5. INMATES I–L (IBARRA–LUCAS)

I

IBARRA, RAMIRO (TEXAS # 999247), DOB 10.5.1954

A NATIVE OF the unpronounceable Cahlchihuites Zacatecas County, Mexico, Ramiro Ibarra had no previous criminal record when he was convicted of the March 1987 sexual assault and strangulation of sixteen-year-old Maria de la Zuniga at her Waco home.

The teenager was looking after her two nephews at 402 S. 15th Street, when Ibarra, a family acquaintance, attacked her. She was beaten, raped then strangled with an electrical cord, which was still wrapped around her neck when she was found.

When arrested and questioned by police, Ibarra was discovered to have scratches on his face and body. Skin identified as Ibarra’s – taken from under the victim’s fingernails – indicated that the young girl had fought desperately for her life.

Amazingly, Ibarra was released from custody after a judge ruled inadmissible certain prosecution evidence. Nevertheless, changes to laws ruling the presentation of evidence allowed prosecutors to pursue the case nearly ten years later.

Ibarra was living in Bell County, Texas, when he was arrested on 10 October 1996. It is believed that he is responsible for the disappearance of his niece and the sexual molestation of his eight-year-old nephew. In any event, he will not escape the executioner.

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JACKSON, JAMES LEWIS (TEXAS # 999272), DOB 13.6.1959

‘THREE MURDERS BUT FOUR VICTIMS’

At six feet three inches in height and weighing 204 lbs, James Lewis Jackson, a gardener by trade, presented a formidable physical appearance. But this strong man’s world fell to pieces when his wife decided to end their marriage, and he reacted in a lethal manner which resulted in a triple killing.

On 8 April 1997, Jackson was at home with one of his two stepdaughters, Sonceria Messia Mayes. Upset that the girl’s mother planned to divorce him, Jackson asked Sonceria how she felt about the situation. When the girl bluntly replied that she did not care about it one way or the other, Jackson went over the edge and choked her to death.

When the girl’s sister, Ericka, returned home from school, Jackson asked the same question. Despite her telling him that she loved him and wanted him to stay in her life, he throttled the life out of her too. Then, in that bizarre ritualistic manner that is peculiar to those in a state of homicidal denial, he placed both girls’ bodies in their own beds. Their mother met the same dreadful fate when she returned home and spurned his advances and attempts at reconciliation.

It is difficult to view James Jackson as a cold-blooded, ruthless killer, when his almost pathetic attempts at reconciliation were made after having killed his wife’s two daughters. Instead, he emerges as a broken man whose reason has been completely eroded and as one of the few inhabitants of Death Row deserving perhaps to be viewed with a degree of compassion.

JACKSON, LARRY KENNETH (OKLAHOMA # 151781)

Thirty-seven-year-old Larry Jackson fatally stabbed his former girlfriend, Wendy Cade, in 1994, after escaping from a prison work detail for Oklahoma State Industries at the Jim Thorpe Building in the State Capitol complex in Oklahoma City. He had been serving a 30-year sentence for the 1985 shooting death of his then-girlfriend, Freda Laverne Washington.

Jackson thought he and Wendy would be married after his release from prison. But she disabused him of that notion when she became engaged to someone else. In prison, with nothing to do but brood on the matter of Wendy’s perceived infidelity, Jackson eventually resorted to doing what he knew best, exterminating girlfriends.

He was convicted and sentenced to death on 11 January 1996.

JACKSON, LEVI (ARIZONA # 103112), DOB 15.1.1976

On Monday 7 December 1992, sixteen-year-old Levi Jackson and two accomplices planned a car-jacking and talked about killing someone. At around 1.30 p.m., the three men waited for a car to stop near the area of 24th Street and Columbus Avenue in Tucson.

When a 40-year-old woman pulled up and stopped, the trap snapped shut. Jackson rushed into the road and asked her for a light for a cigarette. As she reached for her lighter, the teenager pointed a .45-calibre handgun at her head and forced her to move over to the front passenger seat.

The three thugs now took control of the car and, while keeping the gun levelled at their terrified victim, drove into the desert. There, Jackson fired a shot into her chest. She died from this wound, which lacerated her heart and left lung.

The accomplices received lengthy prison terms, and Jackson got his just deserts, the death penalty.

JACKSON, SHELDON DEWAYNE (OKLAHOMA # 2703080)

Twenty-seven-year-old Sheldon Jackson stabbed and beat to death his girlfriend, Monica Decator, and attempted to burn her body by setting her Tulsa house on fire in 1997.

This vile man had also abused Monica’s two-year-old son, Oz, and concealed the infant in the cold crawl space beneath a vacant house for many hours until he was found, nearly lifeless. Oz survived but has suffered permanent brain damage.

Prosecutors say Jackson killed Monica so that she would not report his child abuse to police. Subsequently, he received a life sentence for injuring Oz and a death sentence for killing the child’s mother.

JACOBS, CLAWVERN (KENTUCKY # 32850), DOB 1.2.1947

On Tuesday 16 September 1986, Jacobs abducted teenager Judy Ann Howard from Alice Lloyd College in Knott County. He took her to a wooded hollow where he raped his victim before beating her to death with a rock. Jacobs intended to leave Alice where he had killed her, hoping that her body would decay, but he was arrested at the crime scene.

Jacobs was sentenced to death on 27 February 1987.

JAMES, STEVEN CRAIG (ARIZONA # 46150), DOB 24.5.1958

‘MAN TRAP’

On Monday 16 November 1981, Juan Maya, a seedy pervert, was out trawling for sex with underage boys. Cruising the streets, he picked up fourteen-year-old Marty Norton, a jailbait male prostitute, and made sexual advances towards him. The streetwise Norton turned the offer down, but he suggested that Maya might find a more hospitable reception in a trailer belonging to 25-year-old Steven James. He even offered to make the introduction. It was an offer that Maya should have refused.

Expecting sex, Maya followed Norton into the trailer. There, the heavily bearded Steven James, along with Lawrence Libberton and the boy Norton, set upon him and took turns beating him. The three then forced their prey into the back seat of his own car and drove towards Salome, where James’ parents owned some property with an abandoned mineshaft on it. En route, a police officer stopped them, but Libberton threatened to kill Maya if he attempted to draw the officer’s attention.

With all hope now evaporating for Maya, the car arrived at the Salome property around dawn. James ordered Maya to step up to the mineshaft, and as the terrified man pleaded for his life, James fired directly at him from a distance of no less than five feet. Although almost fatally wounded, Maya charged at the shooter like an enraged bull. But it was to no avail. The other two men attacked him with rocks and a wooden board.

As the badly beaten Maya squirmed in agony on the ground, three more shots were attempted, but the gun was jammed with dirt and nothing came out of the barrel. So, to finish him off they dragged him, still very much alive, to the edge of the deep shaft, and threw him in, dropping rocks and railroad sleepers on top of him.

Norton pleaded guilty to several charges as a juvenile and testified against Libberton and James, both of whom were sentenced to death.

