4. INMATES F–H (FAIRCHILD–HYDE)

F

FAIRCHILD, RICHARD (OKLAHOMA # 241527), DOB 17.11.1959

RICHARD FAIRCHILD WAS responsible for the 1993 beating to death of his girlfriend’s three-year-old son, Adam Broomhall, in Oklahoma County. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996. The boy had severe burns on his back from being held against a heater.

Stacy Broomhall, the child’s mother, pleaded guilty to permitting the abuse of her son and received a five-year deferred sentence. She testified against Fairchild at trial, saying they had been drinking heavily and that she had passed out when the killing happened.

FELDMAN, DOUGLAS ALAN (TEXAS # 999326), DOB 19.6.1958

Portly, blue-eyed Douglas Feldman seems to have been inspired by old Western movies in the manner in which he carried out two highway killings on Monday 24 August 1998. Instead of a horse, however, he rode a motorcycle and it was trucks, rather than stagecoaches, which became his targets. Considering that he stood a mere five feet six inches in height, yet tipped the scales at an impressive 198 lbs, it is arguable that a car may have been a far more suitable means of transport for this rotund highwayman.

On the night in question, in Plano, Texas, Feldman murdered the driver of an eighteen-wheel truck. Witnesses to the killing said that they saw the gunman ride up alongside the moving vehicle and fire several shots into the cab. He dropped back and then accelerated until he was again abreast of the cab to discharge further shots, killing the driver. Reports indicate that a total of twelve rounds were fired during this incident.

Almost half an hour later, in Dallas, this lonesome cowboy rode up alongside a stationary eighteen-wheeler and fired four times, fatally wounding the driver.

On the previous night, in what may have been a dress rehearsal, a motorcyclist loosed off nine bullets into the Central Volkswagen Dealership in Richardson, Texas. Significant damage was caused but nobody was injured.

Almost four months earlier, on Saturday 9 May, a victim received two gunshot wounds in a Dallas parking lot. Ballistic reports showed that the gun used in all of these attacks was the same 9-millimetre weapon belonging to Feldman. Referring to the first of his killings, he reportedly said, ‘I couldn’t stand the way he drove.’

Before he had committed these murders, Feldman had served a two-year sentence for one count of possession of a controlled substance and one count of aggravated robbery.

FIERRO, CESAR (TEXAS # 999650), DOB 18.11.1956

An Hispanic labourer from El Paso, 23-year-old Cesar Fierro, who had no previous criminal record, was convicted in the shooting to death of an El Paso taxi driver on Tuesday 27 February 1979.

After he and a young male companion climbed into the cab, Fierro gave instructions to Nicolas Castanon to drive him to Juarez. After a short distance, Fierro pulled out a .357 Magnum revolver, one of the most powerful handguns in the world, and ordered the horrified driver to pull over to the side of the road. There, he shot the driver once, behind the right ear, killing him instantly. After stealing the takings, his victim’s jacket and watch, he dumped the body in Modesto Gomez Park in El Paso, where if was found several weeks later.

His conscience finally getting the better of him, Fierro’s fellow passenger confessed all to the police, and the killer was arrested in July 1979.

FINCH, MARCUS LASALLE (ARIZONA # 148380)

Marcus LaSalle Finch was a dangerous man. He was wanted for offences which included kidnapping, aggravated assault, armed robbery and causing serious physical injury.

Shortly after midnight on Tuesday 28 April 1998, intent on robbery, he entered a south-side bar on the 300 Block of South Valencia in Tucson. Here he ordered two beers and went to the rest room. Moments later, his accomplice, 21-year-old Keith Royal Phillips, stormed through the front door, armed with a sawn-off .22-calibre rifle. He shouted for everyone to get on the floor and began firing his weapon in a spraying pattern around the room. Customers began ducking and running.

Hearing the gunfire, Finch drew his semi-automatic pistol, and rushed from the rest room in an attempt to control the chaos caused by Phillips’ shooting, to find dead, dying or badly injured customers strewn everywhere. Kevin Hendrix, who was playing pool with some relatives, ran out of the back door. Finch pursued him outside where he shot the fleeing man in the back, killing him. Ten innocent patrons of the bar lost their lives, a dozen were injured and only one person managed to escape unharmed.

Finch and Phillips attempted to escape from this scene of carnage in their car. Police set off in hot pursuit and caught the murderous duo after a high-speed chase. In addition to the death sentence for aggravated murder, both killers each received prison terms of 137 years.

Just how dangerous were Finch and Phillips? This is best illustrated in the following extract from the Pima County Court Record, which lists the labyrinthine range of charges which the court had to wade through:

Pima County CR-61452:

Count 1, Attempted First Degree Murder, committed on 4/12/98, sentence 21 years; Counts 2, 5, 7 and 9, Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon/Dangerous Instrument, committed on 4/12/98, sentence 7.5 years; Counts 13, 17, 20, 23 and 26, Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon/Dangerous Instrument, committed on 4/24/98, sentence 7.5 years; Count 3, Aggravated Assault, serious physical injury, committed on 4/12/98, sentence 7.5 years; Counts 4, 6, 8 and 10, Kidnapping, committed on 4/12/98, sentence 10.5 years; Count 11, Armed Robbery, committed on 4/12/98, sentence 10.5 years; Count 12, Attempted First Degree Murder, committed on 4/24/98, sentence 21 years; Count 14, Aggravated Assault, serious physical injury, committed on 4/24/98, sentence 7.5 years; Counts 15, 16, 19, 22 and 25, Kidnapping, committed on 4/24/98, sentence 10.5 years; Counts 18, 24 and 27, Armed Robbery, committed on 4/24/98, sentence 21 years; Counts 29, 31, 33, 37, 39, 41, 43, 45, 47, 49, 51, 53 and 55, Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon/Dangerous Instrument, committed on 4/28/98, sentence 7.5 years; Counts 32, 34, 38, 40, 42, 48 and 52, Kidnapping, committed on 4/28/98, sentence 10.5 years.

FLORES, ANDREW (TEXAS # 999100), DOB 9.8.1972

A restaurant worker with no previous criminal convictions, Flores, aged 20, from Bexar County, Texas, changed all that when, on Monday 26 July 1993, he resorted to an unnecessary and brutal murder.

Twenty-three-year-old Julian Gabriel Moreno, was serving at the Stop N Go convenience store at 3643 SW Military Drive, San Antonio, when Flores and his accomplice, Joseph Fritz, entered and demanded money at gunpoint. Moreno immediately handed over the contents of the cash register, which amounted to a paltry $44, before he was ordered to kneel down. Begging for his life, he asked the robbers to take his car, which was parked outside. As the terrified man threw his keys across the floor, Flores shot him at point-blank range in the head.

Unfortunately for Flores, he failed to start the car and, with the alarm already raised, the two men took to their heels. Pursuing police quickly arrested them near the famous Mission San Jose.

Flores received the death sentence for aggravated murder, and Fritz drew 60 years.

FLORES, CHARLES DON (TEXAS # 999299), DOB 31.10.1969

‘Farmers Branch and Dallas are as close as two peas in a pod,’ says the official tour guide literature. It adds that ‘Farmers Branch does not have much to do with farming anymore as it is smack bang in the middle of the Dallas Metroplex, one of the most exciting metropolitan areas in the world.’ And, Farmers Branch, with its sweet-pea sounding name, its know-your-neighbour, help-your-neighbour quality of life, has been the setting for a murder most foul.

During the daylight hours of Thursday 29 January 1998, two small-time hoodlums, Charles Flores and Richard Lynn Childs, broke into the home of a 64-year-old woman with the intention of robbing her.

Flores, a porker who weighs 276 lbs, is a man who obviously enjoys his food. So, after tying their victim up they cooked themselves a meal. Having dispelled the pangs of hunger, they then ransacked the place. Before leaving, these two criminal nonentities shot their helpless victim dead.

At their trial, they claimed that they had entered the property with the intention of stealing money, but had left empty-handed.

Flores, who nowadays advertises for pen pals on the Internet, says that ‘life on Death Row is hard’. Currently, he is appealing against his sentence and, bizarrely, his murder victim’s blood-soaked blouse is touring the US as a grisly crime exhibit.

Before this murder, Charles Don Flores had served a previous two-year sentence from Tarrant County for robbery by threats and possession of cocaine.

FLUKE, RONALD DUNAWAY (OKLAHOMA)

On Friday 17 October 1997, Ronald Fluke murdered his wife and two daughters at their home in Tulsa. Then, his clothes spattered with blood, he made his way downtown to the Tulsa Police Station, where he handed himself in and made a full confession. He told police that he had been distraught over financial matters and, at his trial, he pleaded guilty. Sentenced to death for the three killings, Fluke waived all rights to appeals and, in March 2001, he was executed by lethal injection.

That is the story of Ronald Dunaway Fluke as it appears on his prison record and, on the face of it, such a story would arouse sympathy in most of those who read it. But, as the authors have discovered, there is, as a rule, more to these cases than meets the eye, and Ron Fluke is no exception. The manner in which he despatched his 44-year-old wife, Ginger Lou, wasn’t a simple, if not humane, shooting death. According to documents from the office of Oklahoma’s Attorney General, W. A. Drew Edmondson, it was an episode of savagery and violence with little or nothing to mitigate it.

The Flukes lived at South 69 East Avenue, Tulsa. At around 1.30 a.m. on 17 October 1997, as his wife lay sleeping on the couch, 51-year-old Ron set about her with a large hatchet. He struck her several blows on her head, neck and shoulders. Not surprisingly, with axe-blows raining down on her, the poor woman made a bit of noise. Fluke’s reaction to this was to shoot her, saying that he didn’t want the children to wake up. Quite why he imagined that a gunshot wouldn’t arouse them from their slumbers is a puzzle, especially in view of his subsequent actions.

With Mrs Fluke now dead, her murderous spouse made his way upstairs to his daughters, Susanne Michelle and Kathryn Lee, aged 13 and 11 respectively. He shot both girls once in the head, killing them instantly. The girls were in separate bedrooms and, horrifyingly, they were awake when their father killed them. Their last moments of life don’t bear contemplation.

About six hours later, at 8 a.m., Ronald Fluke presented himself at the Tulsa Police Department, where he confessed to the three murders. A self-employed safety consultant, he explained that his business was in ruins, his marriage was on the rocks and he hadn’t paid his taxes in several years. He went on to tell them that his car was about to be repossessed, he couldn’t pay his cell phone bill and he had borrowed a lot of money from friends and relations.

The actual reason for this state of affairs is that, a compulsive gambler since he was in his mid-twenties, Fluke was the author of his own financial downfall. What is more, his predicament was not as dire as he seemed to think. However, he claimed that he had killed his wife and daughters in order to save them from the embarrassment that would surely overtake them when his creditors homed in on him.

Nice try, Ron. If his motives were as altruistic as that, then why didn’t he just shoot his wife in the head, as she lay sleeping? You don’t despatch a loved one by going to town on them with an axe, especially if you’ve a pistol in your belt. Not unless you really want them to hurt.

Although the truth of what was going on in this killer’s mind will never be revealed, it seems more likely that it was the impending break up of his marriage that drove him to commit familicide.

Police records indicate that Fluke told officers that he had attempted suicide but had decided that killing himself was not the way out of his predicament. He is reported to have said, ‘I am the sorriest individual on the face of this Earth right now and I deserve to die.’ And he was not to be disappointed.

Pleading guilty to the murder charges and waiving all rights to appeal, Fluke was sentenced to be executed by lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. Tulsa District Judge Tom Gillert had accepted the defendant’s plea, despite the defence counsel’s submission that Fluke wasn’t all there. A mandatory appeal court upheld the judge’s view and confirmed the sentence.

