2. INMATES A–B (ABSHIER–BUSSELL)

A

ABSHIER, STEVEN LYNN (OKLAHOMA # 099496)

STEVEN ABSHIER BEAT his 22-month-old daughter, Ashley, to death in 1995 in Oklahoma County. He was convicted in 1998. Abshier admitted to a defence psychologist that he had been a heavy user of methamphetamine before the killing. Defence attorneys during the trial’s penalty phase focused on his history of drug and alcohol abuse. Abshier is in the third stage of the appellate process. Ashley’s mother, Stephanie Abshier, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and testified against her husband in exchange for a 25-year sentence.

ABU-JAMAL, MUMIA (PENNSYLVANIA # AM-8335), DOB 24.4.1954

At 3.55 a.m. on 9 December 1981, a Philadelphia police officer stopped a VW Beetle that had been travelling the wrong way down a one-way street. Mumia Abu-Jamal’s brother, William Cook, was driving the car. Jamal, who was driving a taxicab near by, stopped his vehicle and approached the scene. Minutes later, the police officer, Daniel Faulkner, lay dying of fourteen bullet wounds.

Jamal’s pistol was found at the scene. At the trial, eyewitnesses pointed the finger at him. Forensic experts testified that the bullets that killed the police officer could have been fired from Jamal’s gun. But later investigation challenged their conclusion and the testimony of the eyewitnesses was called into question when several new witnesses claimed they had seen an unidentified man fleeing the scene.

Abu-Jamal – former name Wesley Cook – was sentenced to death on 2 July 1982. He is married with eight children and three grandchildren. His case is under appeal.

ADAMS, JAMES (ARIZONA # 131965), DOB 30.1.1964

On 9 February 1996, James Adams, posing as a potential house-buyer, was shown around a show house in Flagstaff, Arizona, by real estate agent Michelle Anglin. When they reached an upstairs bedroom, Adams overpowered the diminutive young woman, tore off her clothing and attempted to rape her while he choked her to death.

When Michelle’s husband and other family members were unable to reach her by pager, they called the police. Officers called at the show house where they found her body stuffed under a bed. Scenes-of-crime detectives discovered buttons from the victim’s blouse in a closet and semen stains on her underwear. Furnishings and drapes were badly damaged, which indicated that Michelle had fought for her life.

Thirty-two-year-old Adams was convicted of first-degree murder, kidnapping, attempted sexual assault and second-degree burglary. He was tried before Judge Ronald S. Reinstein on 1 July 1997, and given the death sentence on 21 November 1997.

ALLEN, GARY THOMAS (OKLAHOMA # 129275), DOB 25.2.1956

Gary Allen pleaded guilty to the 1986 shooting to death of his ex-girlfriend, Gail Titsworth, in Oklahoma County. He was convicted in 1987. Titsworth had broken off the relationship with Allen three days before the killing and had sought a protection order. She was picking up her two sons at a child-care centre when Allen shot her four times. He then struggled with a police officer and was shot in the head.

Allen spent months in mental hospitals after his arrest, being treated for depression and his head injury. He was deemed competent at a 1987 hearing but won a new competency hearing in 1997 after the Supreme Court ruled that Oklahoma’s competency standards were too high. In the subsequent hearing, Allen was again ruled competent. He is in the fifth stage of the appellate process.

ALLEN, WANDA JEAN (OKLAHOMA # 119486), DOB 17.8.1959

Wanda Allen shot her ex-girlfriend, Gloria J. Leathers, in 1988. outside The Village police station in Oklahoma County. She was convicted in 1989.

Allen had met Leathers while serving two years of a four-year prison sentence for a manslaughter conviction related to the death of a previous girlfriend. Police reports indicate that Allen and Leathers fought often, and Leathers was on her way into the police station with her mother to file a complaint against Allen.

Allen was the first woman to be executed in Oklahoma’s history on 11 January 2001.

Al-MOSAWI, SAHIB (OKLAHOMA # 223868), DOB 11.6.1948

Al-Mosawi fatally stabbed his wife, Inaam Al-Nashi, and son-in-law, Mohammad Al-Nashi in 1992 in Oklahoma County. He was convicted in 1994. A third stabbing victim, Fatima Al-Nashi (no relation), survived the attack and described it as an apparent domestic dispute. Al-Mosawi was upset because his wife named her new-born baby against his wishes. Al-Mosawi was executed on 6 December 2001.

ALVERSON, BILLY DON (OKLAHOMA), DOB 19.1.1977

Billy Alverson is one of four people who were convicted in the 1995 beating to death of QuikTrip employee Richard Yost in Tulsa County.

He was convicted in 1997. Michael Lee Wilson and Darwin D. Brown also are on Death Row for their roles in the attack, and juvenile defendant Richard Harjo is serving a life-without-parole sentence. Alverson was tried jointly with Harjo before two separate juries. A videotape showed the defendants wrestling Yost to the ground, and the sounds of a bat striking Yost and the ground could be heard out of the videotape’s viewing range. It was not determined who took part in the actual beating. Alverson is in the third stage of the appellate process.

AMAYA-RUIZ, JOSE (ARIZONA # 57279), DOB 18.3.1958

Mark and Kimberley Lopez gave 27-year-old Amaya-Ruiz a job taking care of the stables at their ranch near Tucson. The couple had only been married a week and Kimberley was four months pregnant.

On 28 March 1985, Kimberley was talking to her sister on the phone when the new handyman entered the house. He stabbed the young woman 23 times with a kitchen knife while chasing her as she fled for her life. As she lay bleeding to death, Amaya-Ruiz found Kimberley’s handgun and shot her through the ear. He drove off in the Lopez’ truck and was arrested shortly afterwards.

This depraved killer was tried before Judge Alice Truman on 26 November 1985 and sentenced to death by lethal injection on 10 March 1986. He now sits on Death Row in Arizona.

ANDERSON, FRANK W. (ARIZONA # 136521), DOB 4.4.1948

Thirty-nine-year-old Leta Kagen lived in a remote part of Mohave County, Arizona, with her son, Robert (fifteen), and friends, Roland Wear (50) and Bobby Poyson (21).

On 13 August 1996, Frank Anderson and his girlfriend, fourteen-year-old Kimberly Lane had been hitchhiking in the area and, as they knew Poyson, they asked to stay the night. Leta agreed and put them up in a caravan on the property.

Within days, Anderson, Poyson and Lane had hatched a plot to rob their hosts and steal their truck. Robert was lured into the trailer where his throat was cut from ear to ear and, while Anderson held the struggling boy down, Poyson drove a bread knife into his ear and out of his nose. The coup de grâce was administered when a cinder block crushed the victim’s skull.

Three hours later, after eating dinner, Anderson and Poyson entered Leta’s mobile home, which was in darkness. The woman was asleep. As Anderson held a lantern for light, Poyson shot her in the head with a rifle. The sound of gunfire awoke Roland Wear and, as he investigated the noise, he was shot in the mouth. Despite his almost lethal wounds, he managed to struggle into the yard, where he was bludgeoned to death with a cinder block.

After eventually confessing to the murders, 48-year-old Anderson was tried before Judge James E. Chavez on 12 January 1998 and, as the crimes were considered especially cruel, he was sentenced to death. While on Death Row, this stone-cold killer claims he has found new religious and moral beliefs and is on his best behaviour, none of which will assist him escaping execution. See also POYSON, Robert A.

ANDERSON, GLEN DOUGLAS (OKLAHOMA # 256320), DOB 24.4.1952

Glen Anderson shot three men and set fire to the house containing their bodies after trying to collect a drug debt in 1996 in Grady County. He was convicted in 1997. The victims were James Poeteet, Keith Smith and Terry Shepard. Two accomplices, Richard Thornburg Jr and Roger Embrey, kidnapped two men and forced one to shoot the other. The man who was shot survived. Thornburg was given a death sentence. A jury handed Embrey two life-without-parole sentences, a 35-year term and two 10-year sentences. Anderson is in the third stage of the appellate process.

APELT, MICHAEL, AND APELT, RUDY (ARIZONA # 80735/# 83093), DOBs 01.8.1963/28.2.1960

Twenty-five-year-old Michael Apelt and his 28-year-old brother came to Arizona from West Germany and immediately began dating numerous women. Eventually, Michael met Cynthia Monkman, and they married in October 1988, settling down to marital bliss in her home at Mesa. Then, one month later, Cynthia’s new husband took out a $400,000 life insurance policy on her life.