JOHNSON, DAVID MARK (OKLAHOMA # 213667)

In a frenzied rage, David Johnson beat Billy Wayne Webb with a baseball bat, doused him with gasoline and set him on fire in 1991 on a rural road in Love County, Oklahoma.

Webb survived for 29 hours, during which time he named Johnson and Ricky Lee Masquat, who were roommates in a Norman apartment, as his attackers.

Defence attorneys, in mitigation, argued that Johnson had organic brain damage caused by alcohol abuse and a doctor described him as borderline mentally retarded.

Masquat is serving a no-parole life sentence for first-degree murder. Forty-five-year-old Johnson was convicted and sentenced to death in 1993.

JOHNSON, DONALD (KENTUCKY # 127510), DOB 25.5.1967

Exhibiting a mind-numbing level of animal savagery, Donald Johnson stabbed 61-year-old Helen Madden 24 times in Floyd County, Kentucky. But, before killing the woman, Donald Johnson mutilated her vagina and rectum with a ballpoint pen, bit her several times and disembowelled her with a knife.

Her body was found on Thursday 30 November 1989 at her place of work, the ‘Bright and Clean Laundry’ in Hazard.

This butchering homicidal maniac was arrested on 1 December 1989 and was sentenced to death the following year.

JOHNSON, JOHNNY RAY (TEXAS # 999197), DOB 2.8.1975

Johnny Johnson went for overkill on the night of Monday 27 March 1995, when he sexually assaulted and murdered Leah Joette Smith in Houston.

Sadly, Miss Smith is unable to give her side of the story; however, Johnson, who hailed from Harris County, later told police that they had been smoking crack cocaine and he wanted sex. When she refused he, manifesting an extreme form of intolerance, slammed her head against a concrete ledge until she went limp. In a crack-fuelled frenzy, he ripped off her clothes then raped her. Following the attack, he stomped on her face, breaking her jaw so severely that her tongue was displaced. She choked to death on the blood from her injuries.

Johnson fled the scene, but had forgotten his wallet, so he returned to retrieve it and, while he was there, he raped the girl’s corpse.

After his arrest, this unspeakable animal, who had a well-documented criminal record of sex crimes, confessed to no less than thirteen other rapes in the Houston and Austin areas. He had also raped his niece when she was just eight years old and had sexually assaulted his sister-in-law.

Johnny Johnson will be executed by lethal injection.

JOHNSON, MICHAEL DEWANE (TEXAS # 999198), DOB 27.5.1966

Michael Johnson is yet another mindless thug who took an innocent man’s life for a derisory few dollars and now faces the death penalty.

On Sunday 10 September 1995, Johnson, with his friend, David Noel Vest, stopped at the Lorena-Fastime convenience store in Loretta, Texas, to buy gasoline for their car.

The store operated a full-courtesy service, and 27-year-old Jeff Wetterman went out to the forecourt, where he proceeded to fill Johnson’s fuel tank. After the attendant had finished pumping $24 worth of petrol into the car, Johnson pulled out a 9-millmetre pistol and senselessly shot him in the face, killing him instantly.

The two men sped off, leaving their victim lying in a spreading pool of his own blood. They were arrested in Dallas three days later, having sold the gun to a truck driver for $35 along the way.

JOHNSON, MICHAEL RENT (OKLAHOMA)

In what was described as ‘the first execution of the new millennium in the United States’, the state of Oklahoma put Michael Rent Johnson to death early on Thursday 6 January 2000 for the murder of a 76-year-old woman in 1981. Aged 41, he was pronounced dead by lethal injection shortly after midnight.

Johnson had been convicted of the murder of Ura Alma Thompson, who was found dead from suffocation in her Oklahoma City apartment. She also had been beaten in the face and on the head. At autopsy the medical examiner determined that the old woman had been brutally raped.

Johnson, who was 23 at the time of the murder, had been convicted previously in Illinois of two rapes, two armed robberies and a burglary. Police found several items from Ura Thompson’s home in his room, including a typewriter, rings, watch, key rings, cigarette case and a hand mirror. Hair and semen samples taken at the crime scene matched those taken from his victim.

At the time of writing, there are 122 inmates on Oklahoma’s Death Row awaiting the same fate as Michael Johnson.

JONES, ANTOIN (ARIZONA # 148403)

If there ever was a homicidal maniac, it has to be Antoin Jones, for here is a man who committed a crime of such depravity it leaps beyond the scale of human understanding.

On Friday 26 April 1996, twelve-year-old Jeraldine Gishie was found dead in a dumpster behind ‘Shep’s Bar’ near 43rd Avenue and Camelback in Phoenix by a tramp looking for cans to sell to buy drink.

An autopsy disclosed that the child had died as a result of blunt head trauma. She had multiple head injuries, stab wounds, abrasions and scrapes to her face and chest. Jeraldine had been raped and sodomised. Indeed, the injuries were so horrific, they churned the stomachs of even the most seasoned law officers who were involved in the hunt for her sadistic and twisted killer. Police vowed to catch him, and catch him very quickly before this monster struck again.

Inquiries soon established that the little girl was last seen alive around 3.30 p.m., when her parents left her at the park to play. When her body was removed from the dumpster, there was evidence that pointed to a local man called Antoin Jones, so he was pulled in for interrogation.

Jones initially denied any involvement with the murder, but later changed his story to one which held as much water as a sieve. He said that he had been forced to have sex with his victim after her death or his girlfriend would have been killed by an unnamed man who held a grudge against him.

Vanessa Odem, the defendant’s girlfriend, was interviewed and she denied any knowledge of the murder. However, when she learned of the shocking facts of the case, she spilled the beans, admitting that Jones had told her that he had killed the little girl. He had even taken her to the dumpster to show her the body and also to the location where the deadly murder weapons were hidden. She said that she had been too scared to tell the police because it had in fact been her boyfriend who had threatened to kill her if she talked.

Scientific analysis of blood and semen linked Jones to the dead child, and further investigation by the police found the victim’s blood in Jones’ car and on the murder weapons.

Jones, the sex beast from Maricopa County, was convicted of aggravated murder and sentenced to death. For count two of kidnapping, he was sentenced to 24 years. Count three of sexual intercourse with a minor drew him 27 years and, for the charges of sexual assault and anal penetration, he received a further 27 years.

JONES, BARRY L. (ARIZONA # 114690), DOB 26.8.1958

When the State of Arizona charged 36-year-old Barry Jones with sexual assault, three counts of child abuse and the murder of Rachel Gray, aged four, they had in mind the ultimate penalty for committing such atrocious crimes: the death sentence.

Rachel’s mother, Angela, and her three children were living with the perverted Jones and, on the afternoon of Sunday 1 May 1994, while she was asleep, Jones took Rachel out of the house in his van and was later seen by witnesses, hitting her with his hand and elbow. When the mother awoke, she discovered that Rachel’s head was cut and she was bleeding.

In the argument that followed, Jones protested that he had not touched the child; she had cut her head when neighbourhood children pushed her down, he argued. Rachel continued to bleed and vomit throughout the night, but he would not let Angela take her child to the hospital for treatment.