Attorney General Drew Edmondson said, ‘I am pleased with the court’s swift action. These were heinous crimes deserving of the death penalty.’

On Tuesday 27 March 2001, the sentence of death was carried out and, at 9.30 a.m. Ronald Dunaway Fluke was pronounced dead.

FOLEY, ROBERT (KENTUCKY # 77421), DOB 13.9.1956

This serial killer has murdered at least seven people. In 1989, he shot Kimberley Bowerstock, Lillian Contino, Jerry McMillen and Calvin Reynolds, in Laurel County. Rodney Vaughn and Lynn Vaughn, two brothers, were also shot dead by Foley, at a party in 1991. Donald Gross, an eyewitness to the shooting, was found dead in Foley’s front yard.

On 23 September 1993 Foley was sentenced to death for the Vaughn killings. Three years later he received another death sentence for the remaining four deaths.

FORD, TONY EGBUNA (TEXAS # 999075), DOB 19.6.1973

A native of Wayne County, Michigan, Tony Ford was a long way from home when he decided to supplement his wages as a barber by committing murder and robbery in El Paso, Texas. But moving from Michigan, which does not have the death penalty, to Texas, which most certainly does, has probably cost Ford his life.

Born on 19 June 1973, Tony Ford was just twenty when, on Wednesday 18 December 1991, he and Vanjarmar Nash Belton forced their way into the home of Armundo Murillo at 1571 Dale Douglas Drive, El Paso. At gunpoint, the two men ordered Armundo, aged eighteen, his mother, Myra Conception Murillo, 44, and his two sisters, Lisa, 22, and Myra, 20, to lie on the floor. While Ford levelled the gun, Belton commanded the hapless family to hand over their money and jewellery along with the keys to their car. The terrified Murillos complied.

Even though the intruder’s demands were met without hesitation, Ford needlessly opened fire. Armundo died at the scene. His mother, who was struck in the chest, Myra, who was shot in the head, and Lisa who was hit in the shoulder, survived to identify the killer.

Ford was sentenced to three life terms for attempted capital murder and received the death sentence for killing Armundo. Belton drew sixty years for aggravated robbery, and he will be released when he is ninety years old, if he lives that long.

FOSTER, KENNETH (TEXAS # 999232), DOB 22.10.1976

Another mindless thug, who killed for small change and a set of car keys, is Kenneth Foster. A labourer from Bexar County, he was convicted of the Thursday 15 August 1996 attempted robbery and murder of 25-year-old Michael Lahood Jr.

Lahood, who had just finished washing his new car, was confronted by Foster and his three accomplices, Mauriceo Brown, Dewayne Dillard and Julius Steen, who demanded his money and car keys. When the unfortunate man refused to comply, Foster, a member of the Black once Disciples street gang, shot him, at point-blank range, in the face.

Both Foster and Brown received death sentences, while the other two men are currently serving long prison terms.

FOSTER, LA FONDA KAY (KENTUCKY), BORN 1963

Drug addict and prostitute LaFonda Kay Foster and accomplice Tina Hicky Powell were convicted of killing five acquaintances after a four-day binge of alcohol and cocaine. Trouble began on 23 April 1986, when the two women ran short of money to buy more drugs. They went to a friend’s house and, armed with a gun, persuaded her and her mother, the housekeeper and two of the husband’s friends, to go out with them to cash a cheque.

After a couple of hours of driving around Lexington, Powell and Foster ordered the five passengers out of the car at gunpoint and forced them to lie flat in the grass. They shot two of the victims there, one of whom died after being dragged ‘for a considerable distance’ under the car.

After stopping at a bar and getting more bullets, the murderous duo drove to a loading dock behind a paint store. There they stabbed and shot another victim and drove over the body with the car. A few hours later, they took the two remaining victims to a deserted field, shot them in their heads, stabbed them repeatedly, cut their throats and, again, ran over them with the car, which they then set on fire.

At the trial, the women admitted their guilt. Because Powell claimed Foster had coerced her into committing the murders, the jury recommended she be sentenced to life imprisonment. Foster, described in the press as a ‘38-year-old beauty’, was sentenced to death on Friday 24 April 1987. Her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1991.

FOWLER, MARK ANDREW (OKLAHOMA # 12879), DOB 21.9.1960

Twenty-five-year-old Mark Fowler was convicted in 1986 for the 1985 execution-style murders of three employees of a Wynn’s IGA convenience store in Oklahoma County. Fowler and his accomplice, Billy Ray Fox, herded night manager Rick Cast and employees Chumpon Chaowasin and John Barrier into a back room, where they were shot, clubbed and stabbed.

Fowler and Fox were tried together, and both received death sentences. The defence attorneys agreed not to reveal to the jury that the two had blamed each other when police initially interviewed them. Both claim to have been using drugs at the time of the killings. Judge David Ebel of the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals stated that District Attorney Bob Macy improperly connected Fowler to a confession by Fox during closing arguments. But Ebel joined two other judges in voting 3–0 to uphold the conviction. He concluded that Macy’s comments did not result in an unfair trial because of other strong evidence of guilt.

FRATTA, ROBERT ALAN (TEXAS # 999189), DOB 22.2.1957

‘GUILTY OR INNOCENT?’

Born in New York, 34-year-old Robert Fratta’s career before his arrest for murder included employment as a firefighter, emergency care technician and safety officer in Houston, Texas. He was married with three lovely children. However, this all came to an inglorious end when his wife left him.

While in the midst of a stressful custody battle for his children with his estranged wife, he declared that she was driving him nuts. Friends and family noted that Fratta was totally frustrated and disgusted with the way the custody case was being handled, and he told them, ‘I don’t understand why this is happening or how to come to an agreement with her. I wish she would just go away – I wish she was dead.’ Almost three years later, she was.

On the face of it, the case is simple and the facts brutal. Robert Fratta hired two known criminals to eliminate his estranged wife altogether. The deal on offer seemed a fair one to the assassins. In return for murder, Howard Guidry, the triggerman, would receive $3,000, while Joseph Prystash would take possession of Robert Fratta’s jeep in payment for arranging the details of the killing and obtaining a gun.

The murder took place on Wednesday 9 November 1994, as Farah Fratta stepped from her car inside the garage of her home. Guidry walked up to her, pulled out a .38-calibre pistol, and shot her dead. Her husband, being the prime suspect, was pulled in for questioning, and denied any involvement. The next day, however, Harris County detectives issued a press statement to the effect that Fratta was lying. Fratta himself alleged that the statement had been issued without their bothering to investigate the crime thoroughly. From the outset, Robert Fratta has maintained his innocence. His mother privately funded his defence, but when the well ran dry, the court appointed a public defender.

Placing guilt at the door of his wife’s family, whom he claims ‘is prominent in the local Houston community’, and the media, who he says ‘may have influenced the judicial system, resulting in an unfair trial’, Fratta is glossing over the obvious fact that both co-defendants identified him as the instigator of the entire sordid business.

But, apart from the tragic and untimely death of a doting mother, the lives of the three children have been destroyed too. Farah Fratta’s parents have recently been awarded custody of the children, whose names have been changed. They can only wait for the day when their father loses his life as well. See also GUIDRY, Howard Paul.

FRAZIER, DERRICK (TEXAS # 999284), DOB 28.4.1977

‘TOM AND JERRY!’

On Thursday 26 June 1997, Derrick Frazier, unemployed and a native of Dallas, along with an accomplice called Jermaine Herron, took public transport to the suburb of Refugio and began their evening by burgling a house, from which they stole a considerable amount of property. Nevertheless, the success of their endeavours posed a problem for these two halfwits, for how were they going to get all this merchandise home? On the bus?

After some heated deliberation in the well-lit street, they reached an agreement, and proceeded to the house next door, the dwelling of Betsy Nutt, which she shared with her fifteen-year-old son, Cody. Quite why Betsy offered her nocturnal visitors a ride back to town will always remain a mystery. However, when she went outside to start her vehicle, Frazier followed her and shot the lady in the face at point-blank range with a 9-millimetre handgun. As she fell to the ground, he fired another bullet into her back. For his part, Herron shot young Cody once in the head and three times in the chest.

After looting Betsy’s home of guns, ammunition, sports equipment and sports clothes, the two master-criminals loaded her brand new pick-up with the proceeds of both robberies but, before fleeing the scene, yet another heated debate ensued in the matter of destroying evidence of their visit. Eventually, consensus was reached and, in an inspired but totally misguided moment, these cartoon-like characters set fire to the house – an act of massive stupidity that guaranteed the almost instantaneous arrival of every local law enforcement officer and the fire department! Police arrested them after a short car chase.

FREDERICK, EARL ALEXANDER (OKLAHOMA # 210421)

Earl Frederick beat to death fellow Vietnam veteran Bradford Beck in 1989 in Oklahoma County. This killer claims to have multiple-personality disorder and gave four names to police officers when he was arrested. He claims that his ‘Jeff’ personality makes him do bad things. Forty-nine-year-old Frederick also claims to suffer from amnesia and cannot remember the killing. However, he has been found competent for trial in two hearings.

The Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the original 1992 conviction and ordered a new trial because Frederick was denied the testimony of a medical expert. He was convicted a second time and given a death sentence in 1998. He also is accused in the 1989 shooting to death of 77-year-old Shirley Fox, five days after the Beck killing. Texas prosecutors did not try Frederick because Oklahoma has given him the death penalty.

FUDGE, JAMES C. (ARKANSAS # SK950), DOB 16.7.1964

During the weekend of 27–28 December 1997, James Fudge, who had a restraining order against him visiting his estranged wife, Kimberly, called at her home. A violent argument followed, yet despite this she was seen leaving the house with him, and apparently she did so quite willingly.

Later that evening, Kimberly’s twelve-year-old daughter telephoned her mother’s apartment from a relative’s home, where the girl was spending the night. James Fudge answered, and according to court testimony, he told his daughter, ‘If you are looking for her, you’ll never find her.’

On Monday 29 December, Fudge left his wife’s 1987 Chevrolet Celebrity with a friend who worked at a truck stop. The car’s upholstery had been washed, but a reddish stain was still visible on the front passenger seat. The stain was still there when the car was pulled over in traffic by a North little Rock police officer who had stopped the vehicle because it was registered to Kimberly Fudge, who had been reported as missing.

Hikers found Kimberly’s body in a shallow grave near Woodson in South Pulaski County on 5 January 1998. Her hands were tied behind her back. She had been stabbed a least a dozen times.

An immediate arrest warrant was issued for James Fudge, and he was taken into custody after having fled to Portland, Oregon, eleven days after the killing. Following a six-day trial, he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. Subsequently, the wife-killer appealed, but it was that faint stain of blood on the car seat, combined with DNA testing, that kept 35-year-old James ‘Bubba’ Fudge on Death Row.

While DNA analysis has freed numerous Death Row inmates around the country in recent years by overturning their criminal convictions, on this occasion DNA testing prevented a guilty man from going free.

FULLER, JUSTIN (TEXAS # 999266), DOB 29.8.1978

Justin Fuller is a labourer from Dallas who stands convicted of the Monday 21 April 1997 abduction, robbery and murder of 22-year-old Donald Harrison Whittington III. The wealthy victim was bound and blindfolded inside his Tyler apartment at 3400 Varsity. The captive man was then driven to his bank by Fuller where some $300 was withdrawn from his account using an ATM card.

Fuller then drove the man to Sandy Beach at Lake Tyler and ruthlessly shot him three times with a .22-calibre weapon.

