‘Dr. Death,’ notorious Detroit contract killer, committed first murder 70 years ago

The shooting death of 43-year-old Luther Mixon on July 1, 1955, landed Chester Wheeler Campbell, 24, and two accomplices in prison. During Campbell’s 13 years in the infamous Michigan State Prison, aka Jackson Prison, he spent his time learning new illicit trades. According to gangland lore, the locked-up training turned him into a fearsome figure upon reentering society in 1969.

Detroit’s death-dealing enforcer was never successfully convicted of murder again, despite being the prime suspect in at least 10 homicide investigations from 1969 through 1975.

Campbell’s first murder

Campbell was born in 1930, the fourth of six children. His father died when Campbell was in the second grade, leaving his mother to raise six children alone. According to available information, Campbell was the only one in his family who encountered any significant legal issues. He accumulated a modest record of two burglary charges by age 20, yet his criminal activities were significant enough for the police to display his photograph in the station house.

At 24, his criminal exploits escalated to a tragic and violent confrontation during the summer of 1955. Campbell, along with David Green, 24, and Watson Brooks, 23, set out on July 1 to hold up a known numbers gambling spot in an apartment. The trio, concealing their faces with handkerchiefs, first confronted Mixon. Two of them brandished pistols and demanded to know the owner of an expensive car parked out front. Mixon’s silence was rewarded with a pistol whip. Mixon fell and, as he tried to regain his footing, one of the assailants fired a round into Mixon’s face.

The robbers weren’t finished. After forcing their way into the apartment, they roughed up and robbed four people inside: John and Julia Jackson, Roosevelt Williams and Emmet Carter. The thieves made off with about $420, including what they took from the pockets of the man bleeding out in the street. Mixon was later pronounced dead at the hospital.

Campbell had been a habitual offender since 1950. He was a prime suspect in multiple attempted burglaries of the same location, F & F Drug Company, which landed him some jail time. Local police were quite familiar with Campbell — the precinct wall photo had come back to haunt him.

The day after the murder, Officer Frank Rewekant spotted two men near an intersection on his way to work. Recognizing one of the men from the precinct picture, he stopped and detained Campbell and Green (who had a .32 handgun). The pair weren’t held on the Mixon murder, however. At the time, police suspected them in connection with an auto parts theft. Police released the two shortly after.

Campbell and Green were arrested again at the end of July — this time for murder. At the station, Otis McClure and his wife, residents of the apartment beneath the numbers spot, positively identified Campbell and Green in the lineup. The third suspect, Brooks, remained at large until late August when FBI agents in New York apprehended him. Brooks was extradited back to Detroit and faced a judge in September.

The court convicted Campbell of first-degree murder and, in January 1956, sent him to Michigan State Prison.

A plea deal

After 13 years in prison, Campbell was granted a new trial. Campbell and his attorney, S. Allen Early, went before Judge Robert Evans in September 1969 to plead down to second-degree murder.

Judge Evans went through the formalities and asked Campbell if he was sure he wanted to forgo a jury trial. “Yes, sir,” Campbell confirmed.

Evans: Mr. Campbell, on the first of July 1955, were you in the city of Detroit and involved in some sort of homicide?

Campbell: Yes, sir. I was.

Evans: Do you know the name of the person that was killed?

Campbell: I think it was Luther Mixon.

Evans: Do you know where he was killed?

Campbell: On the street.

Evans: What street?

Campbell: Lawton.

Evans: Do you know approximately what time?

Campbell: About 5, I think.

Evans: Tell me the circumstances of that incident.

Campbell: Prior to going to this Lawton address, I and several other fellows planned a robbery. After we got there and carried it out and, in the process, my … I shot Mr. Mixon.

Campbell was hesitant to give up the names of his accomplices. Early assured Campbell, “You are not copping out when you say who it was.”

Campbell vaguely explained how Mixon approached him and “offered resistance.” Campbell admitted to striking Mixon with the gun but implied the gun went off accidentally.

Evans: After that, what happened?

Campbell: I think I went through his pockets.

Evans: Did you take anything from his pockets?

Campbell: Yes, sir.

Evans: What did you take?

Campbell: Took some money.

Evans: Now you said before that time — did I understand you to say before this happened you had planned to rob, had you planned to rob Mr. Mixon?

Campbell: Not him in particular, no. The place was supposed to have been a numbers house.

Campbell was paroled in September 1969. He soon returned to a life of crime, but much had changed during his 13 years behind bars.

“Dr. Death”

Following his release from prison, Campbell rebuilt his reputation as a killer in the drug underworld of Detroit and the Midwest. His notoriety earned him the nicknames “Dr. Death” and “The Undertaker.” In 1987, prosecutor L. Brooks Patterson described Campbell as “absolutely incorrigible,” “a dedicated recidivist” and “a heavy-duty criminal.”

A so-called “dope war” was underway, and Campbell wasted little time making alliances and establishing himself as an assassin.