Before sunrise, the little child died and, at autopsy, it was determined that she had died as the result of a ruptured intestine.

On 14 April 1995, after a nine-day hearing, the jurors found Jones guilty on all five counts. In addition to the sentence of death for the murder, the trial court, presided over by a disgusted Judge James C. Carruth, sentenced Jones to concurrent sentences totalling 35 years and a consecutive sentence of life with no parole eligibility.

Arguing his mitigation to the authors from Death Row, this beast says that he behaved himself in court and had a dysfunctional childhood, none of which, we might add, carried any weight when his death sentence was passed on 6 July 1995. However, to date, there are still appeals pending and Jones’s scheduled execution for December 2001 did not take place.

JONES, DANNY L. (ARIZONA # 92576), DOB 24.8.1964

It was Thursday 26th March 1992, a pleasant evening in early springtime and, in his garage adjoining his house, Robert Weaver was sitting happily on an upturned bucket chatting to Danny Jones, who had called by. Inside the house, Weaver’s 74-year-old grandmother, Katherine Gumina, sat watching the television, and his daughter, seven-year-old Tisha, lay on the floor doing her homework: a picture of domestic contentment. But what happened next could have come straight from the pages of a Stephen King novel, so horrifying was its impact.

Danny Jones flipped!

Suddenly, like a thunderbolt, he attacked the unsuspecting Robert Weaver from behind, striking him once with explosive force, over the head, with a baseball bat. Robert collapsed, unconscious, to the ground.

Silently, Jones made his way into the house, walked through to the living room and unleashed a barrage of violence on Katherine Gumina. Shocked and horrified by the attack on her great-grandmother, Tisha Weaver fled to her parents’ bedroom, where she tried to hide from the monster that was Danny Jones.

Leaving the old lady for dead, the homicidal maniac began to maraud around the house searching for Tisha, and he eventually found her, hiding in terror, under her parents’ bed. He dragged the sobbing seven-year-old out from her hiding place and brutally struck her twice about the head before callously strangling her to death.

With the little girl dead, the diabolical killer located Robert Weaver’s gun cabinet, looted the contents and carried the weapons out to the garage. On the way, he grabbed the keys to Katherine’s car, which he intended to use for his getaway. However, when he reached the garage, he found that Robert had somehow regained consciousness and was attempting to flee for help. Still armed with the bat, Jones chased the man and, on catching up with him, killed him with five more blows to the head.

Miraculously, Katherine survived her terrible ordeal and identified Danny Jones, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the horrifying killing of Robert and Tisha Weaver. Although his execution was to take place on Wednesday 28 March 2001, he was granted a stay and is still on Death Row awaiting a new date with death.

JONES, ROBERT GLEN (ARIZONA # 70566), DOB 25.12.1969

The St Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago on Thursday 14 February 1929 pales into insignificance when compared with the next gruesome story from Monsters of Death Row.

On 30 May 1996, Robert Jones and Scott Nordstrom entered the ‘Moon Smoke Shop’ at Grant and First Avenue in Tucson with the intention of robbery. Immediately after walking through the door, Jones pulled out a pistol and shot a customer, Thomas Hardman, in the head. The killer then turned his gun on Clarence O’Dell, who was shot in the head and back. Three employees were ordered to lie on the floor. They, too, were shot by Jones, and the cashier, Steve Vetter, was ordered to open both cash registers. Plucking up immense courage, Steve made a dash for it and escaped unharmed.

Arthur Bell, who had worked at the premises only a short while, fled into a back room when the shooting started and Nordstrom followed him. Bell was forced to his knees and shot execution-style, twice in the back of the head with a .380-calibre handgun.

The two killers shared the proceeds of the robbery with the lookout, Scott Nordstrom’s younger brother David, who had waited outside. They left behind them six dead people.

Thirteen days later, at 9.20 p.m. on 12 June, Jones again with Nordstrom, entered the Firefighters Union Hall on East Benson Highway, Tucson. This time, Jones, using a 9-millimetre pistol, forced three customers to put their heads onto the bar and they were executed by shots to the head. The barmaid, Carol Lynn Noel, was shot dead by Scott Nordstrom after being unable to open the safe. The men fled after stealing a few dollars from the cash register.

The men might have killed again if it had not been for the much younger and impressionable David Nordstrom, who was terrified at what he had witnessed and bravely contacted the police.

Jones and Scott Nordstrom received seven death sentences, a life term, plus 198 years imprisonment. Jones is on Arizona’s Death Row in the Special Management Unit (SMU II) at Eyman, Florence. However, Nordstrom’s current disposition is unknown.

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KAYER SR, GEORGE RUSSELL (ARIZONA # 77910), DOB 20.8.1954

‘You sometimes have to kill people to survive,’ was the chilling observation George Kayer made to his girlfriend, Lisa Dawn Kester, ten days after he murdered a man whom he had borrowed money from. She reported him to the police, an act that culminated in Kayer’s arrest and a place on Death Row.

Bespectacled George Kayer, who was wanted for violating his probation, borrowed money from his friend, Delbert L. Haas, so he could gamble in Laughlin, a city about 70 miles south of Las Vegas, Nevada. Kayer, his girlfriend and Haas drove across the state line into Nevada and spent the day playing cards. Kayer lost every dollar he placed on the tables. Crossing back into Arizona, however, Kayer told Hass that he had ‘won big’, but that his winnings had been stolen from him and he could not repay the loan.

Prior to returning to Arizona; Kayer had told Lisa Kester that he was going to rob Hass and then kill him. When they stopped in Kingman for some beer, Kayer armed himself with a handgun. Later, they turned off the Interstate and drove into woods so the victim could relieve himself, and this proved to be the moment of opportunity for Kayer. He got out of the van and shot the unsuspecting man in the back of his head, returning to his girlfriend with Hass’ watch and some jewellery. They drove a short distance, then Kayer said, ‘Oh, damn, I didn’t get his keys.’ Returning to the body, he found the keys and fired another bullet into the victim to make sure he was dead, before driving to the man’s home in Spring Valley, where Kayer stole a camera, several guns and more jewellery.

On 26 March 1997, this brutal killer was convicted of both premeditated and felony murder as well as trafficking in stolen property and theft of a firearm. And, to round things off nicely, on 15 July, Judge William T. Kiger sentenced him to death.

KEMP JR, EMANUEL (TEXAS # 999909), DOB 19.9.1965

‘THE BUS RIDE TO HELL’

If you are a woman there must surely be few scenarios more terrifying to imagine than to find yourself on a bus, moving through the night bound for an unspecified destination. The only other passenger is a knife-wielding, sex-crazed psychopath. The driver is oblivious to your pleas for help, and there is nowhere you can hide from the evil monster who is advancing threateningly towards you.

For 34-year-old Joannie Mae Gray, this nightmare was one from which there would be no merciful awakening in the comfort of her own bed. The panic, the pain and the numbing fear that gripped her were the starkest of reality. The bus, the man with his glinting knife, they too were real, and there was to be no escape.

