6. INMATES M–R (MALICOAT–RUNNING-EAGLE)

M

MALICOAT, JAMES PATRICK (OKLAHOMA # 261820)

‘BEYOND EVIL’

‘This was a very difficult case. We saw the torture and injuries inflicted by James Malicoat. At the time, I had a small child and I couldn’t help identifying with Tessa … Malicoat’s actions were such that death is the only adequate punishment.’

Prosecuting attorney, Brett Burns

THIRTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD JAMES MALICOAT earned himself accommodation on Death Row for that most despicable of crimes, infanticide. The victim of this evil man’s venom was his 13-month-old daughter, Tessa Leadford, and her tragic death occurred on 21 February 1997 at Chickasha, in Grady County, Oklahoma.

At Malicoat’s trial, the appalling and tragic story of just how Tessa met her death was revealed. Malicoat worked night shift and looked after Tessa during the daytime. This allowed the child’s mother, Mary Ann Leadford, to work at her day job. However, while his daughter was in his care, Malicoat subjected the infant to savage and violent treatment which resulted in her being taken to hospital, seemingly unconscious. Unfortunately, little Tessa was not unconscious; she had already been dead for several hours.

Evidence showed that the repugnant Malicoat had beaten the baby girl every day for more than two weeks. Her injuries included ruptured internal organs – namely, her liver, her lungs and a kidney. Added to that, she suffered seven broken ribs, a crushed skull, multiple bruises and a brain haemorrhage: damage from which even a superbly fit adult would struggle to recover. She had also been cut and bitten.

The jury took less than 15 minutes to find this monstrous father guilty and little more than 30 minutes to recommend the death penalty.

It is almost too awful to contemplate how it must have been for Tessa during the last weeks of her life. She would, by then, have cut her first teeth, taken her first tentative steps and be able to recognise those who loved her and to whom she could turn for affection, tenderness and protection. Like all toddlers, her perspective on adults was based on implicit trust. However, in those final days, her mother, the one person who should have cared above all others, ignored her plight. Mary Ann Leadford stood by and watched, unprotesting, as her child’s life was ended in a relentlessly brutal and protracted barrage of unspeakable cruelty. For her complicity in this abhorrent crime, she was sentenced to life without parole.

MANN, ERIC OWEN (ARIZONA # 45676), DOB 26 April 1961

Eric Mann had a friend, Richard Alberts, who wanted to buy drugs. Mann decided to rip him off. It was arranged that Alberts would go to Mann’s home on the night of Thursday 23 November 1989. However, when he arrived he was accompanied by Ramon Bazurto, which Mann had not expected.

Despite this, the men went into the bedroom, where Mann handed over a box to Alberts. This box was meant to hold cocaine, but actually contained only paper. When Alberts opened the box, Mann promptly shot him before shooting Bazurto.

After the killings, Mann and his girlfriend took the bodies to Alberts’ car and drove to Graham County. There, by the side of a road, they dumped the two corpses. Then they returned home and repainted the blood-splashed walls of the bedroom.

The bodies were found the next day, but the murders remained unsolved until Mann’s girlfriend confessed to the authorities that she had witnessed them.

MARSHALL JR, BARNEY (OKLAHOMA # 197037)

An American Indian, Barney Marshall, pleaded guilty to raping, drowning and stabbing twelve-year-old Helen T. LeFlore in 1990 in Oklahoma County. For this, he was sentenced to death in 1991.

Marshall confessed to raping Helen and then throwing her from a bridge into a creek. The 41-year-old man held her head underwater until she lost consciousness, then slit her throat and stabbed her twice in the chest.

MARTINEZ, DAVID (TEXAS # 999173), DOB 9.5.1972

David Martinez, an Hispanic labourer from Hildalgo County, Texas, had already served time as inmate # 618860 for sex offences. He had received a five-year sentence, but like so many of this dangerous breed, who are released all too quickly for the common good, he spent less than six months behind bars before he was back on the streets.

On Monday 11 July 1994, he entered the home of his girlfriend, 37-year-old Caroline Prado, where she lived with her son, Erik, aged fourteen years. He beat them both to death with a baseball bat.

Following his arrest in San Marcos, two days after the murders, Martinez said he grabbed the bat and began to beat Caroline when she awoke to find him standing over her in the bedroom. Fearful that Erik might discover his murdered mother, he walked into the living room, where the teenager was sleeping, and battered him to death too. Mercifully, he did not harm Erik’s ten-year-old sister, telling her instead to go to her grandmother’s home and not return.

No motive was offered for the killings, and Martinez is now on Texas’ notorious Death Row.

MARTINEZ III, ERNESTO S. (ARIZONA # 96032), DOB 17.11.1975

‘SPEEDY MARTINEZ’

In July 1995, Ernesto Martinez stole a blue Pontiac Monte Carlo in California and a licence plate from another California car. Two days before committing murder, he showed a friend in Globe, Arizona, a revolver with black electrical tape around the handle. Martinez had prior convictions for violent crimes, and he was in violation of his parole. He would do anything to avoid going back to prison.

On Tuesday 15 August 1995, several drivers noticed the Monte Carlo because of its excessive speed on State Route 87. Officer Robert Martin spotted it too and pulled him over.

Martinez shot the highway patrolman four times and took his service revolver before fleeing the scene. Due to Martinez’s reckless high-speed driving, several other drivers took down the car’s licence plate number. The cop-killer drove to California, where police arrested him a day later and recovered the murder weapon and their colleague’s gun.

After his arrest, Martinez was overheard during a telephone call bragging and laughing that he had killed a cop. Facing execution, he is not laughing any more!

MARTINEZ, JOSE NOEY (TEXAS # 999219), DOB 31.12.1976

Convicted in the 19 February 1995 stabbing deaths of a 68-year-old mission woman and her four-year-old granddaughter during a burglary of their home, Jose Martinez is awaiting his execution by lethal injection.

Those killed were Esperanza Palomo and young Amanda Palomo.

Martinez told police that he broke into the residence with the intention of stealing a stereo and television. He said he stabbed the older woman when she confronted him with a baseball bat and then he sexually assaulted her after she fell to the floor.

Then, this vicious Hispanic turned his attention to the terrified Amanda, who started crying as he plunged his knife into her. When she lay dead, he masturbated and ejaculated over her body.

Martinez showed no remorse for the killings. Indeed, after being sentenced to death and while being escorted from the courtroom, he looked back at the bereaved family of the victims and shouted, ‘It’s not over with yet.’