“Detroit in the late 1960s was going through a transitional phase,” author and historian Scott Burnstein says. “The Italian Mafia was passing the torch of leadership from the crime family’s founding fathers to their second generation of college-educated offspring. The African American underworld was experiencing an upheaval and cultural makeover as the docile, subservient gambling bosses working for the Mafia were being replaced by more independent-thinking crime lords and volatile drug kingpins not satisfied with the status quo.”

Within a month of gaining his freedom, Campbell was considered a suspect in a double homicide. In November police suspected Campbell, Brooks and reputed heroin kingpin John Classen in the brutal, double murder of Jimmy Davis and his girlfriend, Lisa. The couple were both shot in the head execution style while sitting in a parked car. Davis had been a protected witness in trials against drug dealers, including Classen.

Campbell’s alliances mostly leaned toward the drug factions aligned with the Mob. “Chester was in the East Side camp, connected to one of the last Black street crews working for the Italians that would eventually be dubbed the Murder Row Black Mafia organization,” Burnstein says. “This was a crew of ruthless and hardened contract killers, extortionists, pimps and drug traffickers that acted as a sub-unit of the Giacalone Mob crew within the Tocco-Zerilli crime family.”

Murder Row, Burnstein says, “would expand its territory citywide, having operations on the West Side and headquartering in Midtown at the Michigan Federated Democratic Social Club.”

Besides contending with the ongoing turmoil between rival drug lords, Detroit soon found itself embroiled in investigations and accusations of major corruption and conspiracy between law enforcement and narcotics dealers, called the “Pingree Conspiracy.”

A legal “dumpster fire”

By 1973, Campbell received more frequent attention for his suspected involvement in several unsolved homicides and the ensuing conspiracy case.

Campbell’s short-lived but storied criminal career came to a head 20 years after his first and only murder conviction. On February 6, 1975, while driving to his girlfriend’s home in upscale Orchard Lake, Michigan, Campbell nearly collided with a patrol car. The incident revealed a trunk full of weapons, drugs and cash. But more important, a proverbial Pandora’s Box of incriminating material awaited the police who searched his home in Detroit and his girlfriend’s residence in Orchard Lake.

In Campbell’s possession were documents bearing the names, addresses and intimate details of cops, politicians, judges, gangsters, addicts, witnesses and prosecutors. He even had sealed grand jury files in his stash. Campbell meticulously kept tabs on both criminals and law enforcement, maintained an array of espionage equipment and was well read in the subjects of criminal law and homicide.

The revelations in these documents exposed the true extent of Detroit’s corruption. Cover-ups, bribes, homicides, espionage, racism, addiction and rampant greed were at their peak.

The implications for possessing this material were not lost on Campbell. “I’m a dead man,” he allegedly told a cellmate after his arrest. “Whether I stay in here or get out, brother, I’m dead.”

The Detroit Free Press reported extensively on Campbell’s unfolding story and the chaos that followed. “That’s how important Campbell’s documents are — at least in his eyes,” the Free Press wrote. “And in the eyes of at least a half-dozen law enforcement agencies in Wayne and Oakland counties as well, who have engaged in squabbling over the potential bonanza of information and intelligence embodied in the Campbell case.”

Campbell also maintained some semblance of power while in custody. Local gangster and murder witness James Lee Newton, aka “Watusi Slim,” was found with his throat cut and eyelids marked with X’s while awaiting to testify against Campbell for the 1972 murder of Roy Parsons.

Regarding the slain witness, Campbell’s lawyer told the judge audaciously, “Chester doesn’t need to be physically present to conduct business.” And his business was thriving as the tensions and raw wounds of a profoundly unstable city escalated.

Several pending murder cases against Campbell did indeed get dropped. While incarcerated, he used his time to pen dozens of letters and legal filings. In his writings he railed against numerous individuals and, perhaps most important to him, made an issue of the seized cash, which was an estimated $250,000.

Forced retirement

Although prosecutors would never successfully convict the prolific contract killer of murder again, there were plenty of other charges to work with. A court in Oakland County, Michigan, convicted and sentenced Campbell to 40 to 60 months for possession of weapons and drugs. In 1977, a Wayne County court added another 20 to 30 months under Michigan’s habitual offender statue. After that, he faced federal charges for possessing a sawed-off shotgun.

Cambell did prevail in the legal battle over the loot discovered in his home in February 1975. The court ruled in Campbell’s favor and ordered it returned, but the win was on paper only. The case dragged well into 1983 when an appeals court once again ruled in Campbell’s favor, but the money had since gone to the IRS, where it would stay.

Campbell was paroled from prison in September 1984, but he still had to keep one eye open. The following April he was shot several times in the leg and thigh but survived. After an 11-hour operation, Campbell told reporters, “I don’t have anything newsworthy to say.”

In a bout of déjà vu, he was caught again in 1987 with a carload of guns, drugs, explosives and spy gear. The 40-year sentence from that case would land him in prison for the rest of his life.

Campbell died in a federal prison medical facility in 2001. The cause of death was determined to be natural: “End stage liver disease; Hepatitis C.”

Christian Cipollini is an organized crime historian and the award-winning author and creator of the comic book series LUCKY, based on the true story of Charles “Lucky” Luciano.