At his trial for first-degree murder, Fuller claimed that he robbed Whittington for his alleged failure to return some rings to a friend. He said he shot him so that the man would not identify him to the police.

Arrested along with Fuller in connection with the murder were Elaine Hays, Brent Chandler and Samhermundre Wideman. Their current dispositions are not known, but Fuller still awaits his inevitable appointment with the executioner.

FURNISH, FREDERICK (KENTUCKY # 127518), DOB 24.12.1967

Fred Furnish was sentenced to death on 8 July 1999 in Kenton County for the murder of Ramona Jean Williamson. On Thursday 25 June 1998, Furnish entered Mrs Williamson’s Crestview Hills home and strangled her to death.

After the murder, Furnish used her debit cards to withdraw money from her bank accounts, which he used to pay for a party for his friends.

The jury also found Furnish guilty of robbery, burglary, theft and receiving stolen money by fraud.

This worthless, stone-cold killer had spent nearly a dozen years behind bars in Kentucky and Indiana. Each time he was released, he soon returned to prison for another burglary. By the time he was released in April 1997, he had hit a prison guard, adding an assault charge to his dismal record.

Furnish will be executed by lethal injection.

G

GALL, WILLIAM EUGENE (KENTUCKY # 31551), DOB 25.5.1946

TWENTY-THREE YEARS ON THE ‘GREEN MILE’

William Gall was sentenced to death and joined another 29 white inmates on Kentucky’s Death Row. He had been found guilty on 6 October 1978 in Boone County, for the rape and murder of Lisa Jansen. Gall was the first person sentenced to die in Kentucky after capital punishment was reinstated in 1974.

On the morning of Wednesday 5 April 1978, Gall abducted the girl near her home in Cincinnati, Ohio, and took her to Walton, Kentucky, where he raped and shot her.

Gall later robbed a grocery store. During the robbery, a Kentucky State police trooper was shot twice in the chest while trying to apprehend him. He was arrested the same day and it was soon learned that he had served a previous prison sentence in Ohio involving rape and armed robbery convictions.

However, this man’s story does not end in the death chamber. Gall went on to spend almost 23 years on Death Row before an appeal court commuted his sentence on 15 August 2001. Instead, in a move, which has caused outrage in many quarters, this rapist and killer was transferred to Ohio where he will serve an outstanding life sentence.

‘It is unfortunate that 22 years after a jury of his peers in Boone County made a determination that Mr Gall was fully responsible for his actions, when he took the life of Lisa Jansen, that the Court of Appeals would then come in and supplement a jury decision with their own,’ said Boone County Commonwealth Attorney, Linda Tally Smith. ‘It is a true American tragedy.’

GALLAMORE, SAMUEL CLARK (TEXAS # 999090), DOB 15.2.1971

A sculptor from Albuquerque, Samuel Gallamore was convicted of the murders of Clayton Kenney, aged 83, his wife, Juliana, 74, and Mrs Kenney’s 44-year-old daughter, Adrienne Arnot, at their country home east of Kerrville, Kendall County, Texas.

On Sunday 29 March 1992, the victims were all beaten and stabbed after Gallamore and accomplice James John Steiner forced their way inside. After killing the occupants, the intruders fled with cash and valuables, including silver servers, a rare spoon collection and brass and porcelain figurines.

Under questioning, Gallamore confessed that he and Steiner had been shooting crack cocaine and decided to rob the Kenney’s to get money for more dope. Ironically, Steiner had once cared for Mrs Kenney at an area nursing home.

GALLEGO, GERARD ARMAND (OREGON), DOB 17.7.1946

Gerald Armand Gallego was born in Sacramento, California, the son of a hoodlum and a teenage girl who had married only five hours after meeting each other. In March 1955, when Gallego was only eight years old, his father, who had killed two men, was executed in Mississippi.

In 1977, after several spells in reform schools and with three violent marriages under his belt, Gallego met nineteen-year-old Charlene Williams on a blind date. He had the kind of dominance she admired but, long before they had collaborated in ten murders, Charlene had realised her mistake and longed to escape from the brutal, insensitive little egotist. She was not to succeed until her arrest.

On Tuesday 11 September 1978 the couple murdered Rhonda Scheffler and Kippi Vaught near Sacramento. Kaye Colley and Brenda Judd were shot dead in Nevada on 24 June 1979. On 24 April 1980, they killed Stacy Ann Redican and Karen Chipman-Twiggs, whose bodies were found three months later in a remote Pershing County canyon. The spree of murders continued on into Portland, Oregon, where, on 6 June 1980, Teresa Aguila was slaughtered.

Travelling the country in Charlene’s Oldsmobile van, the strutting ex-con and his beautiful sex slave returned to Sacramento.

Shortly after midnight on Sunday 2 November 1980, Craig Miller and his fiancée, Beth Sowers, emerged from the Carousel restaurant in Sacramento, where they had been attending a dance. In the car park, they were approached by a pretty blonde girl who appeared to be pregnant.

The couple stopped out of politeness, then, too late, realised that the girl was holding a gun. ‘Get in,’ she said, pointing to her van parked a few feet away. Sitting in the back passenger seat was Gallego, also holding a pistol.

As the van pulled away with a screech of tyres, a passing student, who had witnessed the abduction, made a mental note of the licence plate. Minutes later he telephoned the police who traced the car to its registered owner, Charlene Williams, the daughter of a wealthy Sacramento businessman.

On being questioned about the incident, Charlene insisted she had spent the previous evening at home. Moreover, she had no idea who might have used her car. Shortly after the interview ended, the officers were told that Craig Miller’s body had been found in a field. He had been shot three times in the back of the head. Upon returning to question Charlene further, they found that she had fled with her husband, Gallego.

Five days later, the body of Beth Sowers was also found, dumped in a field. She had been raped and shot. It looked as though rape was the motive for both the abduction and the murders.

The manhunt ended two weeks later as Charlene emerged from a Western Union office in Omaha, Nebraska. She had been collecting $500, wired by her parents, who had tipped off the police.

Gallego was sentenced to die in the gas chamber, and Charlene was jailed for sixteen years after entering a plea-bargaining agreement in which she gave evidence against her husband.

In 1997, the appellate court determined Gallego was entitled to a new sentencing hearing because jurors were given improper instructions regarding the possibility of his eventually being pardoned the crimes. In July, District Judge Howard McKibben imposed a 180-day time limit for the new sentencing hearing to be held. In February, the Nevada Attorney General’s office sought to have Gallego’s death sentence reinstated. But the petition arrived late at the US Supreme Court, when an employee in the mailroom sent the package of legal filings by United Parcel Service instead of first-class mail. Because of this, the court refused to consider the matter.

Whatever the outcome of his appeals, Gallego also faces execution in California for the Sacramento murders. For her part, Charlene was released from prison in 1997, having served her total tariff.

GALLEGOS, STEVEN MICHAEL (ARIZONA # 85586), DOB 10.9.1971

On 16 March 1990, Steven Gallegos and George Anthony Smallwood were staying at the latter’s mother’s house when they decided to sexually assault Smallwood’s half-sister, Kendall Wishon, aged eight. They crept into her room, and when the child awoke, Gallegos held his hand over her mouth and nose causing her to suffocate. After her death, Gallegos had anal intercourse with the girl for 20 minutes. The two men dumped the body under a tree just a short walk from the house.

Smallwood received a lengthy prison term and Gallegos was sentenced to death. However, for reasons only known to God, there was a recommendation for leniency by the police. Nevertheless, this perverted killer is still on ‘The Row’ today.

GAMES, JAMES RUSSELL (INDIANA), DOB 22.7.1964

There is almost a nursery rhyme quality to James Games’ name, but that’s as good as it gets, for James is not so much a children’s story, more a video nasty. His method of killing is described as ‘stabbing and bludgeoning with knife, meat cleaver and a fireplace poker’.

And it gets worse!

With his fourteen-year-old accomplice Earl Tillberry, eighteen-year-old Games devised a scheme whereby they would persuade Thomas Ferree (42), owner of the Heaston movie theatre chain, to take them into his home. There, they intended to tie him up, knock him out and steal his stereo and car. Ferree was a homosexual and was lured by the promise of sexual favours from the two teenagers.

When they reached Ferree’s home at 7251 Lakeside Drive, on 14 July 1983, he invited Tillberry upstairs to take a shower with him. Incited by Games, Tillberry accepted and stabbed Ferree halfway up the stairs, causing him to fall. Games then attacked the wounded man with gusto, stabbing him with an assortment of knives and savagely hacking at him with a meat cleaver. He applied the finishing touches with a fireplace poker which Tillberry had thoughtfully sought out. The two youths then fled in their victim’s car.

Not surprisingly, Ferree died.

Tillberry was the state’s star witness and received a 55-year sentence. James Games received the death sentence. His mitigation was that he had a minimal criminal record, paltry education, and unstable family life – his father had been an abusive alcoholic prone to violence – and that he had consumed alcohol and marijuana on the day of the murder. In addition, Games showed apparent remorse over the killing and had voluntarily surrendered himself to the police. At a retrial, his sentence was vacated and commuted to 110 years imprisonment.

GARCIA, FERNANDO (TEXAS # 999958), DOB 26.4.1961

Fernando Garcia had a criminal history which included burglary and the rape and capital murder of a three-year-old infant.

This diesel mechanic from Bexar County had also served ten months of a two-year-sentence for sexual abuse of a child. He was released on 1 March 1983, and five months later, on 12 August 1983, he was given a ten-year sentence for burglary.

Because of prison overcrowding, Garcia was released in 1986. On 30 August 1987, unable to control his bestial inclinations, this 26-year-old paedophile raped, beat and strangled three-year-old Veronica Rodriguez.

The girl’s body was found on Tuesday 31 March 1987, wrapped in a sheet under a mattress in Garcia’s garage apartment behind the house where she lived.

The child had Garcia’s teeth impressions on her chest and vagina. A psychologist later testified that Garcia had himself been sexually abused as a child and had warned the parole board during the previous case that he might well abuse other children if freed. His advice fell on deaf ears.

Although it was a bit late in the day, on 14 September 1989, this short, overweight sexual predator was sentenced to death.

GARCIA, GUSTAVO JULIAN (TEXAS # 999018), DOB 27.9.1972

Gustavo Garcia was only eighteen when, on Wednesday 12 September 1990, he killed Craig L. Turski, but since his arrest some months later, following another robbery and murder, he has spent the ensuing years on Death Row, where he undoubtedly belongs.

As with many of these contemptible, low-life characters, Garcia was prepared to kill for derisory gains. This unpleasant specimen took a 12-gauge shotgun to rob the Warehouse Beverage Store in Plano. During the robbery, Turski, a store clerk, was shot in the head and right side and he died from the wounds. His life had been taken in return for a small amount of cash and a six-pack of beer.

The law caught up with Garcia a few months later when he and an accomplice, Christopher Vargas, were arrested while robbing a Texaco store in Plano on 5 January 1991. The cowardly Garcia was found cowering in a beer cooler, while Vargas was caught standing over the body of the station attendant who had been shot once in the back of the head.

Outside the store, police arrested Garcia’s common-law wife, Sheila Maria Garcia, who received twenty years for her part in the murderous escapade. Her appalling spouse, however, got his just deserts and was sentenced to death on 8 January 1992. Vargas, his partner-in-crime, received a life sentence with no possibility of parole.

GARCIA, HECTOR TORRES (TEXAS # 999985), DOB 10.5.1961

Twenty-nine-year-old Hispanic, Hector Garcia, was convicted and sentenced to death for the August 1989 murder of fourteen-year-old Eduardo Rios during the robbery of the L & S convenience store, ten miles north of Edinburgh, Texas.

