The last letter Lucy Fullerton wrote her mom arrived just a few days after the Tennessee Tech student was brutally murdered in October 1970. That irony has never been forgotten by her mother, Jeane Fullerton, now 97.
In her final letter, Lucy wrote she planned to marry Rodney Dobbs, a fellow Tech student. She had transferred schools to be with him. Her mother had a foreboding feeling this relationship wouldn’t work, particularly after Dobbs had accused Lucy of trying to poison him.
“The last thing I told his family was he better not hurt my daughter,” Jeane Fullerton said.
Dobbs proposed to Lucy on Oct. 7, 1970, her 22nd birthday. Two days later, Dobbs admitted to stabbing Lucy more than 20 times with a six-inch hunting knife. After the stabbing, he took her new Mustang and drove the curvy highway from Cookeville to Kingston to tell his parents what he had done.
Police records show Dobbs admitted to the crime and told investigators where to find her body.
Obtained by WTVF at the Tennessee State Library and Archives