FBI office named for local woman
When FBI Special Agent Martha Dixon died in a Washington, D.C., shootout seven years ago trying to save her co-workers, her family knew little about her dangerous work.
She couldn't tell her family how she jumped out of helicopters, stormed prisons to quell assaults and stalked murder suspects over rugged, wooded terrain, her brother, Paul Dixon, said Tuesday.
Dixon, 48, of Bethel Park, spoke about his sister at the dedication of the FBI's new office building on the South Side. The Martha Dixon Building is named for the Mt. Lebanon native slain Nov. 22, 1994, when a gunman stormed a Washington, D.C., police station and killed her, another FBI agent and a Washington detective.
"We never knew about most of her exploits until after she died," Dixon said. "She lived the life of a homicide investigator in the mean streets of Washington, D.C."
About 40 family members, including Dixon's nieces and nephews, as well her friends and co-workers from around the nation, attended the dedication. The reception was held in the building's atrium and overflowed with about 200 people.
"She was in a lot of dangerous situations besides the one at the end," said Mary Dixon, Martha's mother. "She was a good agent and a hero."
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said Dixon could have fled out a side door the day she died, but instead tried to protect her co-workers.
"When she came face to face with danger, she was as strong as they come. She went down fighting," Mueller said.
Former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, whose wife grew up in Squirrel Hill, said Dixon probably knew she was outgunned when she heard the sound of an automatic weapon ripping up the third-floor office.
"Martha had a very simple choice. She could have gone to safety, but it was not in her chemistry to do anything but go forward and save lives," Freeh said.
Dixon had been married only 10 weeks to fellow FBI agent Jorge L. Martinez when she died, said Special Agent Bill Crowley, a bureau spokesman in Pittsburgh. Crowley said Dixon's family received permission from Martinez to have her maiden name on the building, because it was the name she had used most her life.
