Donnella Bryan

By Zak Failla From Daily Voice

The man who murdered his ex-girlfriend by suffocating her with a sock and dumping her body in a DC dumpster will spend decades in prison after admitting to the crime, authorities announced.

Richard Dyson, 57, pleaded guilty earlier this year to the murder of Donnella Bryan, 62, who was reported missing and later found in a Hechinger Mall dumpster in Northeast DC.

On Friday, federal authorities announced that Dyson has been sentenced to 24 years in prison.

Bryan was last seen around 12 p.m. on April 17 in the 300 block of N Street NE, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. She was then the subject of a critical missing person alert issued the following day.

Her body was discovered two days later, on April 19, inside a dumpster in the 1600 block of Maryland Avenue NE, police said.

It was the day before Easter Sunday.

According to federal prosecutors, Dyson murdered Bryan by striking her in the head and suffocating her with a sock.

Dyson then purchased a large container from Home Depot and, with the help of a now-deceased accomplice, disposed of the victim’s body in that container by sliding it into a dumpster at Hechinger Mall.

Officers were called to the scene just after 8 a.m., where they found Bryan unconscious and unresponsive. She was pronounced dead at the scene by DC Fire and EMS.

On Sunday, April 20, 2025, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled the cause of death was blunt force trauma and asphyxiation. The manner of death was ruled a homicide.

Dyson was arrested on June 11 and has been in custody since. The judge handed him the maximum sentence.