Garcia arrived at the store in a car, accompanied by Emilio Garza, Edward Morales and a juvenile. The victim was waiting on the premises for his sister, seventeen-year-old Adelmaina Rios, while she cashed up before finishing her shift. A mindless thug, Garcia put a gun to the boy’s head and demanded money from the till. As Adelmaina was emptying the drawer, Garcia shot the innocent lad dead. He then fired at the young woman as she reached down to the floor to retrieve some money that had fallen from the counter. The killer and his three accomplices fled the scene, taking with them between $300 and $600 in takings.

Adelmaina survived the stomach wound and later identified Garcia to the police.

Garcia was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to death on 19 October 1990. Co-defendant Emilio Garza received seventeen years for aggravated assault and aggravated burglary with a deadly weapon. His capital case is still pending. Edward Morales was given immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony against Garcia. No evidence was discovered to link the third accomplice, the juvenile, to the crime.

GARLAND, JOHN ROSCOE (KENTUCKY # 127517), DOB 22.7.1942

‘A LETHAL OBSESSION’

John Garland, a white male, was convicted of shooting to death Willa Jean Ferrier, Crystal Conaster and Christopher Boswell, as they slept in their mobile home in Whitley City, McCreary County, Kentucky, in 1997.

John Garland’s son, Roscoe, gave a statement to investigators explaining that his father was obsessively jealous and possessive of Willa Jean Ferrier. It appeared that she had been messing around with other men, and that he had threatened to kill her, which he most certainly did.

For his lethal obsession, Garland was sentenced to death on Monday 15 February 1999.

GARZA, JUAN RAUL (FEDERAL), DOB 1944

Mexican-American drug lord and murderer Juan Raul Garza was executed at daybreak on Tuesday 19 June 2001 in Terre Haute, Indiana. He became the first person to be executed under the 1998 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which imposes a death penalty for murders stemming from a drug enterprise.

Garza, leader of a huge Texas-based marijuana smuggling ring, was sentenced to die for committing a drug-related murder in which he shot a man five times in the head and neck, as well as ordering two people to be killed. Described by prosecutors as a ‘vicious, dictatorial gang leader, who gave little thought to wiping out rivals or suspected traitors’, his crimes drew few headlines outside the Texas border region near Brownsville, where he grew up.

Like Timothy McVeigh, ‘The Oklahoma Bomber’, executed in the same prison eight days earlier, Garza died with his eyes open. His feet appeared to twitch nervously underneath the white sheet which covered him as he died, but otherwise he did not move and appeared calm.

The condemned drug baron had eaten a final meal of steak, French fries, onion rings, a soft drink and three slices of bread, Warden Harley Lappin reported, adding that he was ‘cooperative at every stage of the process’.

GILSON, DONALD L. (OKLAHOMA)

In one of the most truly appalling cases of extreme child abuse, 39-year-old Donald Gilson helped his girlfriend kill her eight-year-old son, Shane Coffman, in 1995. They hid his body in a freezer outside their abandoned trailer in Cleveland County. The little boy’s battered and decomposing body was found about six months later.

In 1998, Bertha Jean Coffman pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in her son’s death. On top of that, a judge sentenced her to life without parole, plus five life sentences, for the abuse of her five other children. She testified against Gilson at trial who was convicted and sentenced to death.

GOFORTH, JONATHAN WAYNE (KENTUCKY # 121520), DOB 21.11.1960

See CAUDILL, Virginia.

GONZALES, ERNEST V. (ARIZONA # 58534), DOB 8.2.1964

It is almost impossible to fathom the minds of those third-rate, small-time thieves who see the taking of a human life as a price worth paying in return for utterly trifling gains. Some will murder for a handful of loose change or a six-pack of beer, and Ernest Gonzales is certainly drawn from the ranks of those low-achieving vermin, killing a man for a VCR.

On the evening of Tuesday 20 February 1990, the Wagner family returned to their town house in Phoenix following a dinner at which they had celebrated Darrell Wagner’s recent promotion. When they entered their courtyard, Deborah Wagner noticed a light shining from their opened front door. Darrell went inside to investigate while his wife waited in the car with the couple’s seven-year-old son.

Inside the house, Darrell saw Gonzales, a parolee, on the landing with their VCR under his arm. Hearing her husband’s exclamations, Deborah sent their son to get help from neighbours. When she turned back, she was horrified to see Gonzales shoving her husband out of the front door, stabbing him.

Deborah shrieked at Gonzales, pleading with him to stop. But, when he ignored her she jumped on his back. He stabbed her twice. One stab damaged her spleen, colon and diaphragm, and the other punctured her lung. The murderous assailant then fled into the night.

Darrell Wagner lived long enough to help his wounded wife and even managed to speak for a while to the 911 operator while gasping for air. But it was to no avail. Gonzales had stabbed the man seven times; one of the knife blows had skewered the lower lobe of his right lung and another his heart. He died from wounds to his chest. Amazingly, his courageous wife survived her appalling wounds.

Police arrested Gonzales three days later. In addition to the murder, he was convicted of first-degree burglary, aggravated assault, armed robbery and of another burglary committed minutes before he broke into the Wagner’s home. Along with the death penalty this appalling man received three consecutive life sentences.

GOODMAN, SPENCER COREY (TEXAS # 999031), DOB 28.10.1968

For snapping the neck of a Houston woman, after knocking her unconscious and stealing her car, Spencer Corey Goodman was executed by lethal injection on the night of Tuesday 18 January 2000.

Minutes before the execution, a witness turned to the victim’s husband, Bill Ham, manager of rock group ZZ Top, and asked how he was doing. ‘Great,’ Ham replied wryly.

In a final statement Goodman, strapped to the death chamber gurney, expressed love for his family and a woman named Kami. Then he said: ‘That’s it, Warden. Thank you, Chaplain.’ The condemned man gulped, spluttered loudly about a half dozen times and then fell into unconsciousness. He was pronounced dead at 6.22 p.m., nine minutes after the flow of deadly drugs began.

Goodman, who was born in Germany, was 23 years old at the time of the crime. A twice-convicted felon, and footsore from a long walk without a destination, he was just a day out of a San Antonia Parole Centre when he decided to steal Ham’s car.

After being dropped off in Houston along with a busload of other parolees, Goodman headed west on Interstate 10 and spent a restless night by the railroad tracks. He walked throughout the next hot and rainy day until he came across Bill Ham’s Cadillac parked at a pharmacy in west Houston. Ham’s wife had used the car to go shopping.

When the 48-year-old woman returned to the car and slipped into the driver’s seat, Goodman was waiting for her. He slammed his fist into her neck, knocked her unconscious and pushed the limp body to the floor.

Putting his victim’s body in the trunk and her credit cards into his wallet, Goodman took off for a month before his capture, on 7 August 1991.

After travelling as far afield as Colorado, Goodman headed back for San Antonio, leaving behind a trail of nearly 60 credit card transactions for detectives to follow. Deputies in Eagle County, Columbus, Ohio, arrested him after a 32-mile chase that climaxed when he drove the Cadillac over a low cliff. Soon afterwards, he told police that he had killed Mrs Ham and dumped her body in a field near Pearsall, south of San Antonio.

Goodman told investigators, ‘I was going to get out of Houston. Like a dummy, I didn’t think about reporting [for parole] again.’

‘He broke a woman’s neck with his bare hands because he didn’t feel like walking,’ said Fred Felcman, an assistant district attorney who helped prosecute Goodman. ‘And then he stuffs her into the trunk, and drives away and visits friends, gives away presents that she had bought that day, uses her credit cards.’

Massively understating his actions, Goodman said, ‘People make mistakes, and I made a bad one.’ He added, ‘I don’t blame anyone.’

GREENE, BEAU J. (ARIZONA # 123048), DOB 2.4.1966

On 28 February 1995, Tom Bevan and his girlfriend, Loriann Verner, told 29-year-old drug addict Beau Greene that he could no longer stay in their trailer. Greene owed money to a drug dealer who had threatened to shoot him, and Bevan wanted to distance himself from his lodger. Full of methamphetamine, Greene stole a truck and headed for Tucson where the truck broke down.

At around 9.20 p.m. that same evening, Greene encountered 58-year-old University of Arizona professor Roy Johnson, who had just left the Green Valley Presbyterian church, where he had given an organ recital. The circumstances of the meeting will always remain a mystery, but what is clear is that an argument ensued and Greene beat his 140 lb victim to death with a blunt instrument. After first removing his victim’s wallet, he dumped the body in a wash just off Gates Pass, where it was found four days later, lying face down. Greene then drove directly back to the Bevan’s trailer in the victim’s Ford Taurus, where he borrowed a rug and a clean pair of shoes and trousers, because he had blood and mud on his own. He told Bevan about the killing.

On 1 March, using a gauze bandage on his hand to disguise his signature, nineteen-year-old Greene started to use his victim’s credit cards. He bought clothes, food, camping gear, a television, VCR and an air rifle. Later that evening, he told his ex-girlfriend that he had killed someone and had to get rid of the car. His idea was to drive into the desert, dump the car, set it alight, and return in her vehicle, to which she agreed. However, a ranger stopped both vehicles, but Greene fled.

When Greene was arrested on Sunday 3 March, police officers found property that had been purchased with the stolen credit cards.

Since being in prison, this maladjusted thug has written letters boasting about his murder and the fact that he is on Death Row. Moreover, he now advertises on the Internet, looking for ‘fun’ women. Posing in a black bike cap, a T-shirt and stroking a long-haired cat, Greene’s digitised image smiles back at the viewer. In the text which follows, he describes an exciting career that involved his being a fur trapper on the Mexican border, a Harley mechanic and a logger in the Pacific North-west. Astonishingly, he neglects to include his excessive use of drugs and makes no mention of murder while adding that he is ‘tired and bored with a surplus of time’.

GRIBBLE, WILLIAM RUSSELL (PENNSYLVANIA # CC7649), DOB 3.10.1964

See O’DONNELL, Kelly.

GRIFFITH, MICHAEL DURWOOD (TEXAS # 999176), DOB 11.7.1950

Michael Durwood Griffith is a Cancerian, and one of the occupations to which Cancerians are suited, apparently, is that of nursery gardener. And it is this horticultural inclination which seems to have encouraged 44-year-old Michael Griffith to become a regular customer at the ‘Forever Flower and Wedding Chapel’ an emporium run by 44-year-old Deborah McCormick and her mother in Dallas.

On Monday 10 October 1994, Griffith entered the shop and asked for six, long-stem roses. While Deborah was serving him, he pulled out a pistol and proceeded to rob her of $400 and four credit cards belonging to her father.

Not content with this haul, ladies’ man Griffith then ordered the terrified woman into a reception room where he forced her to perform sexual acts. While Deborah was complying with his repugnant demands, Griffith drew a butcher’s knife and stabbed her eleven times until she died.

Barely minutes after the robbery and murder, the killer began to use the stolen credit cards. Indeed, he continued to use them extensively over the next three weeks, lavishly entertaining various girlfriends before police arrested him.

In January 1996, the botanical killer Griffith was sentenced to death for capital murder. Almost irrelevantly, he was given an additional sentence of 60 years on two counts of aggravated robbery. With no relatives to claim his body, after his execution, Griffith will be buried in Peckerwood Cemetery at Huntsville. There will be no flowers on his grave.

GUIDRY, HOWARD PAUL (TEXAS # 999226), DOB 15.4.1976

Hailing from Vermillion Parish County, Louisiana, itinerant labourer turned triggerman Howard Guidry was convicted of the Wednesday 9 November 1994 ‘Murder for Hire’ slaying of 34-year-old Farah Fratta, the wife of former public safety officer, Robert Fratta, who was convicted of masterminding the murder of his wife and was himself sentenced to death.

