Dykes, Heather

Tenure Summary

Heather Dykes's documented career with the Georgia Department of Corrections is administrative and financial rather than custodial. Per GDC position and salary records, she worked as a Financial Ops Generalist 2 at Dooly State Prison in 2023, moved to Accounting Technician 3 at Dooly for 2024 and for part of 2025 (through August 15, 2025), and was appointed Deputy Warden of Administration at McRae Women's Facility effective August 16, 2025. A separate one-day "Deputy Warden" entry at McRae is dated August 27, 2026.

Four deaths are attributed to her leadership tenure, all at McRae Women's Facility, where she held the Deputy Warden of Administration role. The records show no lawsuits naming her as a defendant, no intelligence reports or events dated inside her tenure at McRae, and no news coverage naming her. All four decedents are recorded under the same cause classification; the records provided do not name that category.

What happened on their watch

McRae Women's Facility — Deputy Warden of Administration, from August 16, 2025

Four deaths of incarcerated women are attributed to Dykes's tenure in this role. All four occurred in 2026 and are recorded with her listed as Deputy Warden of Administration at the time:

• Beverly Suzannne Sipple, 59, died March 16, 2026.
• Kristal Lyn Layne, 55, died May 10, 2026.
• Shannon Michelle Rush, 43, died May 16, 2026.
• Chasity King, 26, died May 18, 2026.

The May deaths — Layne, Rush and King — fall within a nine-day span, an unusual clustering for a single facility. The records classify all four deaths under one cause category, but do not name that category, so no cause of death can be stated here. No public narrative is attached to any of the four entries, and no intelligence report or logged event in the provided data is dated inside her McRae tenure. No lawsuit naming Dykes was filed while she held the Deputy Warden of Administration post, and no news report in the dataset names her in connection with any of these deaths.

Dooly State Prison — Financial Ops Generalist 2 (2023) and Accounting Technician 3 (2024; January 1–August 15, 2025)

Dykes held financial-staff roles at Dooly State Prison during these periods. This tenure is below the facility-leadership tier; no deaths are attributed to it, and the available records contain no incidents, reports or allegations tied to these dates.

Litigation

None. The records show no lawsuits in which Dykes is named as a defendant.

Sources

• Georgia Department of Corrections position and salary records — Dykes's Financial Ops Generalist 2, Accounting Technician 3, and Deputy Warden of Administration postings at Dooly State Prison and McRae Women's Facility.
• Georgia Prisoners' Speak mortality records for McRae Women's Facility — individual decedent entries for Beverly Suzannne Sipple, Kristal Lyn Layne, Shannon Michelle Rush and Chasity King, with dates, ages, cause classification and the role held at the time.

No court filings, DOJ documents, audit findings, or news reports naming this person appear in the provided records.

Synthesized by GPS Intelligence System on Sep 23, 2026 from positions, attributed deaths, lawsuits, intel reports, and news mentions in the public corpus. The supporting data tables follow below.