MATTHEWS, DAVID EUGENE (KENTUCKY # 32817), DOB 6.9.1948

Grey-haired David Matthews was sentenced to death on 11 November 1982 in Jefferson County for the murders of Mary Matthews and Magdalene Cruse on Monday 29 June 1981 in Louisville.

Mary was the killer’s estranged wife and Magdalene was his mother-in-law. In the process of committing these crimes, he burgled his wife’s home.

He was tried and convicted on 8 October 1982.

MATTHEWS, JEFFERY (OKLAHOMA # 195154)

Jeffrey Matthews was accused of the 1994 shooting to death of his great-uncle, 77-year-old Otis Earl Short, in Cleveland County. Short’s wife, Minnie, testified that Matthews and his accomplice, Tracy Lynn Dyer, broke into their house at night. Otis was shot at close range as he came out of the bedroom, and Minnie’s throat was slit, although she lived.

Matthews was convicted and sentenced to death in 1995. The State Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the conviction and sentence in 1998 after ruling that the arrest warrant was illegal. In asking for the arrest warrant, an Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agent showed the judge a copy of information related to the unauthorised use of a motor vehicle. Matthews successfully argued that the warrant was illegal because it was not based on probable cause.

The 27-year-old killer was given a second death sentence in 1999 and he is in the first stage of appeals. Dyer pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.

MATURANA, CLAUDE E. (ARIZONA # 91734), DOB 1.7.1957

Claude Maturana, aged 32, and his co-defendant, Stephen Ballard, were angry with sixteen-year-old Glen Estes because he had stolen a car exhaust manifold from them. On the night of Thursday 5 July 1990, the two men went to Estes’ home, where he lived with his mother, and lured him away with the promise that they would ‘party’ in the desert. They then drove him to an extremely remote location, where Maturana shot the teenager twelve times and Ballard cut the lad’s throat. They tossed the body in a water tank, where it was discovered the next morning by a ranch hand.

Ballard, who was 20, was given a life sentence. Maturana was sentenced to death.

MAY, JUSTIN LEE (TEXAS # 999783), DOB 27.6.1978

With a criminal history as long as his arm, 32-year-old Justin May, a welder from Holmes County, Texas, graduated to murder on Tuesday 27 June 1978. He was convicted in the shooting death of 43-year-old Jeanetta Murdaugh during a robbery of the Western auto store she and her husband, Frank, owned and operated in Freeport.

Mrs Murdaugh died from two gunshot wounds to the head. Her husband was killed by four gunshots to the neck and head.

Police also believe that the Murdaughs were two of five people robbed and killed by May during a two-week spree.

On 7 May 1992, Justin May was executed by lethal injection. However, he had an unusually violent reaction to the lethal drugs. According to one reporter who witnessed the procedure: ‘May gasped, coughed and reared against his heavy leather restraints, coughing once again before his body froze.’ Associated Press reporter Michael Graczyk wrote: ‘Compared to other recent executions in Texas, May’s reaction was more violent. He went into a coughing spasm, groaned and gasped, lifted his head from the death chamber gurney and would have arched his back if he had not been belted down. After he stopped breathing, his eyes and mouth remained open.’

MAYS, REX WARREN (TEXAS # 999172), DOB 21.1.1960

Rex Mays, a sex-crazed homicidal maniac, was convicted and sentenced to death for the stabbing deaths of Kynara Lorin Carreiro and her playmate, Kristine Michelle Wiley. The murders were committed inside Wiley’s home in Houston on Monday 20 July 1992.

The girls, aged seven and ten, were alone when Mays, a neighbour to the Wileys, entered and attacked them with a knife. Both girls were stabbed numerous times in the face and neck, dying of their horrific injuries.

Following this savage and deadly assault, Mays returned to his rooms, changed his clothes and, posing as a concerned neighbour, met sheriff’s deputies when they arrived to investigate the homicides.

Eventually, Mays was revealed as the monster behind the murders and was arrested. He gave the authorities a written confession, offering up the pathetically inadequate excuse that he was distraught over having lost his job on the day of the killings.

McCARTHY, KIMBERLY LAGAYLE (TEXAS # 999287), DOB 11.5.1961

Kimberly McCarthy was born in Hunt County, Texas. After completing a two-year prison sentence for forgery, she was released on 9 December 1991. Her previous occupations, before resorting to crime, included being an occupational therapist, waitress, home health-care worker and labourer.

On Monday 21 July 1997, McCarthy entered the home of a 70-year-old white female in Lancaster with the intention of robbing her. A struggle took place and the victim was stabbed numerous times, resulting in her death. McCarthy then used the dead woman’s credit cards during a shopping spree, all the while driving the victim’s car.

McCOY, STEPHEN A. (TEXAS # 999769), DOB 17.12.1948

Even when the death penalty is imposed for a murder having been committed, it is sometimes difficult for the bereaved relatives of victims to feel that justice has been served. However, when Stephen McCoy, aged 40, went to his death on 24 May 1989, there could be few who could argue that he was not made to suffer fully for his crimes.

On that day, after declining to make a last statement, McCoy was strapped to the gurney and the lethal injection was administered. Moments later, he began to experience a violent, physical reaction to the cocktail of deadly drugs. Gasping and choking, his chest heaving and his back arching off the gurney, he departed this life in a macabre dance of agonised death.

Such was the impact of this grotesque spectacle that a male witness fainted, crashing into and knocking over another witness.

Searching for a plausible explanation for the fiasco, the Texas Attorney General admitted that the condemned man ‘seemed to have a somewhat stronger reaction’ in relation to the norm. He went on to say, ‘The drugs might have been administered in a heavier dose or more rapidly.’

Despite the staggeringly inhumane manner of his botched execution, it is not easy to feel much sympathy for the dead man in view of the crimes for which he had received the death penalty. McCoy was one of a trio of violent thugs who had made a pact that each would kill someone in front of the other two, thus sealing their mutual trust in blood. The two other members of this murderous triumvirate were James Emery Paster and Gary Louis LeBlanc.

On Thursday 1 January 1981, in Houston, the three came upon eighteen-year-old Cynthia Johnson. The young woman was on her way home from a New Year party when her car broke down and McCoy and his two accomplices abducted her.

Evidence showed that McCoy raped the terrified girl and then held her legs while Paster and LeBlanc strangled her with electrical cable.

During police investigations, it emerged that the three were tied to the contract killing of Robert Edward Howard in October 1980 and that, a month later, they had raped and stabbed Diane Trevino Oliver.