The unsuspecting victim was shot twice in the head at point-blank range with a .38-calibre pistol as she stepped from her car inside the family garage. The shooting occurred during the course of a custody battle between Farah and her estranged husband. A third man, 39-year-old Joseph Prystash, was convicted of planning the details of the killing. He was also responsible for obtaining the murder weapon for Guidry. In return for these services, Prystash hoped to receive Robert Fratta’s jeep, but instead was sentenced to death.

For his part in the conspiracy, contract killer Guidry was promised $3,000 for killing Mrs Fratta. However, discretion is not his strongest quality and he found great difficulty in keeping a low profile. Following the murder, he committed two armed robberies which proved to be his undoing. When arrested in connection with a bank robbery, he was found to have three weapons and more than $20,000 in his possession. See also FRATTA, Robert Alan.

GULBRANDSON, DAVID (ARIZONA # 96426), DOB 30.12.1944

They say that Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but that adage was written centuries before David Gulbrandson arrived on the scene. When this man was ditched by his lover and business partner Irene Katuran, he exacted a revenge which showed him capable of depravity and sexual brutality on a level seldom encountered.

The two were partners in a photography business and enjoyed an intimate personal relationship. Irene ended the affair during January 1991, and Gulbrandson physically assaulted her on Thursday 14 February. The woman obtained a protective order from the courts, but on 9 March, during a telephone conversation, Gulbrandson threatened to kill her.

Late on Sunday 10 March, or during the early hours of the next day, Gulbrandson entered Irene’s home and, while her two children slept, brutally tortured and murdered the woman. Despite her having put up an intense struggle, Irene received 33 incision-type wounds across her body, a puncture wound to her liver and at least ten injuries of the blunt force type. In addition, Gulbrandson cracked her teeth, fractured her nose and seven of her ribs, as well as setting her hair on fire. A wooden salad fork was found embedded in her leg. Death came either by strangulation or by a blow to her throat, which caused her to suffocate. She was left in her bedroom wearing only panties with her ankles and one wrist bound with electrical cords. In the kitchen sink, police found three knives, one razor knife and a pair of scissors, all bloodstained. The killer fled in his victim’s car and he was arrested in Montana.

GUTIERREZ, RUBEN (TEXAS # 999308), DOB 10.6.1977

Raised in Lee County, Texas, Hispanic Ruben Gutierrez, found work as a forklift operator and labourer, and he would have been wise if he had stayed that way. But he didn’t. On Saturday 5 September 1998, he and two accomplices, Rene Garcia and Pedro Gracia Garza, Jr, went out with the intention of committing robbery. They were prepared to kill if necessary.

Their victim was an 85-year-old Brownsville mobile home park owner. The Hispanic lady lived on site, and she used her home as an office, which contained a safe. The three hoodlums forced their way into the old lady’s mobile home and struck her over the head, the intention being to knock her unconscious. However, to their surprise and annoyance, the octogenarian put up a spirited fight. For her pains, she was punched repeatedly and kicked in the head with steel-toed boots. To finish her off, Gutierrez stabbed her several times in the head with a screwdriver. The thugs fled the scene with over $56,000 and, at autopsy, it was established that the beating had resulted in broken cheekbones and damage to the brain, resulting in death.

For this cowardly and unnecessarily brutal homicide, Gutierrez now languishes on Death Row, no doubt dreaming wistfully of a life of freedom behind the wheel of a forklift truck. His partners-in-crime both drew life sentences.

GUZMAN, JAMES (FLORIDA # 395352), DOB 27.4.1964

It isn’t particularly unusual for a tenant of Death Row to spend years protesting his innocence of the crime for which he has been convicted. After all, when faced with the prospect of execution, it is not a bad idea to make some effort towards self-preservation. And that is precisely what 37-year-old James Guzman has been engaged in since December 1996, when he was sentenced to death for capital murder.

According to Florida law and the US justice system, the State must prove its case beyond any reasonable doubt before a person can be found guilty of capital murder. If a conviction is obtained while serious doubt exists, then there may well be a miscarriage of justice. And it is this aspect that Guzman is striving to press home in his efforts to have, not only his sentence overturned, but also the actual conviction itself.

Whether or not the evidence against him is flawed, one thing is for certain. Standing only five feet eight inches tall and weighing an impressive 208 lbs, Guzman has the build of a short, heavyweight boxer. Add to that a visage that would intimidate even Mike Tyson, then it is not difficult to see the uphill task faced by the defence counsel in trying to persuade a jury of James Guzman’s innocence. In any event, the facts of the case are as follows.

David Colvin’s body was found in his room at the Imperial Motor Lodge, Daytona Beach, by the maintenance man at 9 a.m. on Monday 12 August 1991. He had been hacked to death. The medical examiner, Dr Terrence Steiner, established the time of death as having occurred 24–36 hours prior to the body being found. He and other witnesses identified a samurai sword as being the probable murder weapon.

On the day the body was discovered, police interviewed two witnesses, Curtis Wallace and Anthony Lee. Both men claimed to have seen Colvin alive between 9 p.m. and midnight of Saturday 10 August.

The following Thursday, Detective Wright, who was working the case, received information from a confidential informant who claimed to have overheard, in a conversation, that Curtis Wallace had murdered a man at a motel. Furthermore, the informant said that Wallace was in possession of a ring and a large amount of cash after the killing. The detective was advised to contact Anthony Lee, who might be able to assist the police further.

It was two weeks later, on 29 August, when investigators eventually contacted Lee, who made a sworn statement to the effect that Curtis Wallace had admitted to killing David Moreover, Lee stated that on 10 August he had seen Wallace leaving the murdered man’s motel room between 9 p.m. and midnight, carrying a long, taped-up object that looked like a stick. Lee went on to say that he looked into the room and had seen the victim’s body covered in blood as if he had been beaten to death. Although this suggested that Wallace had murdered Colvin, the man had by this time left the state and disappeared into thin air.

During the following months an astonishing development occurred. The Daytona police, unsuccessful in their attempts to trace Wallace, mysteriously focused their inquiries elsewhere and arrested one James Guzman for the killing of David Colvin.

Amazingly, given the nature and paucity of the prosecution evidence, Guzman was tried, convicted and sentenced to die in the electric chair.

Among the evidence offered by the State’s prosecutor was the testimony of a prostitute, Martha E. Cronin. This woman, who had lived with Guzman, alleged that he had told her that he had committed the murder on 10 August at approximately 3 p.m.. Given that this was outside the time limit put forward by the medical examiner, and that Anthony Lee’s evidence had established Colvin as being alive much later that day, Guzman’s conviction looks, at the very least, unsafe.

In his defence, Guzman presented to the court a letter that had been sent to him by the hooker, Martha Cronin. In this letter, which she admitted to having written, she told Guzman that if she could not have him for herself, then she would make sure that no other woman ever would. Further to that, Guzman’s defence team produced a reliable witness who stated that Cronin had lied in her evidence in order to avoid having to go to jail over an active warrant for her arrest.

So, to describe Martha Cronin’s testimony as perjury is to engage in the wildest of understatement.

Unfortunately for Guzman, one aspect which militates strongly against him is his richly impressive criminal record. This dates back ten years prior to the Colvin murder, and includes second-degree murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, burglary and grand theft.

H

HAIGHT, RANDY (KENTUCKY # 86706), DOB 18.7.1952

Randy Haight escaped from the Johnson County Jail in 1985, where he was in custody awaiting trials in three counties and, while on the run, he stole guns and several vehicles. He also murdered people.

During this time he executed Patricia Vance and her boyfriend, David Omer, as they sat in their car. Haight shot the man in the face, chest, shoulder and the back of the head. Aiming his gun at the woman, he fired at point-blank range, hitting her in the shoulder, temple, back of the head, and through an eye. The bodies were discovered near Herrington Lake in Garrad County.

The killer was apprehended in a cornfield in Mercer County on 23 August 1985. He shot at a Kentucky State police trooper, and caused another officer’s death in the ensuing shootout.

Haight had spent all but two of his fifteen adult years in four Ohio, three Virginia and four Kentucky prisons.

This brutal killer’s appeal, during which he claimed that his trial attorney was ineffective, was denied on 15 June 2000.

HALE, ALVIE JAMES (OKLAHOMA # 122016)

Alvie Hale kidnapped Tecumseh banker William Jeffrey Perry from his home in 1983. Over the next few days, Perry’s family received several telephone calls demanding $350,000 for his return, despite the fact that the hostage was in fact dead. The murderous Hale had shot him five times at a location in Pottawatomie County.

A pick-up was arranged and Hale collected the ransom, but FBI agents captured him after a high-speed chase. Perry’s body was found a day later on Hale’s property. Hale was convicted and sentenced to death in 1984.

HALVORSEN, LEIF (KENTUCKY # 32823), DOB 20.7.1954

In 1983 in Fayette County, Leif Halvorsen and his accomplice, Mitchell Willoughby, executed three teenagers who were redecorating their Lexington home.

Jacqueline Greene was shot no less than eight times in the head, and they shot Joey Durham five times – in the back, testicles, right arm, left leg and right temple. Joe Norman died after being shot three times – in the back, the chest and in the nape of his neck.

That night, the killers disposed of the bodies by throwing them from the Brooklyn Bridge in Jessamine County.

Halvorsen was sentenced to death on 15 September 1983.

HAMPTON, JAMES HENRY (MISSOURI)

‘TAKE THE PHONE OFF THE HOOK’

This two-time killer, who had spent most of his life in prison, was executed early on Wednesday 22 March 2000 after serving only four years on Death Row. He was pronounced dead at 12.05 a.m., three minutes after receiving the first of three lethal drugs at the Potosi Correctional Centre, Mineral Point, Missouri. As the first drug was administered, James Henry Hampton raised his head, looked around and coughed a few times. He then stopped breathing. His last words were, ‘Take the phone off the hook.’

Hampton had grown up as one of eleven children in a poor family in Louisville, Kentucky. Aged eleven, he was sent to reform school and spent his adult life in and out of prisons. Before the murders, he had served time in 25 different prisons for crimes ranging from burglary and assault, to drug trafficking.

In the early 1970s, during one stint in the federal prison in Marion, Illinois, he befriended Gary Gilmore, who went on to become, in 1976, the first American to be executed after a decade-long ban on the death penalty.

Hampton admitted beating Frances Keaton to death with a hammer in 1992, after abducting her from her home in Warrenton. He then fled to New Jersey, where he killed another woman during a second kidnapping attempt.

Court records show that on Sunday 2 August 1992, Hampton left his car at the parking lot of a Warrington church and then cycled three miles to Frances Keaton’s home. An acquaintance, a realtor who had worked with Keaton, told Hampton that the woman had $30,000 in the bank. The same man also provided a key to the woman’s home.

Hampton entered, carrying a sawn-off shotgun, and demanded money from the 58-year-old hairdresser and her fiancé, Allen Mulholland. He tied the man up and abducted the woman, taking her car and heading west on Interstate 70.

While driving, Hampton learned from a police radio scanner that police had been alerted to the kidnapping. At his trial he divulged that he had decided in advance to kill his hostage if police learned of the kidnapping from Mulholland before the ransom was paid. Therefore, he took her to a wooded area of Callaway County, where he killed her with several hammer blows to the head. He buried the body in a shallow grave.

With all hope of receiving a ransom now abandoned, Hampton drove back to Warrington and attempted to retrieve his car. When he saw that police were keeping it under surveillance, he fled to New Jersey.

