Timothy Dumas Army Case: Verdict, Blackmail, and Lavigne Killing

Timothy Dumas Sr., a retired Army Chief Warrant Officer 3 and Fort Bragg civilian employee, was shot to death on the North Carolina installation on the night of December 1, 2020, alongside Delta Force Master Sgt. William “Billy” Lavigne, in what federal prosecutors later described as a cocaine deal turned double homicide. The Fort Bragg murder of Timothy Dumas went unsolved for nearly three years before a federal grand jury indicted Kenneth Maurice Quick Jr., and in May 2026 a jury in New Bern convicted Quick of both killings.¹

Who Timothy Dumas Was

Dumas was 44 at the time of his death. He enlisted in the Army in November 1996 and served nearly two decades as a property accounting technician, a logistics role responsible for tracking equipment and supplies. His assignments supported units within the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, the home of Delta Force and other tier-one special operations units. He deployed to Afghanistan four times between 2003 and 2009 and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal.²

He retired at the rank of Chief Warrant Officer 3 in March 2016, settled in Pinehurst, and continued working as a civilian employee supporting Special Forces units on base.³ At the time he was killed, he was already under investigation for suspected drug trafficking and drug use on the installation.⁴

What Happened the Night of December 1, 2020

According to federal prosecutors, Dumas sold cocaine to Lavigne on the night of December 1, 2020. Lavigne then arranged to resell the drugs to Kenneth Maurice Quick Jr., a 20-year-old from Laurinburg, North Carolina. Quick had no intention of paying. He drove Lavigne to a “trap house” in Laurinburg and shot him five times in the back.⁵

Quick then turned to Dumas, who agreed to help move Lavigne’s body in what prosecutors described as an effort to stay alive. The two loaded the body into Lavigne’s truck and drove into a secluded, publicly accessible wooded training area on Fort Bragg. When the truck bogged down in sandy soil, Quick shot Dumas once in the head and once in the back.⁵ With help from an unnamed accomplice, Quick later located Dumas’s 2014 Dodge Ram pickup and set it on fire.⁶

Both bodies were found on December 2, 2020, in the woods near Manchester Road on the installation, along with Lavigne’s gray 2015 Chevrolet Colorado. Dumas’s truck turned up burned at a separate, undisclosed location. His death certificate listed gunshot wounds to the chest and head; Lavigne’s listed multiple gunshot wounds.⁶

Why the Case Took Almost Three Years to Charge

The FBI and the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division handled the case jointly. Foul play was suspected almost immediately, and physical evidence was recovered at both scenes, but no arrest was announced for nearly three years.⁷

On August 1, 2023, a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina indicted Quick, then 23, on charges including first-degree murder, use of a firearm causing death, conspiracy to distribute cocaine, possession of ammunition by a felon, and obstruction of justice. The indictment alleged the cocaine conspiracy ran from November 25 to December 1, 2020, and that Quick tried to conceal the bodies and destroy Dumas’s truck on December 2 or 3.⁸ U.S. Attorney Michael Easley announced the charges publicly on August 25, 2023.

Quick was already in prison when he was indicted, serving a 57-month sentence for an unrelated case out of a May 2022 traffic stop in Laurinburg, when he tried to flee and discarded drugs and firearms.⁹

The 2026 Trial and Verdict

Quick’s federal trial went before U.S. District Judge Louise W. Flanagan in New Bern, North Carolina. On May 22, 2026, a jury convicted him on all eight counts: first-degree murder, drug conspiracy, illegal firearms possession, and obstruction of justice.¹

Among the most damaging evidence at trial was Quick’s own conduct while awaiting it. Prosecutors presented coded jail phone calls in which Quick spelled out the names of potential witnesses letter by letter and discussed the “work” those witnesses required. When Quick’s mother later told him that one such witness had been killed in March 2025, he replied, “Damn, you don’t know how happy that makes me feel.” A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office said the witness’s death remains under investigation and that no charges have been filed in connection with it.⁴

Quick faces a mandatory sentence of life in federal prison without the possibility of parole. Sentencing is scheduled for August 2026.¹