Eventually, the murderers were arrested and charged with their appalling crimes. LeBlanc gave evidence for the state and escaped with a sentence of 35 years. However, both Paster and McCoy were sentenced to death. Four months after McCoy’s gruesome debacle of an execution, Paster met his own demise with far less spectacle on 20 September 1989. His last words were, ‘I hope Mrs Howard can find peace.’

McGEE, CALVIN WILSON (TEXAS # 999298), DOB 11.12.1976

Apart from serving nine months in jail for auto theft, Calvin McGee had not been in too much trouble with the law, that is, until he committed homicide.

In a summary of the incident it was shown that, during the night of Wednesday 1 October 1997, McGee and his accomplices, Percy Davis and Ottis Burks Jr, murdered a 61-year-old black female during the course of a robbery at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Houston.

The three men were attempting to rob the victim of her 1998 Cadillac while she was at the drive-thru of this fast food restaurant. Blocking her car in the lane with their own vehicle, McGee and Davis got out and ordered the victim into the rear seat at gunpoint. The woman got out of her car and screamed. In response to this, McGee shot her once in the head with a .38-calibre pistol, killing her.

McGINN, RICKY NOLEN (TEXAS # 999150), DOB 11.3.1957

Ricky McGinn was sentenced to die for the rape and murder of his twelve-year-old stepdaughter, Stephanie Rae Flanary. On the morning of Saturday 22 May 1993, McGinn’s wife, Janet, left her home in Brownwood, Texas, for a trip to Arlington. She left Stephanie in the care of McGinn. McGinn and Stephanie spent the day alone together. Stephanie was sexually assaulted by McGinn and then beaten on the head with the blunt side of an axe. She died of multiple head injuries and a fractured skull. Her battered body was found three days later in a culvert along a farm-to-market road near McGinn’s residence in Brown County. Investigators found blood in the trunk of McGinn’s car and a bloody axe under the seat of a broken truck in his yard.

McGREGOR, BILLY KEITH (KENTUCKY # 102840)

Forty-three-year-old Billy McGregor killed Virgie Plumb in Seminole County in 1983. McGregor had been a boarder of Plumb’s when the killing occurred. He hit Plumb on the head with a rock. When she screamed, he hit her again, splitting her head open. McGregor continued to live in Plumb’s home and drive her car until her children were notified of her disappearance two days later. Her remains were found in a wooded area near Wewoka.

The Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the guilty verdict from McGregor’s first trial in 1988 because he had not been provided with a state-funded psychiatrist. He was convicted a second time and received a death sentence in 1989.

McKINNEY, GARY CASPER (KENTUCKY # 127515), DOB 5.1.1967

Gary McKinney was sentenced to death on 21 September 1998 in Pulaski County on three counts of intentional murder, one count of second-degree arson, one count of tampering with physical evidence, and three counts of abuse of a corpse.

On 2 April 1995, a fire was reported at the residence of Gary Casper McKinney, located at 829 Poplar Hollow Road. When the fire department arrived on the scene, the small, wood frame house was fully engulfed. After the fire was extinguished, three bodies were found in the debris. The victims were later identified as the wife and children of Gary McKinney: Shirley McKinney, Amy Bowles, aged three, and Brian Bowles, aged eleven. All three victims had been shot and were dead when the fire started.

McVEIGH, TIMOTHY JOHN (FEDERAL # 129-58-4709), DOB 23.4.1968

‘THE OKLAHOMA BOMBER’

Much has been written about Timothy John McVeigh, the ‘Oklahoma Bomber’, in this age of mass communications and information overkill, but the facts are simple. On Wednesday 19 April 1995, McVeigh detonated a 7,000 lb bomb in the Alfred P. Murrah FBI building in Oklahoma City and, in doing so, he callously murdered 168 people, men, women and children, in America’s worst terrorist outrage prior to the atrocity of 11 September 2001.

This outwardly remorseless killer paid for his monstrous crime just over six years later when he was executed by lethal injection on Monday 11 June 2001, in the Terre Haute Federal Penitentiary, Indiana.

The story of McVeigh’s life and the events leading up to his crime have been documented from many standpoints. He has been grandiosely described as a Gulf War hero by his defence lawyer, who constantly referred to his client as ‘Sergeant McVeigh’ as though he were someone to be admired. To give any credence to this posturing nonsense would be to dignify the actions of a monster whose innocent victims included nineteen children, a point somewhat overlooked by one of his attorneys, who later bizarrely professed on television that he ‘loved him’.

The man who was executed was not a hero in any sense; he was only federal inmate 95057041995, McVeigh, terrorist and murderer.

As would be expected, McVeigh’s execution attracted massive attention. The world’s press and broadcasting media, spectators, the mawkishly curious and many anti-death penalty protestors maintained a vigil outside the prison as the self-styled freedom fighter was given a series of lethal drugs.

Looking on, throughout the execution, were ten Oklahoma survivors and relatives. They watched from behind tinted glass, alongside four witnesses chosen by McVeigh, and ten media representatives. There were two people in the death chamber with him, Frank Anderson, a US marshal, and Harry Lappin, the prison warden.

McVeigh had been led into the death chamber and strapped to the gurney, which resembled a dentist’s chair. Tubes were inserted into one of his legs and a sheet was pulled up to his chest to hide these.

Shortly after 7 a.m., the marshal turned to Warden Lappin and said, ‘You may proceed with the execution.’

The three drugs used were administered intravenously in succession, over a period of less than five minutes. A massive dose of sodium pentothal was the first at 7 a.m. This put McVeigh into a deep sleep in a matter of seconds. Next, at 7.11 a.m., came pancuronium bromide, which halted his breathing by paralysing his chest muscles. Finally at 7.13 a.m., McVeigh’s heart was stopped by a dose of potassium chloride.

At 7.14 a.m., the Warden’s flat tones announced: ‘Inmate McVeigh died at 7.14 a.m., Central Daylight Time. This concludes the execution.’

Timothy John McVeigh died with his eyes open.

At the scene of the blast, 750 miles away, more than 200 victims’ relatives and survivors watched the execution on CCTV. Among these was Kathy Wilburn, a survivor, but one who had lost her grandsons, Colton, aged three, and Chase, aged two, as a result of McVeigh’s action.

She commented, poignantly:

As the three chemicals were administered, I thought about Chase and Colton … about the joy they gave in their short lives … joy that was so far removed from this spectacle. As McVeigh’s breath became more shallow, I remembered the chaos of that morning as I stumbled through flames and falling glass, desperately looking for the boys, knowing in my heart they must be dead.