On Wednesday 16 September 1992, he killed 48-year-old Christine Schurman of Wantage Township. Her husband, Dr Alan Schurman, found her body. She had been killed by the evil Hampton, who had fired a single bullet into her head following yet another botched ransom attempt.

Hampton was finally captured on 19 December 1992, the day after he was featured on the television show America’s Most Wanted. A New Jersey pastor recognised the man and called the police. As officers moved in on the fugitive, he stuck a gun beneath his chin and shot himself. The bullet exited through the front of his brain. Miraculously, he survived, only to meet his death seven years later at the hands of the Missouri executioner.

HARRIS, DAVID RAY (TEXAS # 999827), DOB 19.10.1960

When he left school, David Harris became an apprentice bricklayer. But not for long! This horny-handed son of toil very soon decided that there were easier ways to make money. At the age of eighteen, he embarked on a career of burglary, robbery and housebreaking, all of which earned him a couple of stretches in prison during the next seven years.

The career path of this gifted stone age intellectual came to an end on Sunday 1 September 1985, when he shot and killed 30-year-old Mark Mays at the Towne Oaks apartment complex in Jefferson County.

Mays and his 26-year-old girlfriend, Roxanne Lockard, were asleep when Harris, armed with a pistol, broke in. He forced Mays into the bathroom, then dragged the terrified woman with indecent haste from her bed and abducted her.

Mays freed himself, grabbed a 9-millimetre pistol and raced after Harris, catching up with him in the parking lot, where a shootout ensued. Both men fired five shots. Harris was hit in the neck and an arm, while Mays sustained fatal wounds to shoulders, the chin and his chest. Roxanne escaped unharmed during the shooting.

Harris, who bandaged his own wounds, was arrested four days later by police, who suspected him of drunken driving, and he has been on Death Row since April 1986.

HARRIS, GEORGE BERNARD (MISSOURI), DOB 9.2.1959

George Harris was born 9 February 1959 in Newport, Arkansas. On 26 February 1976, he was arrested in Kansas City, Missouri for first-degree robbery. In September 1976, Harris was sentenced to eight years in the Missouri Department of Corrections.

Thirteen years later, on 19 March 1989, he was arrested in Columbia, Missouri, for a first-degree murder charge stemming from an incident that occurred in Kansas City, Missouri. He was convicted and sentenced to death, being executed on 13 September 2000.

The events which led to George Bernard ‘Baby’ Harris’ downfall are as follows. During the morning of 11 March 1989, Harris had been shooting craps and had won some money. An acquaintance who needed cash asked Harris to lend him $500, and put up two machine guns, an Uzi and a .45-calibre Thompson automatic, as collateral. Harris agreed to the deal, passed over the money in return for the guns and then stowed them in the trunk of his car before returning to the crap game. Unable to rid himself of anxiety over the weapons, he asked a friend, Michael Taylor, if he would keep the machine guns for him. Taylor agreed.

Accompanied by several other men, the two made their way to Taylor’s house. Among the group was Stanley ‘Hank’ Willoughby, who was asked by Taylor to carry the guns into the house. On the way, another man, who was sitting on the porch, asked Willoughby not to bring the guns into the property, so Willoughby handed the box containing the weapons to Michael Taylor’s younger brothers, telling them to hide it somewhere close by. Harris then left.

The boys took the box from Willoughby and hid it under some bushes in the backyard, then left without telling Willoughby where the guns were hidden.

That evening, at about 8 p.m., Harris returned looking for Michael Taylor. At the door someone told him that Taylor was upstairs sleeping. Harris went up to the bedroom, where he told Taylor he had come to pick up the guns. A sleepy Taylor told him that he did not know where the guns were, but Harris insisted that he needed them right away for a drive-by shooting.

By now completely alert, Taylor told Harris that Willoughby was the man to ask about the whereabouts of the machine guns, but Willoughby was out ‘picking up some girls’. Harris resignedly went downstairs to wait and Taylor returned to his comatose state in bed.

Some time later, Taylor was roused from his reverie by Harris, who was yelling for him to come downstairs. Reluctantly, Taylor got up and descended to the front room, where he found an agitated Harris, Willoughby and several others. At this point the proceedings degenerated into a tragic farce.

Once again, Harris asked Taylor for his two guns. Once again, Taylor told Harris to ask Willoughby. For his part, Willoughby truthfully explained that he did not know where the guns were because Taylor’s brothers had hidden them. Disregarding the simple reality of the situation, the irate Harris blustered that he wanted his guns and that he wanted them now.

In an attempt to mollify an unreasoning Harris, Willoughby went outside, in the darkness, to look for the guns. Back in the house, Harris was heard to say, ‘I’m going to kill that nigger.’ Four of the other people in the house, disenchanted by Harris’ charmless and bellicose rantings, went upstairs.

Five minutes later, Willoughby returned without the guns and told Harris that if he wanted them he would have to wait until the young brothers came back. Harris insisted on getting his guns right away. Willoughby said, ‘Well, I can’t help you.’ Harris got up from the chair and pulled a .41-calibre Ruger Blackhawk Magnum revolver from his waistband and shot the victim in the lower face and neck. The bullet passed through Willoughby’s carotid artery. Willoughby staggered and collapsed on the steps. A few minutes later, the police and ambulance were called. Willoughby died before he reached the hospital.

Meanwhile, one of the other men, who had gone out to look for the guns, returned with them and placed them on the porch before running inside. Harris took his property and drove off unconcernedly in the direction of a female friend’s apartment.

Four days later, on Wednesday 15 March, police arrested the killer after he and others had committed an armed robbery in Columbia, Missouri.

HARROD, JAMES (ARIZONA # 136270), DOB 27.12.1953

‘BUTCH HARROD AND THE DYNASTY KILLING’

Although it is often said that truth is stranger than fiction, in reality, most murders are usually prosaic affairs which seldom involve intrigue and glamour of the sort found between the pages of a well-written crime novel. Every so often, however, a case arises which is the stuff of which legends are born and films are made, and the killing of Jeanne Tovrea is just such a tale.

The plot contains a murdered socialite, a millionaire’s fortune, a greedy family, a wealthy dynasty, a palatial mansion and a hired killer. To add intrigue to this spicy tale are some still unanswered questions, a conspiracy of silence and a secret which a condemned man may well take with him to his grave.

The story begins on 1 April 1988. Wealthy socialite and former cocktail waitress Jeanne Tovrea was found dead in her exclusive Phoenix home, set in Paradise Valley, in the foothills of Squaw Peak. She had been shot five times in the head at point-blank range. Two of the shots had been fired through a pillow, in order to muffle her screams. The dead woman was the widow of Arizona cattle baron and celebrated World War II hero Edward Tovrea Sr.

Crime scene technicians found fingerprints at the point of entry, the kitchen window and inside the house. The only other evidence was in the form of several recorded messages left on the victim’s answering machine. The caller gave his name as ‘Gordon Phillips’.

Police carried out a search for the mysterious Phillips, but he didn’t seem to exist, so the hunt for the killer slowly ran out of steam.

The unsolved case lay dormant until a breakthrough came six years later. In January 1994, an anonymous caller, who had watched the Unsolved Mystery TV programme on the case, identified the Gordon Phillips voice as being that of James ‘Butch’ Harrod. Shortly after that, a second tip led police to Harrod’s former wife. She claimed that Harrod had told her that he was paid $100,000 to kill Jeanne by the dead woman’s stepson, Ed ‘Hap’ Tovrea. She further alleged that Hap wanted Jeanne out of the way in order that he could inherit from his late father’s estate.

Galvanised once more into action by this unexpected windfall, and with a motive now apparently established, the police renewed their inquiries. Very soon, a scenario unfolded into which members of this powerful dynasty were reluctantly drawn and some very unpleasant family hatreds exposed.

At long last, the plot to murder Jeanne started to make sense to investigators. At centre stage was Harrod, a.k.a. Phillips, who had made contact with the woman several years after the death, in 1983, of her husband, the war hero. Posing as a writer, he had stalked her and finally gained an interview with her on the pretext that he was interested in her late husband’s experiences as a POW.

According to Deborah Luster, Jeanne’s natural daughter, Harrod had pestered Jeanne night and day ‘for months’. In fact, Deborah claimed to have been so concerned about her mother’s safety that she told investigators that she had begged her to hire a bodyguard, get a guard dog and contact the police. Jeanne did none of these things.

Police arrested ‘Butch’ Harrod, and during the ensuing inquiry they not only amassed a conclusive case against him, but also dragged one or two skeletons out from the Tovrea family closet.

Harrod’s fingerprints matched eighteen lifts taken at the crime scene, and he was flush with unexplained cash following the murder. In addition, detectives discovered a concealed money trail, phone records and a bogus business – all of them linking their prime suspect, like steel wire, with Hap Tovrea, the dead woman’s stepson.

At Harrod’s trial, prosecutors showed how Hap Tovrea had funnelled more than $35,000 to the accused man, both before and after Jeanne’s murder. The funds, supposedly, had been remitted for Harrod’s services as a consultant to Hap’s mining business.

It also emerged that Hap and his two sisters, Patricia Holdcraft and Georgia Tovrea, hated their stepmother, Jeanne. They believed that she was squandering their multi-million dollar inheritance. Their anxiety over their late father’s millions would not have been helped by the knowledge that their stepmother intended to remarry.

With an alarming number of loose ends still untied, James ‘Butch’ Harrod was found guilty of the murder of Jeanne Tovrea and, on Wednesday 27 May 1998, he was sentenced to death.

Oddly, throughout the proceedings, this condemned man had steadfastly refused to implicate Edward ‘Hap’ Tovrea and, even more enigmatically, he had hinted at some sort of conspiracy. To add to the mystery, the authorities still have not charged Hap Tovrea, or anyone else for that matter, in connection with Jeanne’s murder.

At the time of writing, this unresolved melodrama is set to run and run.

The principal player, Harrod, is mounting an appeal against his conviction.

Safe in the knowledge that Harrod is keeping his mouth shut on squalid Death Row, Hap is currently residing in luxury in posh La Jolla, California.

The chorus line, comprised of all of Jeanne’s stepchildren, are involved in a bitter court case over the family millions. This action began with indecent haste, barely a couple of months after the murder.

Meanwhile, nobody has explained why Deborah Luster failed to recognise Harrod’s, a.k.a. Phillips’, voice on the recorded message tapes when she was already familiar with the man.

With so many questions remaining unanswered, County Attorney Rick Romley is convinced that they are only scratching the surface of this labyrinthine drama with its many sub-plots. This tenacious investigator will not allow the case to gather dust. He has publicly vowed to find all of Jeanne’s killers and prosecute them.

HATCHER, CHARLES (MISSOURI), DOB 16.7.1929

‘CHILD SERIAL KILLER’

All too frequently cases appear, involving crimes against children, in which the perpetrator is revealed to have a history of convictions for similar offences. Despite their having demonstrated a predisposition towards paedophilia, there seems to exist the belief that such people need only to serve relatively a short sentence before they are allowed back into the world, where they will live as reformed characters.

Those responsible for such decisions appear to ignore the fact that these dangerous and predatory individuals are simply time bombs, unable to control the urges and desires of their unnatural sexual leanings. Tragically, it often takes the death of a child at the hands of such people before the offender is removed from society. Moreover, this erroneous philosophy is not new. Very few lessons seemed to have been learned from what is the most appalling and harrowing of crimes. Indeed, the twentieth century is littered with horrifying examples of child killers who have been treated with leniency and trust and who have gone on to commit even worse crimes. Such a man was Charles Hatcher.