Since he was seventeen, Emanuel Kemp had spent almost all of his worthless life in prison and he had been released only days previously when he committed the brutal crime which earned him a cell on Death Row at the age of twenty-two.

On Thursday 28 May 1987, Kemp, a black man from Tarrant County, Texas, armed with a knife, hijacked a Fort Worth transit authority bus. He ordered the driver to simply drive around without stopping. Then, to her horror, he turned his attention to the sole remaining passenger, Joannie Mae Gray. While the bus careered on its way, he brutally raped the woman. When he had finished violating his innocent victim, this mindless animal savagely stabbed her in the neck and throat nine times, killing her.

The murderous Kemp then made his way forward to the terror-stricken driver, David Jeanfreau, and ordered him to pull over and stop. As he stepped down from the vehicle he paused, turned around, and lunged with his knife, stabbing Jeanfreau in the neck. Moments later he had vanished into the night.

The driver survived and was able to identify the murderous Kemp, who was arrested after only three more days at large.

KEMP, THOMAS A. (ARIZONA # 99144), DOB 2.6.1948

Several days before his murderous offence, Thomas Kemp purchased a .380 semi-automatic handgun. He told Jeffrey Logan, a friend and accomplice, that he needed money to pay bills and that he was going to look for somebody with cash.

On Saturday 11 July 1992, the two men kidnapped a 25-year-old man, and Kemp used his victim’s ATM card to withdraw $200. Kemp and Logan then drove the hapless man to Silverbell Mine, north-west of Tucson. There, either Kemp or Logan shot their victim several times in the head.

Both men were sentenced to death and there were no mitigating circumstances to invite leniency.

KENNEDY, EDWARD DEAN ‘SONNY’ (FLORIDA # 066680)

Sonny Kennedy was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a store clerk in Miami. He was confined at Union Correctional Institution (UCI) in Raiford, barely a quarter of a mile from the Florida State Prison in Starke, where the state’s electric chair and lethal injection gurney are located.

Kennedy escaped with two fellow inmates, but his companions were quickly recaptured. To steal a change of clothes, Kennedy broke into a trailer home some twenty miles from the prison on Saturday 11 April 1981. While he was there, the owner, Floyd H. Cone Jr, returned with his cousin, Florida highway patrol trooper Robert C. McDermon. When McDermon saw Kennedy, he drew his sidearm and fired. Kennedy returned the fire with a shotgun he had found in the trailer. Both McDermon and Cone were killed in the ensuing gunfight.

Kennedy then fled to a neighbouring trailer, taking a woman and her six-month-old baby as hostages. He surrendered after an hour and, for his homicidal escapade, he was executed in ‘Old Sparky’ on 21 July 1992.

KILES, ALVIE COPELAND (ARIZONA # 58234), DOB 21.5.1961

In asking for the death penalty for Alvie Kiles, prosecutors Phillip Hall and Thomas Varela considered the aggravating circumstances. They established three: prior convictions involving violence; especially heinous, cruel and depraved behaviour to the three victims, and multiple homicide. The prosecutors won hands down.

Kiles lived in Yuma with his girlfriend, Valerie Gunnell, and her two daughters, nine-month old Lecresha and five-year-old Shemaeah. On Thursday 9 February 1989, this violent man used a bumper jack to bludgeon Valerie to death in their home. He then killed the two children because they started ‘screaming and hollering’ as he murdered their mother.

Kiles bragged about the killings to an acquaintance and took him on a tour of the murder scene, during which he stepped on Valerie’s head. Lecresha’s body was later found floating in a canal in Mexico, but the body of her sister, Shemaeah, has never been found.

KING, ERIC JOHN (ARIZONA # 46518), DOB 30.9.1963

On 27 December 1989, Eric King, accompanied by a black male, later believed to be Michael Page Jones, robbed a Short Stop convenience store in Phoenix. King shot and killed the clerk, Ron Barman, and the store’s security guard, Richard Butts.

Police believe that King used Butt’s .357-calibre revolver in the commission of these murders because witnesses saw King return to the scene to wipe his prints off the guard’s holster. Approximately $72 was stolen from the cash register, but fortunately, King was arrested the following day.

KING, JOHN WILLIAM (TEXAS # 999295), DOB 3.11.1974

‘THE MURDER THAT STUNNED AMERICA’

There are many white-supremacist groups, inspired by the Ku Klux Klan, which are spread across the Deep South. They draw their membership from the ranks of those who are born into the world destined to live their lives on the wrong side of mediocrity. Achieving nothing of merit, these ill-informed, culturally undernourished social inadequates are drawn to each other, seeking the comfort of being part of a mob. Feeling threatened by anyone whom they see to be different, they perpetrate cowardly, evil and often murderous acts of vindictiveness on their perceived enemy.

John William King was a member of such a group and, on Tuesday 7 June 1988, along with two confederates, he took part in a racially motivated murder which was one of the most appallingly savage killings of recent years.

The killers were King, Lawrence Brewer and Shaun Allen Berry, whom King had met in Texas’ Beto I Unit, a 3,200-inmate penitentiary.

The murder victim was a 49-year-old disabled black man, James Byrd Jr, a much-loved family man, unemployed and down on his luck.

The killing took place in Jasper County, Texas.

On the fatal night in question, the three white men, King, Brewer and Berry, had been joyriding in Berry’s pick-up. At one point, they had used the logging chain in the truck to pull down a mailbox outside someone’s home. They happened upon James Byrd, who was drunk and walking home from a party. To King’s annoyance, Berry offered the man a lift.

Instead of taking the man home, they drove six miles to a logging road where they parked and got out. There, King set upon Byrd, punching and kicking him. At this stage, Brewer sprayed black paint over Byrd’s face. Brewer also alleged that Berry slashed the man’s throat. The most horrifying aspect of this latter allegation is that it has not been possible to ascertain whether Byrd’s throat was indeed slashed as his remains were in such a mangled condition when they were found.

What is certain, however, is that the three men beat Byrd unconscious and chained him to the back of the pick-up with his trousers around his ankles. They then drove off, dragging their victim for almost three miles along Huff Creek Road.

They left his skin, blood, arms, head, genitalia and other parts of his body strewn along the highway. What remained of this corpse was dumped in front of an all-black cemetery, where a motorist found it just before 9 a.m. on the Sunday morning. The corpse was just a gory heap by the side of the road.

Alerted by the horrified driver, law enforcement officers went to the scene of the macabre discovery. A bloody trail led away from remains of James Byrd Jr, and after a mile they came across his head and right arm by the jagged edge of a concrete culvert in a roadside ditch. This grisly track continued for three miles and, along the way, investigators, led by Sheriff Billy Rowels, found the victim’s shoes, his ripped shirt, his wallet and his dentures. The nauseated searchers were relieved when they reached the end of the trail, a clearing in the woods. There they found abundant evidence of the earlier violent struggle, along with King’s Zippo-style lighter, a can of black spray paint, and a wrench case inscribed with the name ‘Berry’. On the lighter was the inscription ‘PoSSum’, with the SS written in the style of lightning bolts, and three K’s formed into a triangle.

