Fort Bragg killings suspect convicted in cocaine deal double murder

A federal jury convicted Kenneth Quick Jr., 26, of Laurinburg, on eight charges tied to the 2020 Fort Bragg killings of Master Sgt. William LaVigne II and Army veteran Timothy Dumas Sr., putting a violent cocaine deal at the center of a case that shook one of the Army’s most watched bases.

Jurors found Quick guilty of first-degree murder, drug conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and related offenses after prosecutors said he arranged to buy cocaine and then turned the transaction into a fatal ambush. According to the case presented in court, Quick shot one of the victims and left both bodies in the woods on Fort Bragg, a detail that transformed the case from a street-level drug dispute into a double homicide with military ties.

The U.S. Department of Justice later confirmed the conviction in a release that identified the case as involving two murders on Fort Bragg. Prosecutors said the killings were not an isolated act of violence, but part of a larger drug-trafficking network operating around the base. That wider allegation gave the case a broader reach than a simple robbery or one-off shooting, and it is part of why the verdict drew immediate attention beyond Cumberland County.

The murders also became central to Seth Harp’s book The Fort Bragg Cartel, which examined the base as a major drug market and the criminal opportunity that can grow around military life. In this case, that hidden world collided directly with the deaths of LaVigne and Dumas, two men whose bodies were found on base property after the planned cocaine deal went bad.

Quick now faces a mandatory life sentence, and sentencing is expected later this year. For prosecutors, the jury’s verdict marked a clear finding that the drug conspiracy, the killings, and the attempt to cover them up were all part of the same violent episode. What remains next is the formal sentence for the man convicted of turning a cocaine exchange into a double murder on Fort Bragg.