The self-delusion of being a freedom fighter and a martyr was reflected in McVeigh’s final written statement. Pretentious to the end, he chose a poem, ‘Invictus’.

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How changed with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate;

I am the captain of my soul.

The final word, however, must go to President George W. Bush, who said: ‘The victims of the Oklahoma City bombing have been given, not vengeance, but justice. Today, every living person who was hurt by the evil done in Oklahoma City can rest in the knowledge that there has been a reckoning.’

MEDINA, ANTHONY SHAWN (TEXAS # 999944), DOB 17.6.1969

Anthony Medina was convicted and sentenced to death for the New Year’s Day 1996 drive-by killings of David Rodriguez, aged nine, and Diana Rodriguez, aged fifteen. The two young victims were standing in the driveway of their uncle’s home at 15431 Campden Hill in Houston. They were listening to music at a party when Medina drove by and fired several shots from a SKS military assault rifle. David and Diana suffered multiple wounds and both died. A third person was shot in the back but survived.

Posturing, immature hoodlum Medina was the leader of the ‘La Raza – 13’ gang, and the residence where the shooting took place was said to be the ‘marked home’ of a rival gang member’s girlfriend. At the time of the shooting, Medina was on probation for six felony offences, including burglary and arson and, since his arrival on Death Row, he has conveniently turned to God.

MILKE, DEBRA JEAN (ARIZONA # 83533), DOB 10.3.1964

On Saturday 2 December 1989, James Lynn Styers, accompanied by Roger Mark Scott, filed a missing child report, advising police that Christopher Milke, aged four, had disappeared during a visit to the Metrocentre shopping mall. The boy was the son of Styers’ roommate, Debra Milke.

The following day, Scott told police that he had gone with Styers a day earlier to a desert wash in the area of 99th Avenue and Jomax Road, where Styers had shot and killed the helpless Christopher.

Styers had agreed to provide Scott with $250 to file a social security claim, and Styers also believed that he would receive some of Christopher’s $5,000 life insurance policy.

During a police interview, Debra Milke conceded that she had conspired with Styers to have her son murdered. She indicated that it would be better to have a son die than grow up like her husband.

Debra Milke was 27 years old when she was sentenced to death along with James Styers, who was 44.

MILLER JR, GEORGE JAMES (OKLAHOMA # 168725)

George Miller, aged 33, killed clerk Gary Kent Dodd in 1994 at the Central Plaza motel in Oklahoma County. Miller stabbed Dodd repeatedly, beat him with hedge shears and a paint can and poured acid on him and down his throat. Miller had done maintenance work at the motel for two weeks before the killing. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1997.

MILLS, JOHN (KENTUCKY # 32868), DOB 4.6.1970

John Mills was sentenced to death on 18 October 1996 in Knox County for the stabbing to death of Arthur Phipps at his residence in Smokey Creek, Kentucky.

On Wednesday 30 August 1995, Mills stabbed Phipps 29 times with a pocketknife and stole a small amount of money. He was arrested the same day at a house which he rented from his victim on the same land where the crime had occurred.

MINNITT, ANDRE LAMONT (ARIZONA # 73713), DOB 12.11.1969

‘THREE-WAY SPLIT’

Andre Minnitt, Martin Soto-Fong and Christopher McCrimmon decided to rob the El Grande Market, where Soto-Fong had previously worked. They were prepared to kill anyone present to eliminate potential witnesses who could later identify them.

On Wednesday 24 June 1992, in a show of crass flamboyance, they drove to the market in a distinctive, customised car. Once inside, Soto-Fong gathered up two bags of produce, approached the checkout where the owner waited, and took out a .25-calibre automatic pistol.

Grabbing all the cash at hand, about $300, he started firing at the three people near by, Fred Gee, Ray Arriola and Zewan Hong. Minnitt then ran into the store and joined Soto-Fong in shooting the victims to death, while McCrimmon stood in the doorway armed with a handgun. All of the victims were shot, execution-style, in the head.

People near by heard the shots and saw the distinctive car leave the market at high speed, and noted the number plate. The vehicle was traced and the fingerprints at the market tied Minnitt and his accomplices to the murders.

Not surprisingly, Minnitt and Soto-Fong were sentenced to death. See also SOTO-FONG, Martin R.

MONTANA, DANNY (ARIZONA # 86204), DOB 24.10.1970

‘A PRISON MURDER’

On Monday 7 August 1995, during ‘Open Pod’ time in CB4 of the Cimmaron Unit of Arizona Department of Corrections, Danny Montana and David Jiminez murdered Raymond Jackson, a jailhouse snitch, by stabbing him 179 times. Jackson was conscious during much of this brutal attack and other inmates heard his screams for several minutes.

For this murder Montana received the death sentence.

MOODY, ROBERT J. (ARIZONA # 120103), DOB 29.3.1959

‘LOST IN SPACE’

On Monday 15 November 1993, Robert Moody awoke, put on his best suit, picked up some flowers and drove to the home of a female friend. Waiting until the woman’s husband had left, Moody went up to the front door and knocked.

Michelle Malone answered the door, let him in, cheerfully accepted the flowers and showed him around her newly decorated house before leading him into the kitchen for coffee. Those were the last light-hearted moments of Michelle’s life. To her horror, there in her kitchen her friend pulled a knife from his jacket pocket and grabbed her arm. In an instant, surprise turned to disbelief. Then, realisation became fear and chilling terror flooded her mind, numbing her body until instinct took over. Panic-stricken, she began to struggle to free herself from this evil, menacing nightmare situation which was beyond her understanding.

The furiously struggling couple careered out into the hallway, ending up in the office. There Moody’s strength at last overcame that of his shocked and exhausted victim. He pinned her down while emptying her purse and wallet, before forcing her back to the kitchen where he tied her to a chair with phone cords which he had ripped from the wall.

Still chair-bound, the sobbing Michelle was dragged to a bedroom where Moody removed two gun cases from a closet. Taking a BB gun, he callously hit his victim over the head. Moments later he shot her several times in the head and chest with a .22-calibre rifle, reloading between each shot.

Now a killer, Moody fled the house, taking with him the rifle, a shotgun and a .22 pistol, and leaving behind his murdered friend.

Less than a week later, on 20 November, Moody visited another of his female friends, Patricia Magda. Again, he was made welcome and, during their conversation, Patricia bent down to retrieve a Christmas calendar she had made. As she did so, he grasped her around the neck. Stunned by this and almost paralysed by fear, the woman allowed her assailant to bind her hands and feet with neckties which he had thoughtfully brought with him.