On the night of 22 December, and just a day after the policy was activated, the two brothers took Cynthia into the desert near Apache Junction, 30 miles east of Phoenix, and killed her by stabbing her numerous times in the chest and back. They finished their handiwork by slitting her throat.

The following morning, Michael called the police, reporting that his wife had disappeared. He claimed that she had run off with another man whom he knew by sight but couldn’t name. At first, the police were inclined to believe his story, but unfortunately for him, a hunter found Cynthia’s body in the desert just hours later.

The brothers Apelt were tried separately and both sit on Arizona’s Death Row.

ARMSTRONG, SHAD JARVIS (ARIZONA # 155617)

Shad Armstrong had just finished a long prison sentence in California for sexually assaulting and kidnapping an eight-year-old boy when, upon his release, he violated his parole conditions by moving out of state to Tucson, Arizona.

On 17 September 1984, he kidnapped eight-year-old Vicky Lynn Hoskinson, who was riding her bicycle home after posting a letter. He raped the child before killing her, leaving her body in the desert, where it was found a year later.

Twenty-nine-year-old Armstrong was traced to Texas, where he was arrested. He was tried before Judge Hawkins and sentenced to death on 8 May 1987.

B

BALTAZAR, JOHN RICHARD (TEXAS # 999257), DOB 9.5.1972

A criminal with a long record, Baltazar was convicted of the 27 September 1997 shooting of five-year-old Adriana Nicole Marines in Corpus Christi, Texas.

The child was one of three people shot by 25-year-old Baltazar after he kicked in the front door of their home at 3625 Panama Street, brandishing a handgun. Shot and wounded were nineteen-year-old Jose Arturo Marines and Vanessa Marines, aged ten. The shooting apparently stemmed from a family quarrel. Adriana died from two shots to the head. Jose survived wounds to the mouth and neck, and Vanessa mercifully recovered from a bullet wound to the lung. Baltazar is serving two life sentences in conjunction with their shooting. He received the death penalty for killing the little girl.

BANKS, ANTHONY ROZELLE (OKLAHOMA # 87722), DOB 5.7.1952

He was convicted of the 1979 rape and murder of Sun I. Kim Travis in Tulsa County. The conviction came 20 years after the crime because of newly discovered DNA evidence. Banks had been serving a no-parole life sentence for an unrelated killing in which he originally had been sentenced to death. An appeal reversed that conviction, and he made a plea bargain to avoid death. A co-defendant in the 1979 case, Allen Wayne Nelson, received a life sentence. Banks is in the first stage of appeals.

BARAZZA, MAURO MORRIS (TEXAS # 999996), DOB 5.5.1972

Diminutive Hispanic Barazza stands five feet six inches tall and weighs only 100 lbs. Born in Hale County, he was a carpet installer by profession. With no previous criminal record, he was convicted of the robbery and murder of 73-year-old Vilorie Nelson of Haltom City, on 14 June 1989.

Nelson was killed inside her home at 1804 Higgins Lane after Barazza, aged seventeen, with an accomplice, Richard Glen Cedillo, broke in through a window. Vilorie was struck on the head with a pair of shrubbery shears, and then trounced by her attacker, resulting in her chest being crushed. Her throat was also cut. Costume jewellery and a carton of cigarettes were taken from the home following the murder.

BARBER, DANNY LEE (TEXAS # 999673), DOB 8.5.1955

‘THE DALLAS SERIAL KILLER’

A roofer from Los Angeles, California, Danny Lee Barber was just 24 years old when, on 8 October 1979, he committed capital murder in Texas. Twenty years later, after eating a final meal of two steaks, a baked potato, chef salad, tea and chocolate ice cream, he was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville on 11 February 1999. His last words were:

Hello, Mrs Ingram, it’s good to see you. I said I could talk but I don’t think I am gonna be able to. I heard one of your nieces had some angry words. I didn’t have anything to do with the stay [of execution]. I spent the last twenty years waiting to figure out what’s going on. I pray that you get over it and that’s the only thing I can think to say. I’m regretful for what I done, but I’m a different person from that time. If you could get to know me over the years, you could have seen it. I’ve got some people over here that believes it.

I want to talk to my friends over here for a second. Well, it’s good to see you guys. Look after Mary Lynn for me. Like I said, I’ve called my mother already, so she knows. Goodbye.

Barber was convicted of the 8 October 1979 murder of Janie Louise Ingram at her City of Balch Springs home, in Dallas County. Barber reportedly broke into the woman’s home on Lake June Road and repeatedly struck her in the head and face with a length of pipe when she surprised him. His victim was also stabbed in the throat. Her leather purse, clock radio and calculator were stolen from the house.

Her mother, Ruth Clowers, and brother, Roy, who had gone to the house to find out why Janie had not turned up for dinner, found the back door of the property unlocked and decided to investigate. When Roy stepped into the kitchen, he saw a large pool of blood. He found his sister in her bedroom, her naked body smeared with blood. Then they called the Balch Springs police.

Dr Thomas Gilchrist, a Dallas County medical examiner, determined that Janice Ingram had died on or around 8 October, after receiving twenty blows to her head with a blunt object. His autopsy revealed that the skin on her head had been literally ripped from her skull by the force of her attacker’s blows, and the brain itself showed signs of bruising. Bruises covered her face and head, and her nose was broken. Investigating officers soon discovered a man’s bloody palm print at the scene, but a search through countrywide files revealed nothing, and Janie’s killer remained at large.

On 4 May 1980, Barber slipped up. He was arrested for burgling an office in Dallas and police soon learned that he had murdered three women and a man. He confessed to the 17 January 1979 killing of 48-year-old Mercedes Mendez, a.k.a. Mercy Mendez. The woman’s body was dumped on a road in a wooded area near Mesquite after she had been beaten, sexually molested and shot three times in the head.

Raymond Curlee was shot dead on 21 April 1980 during a burglary, and Barber said that he had attempted to have sex with the dead man’s body.

He also confessed to the beating to death of Mary Ellen Caperton on 18 June 1978, and the attempted murder of James Whittaker, whom he shot at with a rifle after he had burgled the home of his wife and beaten her. Then, under questioning, Barber described the murder of Janie Ingram in all its gory detail:

On October 8, 1979, at about 11:00 p.m., I parked on Cheyenne Road. I walked to Janie Ingram’s house on Lake June Road. I was wearing boots, blue jeans, a shirt, a beanie hat, and brown leather gloves. I knew this was Janie Ingram’s house because I had cut down a tree for her and she paid me $10 for cutting it down. I picked up a piece of pipe in the back yard. It was about a foot and a half long. It had a cap on one end. I was going to use the pipe to open a window, but I found the door in the breezeway unlocked. I went in this door and when I turned around I was facing someone who said, ‘Who is it?’ Then she started screaming. She wouldn’t be quite [sic] so I hit her with the pipe I was holding in my hand. I hit her three or four times with the pipe, I went bananas and I don’t remember if I hit her anymore. I turned the light on and saw it was Janie Ingram that I had hit. She was laying in a puddle of blood. I took my gloves off and felt for a pulse on her neck and wrist. I went down the hall and into the bedroom. I looked under the bed and around the room. I found a purse with forty dollars in it. I got a pillowcase off the bed and put the purse in it. I went back and got Janie and drug her down the hall and into the bedroom. I tried to get her onto the bed but I couldn’t. I tried to clean some of the blood off her and got blood all over me. I had her lying on her back on the floor at the end of the bed. I tried to have sex with her. I then went into the bathroom in the bedroom and took a shower. I left the house the same way as I got in. Through the back door.

BARNABEI, DEREK R. (VIRGINIA)

Derek R. Barnabei was executed on 14 September 2000, after being convicted of raping and murdering Old Dominion University student Sarah Wisnosky in 1994.

On 22 September 1993, Sarah’s nude body was found in the Lafayette River. The seventeen-year-old freshman from Lynchburg had been strangled and had suffered ten blows to the head from what appeared to be a ball-peen hammer. Barnabei, who had been dating Wisnosky, fled to Ohio. He denied the charges, but was convicted of capital murder and rape in 1995. Stains matching Sarah’s blood type were found in Barnabei’s room, prosecutors said. Prosecutors presented forensic evidence that semen matching Barnabei’s was present in Sarah’s body. Barnabei’s attorneys said the evidence was only consistent with a consensual relationship.

DNA test results on blood under Sarah’s fingernails confirmed Barnabei’s guilt. The blood belonged to both Sarah and Barnabei.