At 9 p.m. that night, after news of Byrd’s death had spread, a local man, Steve Scott, went to the Sheriff’s office. Scott said he was driving home that morning and saw Byrd walking on Jasper’s Martin Luther King Drive. Minutes later, he said he saw Byrd again on Martin Luther King Drive, this time riding in the bed of a pick-up. He recalled that it was between 2.30 and 2.45 a.m. The truck was grey or black, and there were two or three white men in the cab.

The truck’s description and the name on the wrench case led deputies to Shaun Berry who, on being questioned, spewed out a story which shamed the city of Jasper and the families of the three killers.

For his part in this monstrous killing, King was sentenced to death. Brewer and Berry received life terms, and in Brewer’s case, a judge’s recommendation that he should never be released.

KUNKLE, TROY ALBERT (TEXAS # 999784), DOB 27.5.1966

Repugnant Troy Kunkle described his heinous murder of Steven Wayne Horton as ‘beautiful’.

On Sunday 12 August 1984, teenager Kunkle and three accomplices were driving around the streets of Corpus Christi, looking for someone to rob. They saw Horton walking along Paul Jones Road, and induced him into their car with the offer of a lift home. However, once Horton was in the vehicle, gang member Russell Stanley put a .22-calibre pistol to his head and demanded his wallet.

When Horton refused to comply, Kunkle ordered Stanley to kill him. Stanley refused, saying that it was not necessary.

Kunkle took the gun from Stanley and told accomplice Aaron Adkins to drive behind a nearby skating rink. When they arrived he shot Horton once, in the back of the head.

The fourth member of the teenage gang, Lora Lee Zaiontz, a raven-haired beauty and Kunkle’s girlfriend, then pushed the victim’s body out of the car and took his wallet.

The billfold contained only a paltry $13.

After his arrest and subsequent conviction, German-born Kunkle is reported to have said, ‘Another day, another death, another sorrow, another breath.’

This third-rate poet is awaiting execution for the killing. Adkins and Stanley both drew a much-merited thirty years. Zaiontz received a life sentence which she has put to good use. While serving her time, she has taken a degree and a recent email to the authors contained a photograph showing an attractive and stylishly dressed woman. But appearances can be deceptive; she advertises for pen pals and a future partner on the Internet in the knowledge that one day she will be released. And nowhere in her advert does she make mention of the reason for her being behind bars.

L

LADD, ROBERT CHARLES (TEXAS # 999237), DOB 19.3.1957

When a parole board is considering whether to release a convicted killer who is serving a life sentence, the criterion that must be paramount in the minds of board members is whether the candidate is likely to kill again. If there is the slightest doubt about the criterion being met, then parole will not be granted.

For whatever reason, Robert Ladd was deemed not to constitute a danger to society when he appeared before the Dallas County Parole Board in October 1992. Thus, he was granted parole under mandatory supervision after having served twelve years of a life sentence.

On that occasion, the Parole Board got it wrong big time, and Ladd is now on Death Row.

Nor is it the case that the former barber, Ladd, committed one of those momentary acts of violence resulting in an unfortunate death. No! This man carried out a cowardly and savage killing during the course of a robbery.

At about 8.30 p.m., on Wednesday 25 September 1996, Ladd entered the home of 38-year-old Vicki Ann Garner at 503 South Fannin. He stripped the woman from the waist down, tied her wrists and ankles with cord, raped her, and brutally beat her with a hammer before strangling her to death. Not content with that, this man, who, in the eyes of the Parole Board, ‘posed no threat to society’, then set her body on fire before looting the place of jewellery, food and electrical appliances. Barely 45 minutes after the killing, he traded the swag for five rocks of crack cocaine with John Robertson, who lived less than a mile from the murder scene.

At 6.45 the next morning, the Tyler Fire Department received a 911 call reporting a fire at Garner’s residence. The firemen forced open the door and, once inside, they found much smoke but little fire. They also found Vicki’s body in a bedroom. She lay face down on the floor.

Upon learning of the crime, and not wishing to become implicated in capital murder, John Robertson called the police and told them what he knew, explaining that he had traded cocaine for a quantity of goods, which included an RCA-brand VCR. The serial number of the appliance was noted as 619320052. During a subsequent search of the victim’s home, police found an RCA instruction manual, and the serial number on the document matched that of the stolen VCR. Officers also found a palm print that matched Ladd’s.

The autopsy revealed the presence of spermatozoa in the victim’s vagina. Tests on the sperm revealed DNA1 with characteristics that connected Ladd to the crime. Such a DNA ‘match’ could be expected from only one male in 170,000.

While it is, admittedly, seldom easy to predict just how a man is going to shape up, there is no doubt that if the Parole Board had erred on the side of caution, Vicki Garner could be alive today.

LAGRONE, EDWARD LEWIS (TEXAS # 999083), DOB 3.3.1957

Edward Lagrone had served seven years of a twenty-year prison term for murder when he was released on 24 October 1984. Nine years later, on Sunday 30 June 1991, he killed again. This time he took the lives of three people, shooting them dead in a single murderous incident to prevent them from reporting him for the statutory rape of a child.

Ten-year-old Shakiesha Lloyd was the first to be killed. Next to be blown apart were Zenobia Anderson, aged 87, and 80-year-old Caroline Lloyd, who were the aunts of Dempsey Lloyd, the young girl’s father. Lloyd was also shot but he survived to tell police that former cook Lagrone had shot him as he opened the door of his house.

At autopsy it was determined that the child victim, Shakiesha, was pregnant by Lagrone who received the deserved death sentence.

LAIRD, KENNETH JEREMY (ARIZONA # 107029), DOB 21.3.1975

Two weeks before he committed a brutal murder, Kenneth Laird told several friends that he was getting a Toyota 4x4 truck, adding that he was prepared ‘to kill for it’ if he had to.

On Wednesday 2 September 1992, Laird broke into the home of Wanda Starnes, a night-shift nurse whom he knew owned such a vehicle. He spent the night in her home, telephoning his friends, telling them he had moved ‘to a house on the Tatum Ranch’.

When Wanda returned home from work the next morning, Laird overpowered her, tied her up, gagged her and locked her in her bathroom. He then went to sleep in her bed. When he awoke, he killed the woman by inserting a screwdriver in the knotted ropes encircling her neck and tightening them before smashing her skull. Shortly afterwards he loaded her body into the 4x4 and, leaving a trail of blood on the driveway, drove into the desert, where he buried the corpse.

For the next few days, the posturing Laird drove around in the late Nurse Starnes’ truck, forging cheques drawn on her bank account. During this time, he joked with a friend about having ‘killed a bitch’, offering to show him the body.

When he was arrested on an entirely different matter, Laird was overcome by verbal diarrhoea. He told police that he had come across Wanda’s body while bicycling through the desert. He said that he had taken the vehicle and had felt free to move into her house because, he reckoned, ‘she wouldn’t need them any more’.