Moody took a bankcard from his hapless victim’s purse and drove in her car to an ATM where, after one fruitless attempt, he eventually succeeded in withdrawing $300. Returning to his victim’s house, he pulled out a knife, slit her throat, stabbed her in the back, covered her with a rug and beat her over the head with hedge clippers. She did not survive this murderous onslaught.

After cutting the telephone cord, he left in Magda’s car, taking with him her wallet.

In Yuma the following month, on 20 December, Robert Moody broke into the home of his former sister-in-law. He tied the frightened woman up then nailed her and her children in a closet before making off in her car, a Suburban. He left Magda’s car behind, in which were found some of her credit cards and also his own wallet.

Moody next surfaced in California where, on 5 January 1994, he turned up at the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. He claimed not to know his identity or to remember anything prior to 4 January when he had found himself on a bench at a bus stop.

Eager to help the newly arrived amnesiac, the police ran his fingerprints. This revealed not only his identity but also the fact he was wanted in Arizona for the two murders. Even less helpful to Moody’s credibility was that the stolen Suburban was pulled over by traffic police. On questioning, the driver said that Moody had allowed him to drive around in the vehicle in return for a supply of crack cocaine.

Faced with more awkward questions than one can shake a stick at, Moody had to come up with answers. And he did.

In his defence, he claimed his involvement in the monstrous crimes was involuntary. He said, and still does, that space aliens were in control of his body and he was merely an unconscious observer of the murders. Furthermore, as part of the mission, these ‘extra sensory biological entities’ had apparently decreed that Moody must be executed by 2001 in order that he may come back to life.

Unable to persuade his defence attorney of the veracity of his story, Moody ran into even stiffer resistance from the jury and he is now on Death Row.

MOONEY, NELSON WAYNE (TEXAS 999868), DOB 18.8.1984

After being paroled from the Colorado State Penitentiary in 1985, having served a 30-month stretch for aggravated robbery, Nelson Mooney, a construction worker from King County, Texas, upped the ante when he resorted to capital murder.

Mooney was convicted of the shooting to death of 63-year-old Raymond Garner of Houston. An employee of Bilbo Freight Lines, Garner was found floating in the water at Dayton Lake Estates. A blanket covered his body, to which was attached, not a weight, but a tyre.

Mooney, and accomplice Ross Wayne Nix, were arrested in Grand Junction, Colorado, after attempting to rob a convenience store. The two men were in Garner’s van, which had been imaginatively spray-painted black; the licence plates had been changed.

Nix told police that he and Mooney abducted Garner at knifepoint. They had driven him to an isolated location and robbed him of around $130. Putting the boot firmly into any story Mooney might concoct, Nix stressed that he was not present when Garner was actually killed on Saturday 18 August 1984.

For his part in the incident, Nix received a life sentence, but Mooney was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.

MOORE, BRIAN (KENTUCKY # 31900), DOB 16.12.1957

Balding and thick-set Brian Moore was sentenced to death on 29 November 1984 in Jefferson County for kidnapping, robbery and the murder of 79-year-old Virgil Harris.

The killing took place on Friday 10 August 1979, in Louisville, Kentucky, when Mr Harris was returning to his car from a grocery store parking lot. Moore abducted his victim, drove him to a wooded area of Jefferson County and killed him.

MOORE, DEWEY GEORGE (OKLAHOMA # 112728)

A 63-year-old pervert and sexual predator, Dewey Moore abducted twelve-year-old Jennifer Gilbert after a junior high school football game in 1984 in Oklahoma City. He was convicted a year later and sentenced to death.

Jennifer’s body was found the day after her abduction on a country road, dressed in only a bra and panties. Her hands appeared to have been bound and her mouth gagged.

MOORMAN, ROBERT HENRY (ARIZONA # 31293), DOB 4.5.1948

The ‘Blue Mist’ motel at 40 S Pinal Parkway, Florence, advertises itself as having ‘nice quiet and clean rooms, including refrigerators, some kitchenettes, all with colour satellite TVs, swimming pool, and golf and other attractions nearby’. However, when Robert Moorman stayed there, he was interested in none of these facilities, for this man had the cold-blooded, premeditated murder of his mother on his mind.

While serving a sentence of nine years to life at the Arizona State Prison in Florence, Moorman was misguidedly given 72-hour compassionate leave to visit his mother, and the two checked in at ‘The Blue Mist’.

On Friday 13 January 1984, Moorman bound and gagged his mother and then strangled and stabbed her. He chopped the body into many parts and disposed of them in dumpsters throughout Florence.

For this act of matricide, Moorman’s sentence was upgraded, and he is now on Death Row without the remotest possibility of further excursions on compassionate grounds.

MORA, JULIO (FLORIDA # L11003), DOB 27.5.1929

‘Bravo! Bravo, Judge!’ acclaimed a smiling and ‘mad as a hatter’ Julio Mora as Judge Paul Backman finished reading out the 28-page order in which he explained why Mora should be executed by lethal injection.

At 72, Julio Mora is the oldest man on Florida’s Death Row. He is also one of the most intriguing, as questions of his mental health have surrounded his case from the very beginning. This strange man’s bizarre story is as follows.

On 30 April 1997, Mora was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder. The victims were his former boss, Clarence Rudolph, and attorney Karen Starr Marx, aged 30, who was four months pregnant with her first child at the time of her murder. Mora was also found guilty of attempted first-degree murder for shooting Maurice Hall, who was Rudolph’s attorney.

Evidently, Mora had filed a $10 million lawsuit for wrongful dismissal against 54-year-old Rudolph and, on Friday 27 May 1994, both men were together with the two attorneys at an office in Fort Lauderdale, where a deposition was being made. Moments after the proceedings began, Mora pulled a 9-millimetre handgun from his attaché case and loosed off ten shots.

What makes Mora’s case interesting, however, is the compelling evidence of his insanity which his defence team offered to the court. Three mental health experts testified that Mora suffered from ‘a persecutory delusional disorder’ in which he believed that the victims, particularly Rudolph, were out to kill him.

More interesting still were mounds of evidence, dating from the mid-1970s, which suggested strongly that Mora had suffered more than the odd mid-life crisis. Among the episodes, the old man was once evicted from an apartment because he had wired his front door knob to the electricity supply.