BARNES JR, ODELL (TEXAS # 999998), DOB 22.3.1968

Odell Barnes Jr, a condemned killer whose record included nine previous felony convictions, headed to the Texas death chamber during the evening of 1 March 2000, for the murder of a Wichita Falls woman on 29 November 1989.

Former construction worker Barnes, aged 31, insisted that he was innocent of the rape, beating with a rifle and table lamp, stabbing and shooting of 42-year-old Helen Bass at her home at 1221 Harding. Her nude body was found on her bed. Barnes then stole money and a .32-calibre pistol from the house and he was later seen trying to sell the stolen gun to different people.

The killing occurred three weeks after Barnes was paroled, having served nineteen months of a ten-year prison term for robbery. Earlier, he had been paroled after serving only three months of an eight-year sentence for a similar offence.

The paroles came during a period when Texas had too many inmates and not enough prisons, and state officials were forced to release inmates to comply with federal court orders governing prison overcrowding.

Wichita County DA Barry Macha said,

He [Barnes] is a very dangerous and violent individual And very appropriately, the jury concluded he would be a continuing threat to our society. There is no question of his guilt. Neighbours saw him jumping over the fence around Bass’s house. People saw him with the victim’s own gun later that night, and that he was wearing coveralls. Those clothes were recovered from his brother’s car, and identified as always worn by Barnes, had blood stains that matched the blood of the victim, and his fingerprints were found on the lamp that was used to beat Mrs Bass.

BASHIR, ABDULLAH BASHIR, A.K.A. PHILLIPS, CLIFFORD (TEXAS # 999723), DOB 2.12.1934

A general contractor form Erie County, New York, Bashir had been convicted of second-degree manslaughter in Ossining, New York State, in November 1972 and sentenced to five to fifteen years. He served just over three years and was released from prison on 21 January 1976.

On 13 January 1982, Bashir went to the office of 58-year-old Iris Siff, a one-time performer and now managing director of the Alley Theatre in Houston. Siff was working late into the night, filling out an application for a government grant. Bashir, a former security guard at the theatre, had been fired a few weeks earlier for sleeping on the job. According to him, he was calling to collect wages that he said were owed him.

After Bashir was arrested outside his mother’s home in Los Angeles, a month after the killing, he made a full confession. He argued that Siff attacked him and he killed her in self-defence by strangling her with a telephone cord. Testimony showed that he stole her television, fur coat, jewellery, tote bag and Lincoln Continental car.

He declined a last meal, and during his final statement he apologised for committing the murder and expressed his love for his third wife, an Irish woman, whom he had married while on Death Row. He was executed by lethal injection on 15 December 1993.

BASSO, SUZANNE MARGARET (TEXAS # 999329), DOB 15.5.1954

‘A VERY FATAL ATTRACTION’

Louis ‘Buddy’ Musso’s body was found on Wednesday 26 August 1998. According to court documents from Harris County, Texas, Mical Renz was jogging on Main Street in Galena Park, a city east of Houston, around 6.15 a.m., when he saw what he took to be someone lying on the embankment at the side of the road. Renz didn’t investigate the matter any further and continued on his way. However, after finishing his morning run and preparing for work, Renz went back to the place where he had seen the recumbent figure. It was, by then, a few minutes before 8 a.m. and when he got close up to the figure he discovered that it was the dead body of a man. He phoned the police.

Within minutes, Officer Kevin Cates of the Galena Park Police Department arrived at the scene. Cates observed that the deceased man was dressed in clean clothes despite the fact that his body was bloody and very badly bruised. This macabre state of affairs led the officer to conclude that the body was that of a murder victim who had been moved to that location and dumped, rather than having been killed there.

Shortly afterwards, Assistant Chief Robert Pruett also arrived and he arranged for a police despatcher to check neighbouring cities for reports of missing persons. Information from Jacinto City, which borders Galena Park, indicated that a woman by the name of Suzanne Basso had recently filed a missing persons report. On receiving this information, Robert Pruett headed out to Basso’s address, hoping for a lead on the as-yet unidentified victim.

Suzanne Basso was 44 years old and lived in an apartment in Jacinto City with her son, James O’Malley. When Pruett arrived there, Basso was not at home; she had gone to the police department to give officers an identification card belonging to the missing man, Louis Musso.

Pruett waited, and within a few minutes Basso returned. From the initial conversation, Pruett learned that Musso lived there along with Basso and her son. Basso invited the policeman into her home, where he was introduced to O’Malley, and where he was surprised to see some bloodstained clothing and a sheet near a temporary bed in the living room.

In response to Pruett’s questions regarding the bloodstained articles, Basso said that Musso slept in the living room and that the clothing was his. Pruett then asked Basso and O’Malley to accompany him to where the body was, in order to determine whether they could identify it, which they did without expressing any surprise or emotion. The identification completed, Pruett then asked Basso and O’Malley to accompany him to the police station to give written statements. Both agreed.

At the station, O’Malley very soon confessed to involvement in the murder. He gave oral and written statements which outlined the events surrounding the killing and named all the other persons involved.

What emerged from that initial confession and the subsequent murder investigation was an horrific story in which a mentally retarded man had been subjected to an appalling catalogue of torture and violence at the hands of six people. Moreover, the monster who was the instigator, orchestrator and driving force behind the murderous episode was none other than O’Malley’s mother, Suzanne Margaret Basso.

According to the Texas Department of Corrections records, inmate # 999329 Suzanne Margaret Basso is five feet two inches in height, with grey hair and blue eyes. She lists her previous occupations as office clerk, seamstress and labourer, and, at the time of her arrest, she had no previous criminal convictions.

It isn’t easy to piece together a reliable personal history of Suzanne Basso, for much of what she would have the world believe about her has been discredited and exposed as downright lies. What is, however, true is that she was born on 15 May 1954, in Albany, New York State, and has two adult children, both still alive, one of whom is James O’Malley.

What is also beyond dispute is that this middle-aged woman, waiting her turn on Death Row, is one of the most evil killers of modern times and is as deserving of the death penalty as any man, but whatever she did in the 44 years before she was arrested for murder, it is certain, having been attested to in court, that Basso frequently demonstrated a penchant for cruelty and deviant behaviour. Her 23-year-old son James professed to be terrified of her, and her daughter, Christianna Hardy, said that their mother had abused both her and her brother emotionally and sexually.

In fact, there can be no more vivid indictment of this evil woman than that which was provided by Christianna, who said, jubilantly, when the jury voted in favour of the death sentence, ‘It’s wonder, it’s wonderful. Justice has finally been served. She is off the streets. She can’t hurt anybody any more.’ She went on to say, ‘Let the inmates kill her, I don’t care. She didn’t feel any sadness for Buddy. She didn’t feel any sadness for anybody else that she’s hurt. Why should we give her sympathy?’

The first recorded reference to Basso’s earlier life comes from the Houston Press in an article concerning the circumstances surrounding the death of her husband, Carmine Basso. Carmine’s body was found on 27 May 1997, in an office suite, number 215, of a building at 6633 Hillcroft, in south-west Houston. It appears that she had placed a wedding announcement in the Houston Chronicle of Sunday 22 October 1995. The grandiosely worded and wildly inaccurate announcement said that ‘Suzanne Margaret Anne Cassandra Lynne Theresa Marie Veronica Sue Burns-Standlinslowski’ and Carmine Basso had tied the knot. The newly wed Mrs Basso, as well as having eleven forenames, claimed to have eleven brothers and to be heiress to ‘the Oil Dynasty in Halifax, Nova Scotia’.

As if this were not enough, this heiress to an empire in ‘black gold’ claimed to have been educated in England, at no less a seat of learning than Saint Anne’s Institute in Yorkshire, where she obtained a degree in Home Economics and Trade Sewing. A model of all the virtues, she rounded off her education by entering a convent and becoming a nun, known as Sister Mary Theresa.

Perhaps her role model was Mother Theresa of Calcutta, although she in no way resembled the saintly winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Standing only five feet two inches tall and weighing in at a massive 365 lbs, the porcine Basso was built for the world of gridiron football rather than a convent and, very clearly, had never followed a regime of fasting and abstinence. In any event, convent officials soon disabused the Houston Press of any notions that this may have been true: they said they had never heard of the woman.

What is more, that may not have been all that was untrue in this woman’s curriculum vitae, richly embroidered as it was in merit and distinction. According to Carmine Basso’s stepmother, Suzanne’s new in-laws were far from sure that Carmine and she were even married at all. The stepmother, Arlene Basso, is quoted as saying, ‘Believe me when I tell you, she is off the wall.’