Laird, an immature seventeen-year-old juvenile, was tried as an adult and convicted and sentenced to death for first-degree murder. For kidnapping, burglary, theft and four counts of forgery, he also received consecutive sentences totalling 97 years.

LAMBERT, ROBERT WAYNE (OKLAHOMA # 149398)

In 1988, 34-year-old Robert Lambert, along with his accomplice, Scott Hain, was convicted of the 1987 abduction and burning to death of Michael Houghton and Lara Lee Sanders. The couple were kidnapped from the parking lot of a Tulsa bar, put in the trunk of a car and driven to Creek County, where they were burned alive.

Lambert has undergone four competency hearings and two trials. His last trial resulted in a death sentence in 1996, and he now awaits the pleasure of the Oklahoma executioner.

LAMBRIGHT, JOE LEONARD (ARIZONA # 45045), DOB 3.9.1947

Sometime between 11 and 14 March 1980, Joe Lambright, with two companions, Robert Douglas Smith and Kathy Foreman, picked up Sandra Owen, a young woman with mental problems, who was hitchhiking in the Tucson area.

The appalling Smith raped Sandra twice. Following this vile act, the trio took her to a remote area in the mountains, where Lambright and Smith killed their terrified victim by choking her, stabbing her and smashing her head with a large rock. They concealed the body by covering it with rocks, and it was not discovered until a year later.

Lambright and Smith were tried jointly before Judge Michael Brown with separate juries. Kathy Foreman testified against them in exchange for a grant of immunity from prosecution.

Both men were sentenced to death on Thursday 27 May 1982. They are still residents of Arizona’s Death Row.

LANDRY JR, RAYMOND (TEXAS # 999738), DOB 14.5.1949

‘NOT AN EXECUTION FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED!’

On Friday 6 August 1982, 33-year-old Raymond Landry Jr committed a murder which earned him a place on Death Row and, ultimately, an unusually spectacular and protracted death by lethal injection.

With no previous criminal record, this electrician from Lafayette Parish went, on the day in question, to the ‘Dairy Maid’ restaurant at 7100 East Bellfort, Dallas. There, the owner, Kosmas Prittis, together with his wife and children, was closing up the place when Landry, armed with a pistol, stormed in and demanded the takings.

Given that his wife and children were around, Prittis erred on the side of caution. He decided to play safe and handed over $2,300 to the gunman. It was to no avail. Moments later he was lying dead on the floor, brought down by a shot to his head from Landry’s gun.

Witnesses later testified that Landry had slapped Prittis’ wife and threatened her children with his gun before fleeing the crime scene.

Three days after the shooting, police arrested Landry at his home at 7300 Eisenhower, where they found a bank bag from the restaurant.

Convicted of the first-degree murder of Kosmas Prittis, the cowardly Landry was sentenced to death by lethal injection.

His execution, which took place on Tuesday 13 December 1988, was a fiasco.

Two minutes after the drugs were administered, the syringe popped out of the condemned man’s arm, spraying the deadly chemicals in the direction of witnesses. A curtain, to separate the witnesses from the condemned man, was pulled across. It was not reopened for some fourteen minutes. During this time, the execution team reinserted the catheter into Landry’s vein and witnesses reported hearing ‘at least one loud groan’.

Charles Brown, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Corrections, issued a statement. He said, ‘There was something of a delay in the execution because of what officials call “a blow-out”. The syringe came out of the vein and the Warden ordered the team to reinsert the catheter into the vein.’

Regardless of this banal explanation, the patently obvious botched job meant that it was 40 minutes after his being strapped to the gurney before Raymond Landry was pronounced dead, and it had taken 24 minutes from the moment the drugs began flowing into him to complete the procedure. In this case, what went around certainly came around.

LANE, DOIL EDWARD (TEXAS # 999092), DOB 15.4.1961

Trailer-park trash and a dishwasher by trade, paedophile Doil Lane was not one of life’s success stories when, aged eighteen, he committed murder most foul. Weighing 198 lbs, with brown eyes, close-cropped mousy hair and porcine features, his life was going nowhere.

On Thursday 20 March 1980, in the company of his mother and stepfather, Murlene and Elga Broughton, he kidnapped, raped and murdered eight-year-old Bertha Martinez in San Marcos, Texas.

The little girl was last seen alive by neighbours as she was riding her bicycle outside her home at 107 Second Street.

Records indicate that this sordid trio, Lane and the Broughtons, lured her to the city park where she was raped by both Lane and his stepfather. The three then drove her to a house, where she was beaten, strangled and stabbed to death. The child’s body was found inside a shed six days later.

Lane remained at large for a further eleven years before he was arrested in Wichita, Kansas, during another child kidnapping/murder investigation. The whereabouts of the evil Murlene and Elga Broughton, however, are unknown. Doil Lane now awaits his fate on Death Row.

LAVE, JOSEPH ROLAND (TEXAS # 999120), DOB 17.10.1964

A truck driver from Dallas, Joseph Lave was 28 years old when, on Wednesday 25 November 1992, he and accomplice James Langston savagely killed two employees of Herman’s sporting goods store at 1718 E Beltline, Richardson, during a robbery.

Frederick Banzhaf and Justin Scott Marquart, both aged eighteen, were beaten with a hammer and had their throats cut. A third employee, 22-year-old Angela King, survived to identify Langston as a former colleague who had worked at the store.

Stolen during the robbery was $2,950 in cash, 21 rifles and shotguns, tennis shoes and various items of clothing.

Only days later, Langston got his just deserts when he was shot to death by a police officer after attempting to run him down with his car. A third accomplice later confessed; Lave was arrested and he hasn’t been into a sports store since.

LEAL JR, HUMBERTO (TEXAS # 999162), DOB 16.1.1973

On Tuesday 21 June 1994, 21-year-old Hispanic Humberto Leal from Monterrey abducted sixteen-year-old, Adria Saveda from a San Antonio party. This vicious killer raped the terrified teenager, before pounding her to death with a 35 lb slab of asphalt.

Her body was found, with a length of timber protruding from her vagina, near a creek off Reforma Drive.

Leal was arrested and, during a police medical examination, a doctor found scratches and cuts on the killer’s face and body. Subsequently he was tried, convicted and sentenced to death.

LEE, CHAD ALAN (ARIZONA # 110783), DOB 26.9.1972

With a prior conviction for murder when he was a teenager, it is chastening to learn that Chad Alan Lee was back on the streets by the age of twenty to kill again. This time, twice!

On Monday 6 April 1992, Lee and fourteen-year-old David Hunt ordered a pizza to be delivered to an empty house. When Linda Reynolds from Pizza Hut arrived, the two youths were lying in wait and they forced her to remove her clothing in the backyard.

Lee and Hunt drove her out to the desert area of Camelback and 115th Avenue, where they destroyed her car, sexually assaulted her and stole her takings. They then drove her in Lee’s car to the First Interstate Bank at 83rd Avenue and Indian School, where they forced her to withdraw $20 from the ATM.