Inside another apartment he had built a makeshift hut to keep out laser beams, which he imagined were being sent by his wife.

Just before murdering Rudolph and Marx, he had put foam sealer in the electrical sockets in his apartment, placed fans in all the rooms to keep the air circulating, installed a giant exhaust fan in a front window, and rigged up an oxygen tent above his bed. He did this, he said, because Rudolph was pumping poison gas into his rooms.

Astonishingly, the jury remained persuaded that Mora was perfectly sane and recommended the death penalty. The officer who apprehended Mora said after the trial, ‘Julio Mora isn’t all there. This man should be in a mental institution, not on the Row.’

MORROW, ROBERT BRICE (TEXAS # 999244), DOB 30.6.1957

A roughneck from New Orleans, Robert Morrow had a varied and distinguished criminal record in Louisiana and South Carolina. This involved passing bad cheques, illegally carrying a weapon and grand larceny. So when he was released from prison on 15 April 1983, the bets were on that it would not be long before he was in trouble once again. Against the odds, however, Morrow did keep his nose clean until 1996, as far as records show, that is.

In any event, on Wednesday 3 April 1996, attractive 21-year-old Lisa Allison, who was on a spring break from college, left her parent’s home to wash her father’s car in a car wash. She was in love. She had a date in Houston the following evening and she wanted the car to be clean.

This was the last time that the young woman was seen alive. Her badly violated body was found the next day, floating in the Trinity River. She had been raped and killed. Police investigations revealed that the murderer was Robert Morrow. He is now on Death Row and no execution date has yet been set.

MOSLEY, KENNETH (TEXAS # 999243), DOB 7.9.1958

‘OFFICER DOWN’

Born in Flint County, Michigan, Kenneth Mosley was 39 years old when he shot to death a Garland, Texas, police officer, Michael D. Moore, during an attempted bank robbery.

Employees of Bank One at 1000 West Centerville Road, called police after noticing Mosley acting suspiciously inside the bank. As one of the first officers to arrive at the scene, Moore, who was in full uniform, entered the bank and approached Mosley. He noticed that the would-be bandit had his hand stuck in his waistband, and when he ordered the man to show his hands, a struggle ensued, with the two men crashing through a reinforced plate-glass window.

Witnesses heard several shots before Mosley re-entered the bank through the broken window. After brandishing his pistol at a second police officer, he was shot in the wrist and arrested.

Officer Moore suffered at least four bullet wounds and was life-flighted to the Baylor Hospital in Dallas, where he died on the afternoon of the shooting.

MYERS, KARL LEE (OKLAHOMA # 078224)

Fifty-two-year-old Karl Myers was convicted in Rogers County for the 1996 rape and killing of Cindy Michelle Marzano and the 1993 rape and death of Shawn Marie Williams.

Myers’ arrest and DNA evidence in the Marzano case led authorities to link him to the Williams slaying.

The killer Myers had previously received a 20-year prison sentence in 1976 for assault with intent to rape a twelve-year-old. Serving only a short time behind bars, he was released, only to commit two sexual assaults in 1981 against a thirteen-year-old relative.

Testimony indicated that, after receiving immunity, Myers admitted to a Cherokee County sheriff in 1978 that he had killed Charles ‘Chink’ Enders, of Picher, Oklahoma. Defence attorneys said he suffered from organic brain damage and was mildly retarded with an IQ of 77, having suffered a brain injury as a child.

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NAPIER, CARL EDWARD (TEXAS # 999880), DOB 9.10.1945

Carl Napier’s occupation is described, grandiosely, as ‘oilfield consultant’, but this seems to be stretching the truth somewhat, if his prison record is to be believed. At the age of 22, he embarked on a 60-year prison sentence for taking part in three armed robberies. The parole board saw fit to release him after five years but, a few months later, he was back inside. It was not until 1982 that Napier again emerged from prison to employ his talents in the outside world.

The parole board has a lot to answer for in having believed Napier’s intention to tread the straight and narrow. On Thursday 20 February 1986, the ‘oilfield consultant’, accompanied by Charles Philip Rummell, broke into a houseboat which they had found docked on the San Jacinto River, near Houston.

The boat was the home of Martha, Andrew and Jack Carlin and, unfortunately for them, they were there when the ‘oilman’ and his colleague, armed with a .38-calibre pistol and a shotgun, climbed aboard. Moments later, the Carlins, all three of them, were dead, having been shot by the intruders.

After murdering the Carlins, Napier and Rummell ransacked the boat and, when they left, they took with them a TV set, a VCR, a sewing machine, jewellery, a fur coat and about $5,000 in cash. It was also reported that Napier cut off one of Jack Carlin’s fingers to facilitate the removal of a diamond ring.

The police obviously held a more pragmatic view of Napier’s character than the naive parole board members, for they arrested him three days after the triple slaying. At the time of his arrest, the expert in black gold was in possession of a pistol and other property belonging to the recently late Carlins.

Tried and convicted of the horrific crime, Napier was admitted to Death Row, in August 1987, where he underwent a career change, and he is now successfully holding down the position of ‘condemned man’.

NASH, VIVA LeROY (ARIZONA # 47754), DOB 10.9.1915

‘NEVER-SAY-DIE!’

One should not appear to be glorifying a man who commits murder, but there is an endearing, never-say-die quality to the unusually named octogenarian Viva LeRoy Nash which marks him out from the spineless guttersnipes who knock over convenience stores and kill women and children indiscriminately for a handful of loose change. This man is not a monster, but his story is included here as something of an antidote to the poison. In so many ways, LeRoy Nash is a breath of fresh air.

Born as long ago as 1915, only five years later than Bonnie Parker of Bonnie and Clyde, Nash was already serving two consecutive life sentences for murder and robbery in Utah, when, at the astonishing age of sixty-seven, he escaped from prison in October 1982. Three weeks later, on Wednesday 3 November, he entered a coin shop in north Phoenix, Arizona, and demanded money from store employee Gregory West. Mr West bravely refused and pulled a gun, firing off a shot at the elderly robber. West’s bullet missed Nash, who returned his fire and shot him with a .357 Colt Trooper revolver, killing him.

In a letter to the authors, dated 25 December 2001, the lively octogenarian Nash gives his own account of the gunfight. He says:

I saw the flash from his gun and instantly jerked my torso aside so his bullet would not hit me. It went past me and ploughed through the wall into a beauty salon next door. Four women ran aside and watched. But my bullet not only knocked his gun aside, so he couldn’t shoot a second time, but the damned bullet bounced off his gun, entered his flank and went through his body, killing him.