Arlene also says that the newly wed Suzanne had claimed to have twin daughters. She sent a photo of the twins to the Basso family, who could see that the picture was, very obviously, one girl looking into a mirror.

Nor did Suzanne neglect her new husband’s pedigree when she devised the pretentious quarter-page advert, for she stated that her spouse was a holder of the Congressional Medal of Honour. He was not. However, her assertion that he was the owner of Latin Security and Investigation proved to be true. The company’s office was registered at Suite 215, 6633 Hillcroft, Houston, which is precisely where Officer J. R. Martinez found Mr Basso’s corpse.

Although the autopsy showed no apparent trauma to the body, the subsequent murder of Louis Musso has caused the police in Houston to take a fresh look at Carmine Basso’s death and the circumstances surrounding it. According to the medical report, it seemed that Suzanne Basso was the last person to speak to her husband, and that was on 20 May 1997 at 11 a.m. She had phoned him then from New Jersey, where she claimed to have been visiting her mother. The report also says that, although there were no rest rooms or hygiene facilities in the office suite, the couple had been apparently living there for several months and the results were not pleasant. It goes on to state that ‘there were several trash cans with faeces and urine in them’. In truth, the office was so dirty that the cleaners would not go near it because of the horrendous smell coming from within. And Carmine Basso’s slowly decomposing corpse cannot have helped matters either.

The postmortem examination was carried out by Harris County Chief Medical Examiner, Joye Carter, who ruled that Carmine Basso had died of natural causes. She concluded that his death was the result of erosive oesophagitis (inflammation of the lower oesophagus from the regurgitation of gastric acid contents). In Carmine’s case, this erosion extended to the trachea and a portion of the cervical spine area. The only other major abnormality noted was ‘a strong ammonia smell to the body’.

In short, it seemed that Carmine Basso died, at the age of 47, from a fatal case of acid indigestion and nothing more. Nevertheless, Dr Carter was prompted to say, two years later: ‘When Mr Basso was found dead, it did not appear to be foul play, but it did appear to be a little strange. In the light of the Musso case, I think it may warrant a second look.’

While the debate over whether to exhume Carmine Basso is, at the time of writing, unresolved, there is no doubt that there was nothing natural in the cause of the next death in which Suzanne Basso was involved. Louis ‘Buddy’ Musso had most certainly been murdered.

Although Louis Musso was 59 years old, he was mentally retarded, described, by those who knew him, as a trusting soul, but with the mental capacity of an eight-year-old child. Buddy was born and raised in New Jersey. He was a regular churchgoer, and it was at church where he met Mimi Averill, about twenty years prior to his death. Mimi, who has a mentally retarded grandson herself, had warmed to Buddy and he became something of an adopted member of the Averill family.

Eventually, however, in 1998, Buddy came into contact with Suzanne Basso and her son, James, himself a mildly retarded man. Somehow, Basso persuaded Buddy that it would be a good idea if they would marry and, in the June of that same year, without any word to the Averills, Buddy left the ‘Garden State’ of New Jersey and headed for Texas to live with Basso and her son in Houston. At Basso’s trial, Mimi Averill told the court, ‘I made a promise to Buddy that I would always take care of him, and I hurt, and I will always carry that guilt.’

The trio lived in Basso’s apartment in Jacinto City and, immediately, the bride-to-be took control of Buddy’s life, beginning with his finances. She tried to get his Social Security cheques sent directly to her, and she wrote cheques to herself from his bank account. Within a month of his arrival, his intended spouse made out a will in Buddy’s name, which he signed, naming her as the sole beneficiary of his estate. This nefarious scheme was devised so that Basso might collect on Buddy’s life insurance policy. In fact, by the terms of Buddy’s policy, the insurance company would pay $65,000 if he were to meet a violent death, which is exactly what the murderous Basso intended to happen.

During the time between his arrival in Houston and his death, approximately two months later, Buddy was only allowed to speak to his friends, the Averills, on one occasion. During the call he wept and told them that he missed them. so no further calls were allowed him. Basso herself phoned the Averills, but despite their requests they were not allowed to speak with Buddy.

Basso and her son were friendly with Bernice Ahrens, who lived in a nearby apartment with her adult children, Craig and Hope, and Hope’s boyfriend, Terence Singleton.

On Saturday 22 August 1998, in response to a phone call, Houston PD sent Police Officer Jeffery Butcher to a reported assault in progress. When he arrived at the scene he was met by the complainant, a man called Jeffery Jones. Also present were Buddy Musso, James O’Malley and Craig Ahrens. Jones told the police officer that O’Malley and Ahrens had been forcing Buddy to run on the spot, against his will. The officer noticed that Buddy had severely blackened eyes and various other signs of violence about his body. He noticed also that Buddy was mentally retarded and seemed to be suffering from exhaustion.

On questioning, Buddy explained that he had been beaten up by some Mexicans, and he denied that O’Malley and Ahrens were responsible for his injuries. With nothing else to go on, the officer drove Buddy to the apartment of Bernice Ahrens, where he met Suzanne Basso. She explained that she was Buddy’s guardian and added that Buddy had been abused when he was living in New Jersey. The self-styled ‘Angel of Mercy’ went on to say that she had sent O’Malley and Ahrens to take Buddy running, as he was always wanting to run in the apartment. At this point, Buddy apparently went up to Basso and put his head on her shoulder in an affectionate manner.

Convinced by this that Buddy was now in safe hands, Officer Butcher went away, leaving Buddy in Suzanne Basso’s care. It was a clever deception by the evil woman and a fatal misjudgement by the lawman, as, from the moment the officer left Bernice Ahren’s apartment, Buddy was subjected to a regime of inhumanly cruel torment and violence which would end only when he died, some three days later.

The extent of the brutality which Buddy was forced to undergo, and his misery during those final days of his life, is graphically documented in the court records of Harris County. For the next few days, Buddy, Basso and O’Malley stayed at the Ahrens’ apartment, and during that time all the occupants, egged on by the evil and avaricious Basso, subjected this trusting soul to beatings and abuse.

Buddy was forced to sit in what is described as a ‘hurricane position’ with his knees on a mat and his hands on the back of his head. Any time that the hapless man failed to hold this position, he would be punished. This chastisement involved such treatment as Singleton kicking Buddy ‘in the tail’ with force and Basso hitting him about the head with a shoe and a metal part from a vacuum cleaner, which caused the first of seventeen gashes to his head. At one point, Craig Ahrens suggested that they take Buddy to hospital to have his head stitched, but the idea was not taken seriously and the beatings continued.

Throughout the entire period until he died, Buddy was denied food of any sort and, as time progressed, the beatings and abuse intensified, with baseball bats, a belt and steel-tipped boots being used. At trial, one of the defendants also admitted that they had bathed him with cleaning fluids and bleach and then scrubbed him with a wire brush.

At some point, an argument erupted over whether Suzanne Basso had told Buddy that she wanted to have sex with him. Craig Ahrens, O’Malley and Singleton confronted Buddy about this and began to beat him. Singleton used the baseball bat to hit him while O’Malley, wearing steel-tipped boots, kicked him in the head and chest and stomped on his arms. According to testimony from Bernice Ahrens, Buddy was pleading for relief from the constant beatings and asking to be taken to hospital because he wasn’t ‘feeling well’.

On the Tuesday evening, before dinner, O’Malley and Singleton took Buddy to the bathroom to give him a bath. He slipped in the tub and hit his head. At this, O’Malley jumped in the tub and stamped on his head and chest, causing him to bleed from a deep cut on his head. Hope Ahrens then entered the room and the three combined to punch and kick Buddy, which made his ear puff and his head bleed even more. They then dragged him out of the bath and left him on the floor while they went into another room to eat dinner.

During the meal, the 365 lb Basso went to the bathroom and hit Buddy on the head, leaving an x-shaped cut. Singleton joined her and as Buddy was, by this time, barely responsive, they put him back in the tub and savagely poured surgical spirit and peroxide on his cuts before returning to their meal.

Shortly after dinner, it was discovered that Buddy, who viewed life as would an eight-year-old child, had given up the struggle and had mercifully died.

To distance herself from the death, and with the insurance payout in mind, Basso arranged that they clean up Buddy’s corpse, dress him in clean clothes, put him in the trunk of Bernice Ahrens’s car and drive to a location where his body could be dumped. They left him on Main Street, Galena Park, where he was found the next morning.

Following the discovery of the body and the arrest of Basso and O’Malley, the police went to the Ahrens’ apartment. There, they recovered copious evidence of the orgy of savage violence which had resulted in Buddy Musso’s horrific death. Among the items found were handcuffs and two baseball bats, both of which were stained with the dead man’s blood. There was blood too on the carpet and in Bernice’s car. All of it was Buddy Musso’s.