Returning to the desert, Lee shot Linda in the head. However, realising that she was still alive, he stabbed her twice in the chest. The knife perforated her heart and lung.

A mere nine days later, on 15 April, Lee and Hunt struck again. This time they robbed and murdered David Lacey, a Metro Taxi Cab driver. Lee shot Lacey four times and dumped his body, again in the desert.

Chad Alan Lee was sentenced to death on 23 June 1994, while Hunt, a juvenile and too young to be executed, received a lengthy prison term.

LEE, DARRELL (ARIZONA # 69732), DOB 6.6.1957

Around noon, on Thursday 5 December 1991, Darrell Lee and Karen Thompson approached John Calvin Anderson in his car. Their intention was to kidnap and rob the man. Their motive was to get money to buy drugs. At knifepoint, the victim was forced to hand over his cash and credit cards, and then the two took him to a bank machine where they demanded his PIN.

Anderson was now begging for his life, and to quieten him down, Lee reassured him that he would not be harmed. He would merely be bound up and left in a ditch until he either freed himself, or was found by someone else.

A short time later, however, the two criminals returned to Anderson and put him in the trunk of his car, before driving from Phoenix to La Paz County. All in all, an eight-hour trip.

On their way through the desert, they stopped. Lee attached a garden hose to the exhaust and tried to gas Anderson, who was still in the trunk. But it was not to be that simple. The luckless victim attempted to escape.

Lee caught up with the fugitive and there followed a homicidal display of incompetent savagery as he strove to despatch his prey to the after life. Two attempts to strangle the man were punctuated by a percussive assault on his head with a sizeable rock. Not surprisingly, the exhausted Anderson succumbed to Lee’s battery and expired.

Lee was arrested for the murder of Anderson. Tried and convicted, he received the death sentence on 8 March 1993. At the time of writing, Thompson’s disposition is unknown.

LEHR, SCOTT (ARIZONA # 130004), DOB 6.6.1959

Between February 1991 and February 1992, Hispanic serial rapist and murderer Scott Lehr lured ten female victims, whose ages ranged from ten to 48 years old, into his car. He drove them to secluded desert areas, where he forced them to engage in various sexual acts.

He released a few of the victims without further injury, but most were choked into unconsciousness or beaten about the head with heavy rocks. Each female was stripped and abandoned in the desert. Three of these women died as a result of their head wounds.

It will come as no surprise to the reader to learn that the repugnant Scott Lehr received the death penalty.

LEWIS JR, NAPOLEON (OKLAHOMA)

In 1995, 43-year-old Napoleon Lewis doused his ex-girlfriend Anita Bebout and her six-year-old daughter, Tressa, with gasoline and set them on fire. This gruesome crime took place in Oklahoma County.

Bebout died eighteen days after the attack, and Tressa is permanently disfigured. Lewis received a death sentence in 1996 for Bebout’s murder and a life sentence on a charge of child abuse.

During Lewis’ trial, an assorted bag of mental health professionals was wheeled in. Predictably, they disagreed about his state of mind. A psychologist testifying for the defence said Lewis was ‘legally insane’ at the time of the attack. The prosecution’s psychologist contradicted that diagnosis because Lewis may have ingested cocaine. Lewis had a history of violence and drug abuse. This pointless debate had no great bearing on the outcome of the case, however, as Napoleon Lewis was, quite rightly, condemned to die.

LIM, KIM LY (TEXAS # 999030), DOB 4.5.1971

A construction worker and native of Cambodia, Kim Lim was convicted and sentenced to death for the Wednesday 29 May 1991 robbery and murder of Pixh Xhhuon, aged nineteen, and five-year-old Priesty Chhay in Houston.

Both victims were shot, execution-style, in the back of the head with a .25-calibre pistol after Lim, with two accomplices, broke into their home at 2314 Rhyme Court in Harris County.

Also shot was 51-year-old Sameoeurn Phuong. Cheau Lay Streng, the 46-year-old mother and grandmother of the two victims, was beaten along with a fourteen-month-old child, Jeffrey Neou. They all survived.

Property and jewellery, including the baby’s leg and arm bracelets, were taken from the home. Lim fled to California, where he was arrested three months later.

LOCKHART, MICHAEL LEE (TEXAS), DOB 30.9.1960

The execution of a drifter who had killed at least two young girls and a policeman brought applause and cheers from nearly 100 Beaumont police officers who showed up outside the prison walls to celebrate Michael Lee Lockhart’s death by lethal injection. He was the 37th inmate executed in Texas during 1997.

A labourer, truck driver, high-school dropout and drifter, Lockhart had few legitimate career options open to him, so he graduated to crime in order to enhance his lifestyle. Tragically, it was a car theft that resulted in the deaths of a cop and, ultimately, Lockhart himself.

Some say Lockhart was ‘strikingly handsome’. Others say he was a ‘perfect gentleman’ with money, a flashy red Corvette and irresistible sex appeal. On the other hand, he was actually a bank robber, drug dealer, forger, rapist, car thief and cold-blooded killer.

Lockhart’s role model was America’s most notorious serial killer, Ted Bundy. He even bragged of outdoing his murderous idol by butchering so many trusting girls, on a 3,000-mile odyssey of sex-torture, mutilation and murder, that the actual number of his victims may never be known.

On Tuesday 22 March 1988, Officer Paul Douglas Hulsey Jr, attempted to arrest Lockhart for driving a stolen red Corvette. Hulsey was shot three times and killed.

At his trial for first-degree murder, Lockhart had very little to say. Nevertheless, shortly before his judicial death at Huntsville, and after eating a double-meat cheeseburger, French fries and a Coke, he walked to his death after confessing to two other murders.

He acknowledged the October 1987 killing of sixteen-year-old Wendy Gallagher, of Griffith, Indiana, and the January 1988 murder of fourteen-year-old Jennifer Colhour, of Land O’Lakes, Florida. Both girls, he said, were raped and savagely stabbed. Their bodies were discovered in their homes by relatives.

Lockhart’s last words were:

I am deeply sorry for all that I did to hurt all of you. It is my hope that my death tonight will bring you some comfort … a lot of people view what is happening as evil, but I want you to know that I found love and compassion here. The people who work here, I thank then for the kindness they have shown me and I deeply appreciate all that has been done for me by the people who work here. That’s all. Warden, I’m ready.

After the execution, on Friday 12 September 1997, the dead police officer’s father, Paul Hulsey Sr, said ‘After all these years of waiting, it’s finally happened. I’m pleased it’s all over. It’s thumbs-up all the way. Forgiveness is not in my vocabulary.’

LOOKINGBILL, ROBERT ANDREW (TEXAS # 999990), DOB 22.7.1965

Robert Lookingbill first found himself in trouble with the law when, on 28 August 1986, he was sentenced to serve seven years in prison for burglary with intent to commit assault. He served just ten months before he was set free.

Two years after his release, this good-looking 24-year-old, with hazel eyes and brown hair, went to live with his grandparents. Seventy-year-old Adeline Waunita Dannenberg and her 77-year-old husband, Lorenz, had a home at 106 W 12th Street, San Juan, Texas.

