Sitting in the front row of the courtroom on Monday, Bruce Basham covered his eyes with a tissue and sobbed.
Basham had just looked into the eyes of the man who killed his daughter and listened to him talk about killing her in blatant disregard.
"She was a sweet girl," Marlon Dewayne "Ice" Dixon said before he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in federal prison for killing 21-year-old Branda Mae Delight Basham.
Dixon, 39, spared himself the possibility of the death penalty when he pleaded guilty last November to tampering with a witness or informant by killing.
"Every time I dealt with her it was a hug and a kiss on the cheek - the same every day until the Feds came and busted in my house. I was only dealing with four people," Dixon said Monday.
Basham was shot three times on July 12, 2014. Her body was found close to the railroad tracks near Breece and Madison streets on Charleston's West Side. Dixon was arrested about a week later.
Basham was working as a police informant. Dixon sold drugs to her several times.
"I saw her with my own eyes talking to the Feds," Dixon said Monday, adding that he asked her why she told police about him.
"She told me she had to do it. ... She told me, 'You are the only one they wanted,'" Dixon recalled in the courtroom. "And that was the end of that."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Joshua Hanks, of West Virginia's Southern District, stood up after Dixon finished speaking and announced he felt sick to his stomach.
"This case represents the worst nightmare of any family. Our District, our nation is eaten up by opiate addiction," Hanks said. The Bashams "could be any family in this District. They are good people and loved Branda as deep and complete as any parent loves their child."
The charges a federal grand jury returned against Dixon last October made him eligible for the death penalty or life in prison. The federal Department of Justice makes the determination whether to pursue the death penalty.
West Virginia abolished capital punishment at the state level in 1965, but the federal government can still ask for it.
"He deserves this life sentence, your honor," Hanks said. "Justice demands it."
U.S. District Judge Thomas Johnston, who began serving on the federal bench in 2006, said Monday that Dixon's case marked the first life sentence he had handed down.
"Life imprisonment is a just punishment," the judge said. He also ordered Dixon to pay nearly $8,000 in restitution.
Reach Kate White at kate.white@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1723 or follow @KateLWhite on Twitter.