Among the many injuries that the medical examiner, Dr Shrode, detailed at the trial were fractured ribs, a broken nose, a skull fracture, cigarette burn marks, chemical burns and bruises extending from the bottom of his feet to his upper torso, including his genitals, eyes and ears. Blood was discovered in the oral cavity and windpipe. The autopsy revealed that the immediate cause of death had been ‘skull fracture from multiple blunt impact trauma’, but the injuries to the genital area were so serious that they themselves could have resulted in death. Testimony was also presented that the tragic victim had lost up to 30 lbs in weight during the few weeks that he had spent with the sadistic Basso.

Although all the participants were found guilty, the death penalty was not sought for Basso’s five co-defendants. Only she was singled out for the ultimate sentence as she had masterminded the entire plot in order to gain the insurance payout. The prosecution painted a picture of an evil and unscrupulous confidence trickster who used several aliases, and police discovered that Buddy was not the only one whose death would be of benefit to Basso: she had taken out life insurance policies on several people, including an eight-year-old child who didn’t actually exist.

Perhaps the final word on the matter should go to Basso’s daughter, Christianna, who plans to celebrate when her mother’s sentence is carried out. She said, ‘I might just sit at home and pop a bottle of champagne when the lethal injection is given. I have no remorse for her.’

This murderous and manipulative freak of nature even attempted to exact misplaced sympathy from the jury by appearing in a wheelchair at her trial after having shed an enormous 200 lbs in weight in an attempt to look frail. Her ploy failed and, on Wednesday 1 September 1999, Suzanne Margaret Basso was sentenced to be executed by lethal injection.

BATTENFIELD, BILLY RAY (OKLAHOMA # 097638), DOB 11.3.1952

Battenfield beat to death Donald Cantrell in 1984 with a tyre iron in the Wahoo Bay area on Fort Gibson Lake in Wagoner County. He was convicted in 1985. An accomplice, Melvin Battiest, was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the murder. Battenfield is in the sixth stage of the appellate review.

BAZE, RALPH (KENTUCKY # 32863), DOB 1.7.1995

On 4 February 1994, Ralph Baze was sentenced to death in Rowan County for the murder of two police officers.

On 30 January 1992, a Powell County deputy, Arthur Briscoe, went to Baze’s home regarding an arrest warrant from Ohio. At first, Baze was not at home, but when the deputy returned with Sheriff Steve Bennett, Baze, using an assault rifle, killed the two officers. He was arrested in Estill County the same day.

Ralph Baze resides on Death Row at the Kentucky State Penitentiary.

BEATY, DONALD EDWARD (ARIZONA # 54558), DOB 7.2.1955

On the evening of 9 May 1984, pretty thirteen-year-old Christy Ann Fornoff was collecting money from her paper round customers at the Rockpoint Apartments in Tempe, Arizona, when she bumped into Beaty, who was the manager. Beaty lured the girl into his rooms where he raped and suffocated her. He kept the body for two days until he placed it behind the complex’s trash dumpster.

This 29-year-old killer offered no mitigation for his crime and was sentenced to death by Judge Rufus Coulter Jr, on 20 July 1985. He is on Death Row at the Arizona State Prison.

BEAZLEY, NAPOLEON (TEXAS # 999141), DOB 5.8.1976

A labourer hailing from Houston, Texas, eighteen-year-old Beazley was convicted in the car-jacking of John E. Luttig, aged 63, of Tyler. Luttig, driving a 1987 Mercedes Benz, had pulled into the driveway of his home at 120 South College, when he was approached by Beazley and shot in the head with a .45-calibre pistol. Beazley, and his two accomplices, Cedric and David Coleman, then fled in their victim’s car.

Beazley is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection. His two partners-in-crime received life sentences for aggravated robbery.

BEETS, BETTY LOU (TEXAS # 999810), DOB 12.3.1937

‘A BLACK WIDOW’

On 24 February 2000, Betty Lou Beets, aged 64, became the fourth woman to be executed in the United States since the Supreme Court in 1976 allowed the death penalty to resume after a ten-year moratorium. She was the second woman to be executed in Texas since the Civil War. She gave no final statement, as she lay strapped to the death chamber gurney. The former cashier and waitress made no eye contact with the victim’s family, but smiled at her own relatives.

Beets was convicted of the 6 August shooting to death of her fifth husband, Jimmy Don Beets, at the couple’s home near Gun Barrel City in east Texas. Prosecutors said that the diminutive woman – she was a mere five foot two inches tall – killed her husband, a Dallas Fire Department captain, to collect $100,000 in insurance and pension benefits. Following an anonymous tip-off, his body was found buried in a wishing well which was used as a flower garden. The corpse had been there two years after having been reported missing by Betty Beets following a fishing trip.

Police also found the skeletal remains of Beet’s fourth husband, Doyle Wayne Barker, under a storage shed at the property. Baker, who disappeared in 1981, had also been shot to death.

Both men had been shot in the back of the head and stuffed into blue sleeping bags. She was also convicted of shooting and wounding her second husband, Bill Lane.

BELL JR, WALTER (TEXAS # 999524), DOB 9.12.1953

A deliveryman from Lafayette Parish, Louisiana, Bell was first sentenced to death in July 1974 for the murder of 59-year-old Irene Chisum, a Port Arthur housewife. Chisum, and her 59-year-old husband, Fred, were killed after being tied up in their home and robbed. Mrs Chisum was beaten and raped before her death.

US District Judge Robert Parker vacated Bell’s conviction in January 1984 and he was given a life sentence in May that same year. His death sentence was overturned because he had been interviewed by a state psychiatrist without being warned that the psychiatrist was gathering information that could later be used against him in court.

Prior to the commutation, however, Bell was again convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for the murder of Mr Chisum, the owner of an appliance repair shop who once employed the killer.

Prosecutors said Bell robbed and killed the couple because he had been recently fired by Mr Chisum. Their bodies were found in the bedroom of their home on 19 July 1974. Bell, who had attempted to cash a cheque on the Chisum’s account, was arrested outside a bar the next day. A plastic container of coins taken from the house was later found at Bell’s residence. His fingerprints were also found at the crime scene.

BENEFIEL, BILL JOE (INDIANA # 886175), DOB 3.6.1956

‘THE SUPERGLUE MONSTER’

When a Gemini’s personality changes from Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde the result can be one of extreme evil, and 36-year-old Bill Benefiel’s Mr Hyde is unquestionably one of the most malevolent and sadistic alter egos to be encountered among the inmates of Death Row, Indiana.

The State of Indiana’s case was established by the testimony of seventeen-year-old Alicia Elmore, a surviving victim of this revolting monster. Alicia lived at 207 S 14th Street, Terre Haute, with her mother, brother and stepfather. On the evening of 10 October 1986, at 7.30 p.m., she left home and began to walk to a local store to buy some Sprite for her mother and her brother, both of whom were ill. However, Alicia never made it to the store and it was to be four months before she saw her family again.

What happened to Alicia that night is the stuff of which only the worst of nightmares are made. She was walking on the south side of Ohio Street and heard a noise. Looking round, she saw someone run between two houses. She became scared and cut across to the other side of the street to a gas station. There she bought two Sprites and then started to walk back home, a distance of only two blocks.

As the teenager walked back along Ohio Street, a man suddenly ran out from the darkness between the two houses, crossed the street and, to her horror, pointed a gun at her. He asked if she had any money. Terrified, she said, ‘No, you can check.’ The armed assailant, Bill Benefiel, who was wearing a stocking mask, reached out and grabbed Alicia by the back of her hair. She screamed. He said that if she screamed again, he would shoot her. Almost out of her wits with fear, she complied.

He walked her down an alley and, at the first garage, told her to open the door. She was roughly pushed into the dirty, junk-filled garage, where he stripped her of all her clothes and tied her hands and feet. Then, after gagging her with her underwear, he covered her head completely with her jeans and left. After about five minutes he returned with a van. He picked her up and dumped her into the back of the van and drove off. Throughout the journey, he asked her, frequently, if she had any idea where they were. She lied, saying that she thought they were out of Terre Haute, to make him think that she didn’t know what was going on. She really believed that she was close to where she lived and she was perfectly correct. They were at 323 S 13½ Street, little more than a hundred yards from her home.

The man carried her into the house and laid her on a mattress, on the floor. Still with her jeans over her head, she could hear him snapping photos of her. Then, holding the gun to her head, he raped her.