Jailed for trying to abduct a newspaper boy, on Sunday 2 July 1961, Hatcher was working in the kitchens of the Missouri State Penitentiary when he committed his first murder. His victim was fellow convict Jerry Lee Tharrington, and, although Hatcher was the prime suspect for the stabbing death, he was never charged, owing to lack of evidence. In 1969, this novice murderer completed his sentence and was released into the outside world where he embarked on a trail of sickening crimes against children, which spanned two blood-drenched decades.

In the August following his release, Hatcher abducted twelve-year-old William Freeman. For no apparent reason, he strangled the lad. Less than a month later, this animal was arrested in San Francisco for sodomising a five-year-old boy. For this awful offence, Hatcher served only four years before a remarkably ill-informed parole board opened Pandora’s box and set him free on parole.

A grateful Hatcher justified the board’s ‘wise’ decision by breaking the terms of his parole and disappearing into thin air. There followed a string of abductions, molestations, child rapes and killings carried out by this monster once he had been set free. Over the next five years he travelled the USA, leaving in his wake murdered children and devastated families.

In May 1978, Hatcher abducted and strangled four-year-old Eric Christgen. Bizzarely, local man Melvin Reynolds confessed to this murder and, in February 1979, was sentenced to life imprisonment. He served five years before the true killer was discovered. In the meantime, in September 1978, Hatcher was arrested in Omaha, Nebraska, for sodomy. Deemed mentally unstable, he was briefly detained and then set free.

A year after Eric Christgen’s death, Hatcher was arrested for the attempted murder of a seven-year-old boy. Yet again, he was considered mentally unstable. In a show of uncharacteristic common sense, the authorities put him in a secure hospital. However, they let him go free after a year and he resumed his vile progress.

This pattern continued, with Hatcher being arrested many times, only to be set at liberty on the advice of ill-informed psychiatric reports. Even when he was institutionalised, he either escaped or was released prematurely and there is almost a criminal quality to the laxity with which the various mental health authorities treated him.

Hatcher’s perverted odyssey came to an end in 1982, when he was arrested for the 30 July abduction, rape and murder of eleven-year-old Michelle Steele in St Joseph, Missouri. During interrogation there emerged a confession which nauseated the detectives who were involved. It transpired that in the thirteen years since 1969, Charles Hatcher had murdered no less than sixteen children. These homicides had been carried out in California, Iowa, Missouri and Illinois.

Probably the most ghastly aspect of the Hatcher case is that there had been so many opportunities for the authorities to bring an end to his murderous progress, as he had been arrested frequently, but he was never fully investigated and was always released at the soonest possible opportunity. On being set free, this rebarbative monster would simple resume his lethal and depraved activities.

At his trial, Hatcher was found guilty of the murder of Michelle Steele, Eric Christgen and William Freeman. Although he requested the death sentence, he was given two life sentences. However, this brutal and deranged child-killer was determined to walk the ‘Green Mile’ in one form or another and, on Friday 7 December 1984, Charles Hatcher did everyone a favour and hanged himself in his prison cell.

HEDLUND, CHARLES MICHAEL (ARIZONA # 56613), DOB 22.11.1964

On Sunday 10 March 1991, Charles Hedlund and his half-brother, James Erin McKinney, brutally beat and shot dead 40-year-old Christine Mertens in her home during the commission of a burglary. Mrs Mertens’ son found his mother dead, lying face down on the living-room floor. Those responsible had ransacked the bedroom and rifled through her purse.

On 23 March, the two killers burgled the home of 65-year-old James McLain, and they shot the man in the head as he lay asleep in his bed. As well as the killing, they stole personal property, including several guns.

Hedlund was convicted of first-degree murder for the killing of Mr McLain, and he was sentenced to death. He was convicted of second-degree murder for the killing of Christine Mertens, two counts of burglary in the first degree and one count of theft. McKinney was also sentenced to death for these especially heinous crimes.

HENDERSON, CATHY LYNN (TEXAS # 999148), DOB 27.12.1956

‘BABY KILLER’

The Braugh family had employed blue-eyed, strawberry-blonde Cathy Henderson as a professional babysitter for three months and, to all intents and purposes, she was well liked and well suited to her job.

On Friday 21 January 1994, Mr and Mrs Braugh set off for work, leaving their two children, their three-month-old son, Brandon, and their 2-year-old daughter, Megan, in their babysitter’s charge.

On their arrival home, the Braughs discovered to their dismay that Megan was alone in the house. Brandon and Cathy Henderson were missing. Distraught, they called the police.

After a nationwide search, Henderson was eventually traced to Missouri, where she was arrested. When questioned, she told officers that Brandon had died after falling on his head. She asserted that it was an accident, but that she had panicked, buried the dead child and fled to her native state.

On 8 February 1994, using a map drawn by Henderson, police found Brandon’s corpse in a cardboard box, buried in a shallow grave outside of Temple, Texas. An autopsy examination determined that the child had died of a fractured skull.

Despite arousing a great deal of public sympathy and support in her fight against the severity of her sentence, Cathy Henderson is still on Death Row.

HENRY, GRAHAM SAUNDERS (ARIZONA # 67112), DOB 24.7.1949

On Friday 6 June 1986, at approximately 3 p.m., the ever-smiling Graham Henry and his accomplice, Vernon Foote, kidnapped Roy Estes from his Las Vegas apartment. The two men forced the elderly and partially disabled man, who used a walking frame, into his truck before driving him into the desert, where they cut his throat and stabbed him through the heart.

Leaving the body in a desolate location 40 miles north of Kingman, the two men drove back to Highway 93, where police officers stopped the vehicle. Henry, who was driving on the wrong side of the road, gave a false name and was arrested for drunk driving.

On 8 June, police discovered Henry’s true name and were also made aware that Estes was missing. Homicide detectives questioned Henry about the dead man’s whereabouts and, spineless to the last, he immediately blamed Foote for the murder before leading police to the body.

In a separate trial, Foote was convicted of robbery and theft, but the jury could not reach a verdict on the murder charge. However, Henry was convicted of first-degree murder, and received the death sentence on 16 March 1988.

HERMAN, DAVID LEE (TEXAS # 999003), DOB 7.11.1957

David Herman was the former owner of a topless nightclub. He killed a woman while robbing the place, and he was executed by lethal injection on Wednesday 2 April 1997. A day and a half before he met his death, the condemned man strove to hasten his demise by slashing his throat and wrist with a disposable plastic razor.

Thirty-nine years old and six foot four inches tall, Herman was legally killed about 38 hours after a guard had spotted the blood. He spent three hours in the prison hospital getting his injuries stitched before returning to his cell at ‘The Walls’ in Huntsville.

Herman had been convicted of killing 21-year-old Jennifer Burns in the 20 December 1989 robbery at the ‘Lace’ topless nightclub in Arlington. This was a business he had managed two years earlier.

On the evening in question, he confronted club manager Clay Griffith at gunpoint and ordered him to the office, where Jennifer Burns, who worked as a bookkeeper, and her colleague, Sally Fogle, were preparing to open for the day.

The gunman ordered Ms Burns to put $11,200 in a canvas bag, and then he tried to rape her. When he failed he became enraged and shot all three with a .357-calibre handgun. Griffith and Fogle survived almost fatal injuries to identify him to police.

Herman was arrested ten days later and much of the money was recovered. The jury took only fifteen minutes to convict him of capital murder. Greg Pipes, the prosecutor, said the jury could not have had a more clear-cut case, adding that ‘it is always nice to have two people come in and say, “He shot my friend and he killed this young lady.”’ (A staggeringly injudicious use of the word ‘nice’, given the gravity of the circumstances!)

HERRERA JR, WILLIAM (ARIZONA # 77036), DOB 1.5.1968

‘OFFICER DOWN!’

Murdering a police officer in his line of duty carries a mandatory death sentence in the state of Arizona. Hispanic William Herrera Jr was undeterred by this when he ordered his younger brother to blow the brains out of a deputy sheriff on the afternoon of 30 June 1988.

It was a blisteringly hot day in Maricopa County and William Herrera Snr was drinking beer with his three sons, William Jr, Mickel and Ruben, and Mickel’s girlfriend, Mary Cardenas, near a canal in South Phoenix.

Deputy Sheriff Vernon Marconnet was on patrol at 35th Avenue and Carver Road. He spotted the group, drove up to them and asked them for identification. Somewhat the worse for drinking, William Herrera refused and pushed the deputy away. After a short struggle, the officer forced the man into his cage car and summoned assistance on his portable radio.

William Jr and Mickel now started fighting with the officer while Ruben sprang his father out of the car. Herrera then joined in the fracas and, during the struggle, managed to wrestle the officer’s revolver from him. Mickel ordered the cop to lie on the ground and the deputy complied. But what happened next can only be described as cold-blooded murder.

With the rest of the group urging him on, Mickel pointed the gun at the policeman’s head and fired a single shot into his brain, killing him. When back-up arrived, colleagues found Marconnet’s body slumped by his car.

As Mickel was a junior, he received a life sentence. Both William Herreras drew the death penalty, while brother Ruben entered into a plea agreement and received a ten-year prison term.

HICKS, DAVID (TEXAS # 999202), DOB 15.1.1962

On 20 January 2000, 38-year-old David Hicks was executed in Texas for a truly monstrous crime. He beat his elderly grandmother, 88-year-old Ocolor Hegger, then returned to her house and raped her, before fatally shattering her skull with a wooden doorstop. This sickening crime, which turned the stomachs of seasoned investigators, took place on Monday 25 April 1988, when Hicks was only 26 years old and recently released from jail.

Hicks and a cousin went to Mrs Hegger’s house on the night of the murder because the cousin owed her money. The pair left her watching television, but Hicks returned to rob the lady.

He beat her unconscious and left her in the bedroom, before spending the evening drinking with friends. Drunk, he then returned to murder the helpless old woman in cold blood.

A shocked neighbour found Mrs Hegger sprawled on the kitchen floor of her small frame house in Teague on the morning of 26 April 1988. To the astonishment and disgust of the forensic team, semen found at the scene was matched to the woman’s killer and rapist – her grandson.

HILL, CLARENCE DAVID (ARIZONA # 79717), DOB 25.7.1948

‘BURNED ALIVE’

Judge Leonard C. Langford bore in mind Clarence Hill’s previous convictions, involving brutal violence, when he sentenced this defendant to death on 5 June 1990. ‘There is no mitigation for the especially heinous, cruel and depraved crime you committed, the murder for which you were charged,’ admonished the judge.

Hill lived in a small motor home on property owned by Dale Edmundson in Mohave Valley, Arizona. Early in the morning of Sunday 18 June 1989, the two men were drinking in Edmundson’s home, when Hill suddenly hit his host over the head with a blunt object wrapped in a blanket and ransacked the place for money and valuables. He then drove the unconscious man into the desert, poured paint thinner over him and set him on fire, leaving him to die.

Police discovered the still burning corpse at 5 p.m., that day, and Hill was arrested soon after.

HILL, MACK ORAN (TEXAS # 999961), DOB 12.8.1953

A game warden came across an altogether unexpected discovery when, in August 1987, he happened upon a 55-gallon drum submerged in Amon Lake, Montague County, Texas. When he was called to the scene by fishermen, who were concerned about the label ‘Calcium Carbide’, the warden knew that this highly toxic substance was a source of calcium cyanide: a hard, brittle crystalline compound of calcium and carbon used in the making of fertiliser or acetylene, a gas used in welding or cutting metal.

Upon opening the drum, however, the men reeled back in horror at the contents. Set in concrete and wrapped in a death shroud of plastic sheeting was a man’s body. At autopsy, it was revealed that the dead man had been shot once in the head with a .25-calibre pistol. Police soon determined that the deceased was 43-year-old Donald Franklin Johnson, a paint and body shop owner, who had been reported as missing from Lubbock County the previous March.

