael now knew that his friend was very clearly capable of murder & believed his threats to be real.
Micahel confessed that he had been the anonymous caller from years earlier, urging investigators to look into Vick after Dana had been murdered in 1995. When nothing came of it & Vick wasn’t arrested, he felt satisfied that he had done what he could to set investigators onto the correct path.
When current investigators asked him what prompted him to come forward again, he explained that meeting & speaking with Ashley had been the turning point. He hadn’t followed the news when Dana had been murdered & had no idea that she was a mother. He insisted that knowing that she had small children at the time of her death, he would have gone to police much sooner.
Authorities explained to Michael that he could not remain anonymous & he would have to provide his name to a judge if there was any chance in obtaining a court order for Vick’s DNA. Michael finally agreed, feeling that he could help find justice better late than never.
By this point in time, Jonathan Vick was a married father of a young daughter & proclaimed his innocence as he was served the warrant for his DNA sample. As he awaited the results, detectives spoke with Vick’s friends & acquaintances in order to get a better idea of who he was as a person.
A girl who was dating Vick at the time of Dana’s murder recalled that he often drove by Dana’s salon after her murder & threatened that if she didn’t do the things he said, she would end up like the woman who was killed there. She said that he had a violent temper that could erupt without prompting.
After graduating high school, Vick went on to join the United States Marine Corps & during his two year run, he was frequently in trouble & easily lashed out at those around him.
Upon his discharge, he floated from one job to the next & was often fired because of his quick temper. On top of everything that investigators were learning, they also discovered that a woman that Vick had been engaged to seven years after Dana’s murder, 20-year-old Heather Sellars, went out with Vick on the night of September 24, 2002 & was never seen again while her car was located at the bottom of a river.
Heather had finished her shift at the Waffle House in Spartanburg, South Carolina & later that evening, Vick picked her up at her aunt’s house for an unplanned date. He recalled that they had spent several hours at various local bars & then he dropped her off. Her family always suspected that Heather had met with foul play. Blood & strands of hair were later found in a vehicle that had been leased to Vick, but they could not be positively matched to Heather. Detectives learned that Heather had told her family that Vick had been physically abusive toward her, but she hadn’t reported him to the authorities out of fear. After she called off their engagement, tensions only heightened between Vick & Heather.
Despite the nature of their relationship, Heather & Vick continued to see each other on a friendly basis after their breakup. Vick fully admitted to being with Heather on the night of her disappearance, but due to insufficient evidence & the fact that her body had never been found, Vick was never charged. More than twenty years have gone by since Heather disappeared, her whereabouts are still unknown & the case remains unsolved to this day.
When the DNA results came back in Dana’s case, it proved that Jonathan Vick was a match to the sample taken from Dana’s rape kit at a ratio of 900 million to one. Authorities were finally able to charge Dana’s killer with kidnapping, sexual assault & first-degree murder.
The trial began in November 2006 & Vick’s defense attorney argued that a stray pubic hair that had been found on Dana’s body didn’t belong to his client. He pointed out that no test had the ability to show when the semen made contact with Dana’s body & urged the jury to keep an open mind & insisted that this information alone was sufficient to introduce reasonable doubt into the minds of jurors. The jury heard testimony from multiple customers who visited the salon on the day of the murder & had often used the restroom where Dana’s body & the pubic hair was found.
Another witness, Michael Crook, was driving by the salon at the time of the murder & said he saw a white man crouched behind nearby bushes, looking at the salon. Another witness testified that he saw a blue & white Ford Bronco with custom rims identical to what Vick drove at the time, parked at a business across the street on the evening of the murder. Another witness named Aaron Popkin bought the Bronco from the Vick family in 1996. When he took the car for a test drive, he indicated that Vick later told him that he was suspicious of him because he could be a “police person.”
The events of what happened on the night that Dana was murdered were pieced together as best as possible. It was speculated that Vick visited the salon that night with the intention of making romantic advances toward Dana, who had cut his hair on multiple previous occasions. When he entered the salon & found Dana was alone, he propositioned her & his unwanted advances had been rejected. Vick then turned the lights off & proceeded to beat Dana into submission. He raped her & strangled her to death. It’s unclear why he opted to flee through the salon window rather than the front door which would have attracted far less attention.
The trial lasted four days & 32 witnesses were called, including Vick’s childhood friend, Michael Pace, who had made the anonymous phone calls that led to his capture. In early December, the jury deliberated for twenty minutes & found Jonathan Vick guilty on all charges. He was sentenced to life in prison for Dana’s murder, plus thirty years for criminal sexual misconduct & kidnapping for having held his victim against her will & will be eligible for parole after twenty years. He was not eligible for the death penalty as he was a juvenile at the time of the murder.
During the sentencing, Vick’s wife Caroline pleaded with the judge prior to the sentencing & asked for the minimum sentence since they have a young daughter at home & added, “I know he didn’t do this. I know he didn’t.” As the then 28-year-old Vick was led from the courtroom in tears, he denied having anything to do with Dana’s murder & added, “She did not get justice today. She will not, as long as I sit behind bars.”
As Mike Satterfield, Dana’s widower hugged their children, he took Vick’s denial with a grain of salt since all the evidence pointed directly at him & felt that it’s possible that in his own mind, Vick actually believes he is innocent. Mike was relieved that they were able to get justice but realizes that life will never be the same without Dana. 20-year-old Ashley, Dana’s daughter, was grateful that Vick would no longer be able to hurt anyone else & felt that he could go on lying to himself.
Present at the courthouse was Vick’s sergeant from the Marine Corps who indicated that during his time of service, Vick had assaulted male & female Marines & was punished twice for assault. He eventually received a general discharge. He referred to Vick as a “pathological liar” with a violent temper. He often secured dates with female Marines through flattery & would then change his behavior. One female came to him & compared Vick to Dr. Jekyll & Mr Hyde. The family members of Vick’s former fiance, Heather Sellars, who disappeared in 2002 were also present at the trial.
Vick immediately requested a new trial on the grounds that his council had been ineffective, however this was dismissed.
In April 2006 while Vick was incarcerated & awaiting trial for Dana’s murder, he was accused of assaulting a corrections officer which he was convicted of & three years were added to his sentence. As part of his punishment, he was only allowed out of his cell for one hour a day for six months. Vick is currently incarcerated at the Ridgeland Correctional Institution in Ridgeland, South Carolina & he will be eligible for parole in 2035 when he is about 57-years-old.
Dana’s daughter Ashley, who is now a married mother of two, is employed as a victim advocate at the Spartanburg County Detention Center. At age eight, she witnessed her own mother’s body being removed on a stretcher from the scene of her murder & understands the pain of losing a loved one to violence. The ache of losing her mom will never go away, but helping other victims has allowed Ashley to heal.
Dana may have been a stunningly beautiful woman, but she was most remembered for her kindness & sweet disposition who brought joy to those around her.
References:
- Go Upstate: Witnesses recall grisly salon killing
- FindLaw: State v Vick
- Go Upstate: Vick gets life in prison
- Medium: Fatal Beauty: The shocking murder of Dana Satterfield
- Medium: The murder of Dana Satterfield
- Oxygen True Crime: A decade passes before beauty salon owner’s killer is caught – even with an eyewitness