After the rape, he put the mattress onto a bed frame and chained Alicia to this, face down. He handcuffed her wrists to the side rails and went out. When he returned, after about fifteen minutes, he raped her again, before taping up her mouth with duct tape and sealing her eyelids with superglue.

The next day, while Benefiel was out, Alicia attempted to escape and began screaming. Unfortunately, the depraved fanatic returned and began to slap her on her head and back. Then, he took a knife and made small cuts all over her back. He cut off her fingernails and part of her hair, ‘to put in a scrapbook along/with the rest of them’. Afterwards, he put more glue in her eyes and more tape over her mouth.

On 30 October, he said they were going to have a Hallowe’en party. His repulsively distorted idea of a party involved raping her anally while inserting a gun into her vagina. He also cut the side of her neck and her chest before applying more glue to her eyes.

For the next four months she endured being raped and sodomised, at gunpoint, twice a day. She counted 64 rapes before losing count.

Most of the time she was chained and handcuffed to a bed. Daily he would glue her eyelids painfully shut with superglue and stuff toilet paper in her mouth. She was often cut with a knife and beaten.

One day during the fourth month, on 27 January 1987, Benefiel neglected to secure her eyes properly and Alicia saw a second girl, Delores Wells, naked and handcuffed on the bed with tape over her eyes and mouth. She later saw Benefiel beat Delores and put superglue in her nose, then pinch it together so that she couldn’t breathe.

A few days later he left the house for a couple of hours and, when he returned, told Alicia that he had killed and buried Delores. He described how he had tied her arms and legs to two trees and taped her whole face, to suffocate her. To be sure she was dead, he had viciously snapped her neck.

Eventually, on 11 February, following a tip-off from Benefiel’s wife, police were led to the house and rescued Alicia, who was hidden in a recess behind a false ceiling. However, it was almost two weeks before, on 23 February, local volunteer searchers came upon a shallow grave in some nearby woods. A police team arrived and, an hour later, the naked body of the missing teenager, Delores Wells, was recovered. She had been brutally murdered in precisely the manner that Benefiel had described to Alicia.

Tried at Vigo County Superior Court by Judge Michael H. Eldred, Benefiel’s plea of insanity fell on deaf ears and was not accepted by the jury. The trial took three weeks, but the jury took less than three hours to pronounce him guilty. He now faces execution for his appallingly depraved and sadistic crimes.

BERNAY, JOHN CAMP (OKLAHOMA # 052288), DOB 6.10.1931

Sixty-four-year-old John Bernay shot to death Pamela Wolf Chief in 1995 in Oklahoma County. He was convicted in 1997.

Wolf Chief and two men went to Bernay’s apartment to retrieve her 25-year-old daughter, Lucinda, who had been staying there. During a subsequent struggle, Wolf Chief was shot in the back of the head as she was lying on the floor. Bernay was sentenced to death but was acquitted on two counts of shooting with intent to kill related to the woman’s companions. Back in 1971, Bernay pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in Muskogee County and was sentenced to life in prison with parole possible. He served sixteen years before being paroled. He is in the third stage of appeals in the 1995 case.

BIBLE, RICHARD LYNN (ARIZONA # 43353), DOB 23.1.1962

At around 10.30 a.m. on 6 June 1988, nine-year-old Jennifer Wilson was riding her bike on a forest service road in Flagstaff, Arizona. Bible drove by in a truck and forced her to stop. He abducted Jennifer and took her to a hill near his home where he sexually assaulted her before killing her by hitting her about the head and face with a length of axle rod.

A passing motorist had seen Bible talking to the young girl by the roadside, and when a local radio station reported Jennifer as missing, he telephoned the police, who arrested Bible later the same day. He denied the offence and the girl’s body was not found for three weeks.

Bible, who was 26 at the time of the murder and had a history of prior convictions involving violence, was sentenced to death by Judge Richard K. Mangum on 12 June 1990.

BIGBY, JAMES EUGENE (TEXAS # 999997), DOB 8.4.1955

The short and overweight Bigby, a car mechanic and native of Tarrant County, was convicted for the deaths of 26-year-old Michael Trekell and Jayson Kehler, a seventeen-week-old infant. The victims were two of four people killed during a seven-hour murder spree by Bigby in Fort Worth and Arlington, Texas, on 24 December 1987.

Trekell, who had befriended his 32-year-old soon-to-be killer, was shot in the head with a .357-calibre pistol. Bigby suffocated the infant with a piece of cellophane, then placed the child, face down, in a water-filled sink.

Bigby is also suspected of the killing of Calvin Wesley Crane of Fort Worth and Frank Curtis Johnson of Arlington.

He was arrested after an apparent suicide attempt on 26 December 1987, earlier vowing to go out in ‘a blaze of glory’. He is on Death Row at Terrell Unit, Livingston, Texas.

BITTAKER, LAWRENCE SIGMUND (CALIFORNIA)

Lawrence Sigmund Bittaker was serving time for rape in 1978, when he met Ray Lewis Norris at the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo. They recognised soul mates in each other, and they soon became inseparable fellow cons. While still confined, they hatched a grisly plot to kidnap, rape and murder teenage girls ‘for fun’, as soon as they were freed. If all went well, they planned to kill at least one girl from each teenage year thirteen to nineteen, while recording the events on videotape.

Paroled on 15 November 1978, Bittaker began making preparations for the crime spree. He bought a van, which he dubbed ‘Murder Mac’. Norris was released on 15 June 1979, and, after a period of observation at the Atascadero State Mental Hospital, he joined up with his sidekick at a Los Angeles motel.

Nine days later, on 24 June, Cindy Schaeffer, aged sixteen, vanished following a church service at Redondo Beach, never to be seen alive again. She was bundled into the back of the van and driven up into the mountains, where the two men repeatedly raped her before jointly strangling the girl with a wire coat hanger. Her body was dumped in a nearby canyon.

On 8 July, they transported another victim, eighteen-year-old Andrea Joy Hall, along the Pacific Coast Highway to a place where she was subjected to repeated sexual abuse before Bittaker rammed an ice pick through her ear and into her brain.

On 2 September, thirteen-year-old Jacqueline Leah Lamp and fifteen-year-old Jackie Gilliam were lost while hitching a ride in Redondo Beach. After two days of torture, their bodies were thrown over a cliff.

At Hallowe’en the same year, the pattern of abduction and sexual torture was repeated: this time sixteen-year-old Shirley Ledford was abducted, and her body was left on the front lawn of her house in Sunland, where it was found by horrified neighbours. Strangled with a coat hanger, she had first been subjected to sadistic and barbaric abuse. Her breasts and face mutilated, arms slashed, her body covered with bruises.

Bittaker and Norris were arrested on charges stemming from an earlier 30 September assault in Hermosa Beach. According to reports, their female victim had been sprayed with Mace, abducted in a silver van and raped before she managed to escape. The woman ultimately failed to make a positive ID on the two men, but arresting officers discovered drugs in their possession, holding both in jail for violation of parole.

Ray Norris started showing signs of strain in custody. At a preliminary hearing in Hermosa Beach, he offered an apology ‘for my insanity’, and he was soon regaling officers with tales of brutal murder. According to his statements, girls had been approached at random, photographed by Bittaker and offered rides, free marijuana or jobs in modelling. Most turned the offers down, but others were abducted forcibly, the van’s radio drowning out their screams as they were driven to a remote mountain fire road for sessions of rape and torture. Tape recordings of Jacqueline Lamp’s final moments were recovered from Bittaker’s van, and detectives counted over 500 photos of smiling young women among the suspect’s effects.

On 9 February 1980, Norris led deputies to shallow graves in San Dimas Canyon and the San Gabriel Mountains, where the skeletal remains of Lamp and Gilliam were recovered. An ice pick still protruded from Gilliam’s skull, and the remains bore other marks of cruel mistreatment.

Charging the prisoners with five counts of murder, Los Angeles County Sheriff Peter Pitchess announced that Bittaker and Norris might be linked to the disappearance of 30 or 40 more young women. By 20 February, the stack of confiscated photographs had yielded nineteen missing girls, but none were ever traced, and Norris had exhausted his desire to talk.

On 18 March, Norris pleaded guilty on five counts of murder, turning state’s evidence against his confederate. In return for his co-operation, he received a sentence of 45 years to life, with parole possible in 2010.