Inquiries soon led investigators to Mack Oran Hill and Herbert Wayne Elliott. Both men were well known as having criminal records. Indeed, prior to the last sighting of the victim, Hill had only recently been released from prison following a twelve-year sentence for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon.

Johnson and Hill had previously been partners in several unsuccessful business ventures. Witnesses soon came forward to say that, following the victim’s disappearance, Hill had been seen driving Johnson’s truck and camper. Another informant explained that Hill had stolen equipment from the body shop and sold the goods at flea markets around the area.

The case, like the oil drum, which proved to have come from Johnson’s workplace, was watertight, and police were able to recover Hill’s fingerprints from the plastic sheeting.

As well as protesting his innocence to the end, this brutal killer made an enigmatic accusation. He was executed by lethal injection on 8 August 2001, his last words being: ‘That’s all Warden. I love y’all.’

HINCHEY, JOHN ALBERT (ARIZONA # 60097), DOB 10.5.1933

On Sunday 29 September 1985, John Hinchey and his common-law wife of twelve years got into an argument about a domestic matter. Following the row, his wife had gone into the living room to sleep because she would not share the same bed, Outraged, Hinchey produced a gun he had purchased the same day and shot her four times.

This madman then ran to a bedroom where his victim’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Tammy, was sleeping with her infant son beside her. After kicking open the door, he shot the teenager twice in the face.

Miraculously, his wife managed to run outside, where she screamed for help. Hinchey, now out of bullets, chased her and hit her over the head with the gun, which broke in his hand. Then he beat her head against some rocks.

When this homicidal maniac returned to the house, he heard Tammy moaning. Savagely, he hit her in the face with a glass bottle until it shattered. He then grabbed a butcher’s knife from the kitchen and stabbed her several times, leaving the blade protruding from her stomach. Tammy died, her infant son was unhurt, and his wife survived.

With nothing that could possibly mitigate the animal savagery of Hinchey’s actions, Judge Gloria Ybarra sentenced him to death on 28 October 1987.

HINES, BOBBY LEE (TEXAS # 999025), DOB 7.7.1972

Four packs of cigarettes, a bowl of pennies and a cheap gold charm were the value of 26-year-old Michelle Wendy Haupt’s life when it was brutally ended on Sunday 20 October 1991.

The girl’s murder took place in her apartment at Country Square Drive in Dallas. Teenage labourer Bobby Lee Hines was staying in the apartment of the complex’s maintenance man, who had master keys to all of the rooms. A bottom-of-the-barrel chancer, Hines used one of the keys to enter Michelle’s apartment and, when she confronted him, he stabbed her repeatedly with an ice pick before strangling her to death.

The derisory few items that Hines had stolen from the poor young woman were in his possession when he was arrested. Scratches to his face and neck bore grim testimony to the struggle as Michelle fought vainly for her life.

HODGE, BENNY (KENTUCKY # 32835), DOB 9.8.1951

See EPPERSON, Roger D.

HOLBERG, BRITTANY MARLOWE (TEXAS # 999258), DOB 1.1.1973

With a prior conviction for drug abuse, the attractively proportioned, green-eyed Brittany Holberg was released from prison on 1 September 1996. Her next crime would be that of murder.

On Wednesday 13 November 1996, aged just 23, Holberg robbed and murdered an 80-year-old male in his home, and this crime can only be described as monstrous. The weapons used were: a paring knife, a butcher’s knife, a grapefruit fork and a carving fork. Holman also rammed a metal candlestick more than five inches down her victim’s throat.

HOLLIS, DAVID (INDIANA # 13152), DOB 14.8.1960

Although sentenced to death for the murder of two young women and an infant, David Hollis cheated the executioner by taking his own life while on Indiana’s Death Row on 19 February 1984. This maladjusted man joined the 110 other inmates who had committed suicide in US prisons during 1984.

On the night of Saturday 27 February 1982, Hollis had gone looking for his estranged eighteen-year-old wife, Debbie, and had found her in Hammond, Indiana, at an apartment with her friend Kim Mezei, also eighteen. Also present was Kim’s two-year-old son. An argument ensued and Hollis stabbed his wife several times before strangling all three occupants.

The following day, in the nearby town of Griffith, Hollis, armed with a shotgun, went to the home of a friend, Donald K. White. Hollis explained that the police suspected him of the previous night’s murders and confirmed that he had killed them. However, he said that he was sorry for killing Kim and her child but they had ‘just got in the way’.

In a bizarre act, Hollis then tied up White and his roommate before forcing White to perform oral sex on him.

Hollis pleaded guilty to all three murders and offered no mitigation in his defence.

HOOKS, DANNY KEITH (OKLAHOMA # 135525)

Forty-two-year-old Danny Hooks fatally stabbed five women in 1992 and left their naked bodies inside an Oklahoma City drug house. Prosecutors believe that Hooks, a cocaine addict, tried to force Sandra Thompson, Phyllis Adams, Carolyn Watson, Fransill Roberts and LaShawn Evans into an orgy and killed them when they tried to flee.

The murders remained unsolved until 1997, when Hooks’ DNA, from a 1988 forcible rape case in California, was put on file and discovered to match blood that was found in the drug house. He was convicted and sentenced to death on 2 November 1998.

HOOPER, MURRAY (ARIZONA # 47621), DOB 22.11.1945

See BRACY, William.

HOSKINS, ARRON SCOTT (ARIZONA # 129513), DOB 28.4.1974.

Between the late evening of 31 July 1994 and the early morning of 1 August, Arron Hoskins and his seventeen-year-old brother-in-law, Scott DeShaw, kidnapped eighteen-year-old Crystal Cabral. Hoskins shot her in the head and neck, and dumped her body in the desert. They then stole her red Suzuki car, and were arrested after a road accident during which the vehicle was wrecked.

In mitigation, Hoskins claimed that he had a dysfunctional family history and a difficult childhood. Psychiatrists claimed that he was antisocial with a borderline personality disorder; none of which cut any ice with the court, for he is still awaiting execution.

HOWELL, MICHAEL WAYNE (OKLAHOMA # 172655)

In attempting to steal her car, 40-year-old Michael Howell killed Sgt Charlene Calhoun of Tinker Air Force Base in 1987 outside a Del City apartment. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996. The murder was part of a cross-country crime spree committed with his girlfriend, Mona Lisa Watson.

Howell has also been sentenced to death in Tennessee for killing a Memphis convenience store clerk less than 24 hours before Calhoun’s killing. The couple were arrested in Florida driving Calhoun’s car after engaging in a shootout and a high-speed chase with police officers. Watson received life in prison for both killings. Defence attorneys for Howell argued unsuccessfully that his violent behaviour was caused by brain damage and drug use (all too obvious).

HOWELL, PAUL (FLORIDA # 123792), DOB 25.6.1962

‘THE CASE OF THE EXPLODING MICROWAVE OVEN’

Like the Chinese Triads and the Italian Mafia, the ‘Yardies’ of Jamaica control their multi-million-dollar drug trafficking operations throughout the world by means of localised gangs. Based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Paul Howell became, for a time, the leader of one such gang, which distributed crack cocaine across the Deep South.

In August of 1991, Howell, with a colleague, hired a Mitsubishi car and went about robbing and killing a drug dealer named Alfonso Tillman. After the shooting, which took place in the car, there was a great deal of blood and more than a few bullet holes. This meant that extensive refurbishment was needed before the hired vehicle could be returned.

Howell’s girlfriend, Yolanda, who could not really fail to notice the telltale traces of murder most foul, asked him about their origins. The garrulous Yardie told her of the robbing and execution, but later regretted his boastful indiscretion.

Unable to feel that he could trust Yolanda to remain quiet, Howell decided that he would ensure her silence by the simple expedient of blowing her to Kingdom come. This resourceful and subtle man manufactured a pipe bomb and placed it inside a brand new Sharp microwave oven, which he gift-wrapped. The plan was, that when the grateful lady opened the oven door the bomb would explode. He then set off in the hired car to deliver his lethal present. The best laid plans of mice and men, however, ‘gang aft agley’, and what happened next can only be described as a tragic farce.

In Jefferson County, on Saturday 1 February 1992, Florida Highway patrol trooper James Fulford noticed the 1991 Mitsubishi Galant exceeding the speed limit and made a routine traffic stop. After making the usual inquiries, he discovered the car was a rental, and the driver, Howell, was without a licence. The officer arrested the man, handcuffed him, placed him in his cage car, and then radioed for assistance in having the Mitsubishi impounded.

While he was waiting for his colleagues to arrive, Trooper Fulford made a foolish mistake. Unable to overcome his prurient curiosity and flouting official arrest procedures, he opened the gift-wrapped package containing the microwave oven. The policeman died from extensive injuries caused by his successful detonation of the home-made pipe bomb.

Alone, unable to escape, confused and in a state of shock, the Yardie bomb-maker was forced to sit handcuffed in the cage car awaiting the arrival of police reinforcements.

After a thorough investigation of Howell’s activities, a further six arrests were made and he and his co-defendants were convicted on a string of charges including murder and drug trafficking. As an aside, he was also convicted of the destruction of the Mitsubishi Gallant and the microwave oven.

HURLES, RICHARD D. (ARIZONA # 39884), DOB 1.6.1959

Several bookworms were suspicious of Richard Hurles when they visited the Buckeye Public Library. The 33-year-old man was avidly reading a children’s book and, later the same day, two customers tried to enter the library but found the door locked. As they rattled the lock, one peered through a window to see a woman, the librarian, lying in a spreading pool of her own blood. At the same time, at the rear of the building, another person observed the back door opening and a man in bloodstained clothes leaving in some haste.

When police arrived, they found that the victim’s blouse was bloody, her skirt was pulled up round her waist and her panties had been removed. She had been stabbed no less than 37 times and had died from these horrible wounds.

That afternoon, Hurles went to his nephew’s house and asked him to give him a ride to the Phoenix Greyhound bus station. On the way, Hurles threw his bloodied T-shirt and blue jeans out of the window. But by now, the hue and cry was up, and police arrested the library killer when the bus stopped at Wickenburg.

Richard Hurles was found guilty of first-degree murder, attempted sexual assault, and first-degree burglary. He will be executed by lethal injection.

HYDE, DAVID O. (ARIZONA # 39884), DOB 18.6.1962

On Friday 8 March 1991, 72-year-old Chinese-American John Lee and his daughter, 50-year-old Ginger Lee, were found bludgeoned to death on the blood-soaked floor of the Joyland Market in Phoenix. Mr Lee had owned and operated the market for decades. Ginger assisted her father at the market in the evenings, after working during the day as an elementary school teacher at the nearby Griffith School.

An anonymous tip led police officers to David Hyde and his stepbrother, Jackie Johnson. During questioning, Hyde made a number of self-incriminating statements to detectives and, during his incarceration in the Madison Street Jail in Phoenix, he bragged about the crime to a cellmate, who reported the matter to correctional staff.

Hyde’s version of events suggested that he and Johnson needed money to leave the state. Johnson attempted to steal Ginger Lee’s purse, but she caught him in the act, and a scuffle ensued. When John Lee attempted to help his daughter, Hyde beat him over the head with a large Bowie knife, and then attacked Ginger with the same weapon, before stealing approximately $700 from the cash register.

However, Johnson, who told the truth of what happened, said that they had gone to the store merely to rob the place and that he had taken no part in the murders. He was tried separately and acquitted of both homicides, but given a sentence for aggravated robbery. Hyde was sentenced to death.