New Orleans crime lab tech recognizes ex-boyfriend as murder victim

A New Orleans crime lab tech was taking photographs at a crime scene when she spotted a familiar tattoo on the dead man's back.

Luther Vandross was outed as gay after his death.

A New Orleans crime lab tech was taking photographs at a crime scene when she spotted a familiar tattoo on the dead man’s back. The tattoo was her name, and the man was her ex-boyfriend.

“I started backing up. It was like this heavy weight. I kept not believing it,” Alonia Singleton said of discovering her ex’s body, according to the The Times-Picayune.

The man, Jonathan Dotson Sr., had been gunned down on November 7th. He had been working a string of jobs and was about to make his debut in a film called A Quiet Storm, in which his character is shot down randomly outside a convenience store. Dotson died only a few houses away from the spot where that shooting death scene had been shot.

“It’s a surreal blurring of reality and fiction,” film director Jason Affolder told The Times-Picayune.

Singleton and Dotson dated for three years before they broke up in 2009.

“He always wanted to get married,” Singleton recalled. “But I knew he wasn’t ready.”

The two had a son together, who is now eight years old, and Singleton said that he has not quite fully grasped the fact that he has lost his father. “I don’t really think he fully understands,” Singleton said.

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