The Drug Network Around Dumas

The killings did not sit in isolation. Journalist Seth Harp, in his book The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces, has reported that Dumas used his logistics and supply position within JSOC to help run a criminal enterprise. Harp alleges that Dumas and other soldiers stole grenades and automatic weapons from Fort Bragg armories for resale on the black market, and that Dumas’s specific job was falsifying entries in property book accounting systems to keep the thefts off inventory records.¹⁰

On the drug side, Harp reports that Dumas partnered with Freddie Wayne Huff II, a former North Carolina state trooper and DEA task force agent who had become a Los Zetas distributor moving roughly 50 to 100 kilograms of cocaine every week to ten days at his peak. Dumas allegedly moved the product through a network of soldiers on base. Huff was arrested in 2021 and sentenced in October 2023 to 21 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to leading a multimillion-dollar operation that trafficked approximately 2,000 kilograms of cocaine and 25 kilograms of heroin between 2016 and 2021.¹¹ Huff told Harp that Dumas had introduced him to the network and described the operation as “basically a gang” centered on Lavigne and other Delta Force operators.¹⁰

Orlando Fitzhugh, a former 82nd Airborne soldier who had served time at Fort Leavenworth for drug dealing on Fort Bragg in the 1990s, was federally convicted of cocaine trafficking in 2023. Dumas had introduced Fitzhugh to Huff as one of his closest associates.¹⁰

The Alleged Blackmail Document

Before his death, Dumas reportedly assembled a document he intended to use as leverage against the Army. According to Huff, and corroborated by other witnesses, Dumas stored a letter on a thumb drive that he handed to Huff in late 2019. The letter was addressed to a high-ranking general and allegedly named soldiers involved in trafficking opiates from Afghanistan to Fort Bragg. Dumas is said to have intended it as a dead man’s switch, to be released if anything happened to him, and as pressure to get his forfeited pension reinstated.¹⁰

Four sources confirmed the document’s existence to Harp, including Dumas’s son, Timothy Dumas Jr., and a woman named Brianna Woods. Huff said he was the only person who read the full document. After Huff’s arrest, the Winston-Salem Police Department seized the thumb drive, but when authorities later accessed it, the drive was reportedly empty.¹²

Lavigne’s 2018 Killing

The other man killed alongside Dumas had a violent history of his own. Lavigne, 37, was a 19-year Army veteran and Delta Force member with multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, a Bronze Star with Valor device, and the Special Forces Tab.¹³ In March 2018, he shot and killed Sgt. 1st Class Mark Leshikar, a 33-year-old National Guard Green Beret, at a Fayetteville residence. Lavigne said Leshikar had attacked him with a screwdriver after an argument, though family members said no screwdriver was found at the scene.² The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office ruled the shooting a justifiable homicide and filed no charges. A later Army CID investigation noted inconsistencies in Lavigne’s account and documented his extensive drug use, including a positive cocaine test, but did not recommend new charges.⁵ Lavigne was moved out of Delta Force but remained in the Army, with further drug-related run-ins with law enforcement before his death.⁹

1
U.S. Department of Justice. Killer Convicted of Two Murders at Fort Bragg
2
Army Times. USASOC Master Sergeant Identified as One of Two Found Dead at Fort Bragg
3
ABC News. Foul Play Suspected in Death of Green Beret, Army Vet
4
Stars and Stripes. Man Convicted in Fort Bragg Murders
5
Task and Purpose. Fort Bragg Delta Force Killing Conviction
6
Army Times. Arrest Made in 2020 Slayings of Special Forces Soldier and Veteran
7
Fayetteville Observer. Suspect Named in Fort Liberty 2020 Murders of Special Forces Soldier
8
U.S. Department of Justice. Man Arrested on Charges Related to Two Victims Found Dead at Fort Liberty
9
Audacy. Arrest Made in Connection to 2020 Fort Bragg Murders
10
Rolling Stone. Fort Bragg Cartel Murders
11
The Assembly. Huff Police Officer Drug Trafficking North Carolina
12
Reason. How Elite Special Operations Troops Created a Drug Cartel
13
U.S. Army. Soldier Identified as One of Two Found Dead on Fort Bragg