Bittaker, meanwhile – nicknamed ‘Pliers’ after his favourite instrument of torture – denied everything. At his trial, on 5 February 1981, he testified that Ray Norris first informed him of the murders after their arrest in 1979. A jury chose not to believe him, returning a guilty verdict on 17 February. On 24 March, in accordance with the jury’s recommendation, Bittaker was sentenced to die. The judge also imposed an alternative sentence of 199 years and four months in prison, to take effect in the event that Bittaker’s death sentence is commuted on appeal.

This monster is still on Death Row and awaiting his appointment with the executioner.

BLACK SR, CHRISTOPHER (TEXAS # 999277), DOB 2.8.1959

Christopher Black Sr, from Portsmouth, Virginia, ended up on Texas Death Row for committing familicide. Holding down a good job, and a man of previous excellent character who was happily married, he suddenly snapped, as he later told police.

During the evening of 2 August 1998, he fatally shot his wife, 36-year-old Gwendoline, his five-month daughter, Christine Marie, and his seventeen-month-old granddaughter, Katrese Houston, with a 9-millimetre Ruger pistol.

Immediately after the shootings, he called 911, and when the officers arrived, they found a tearful Christopher Black holding his dead daughter in his arms.

Now a completely broken man, he can look forward only to his execution and an end to his torment.

BLACK, JOHNNIE (OKLAHOMA # 142622), DOB 27.9.1965

Thirty-two-year-old Johnnie Black was one of five men who beat to death rancher Bill Pogue and stabbed his son-in-law, Richard Lewis, in 1998 in Stephens County. He was convicted in 1999.

Testimony indicates that the attack was a case of mistaken identity. Black, his two brothers, Jesse J. Black and Jimmy Lee Roy Black, and Cal Eugene Shankles and Robert William Seals stopped a sport utility vehicle on a dirt road and dragged Pogue and Lewis from the vehicle. The defendants had been searching for two men in a similar vehicle for a fight. After the incident, the defendants realised that they had attacked the wrong people, testimony shows.

Shankles is serving a life sentence for the fatal beating plus ten years for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. Jesse Black and Jimmy Black each are serving 25 years for first-degree manslaughter and seven years for assault with a dangerous weapon. Johnnie Black had previously served eight years of a fifteen-year prison sentence for a 1984 manslaughter conviction in Cleveland County. He also escaped from the Jefferson County Jail while awaiting trial and left a threatening letter to the County Sheriff. He is in the first stage of appeals related to the 1998 conviction.

BLAND, JIMMY DALE (OKLAHOMA # 090763)

Forty-two-year-old Jimmy Bland shot former Manitou Mayor Windle Rains in the head in 1996 in Tillman County. Bland was released from prison in 1995 after serving 20 years for the shooting to death of a Grandfield man. He was convicted of the 1996 slaying in 1998 and is in the first stage of the appellate process.

BOCHARSKI, PHILLIP (ARIZONA # 129752), DOB 22.2.1962

On 13 May 1995, Freeda Brown’s partially decomposed body was found in her trailer home at Congress, Arizona. The cause of death was determined to be multiple stab wounds to the head and neck. She also had a defensive wound on her right hand which told police that she had grabbed her killer’s knife in an effort to ward off the blows.

Attention was soon drawn to Phillip Bocharsky, who lived in a tent near to the victim’s home. He had previously done a few odd jobs for Freeda, including driving her to her bank and the local stores at Wickenburg just ten miles away.

On 10 May 1995, Frank Sukis offered Bocharski a lift into Congress to obtain food from a vagrant’s shelter and, upon returning to the tent, they saw Freeda. Bocharski told his friend that they should kill her because she was 85 years old and was complaining of arthritis.

The actual date of the murder has never been determined. However, before the killing, Bocharski was broke, and a few days later, he had hundreds of dollars in his pocket. Over a few drinks, he told Sukis that he had been given $500 ‘to do a hit job in Prescott in the near future’.

Sukis, his suspicions aroused, reported this fact to the police. During questioning, the suspect claimed that the money had been given to him in advance of building work, but he could not provide the mystery employer’s name.

For this particularly heinous crime, Judge William T. Kiger sentenced the 33-year-old killer to death on 12 June 1990.

BOGLE, BRETT ALLAN (FLORIDA # 110265), DOB 1.5.1969

In a curious case of ‘splitting hairs’, thirty-one-year-old Brett Bogle is on Florida’s Death Row for bludgeoning his ex-girlfriend’s sister, Margaret Torres, with a concrete block in 1991.

The nude body of the 89 lb, four-foot-eleven-inch woman was found outside a drive-through market in Gibsonton. The key evidence against 22-year-old Bogle was a strand of hair that Hillsborough County detectives said they found on his white underpants. FBI examiner Michael Malone testified that the hair ‘microscopically matched’ the victim’s pubic hair. ‘There were no dissimilarities at all,’ he said adamantly. And former Hillsborough prosecutor Karen Cox told the jury that the pubic hair could not have got there by casual contact. ‘It helped prove Bogle raped the woman,’ she said, ‘and if he was the rapist, he was the murderer’.

Recent Justice Department research suggests, however, that the hair was consistent with Torre’s head hair, not her pubic hair, and that there were other possible problems with Malone’s work. Terri Backhus, Bogle’s attorney, says her client is innocent. She calls the case against him ‘a crushing combination of State deception and lies’, and, notwithstanding the obvious fact that not only had both the prosecution and Justice Department examined ‘a’ hair, she has confused the entire debate by questioning whether a hair exists at all. The forensic expert, Malone, says he made a ‘silly clerical error’ in his notes, inadvertently writing that a pubic hair was a head hair. ‘There’s no way to confuse a head hair and a pubic hair,’ he added. ‘That’s so basic, it’s unbelievable … I wouldn’t give it a second thought.’

One question does, however, hang precariously in the air: what was one of the victim’s head hairs doing in Bogle’s underpants, when he has consistently denied having ever had sex with her? No doubt Mr Bogle will be giving plenty of thought to this, and the no small matter of his agonising death in the electric chair in the years to come.

BOLTZ, JOHN ALBERT (OKLAHOMA # 141921)

Sixty-nine years old, balding and bespectacled, John Boltz fatally stabbed his 22-year-old stepson, Douglas Kirby, in 1984 in Pottawatomie County. He was convicted in November 1984.

Boltz was a car salesman and part-time evangelist who was estranged from Kirby’s mother, Pat Kirby. Douglas Kirby was nearly decapitated and was stabbed in the chest and throat. Boltz is in the fifth stage of appeals.

BOWLING, RONNIE LEE (KENTUCKY # 32851), DOB 05.12.1968

This killer executed two gas station attendants in separate robberies in Laurel County, Kentucky, in 1989. Ronald Smith, from London, Kentucky, was killed in the early hours of 20 January, and two days later, again in the early hours, Bowling shot to death Marvin Hensley. Both were killed while they were helpless and lying face down.

Bowling was arrested on 5 February 1989, and was sentenced to death on 9 December 1992.

BOWLING, THOMAS C. (KENTUCKY # 32854), DOB 18.1.1953

‘LETHAL ROAD RAGE’

No relation to Ronnie Bowling, Thomas Bowling was sentenced to death on 4 January 1991 in Fayette County for the shooting to death of Eddie and Tina Earley in Lexington, Kentucky.

The husband and wife were shot on the morning of 19 April 1990, while sitting in their car before opening the family-owned dry-cleaning business. The couple’s two-year-old son was shot but survived.

Bowling was arrested on 21 April 1990, and tried and convicted on 28 December. The following is an excerpt from the Victim Impact Statements that were submitted to the court in December 1990.

It broke our hearts. Eddie was our youngest child and our only son. We are a close family and Eddie was there anytime we needed him. We don’t know how to put into words the void it left in our lives. We now have another small child to raise and explain to him why his mother and father can’t come home. (Leroy and Rosie Earley, Eddie’s parents)

It was and still is as if our hearts were torn out. We will never heal inside. (Billie Morgan, Tina’s mother)

BRACY, WILLIAM (ARIZONA # 47620), DOB 23.8.1941

On New Year’s Eve 1980, William Bracy and Murray Hooper, both from Chicago, and former police officer Edward McCall went to the home of Patrick Redmond and his wife in Phoenix, where they were preparing for a party. The three men entered the house and forced the Redmonds and Patrick’s mother-in-law, Helen Phelps, into the master bedroom at gunpoint.

After taking jewellery and money, the intruders bound and gagged their victims. They then shot each victim in the head and also slashed Mr Redmond’s throat. Patrick and Helen died at the scene; however, miraculously, Mrs Redmond survived and was able to later identify all three killers.

Bracy (39) and Hooper (35) were convicted of the murders following a joint trial and sentenced to death. McCall and another man, Robert Cruz, who was alleged to have hired the killers, were also convicted of the murders. McCall was sent to prison for life, and Cruz won a new trial on appeal and was found not guilty. Joyce Lukezic, the wife of Redmond’s former business partner, was also charged with the murders and she was convicted. On appeal, she too was found to be innocent.

BRISENO, JOSE GARCIA (TEXAS # 999043), DOB 4.5.1957

‘Who shot the sheriff?’ Jose Briseno, labourer and native of Dimmitt County, was convicted in the January 1991 killing of Sheriff Ben ‘Doc’ Murray.

Murray was killed inside his home, 811 Ninth Street in Carrizo Springs, following a violent struggle with Briseno and his accomplice, Alberto Gonzalez, now serving a life sentence for capital murder. The sheriff suffered numerous stab wounds inflicted with a butcher’s knife, later found buried in his chest. He had also been shot once in the head. The two men reportedly killed Murray to avenge previous arrests he had made against them.

BROWN, DEBRA DENISE (INDIANA # 864793), DOB 11/11/1962

‘THE MID-WEST MONSTERS’

The only good thing to emerge from the trial and conviction of Debra Brown and Alton Coleman is that they are now both on Death Row, and are no longer at large to repeat their monstrous crimes.

Responsible for a cross-country binge of up to eight murders, seven rapes, three kidnappings and fourteen armed robberies, their trail of repugnant and perverted acts of sadistic violence ended when they were arrested following the abduction of two little girls in Indiana.

On 18 June 1984, seven-year-old Tamika Turks and her nine-year-old niece, Annie, were walking from a candy store to their home when Brown and Coleman confronted them. The two persuaded the children to walk into nearby woods to play a game. Once there, they removed Tamika’s shirt and tore it into small strips, which they used to bind and gag their little victims.

The terrified Tamika began to cry. Infuriated by this, Brown held the child’s nose and mouth closed, while Coleman stomped on her chest before strangling her to death.

After being carried a short distance, Annie was forced to perform oral sex on both Brown and Coleman. Then the man raped her. The two perverted monsters finally choked the little girl until she became unconscious. When she awoke, they were gone.

Police discovered Tamika dead in bushes close by. She had been strangled with an elastic strip of bed sheet. (The same fabric was later found in the apartment shared by the killers.) Annie had received cuts so deep that her intestines were protruding into her vagina.

This was not the first of such crimes committed by this evil pair; evidence of a remarkably similar murder, in Ohio, was admitted at the trial.

Brown is on Death Row at the Indiana Women’s prison.

BROWN, RICKY (ARIZONA)

Three adults – Ricky Brown, aged 23, his 32-year-old wife, Barbara, and lodger Janette Ables, aged 22 – killed their five children on 21 November 1997 when they deliberately set fire to their home in Weston, West Virginia to cash in on an insurance policy. Killed in the inferno that quickly engulfed the small Main Avenue house were Ables’ two children, Rayshell, aged five, and Jimmy, aged three, and Barbara’s three children from a previous marriage, Sreonica D. Castner, aged ten, Kimberley, aged nine, and Brandon, aged eight.

Suspicion of the two parents and the stepfather mounted partly because the property was engulfed with flames before firefighters arrived from their station just two blocks away. Horrified neighbours called for them to be burned alive after finding out that they had killed their own children.

Ricky Brown initially blamed his stepson for starting the fire, but later blamed the three-year-old son of Janette Ables. ‘He was playing with matches beside his bed,’ he said. ‘I jumped from a window and when I tried to get back in through the door, it was locked. I was stopped from breaking a window by neighbours,’ he added.

Officer John Brand of the Weston Police Department had sifted through the rubble with a fine-tooth comb, and he found that there was not even a lock on the door.

Insurance investigator Richard Casto said that the fire showed ‘classic’ and ‘textbook’ signs of arson. Evidence showed that someone had poured gasoline inside the front door and back doors and set at least three different fires inside. He testified that after examining the remains of the residence and photographs of the fire, he concluded that a fire on a mattress never spread beyond that room, and that scorched sections of the one-storey house appeared to indicate the use of petrol.

On 18 September 1998, the parents were indicted on fifteen federal counts, including arson resulting in death, mail fraud and conspiracy, and earned themselves the death penalty. According to the indictment, the fire was deliberately set to cash in on a $91,000 homeowners’ insurance policy and $5,000 life insurance policies that Mrs Brown had taken out on each of her three children. She also took out a $10,000 policy on herself.

It was later claimed that the children had been the subjects of a social services inquiry, and care supervisors had called at the house on three occasions prior to the fire. The children were filthy, dishevelled and appeared neglected, and Rayshell appeared so malnourished that she would stuff extra food from lunch into her pockets and eat the marshmallows that the kindergarten children were using to learn how to count.

At his appeal, Ricky Brown changed his story, claiming, ‘When the fire broke out, we just forgot about the kids and ran for it.’ However, his wife claimed that they had gone looking for their food stamps before they left the rapidly burning building.

BUCK, DUANE EDWARD (TEXAS # 999231), DOB 5.7.1963

Although professing to be only a simple mechanic, Duane Buck from Harris County undersells himself. He also had a conviction, which carried a ten-year sentence, for cocaine trafficking. He added another thread to the richly embroidered tapestry that is his curriculum vitae when, on 30 July 1995, he killed two people and wounded another.

The two people whom Buck murdered were his ex-girlfriend, Debra Gardner, and her friend Kenneth Butler. It appears that, on the morning in question, Buck had had an argument with Miss Gardner at her home in Houston. He went away, but returned several hours later, carrying not one, but two rifles. By all accounts, Buck forced his way into Gardner’s home and began shooting indiscriminately. The first person he encountered was his own sister, whom he shot in the chest. Moments later he came upon Kenneth Butler and he shot and killed the unfortunate man.

Thirty-two-year-old Buck then turned his attention on Debra, chasing her out of the back door and into the middle of the street as her young daughter begged him not to shoot her mother. The girl’s pleading was to no avail, for he shot Gardner and left her bleeding were she fell. Horrified witnesses saw the killer laughing as he stood over her body and he reportedly said, ‘The bitch, she deserved it.’

Fortunately, Buck’s sister survived being wounded in the chest.

BUNTION, CARL WAYNE (TEXAS # 999993), DOB 30.3.1944

Grey-haired with steel-blue eyes and a long criminal history including vehicle theft, criminal damage and assault on a child, auto-mechanic Buntion was convicted with John Killingsworth in the June 1990 shooting of 37-year-old James Irby, a Houston Police motorcycle officer, who had stopped their car for a minor traffic violation.

The veteran cop was shot once in the head by Buntion as he talked to Killingsworth, the driver. The gunman then walked around to the front of the car and calmly discharged two more shots into the officer’s back as he lay on the ground.

Killingsworth was not charged with the murder. He was, however, convicted of possession of heroin, which was found in the truck of the car, and sentenced to five years imprisonment. Buntion received the death sentence and awaits his destiny on Death Row.

BURRIS, GARY (INDIANA)

Kenneth Chambers was a cab driver in Indianapolis. His nude body was found in an alley near Falls Creek Parkway, face down and stuck to the ground in a pool of his frozen blood. There was a small-calibre gunshot wound to the right temple.

The cab company log revealed that Burris had called for a taxi on the evening of 29 January 1980, and this was Chamber’s last fare. A witness testified that Burris returned to his apartment with Emmett Merriweather and James Thompson with wads of money and a cab driver’s run sheet and clipboard.

Burris was arrested at the apartment of his girlfriend where a .38-calibre handgun was found. The Indianapolis State Police Laboratory confirmed it to be the murder weapon.

Burris was sentenced to death on 20 February 1981 and, aged 40, he was executed on 20 November 1997.

BUSSELL, CHARLES (KENTUCKY # 32856), DOB 11.3.1955

Bussell is on Death Row for beating and strangling elderly Sue Lail during a robbery at her Hopkinsville home in Christian County, Kentucky in 1990. Mrs Lail had employed Bussell to perform odd jobs around her home.

She was reported missing on 3 December 1990, but her body was not discovered until 22 February 1991, when an autopsy showed that she had suffered multiple rib fractures, a dislocated vertebral disc and a fractured windpipe. Her decomposed corpse could only be identified by x-rays.

Bussell was arrested on the day Sue’s body was recovered and tried and convicted of first-degree robbery and murder. He was sentenced to death on 21 November the same year.