Saturday, September 22, 2018

Golf Pictures

A rather interesting tale: Valentino Dixon was in prison, serving a long sentence, and took up drawing pictures about golf. He had never played golf, but he had considerable talent drawing, and someone had asked him to draw a picture of a hole on Augusta golf course, and he discovered that drawing it was relaxing. He began sending his pictures in to Golf Digest, to which another inmate had a subscription and whose photographs he had started using as an inspiration. After a while, the drawings caught the attention of someone and a reporter for the magazine, Max Adler, looked into it as a possible story. When he did, he started finding a large number of puzzles about Dixon's case -- policework that didn't seem to follow procedure, unreliable witnesses, a confession by someone else, and the like. So he published a story not just about the pictures but raising questions about the case, and, although it wasn't a straightforward or easy path, Valentino Dixon's sentence was vacated and Dixon walked free, recognized as an innocent man, a few days ago.

Golf Digest's original profile on Dixon: Drawings from Prison

And their report on the whole story: For Valentino Dixon, a Wrong Righted