As LeRoy fled the scene, the proprietor of a nearby shop pointed a gun at him. The veteran hoodlum, despite his age, grabbed the weapon and struggled with the younger man. Police officers soon arrived and arrested LeRoy Nash.

Offering nothing in mitigation, Nash pleaded guilty at his trial, which was over in one day. Now, nineteen years on, at the ripe old age of 87, he is seeing out his days on Death Row. One thing is certain, Nash, a survivor from a bygone era who has no sense of fear, will go to his execution without a whimper. Having said that, the authors nurse the hope that common sense will prevail and that he will be allowed to see out his days in better surroundings than Arizona’s Death Row.

Correspondence between the authors and Mr Nash has shown him to be an intelligent and articulate man. Despite a heart condition and a partially crippled right hand, he produces copious amounts of typewritten information which reveals that he has led a full and interesting life. His account of his beginnings as a bank robber during the Great Depression is a wonderful piece of social history.

This six-foot-tall Nordic man describes himself as ‘a natural explorer who has travelled both the American continents, looking at everything, especially Mexico City’. He was formerly ‘an Olympic-class athlete in the disciplines of swimming, boxing, tennis and running’.

For some reason, best known to the authorities, Viva LeRoy Nash, a disabled and elderly man with a heart condition, is considered to be so dangerous that he lives in an escape-proof cell within a cell. Under lockdown, he is not allowed exercise privileges, media interviews or any visitors such as other inmates might have.

In his own words, he says, ‘I am in solitary confinement 24 hours a day, every day,’ adding, almost humorously, ‘and I am partially hard of hearing’.

Those wishing to assist LeRoy Nash may contact: thecriminologist@hotmail.com

NEILL, JAMES LESLEY (OKLAHOMA # 141128)

Thirty-five-year-old James Neill fatally stabbed employees Kay Bruno, Jerri Bowles and Joyce Mullienix during a 1984 robbery at the First Bank of Chattanooga in Comanche County.

He also shot to death customer Ralph Zeller, wounded three other employees and aimed an empty gun at a baby.

Neill and his accomplice, Robert Grady Johnson, were tried together. Subsequently, the State Court of Criminal Appeals ordered new trials because, the justices ruled that the defendants had mutually antagonistic defences. Very much a case of dog eat dog.

In his subsequent 1992 trial Neill was convicted and given four death sentences. Johnson was convicted and given four no-parole life sentences.

NENNO, ERIC CHARLES (TEXAS # 999188), DOB 13.4.1961

Born in Olean County, New York State, balding and unprepossessing Eric Nenno was a 33-year-old salesman. On Thursday 23 March 1995, he lured seven-year-old Nicole Benton to his home at 1760 Bollis Gap, Hockley, Texas. There, he attempted to rape the child but, when she began to cry and resist his sexual predations, he choked her to death, after which he sexually violated the child’s corpse several times.

The homicidal paedophile hid the nude body in his attic until neighbours reported to the police two days later that Nenno had something of a track record in child molestation and had previously been accused of fondling a child. Under questioning, Nenno confessed to killing Nicole, and then led police to her body.

NEWTON, FRANCES ELAINE (TEXAS # 999922), DOB 12.4.1965

Frances Newton was already on probation, from a 1986 probate forgery offence, when she was convicted of the murder in April 1987 of her 23-year-old husband, Adrian, and two children: her son Alton, aged seven, and her 21-month-old daughter, Farrah.

The diminutive and slightly built accountant had taken out an insurance policy to the tune of $50,000 on her husband’s life only a month before shooting her family with a .25-calibre pistol.

Newton and her husband had separated a month prior to the killings and a policy already existed on her husband’s life. She admitted taking a gun, which belonged to her boyfriend, to her husband’s apartment on the night of the murders, but told police that she took it only for protection, and that her family members were alive when she left. She filed insurance claims on 21 April 1987, and she was arrested and charged with capital murder the next day.

Those who murder for insurance payouts are motivated by greed, and it is this avarice that almost always catches them out. They can conceive the start and finish of an enterprise but, in their haste to get their hands on the money, they frequently overlook the details and the many pitfalls that lie between: a description that fits Frances Newton like a glove.

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OCHOA, GEORGE (OKLAHOMA # 243148)

A 26-year-old Hispanic, George Ochoa, fatally shot Maria Yanez and her common-law husband, Francisco Morales, nine times each in 1993 in Oklahoma County. He was convicted in 1996. His accomplice, Osbaldo Torres, is also on Death Row for the killings.

Prosecutors do not know of a motive. No money or items were taken after the shooting. At least three children who were in the home were unharmed and one recognised the killers. A mistrial was declared in the first trial in 1995 after the jury was deadlocked. A subsequent trial led to Ochoa’s conviction and death sentence. He is in the fifth stage of appellate review.

O’DONNELL, KELLY (PENNSYLVANIA # OC-0215), DOB 12.1.1967

On the morning of Friday 13 November 1992, Philadelphia police received a 911 report that someone had found some body parts in a trash dump on North Delaware Avenue. The officers who were despatched to the site found a human torso with its head missing, the severed arms of a white male and a head which was minus a left eyeball. During the search of the scene, police found papers strewn around, and among these was a letter addressed to Agnes McClinchey, 3123 Richmond Street.

The remains were later identified, as ‘belonging to’ a Mr Eleftherios Eleftheriou, and the story of how they came to be there is a disturbing tale of violence and animal savagery, equal in its grisly nature to any plot from the imagination of horror writer Stephen King. What makes it all the more shocking is that the macabre butcher was a woman!

Kelly O’Donnell had a 30-year-old boyfriend called William Russell Gribble. She also had a drug problem, and so did he. Early in November 1992, this couple went to stay at 3123 Richmond Street in Philadelphia. The apartment at which they stayed was the home of Gribble’s mother, Agnes McClinchey, who had given them permission to stay there while she was away visiting a friend. Also residing there at the time was James Matthews, an elderly friend of the house owner.

Shortly after 10 p.m., on Wednesday 11 November, Kelly O’Donnell went to a pizza shop which was managed by one Eleftherios Eleftheriou, known more conveniently as ‘Terry’. As well as running a pizza shop, the enterprising and versatile Terry did some drug dealing and a little money lending. O’Donnell took with her a leather jacket, which she offered as collateral against a loan which she sought from this man.