On the night of Tuesday 5 December 1989, and following a dispute over money, Lookingbill picked up a metal bar weighing 20 lbs and set about his grandparents. After stealing $568 from her purse, he beat his grandmother to death.

Mr Dannenberg survived the attack. He suffered brain damage but was able to identify Robert Lookingbill as his attacker and the killer of his wife.

The former construction worker from Hidalgo County confessed to police after blood was found on his shoes and pants. He said that he needed the cash so he could buy cocaine. Well, at least this was the prosecution’s version of events. Today, however, facing his execution, Lookingbill has another story to tell, notwithstanding the obvious fact that guilt has been placed firmly at his feet.

From Death Row, Lookingbill claims that he came home from work and found his grandmother heavily beaten up by someone other than himself. He called an ambulance and went to seek help next door, and someone he had never seen before answered the door.

Next, he says he went outside to see where the ambulance was so that he could tell the paramedics where to go.

All of this flies in the face of the reliable testimony of Lookingbill’s grandfather who, it must be remembered, collected more than a few bumps on the head from the attacker himself.

As to the $568 stolen from his grandmother’s purse, Lookingbill argues, even to this day, that the money was rightfully his, and that he has the documents to prove it.

LOPEZ, GEORGE MOLINA (ARIZONA # 79354), DOB 5.2.1953

‘BABY-KILLER’

In August 1989, George Lopez was living in a Tucson apartment with his girlfriend and their eighteen-month-old son, Anthony. Around 10 a.m., on Saturday 26 August, the mother went shopping and left Anthony at home with Lopez. When she returned, around noon, the baby had bruises on his forehead and chin and seemed unusually quiet. Lopez told her that Anthony had pulled a nightstand over on top of himself. The anxious mother wanted to take the infant to a doctor, but Lopez persuaded her that the child would be all right.

About two hours later, she went to the laundromat. When she came home, Lopez was performing CPR on her child. They took Anthony to the hospital, where he died a short time later.

The autopsy showed that Anthony had numerous bruises on his face, chest and back. He had also suffered a skull fracture on each side of the back of his head, as well as broken ribs and a torn pancreas. He died as the result of internal bleeding.

At his trial, the sickening truth of why Lopez had killed the child emerged. While he was changing Anthony’s diaper, the child accidentally urinated in his stepfather’s face. This innocent act was too much for the violent Lopez, who exploded with rage, subjecting the infant to a frenzied barrage of unspeakable brutality.

The final word on this monster’s behaviour came from the mouth of the officer-in-charge of the case, who said: ‘What breaks my heart is that when the kid’s mother comes home, he goes over and hugs her, then he hugs the bastard who beat him.’

LOPEZ, MICHAEL (TEXAS # 999318), DOB 28.4.1981

Eighteen-year-old illegal immigrant Michael Lopez decided to make a run for it when the truck in which he and several other wetbacks were travelling was stopped by a police officer in Houston for routine questioning.

When the 26-year-old cop was talking to the driver, Lopez bolted. The officer gave chase, and several minutes later two shots were heard.

The body of the deputy was found in a grassy field about 350 yards from the stopped vehicle. He had died as a result of a bullet entering his throat.

LOPEZ, SAMUEL VILLEGAS (ARIZONA # 43833), DOB 30.6.1962

On Wednesday 29 October 1986, Samuel Lopez broke into the apartment of 59-year-old Estafana Holmes. Her body was found nude from the waist down with her pyjama bottoms tied around her eyes. A lace scarf was crammed tightly into her mouth.

Estafana had been stabbed 23 times in the left breast and upper chest, three times in her lower abdomen, and her throat had been cut from ear to ear. Lopez’s semen matched seminal fluids found in his victim’s body.

LUCAS, HENRY LEE (TEXAS), DOB 23.8.1936

Henry Lucas was one of America’s most infamous serial killers, whom Christopher Berry-Dee met on Death Row in 1996. Henry, who died of a heart attack on Saturday 12 May 2001 after his death sentence was commuted to life by President George Bush, was initially given his sentence for killing an unidentified hitchhiker whose body was found near the I-35 highway in Texas on 31 October 1979.

Lucas had experienced a brutal childhood. He was the last of eleven children; his mother was a prostitute and his stepfather was a cripple who had lost both legs after he fell under a train. As a child, aged eight years, Henry was beaten senseless by his mother and suffered permanent brain damage as a result. He also lost an eye after his schoolteacher accidentally hit him while in the process of striking another troublesome pupil.

He claimed to have committed his first murder when he was fifteen. In January 1960, he killed his mother after a domestic argument and was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment. While locked up he suffered hallucinations and several times attempted to commit suicide. He was recommended for parole in 1970 because the Michigan prison system was overcrowded. Against his wishes he was set free, and it is believed that he killed again within hours of leaving prison.

Lucas killed several times during the early 1970s and in 1977 met Ottis Toole with whom he had a homosexual relationship. Toole, a man who scuttled through the swamps of society, ceaselessly scanning for prey, introduced Lucas to his nephew and niece and the four made a kind of criminal family, robbing banks and filling stations. Lucas took Toole’s niece, Frieda ‘Becky’ Powell, not yet in her teens, as his common-law wife.

In 1982, Lucas and Becky stayed in Ringgold, Texas, with elderly Kate Rich for whom he worked as a handyman. On 24 August, he killed and dismembered Becky after an argument and, the following month, killed Kate Rich because she asked too many questions.

Lucas was arrested on 11 June 1983, in Montague County, Texas. He attempted to commit suicide. While in custody, he astounded the police by confessing to hundreds of murders in every state except Hawaii and Alaska.

In October 1983, he was sentenced to 75 years imprisonment for the murder of Kate Rich and, in November, was given a life sentence for murdering Becky Powell. In 1986, he was convicted of the murder of a hitchhiker along I-35 – dubbed the ‘Orange Socks Murder’ on account of the fact that the victim was naked except for a pair of orange socks – and he was sentenced to death.

At this point, Lucas went back on his earlier confessions, although the police had substantiated his accounts to the extent that they were able to close the files on over 200 cases. He now said, ‘I never killed nobody but Mom.’

Henry claimed to have committed incest, necrophilia, rape, bestiality, arson and murder. He was diagnosed as schizophrenic and clinical tests confirmed that he had extensive neurological damage. He was also a chronic alcoholic and drug abuser over many years.

Aged sixty-four, Henry Lee Lucas died of a heart attack during the late hours of Monday 12 March 2001. He was removed from his cell and taken to the medical area at Ellis Unit after complaining of chest pains, and was pronounced dead at 10.17 p.m. After an autopsy at the University of Texas medical branch in Galveston, he was buried at Peckerwood Cemetery, Huntsville – the final resting place of thousands of inmates whose bodies have been unclaimed by family and friends – on Thursday 15 March. Over 500 people attended the service.

There have been many articles written on Henry Lee Lucas and he is the eponymous subject of the film Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer.