Former Alexandria Sheriff James Dunning Dead at 62

Former Alexandria Sheriff James Dunning died Thursday in Hilton Head, SC. He was 62.

The local medical examiner’s office in South Carolina will perform an autopsy, Alexandria Police spokesman Jody Donaldson told Patch. Donaldson said it is expected that Dunning died in his sleep of natural causes.

Dunning retired to South Carolina a few years after the Dec. 5, 2003, murder of his wife, Nancy Dunning, in the couple’s Del Ray home.

The murder remains unsolved. Police say the case investigation remains active.

The Del Ray Business Association Foundation gathered funds to help solve the crime. The nonprofit foundation still has more than $100,000 pledged for leads in that unsolved case, according to DRBA officer Gayle Reuter.

The annual holiday luminarias along Mt. Vernon Avenue are set up each December in honor of Nancy Dunning, a popular neighborhood Realtor who helped organize many of the Del Ray’s community events.

James Dunning was elected sheriff in 1986. He was responsible for overseeing many high-profile inmates in the Alexandria jail, including convicted spies Robert Hanssen and Brian Regan, terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui, and John Walker Lindh, who was captured in Afghanistan while fighting with the Taliban, according to a report on Dunning in The Washington Post. 

“We were notified of retired Sheriff Jim Dunning's death by a family member this morning,” Alexandria Sheriff Dana Lawhorne said in a statement. “We have extended our condolences to his family and offered our assistance to them.”