According to a witness, an employee of the pizza shop, Terry took a large wad of money from his pocket and gave some of this to O’Donnell. Then the two arranged to meet later that night. Around 1 a.m., Eleftheriou closed the business and drove to the rendezvous.

O’Donnell took him back to the apartment on Richmond Street, arriving there at about 1.30 a.m. What happened next is drawn from O’Donnell’s confession and her evidence given at the trial.

Terry was looking out of a window when the woman hit him over the head with a hammer. He fell to the floor and she continued to rain hammer blows down on his head.

The reason which O’Donnell gave for this murderous attack was, she claimed, that the man was ‘a pervert’ who had previously sexually assaulted her. Whatever the reason may have been, she now had a body lying on the floor which needed to be disposed of, and an undertaker was, pretty obviously, not an option on this occasion. She enlisted the help of Gribble to drag the body down into the basement. There, in the anaemic half-light, in grim surroundings reminiscent of an Alfred Hitchcock scenario, they dismembered the Greek pizza man.

Dispersal of the component parts of Terry was effected by the simple, if irreverent, expedient of placing them in black plastic trash bags. Not long afterwards, the two of them dumped the bags on North Delaware Avenue, where they were later discovered.

A day later, on Friday 13 November, elderly Agnes McClinchey returned to her apartment. Her home was not quite as she remembered it, however, for she found blood on the front door and carpets. O’Donnell told the bewildered woman that she and Gribble had been involved in a murder, adding that she had heard a report that the victim’s head had been found on Delaware Avenue.

Later that day, Ms McClinchey overheard O’Donnell telling Gribble to burn Terry’s car, which he did and, when he returned, she said to him, ‘Thank God you didn’t get caught.’

At 7.30 p.m. that evening, police responded to a report of a car on fire on D Street. When the fire was eventually extinguished, they searched the burned-out vehicle and, not entirely to their delight, found the well-cooked missing bits of the pizza man’s dismembered corpse.

An hour or so later, an agitated Agnes McClinchey called the police and they met her at a nearby gas station where she told them what she knew. Following their discussion with the distraught woman, law officers went to her apartment at 1.30 a.m. on the morning of 14 November, and there they arrested O’Donnell and Gribble.

There then began a search of the apartment and basement. In the latter area police found a kitchen knife, a chisel and a claw hammer, each of which revealed traces of human tissue and blood.

Finally, they stumbled across the two missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that was Terry. Stuffed inside a pipe they found a pencil case, in which were an eyeball and a penis.

Now that they could relax in the knowledge that nobody was going to turn up with more bits and pieces belonging to the corpse of the murdered man, the police got down to the business of interrogating the two suspects. While the arrests had been made pretty quickly, establishing the truth behind the killing proved, at first, to be as untidy as the distribution of the victim’s body parts had been. Both O’Donnell and Gribble made statements in which each accepted personal responsibility for the murder while attempting to exculpate the other. In the end, they were both charged with murder, criminal conspiracy, arson and a variety of offences connected to the demise of Mr Eleftheriou.

The two suspected butchers were tried together and they both waived their right to trial by jury, electing instead to appear before a bench judge. The medical evidence given at the trial makes for very disturbing reading.

An assistant medical examiner testified that there were numerous abrasions on the victim’s head and these were consistent with blows from a hammer. This witness also testified that one person, acting alone, could not have killed and dismembered the victim’s body in a manner consistent with the physical evidence. The most horrifying aspect of the murder was revealed during the witness’s testimony when he stated that red abrasions in the areas where the murdered man’s head and right arm had been severed indicated that, at the time these parts were removed, the man’s heart had still been beating. Whether or not he could feel the pain at any time is not known. He went on to say that a single person on their own would not have been able to remove both the head and right arm in the estimated fifteen minutes that it took before Eleftheriou bled to death.

In contrast, yellow abrasions in those areas where the remaining body parts had been severed indicated that the pizza shop manager’s heart had stopped beating by the time they were cut off.

Kelly O’Donnell was found guilty of first-degree murder and for this she was sentenced to death. She is currently on Death Row at the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institute, Muncy, Pennsylvania.

William Russell Gribble is on Death Row at SCI-Greene at Waynesburg.

OSBORNE, LARRY CECIL (KENTUCKY # 121516), DOB 22.3.1980

Nineteen-year-old Larry Osborne was sentenced to death on 27 January 1999 in Whitley County. The charges on which he had been convicted, were: two counts of intentional murder; first-degree burglary; first-degree robbery; and first-degree arson.

On Sunday 14 December 1997, the Whitley County 911 despatch received a telephone call reporting that the breaking of glass had been heard at a residence and that someone should check the incident out. This message was relayed to the Kentucky State Police and, upon arriving at the scene, officers found the place on fire.

The blaze was soon extinguished, and the bodies of Sam and Lillian Davenport were found lying near the front door. A single barrel shotgun was located about two feet to the right of the dead man.

It soon became obvious that the couple had been burgled and a .380-calibre Beretta semi-automatic pistol had been stolen. Osborne was arrested while trying to sell this gun.

This killer advertises on the Internet for pen pals, saying:

Age 39, Height 5’11”, Weight 200, Eyes Hazel, Hair Brown, Seeking friendship Smile! They’re free! I would like to correspond with anyone who needs a penpal to exchange smiles and discourse on anything, from the simple things to the complex, from gardening to geo-political issues. Don’t worry, what we don’t know about, well, we’ll just get a book and learn. I love humor, music, and learning. I have been a lot of places and done a lot of things. How about your big adventure that we call life? I would love to hear all about it. I have worked as a carpenter, promoter, farmer and ran a remolding / building maintenance company. My hobbies are computers, electronics, fishing, camping, and custom woodworking. (All that I can’t do here.) I am into martial arts, bodybuilding and fitness. I am currently studying Syda Yoga and Zen Buddhism. I have a fairly wide range of talents and interests. If you would like to swap ideas, gripes, humor etc. All you need to do is write … Keep the Faith.

It is notable that nowhere among his richly impressive and varied list of talents and interests does Larry Osborne mention killing people and burning houses down. But, then again, he wouldn’t, would he!

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PANDELI, DARRELL P. (ARIZONA # 137439), DOB 23.11.1964

There are some murderers who commit the most repugnant and monstrous acts of mutilation on their victims and Darrell Pandeli’s crime is, in some way, reminiscent of the work of ‘Jack the Ripper’.

On Friday 24 September 1993, Darrell Pandeli picked up prostitute Holly Iver while driving home from ‘Baby Dolls’, a strip joint in Phoenix. He paid this woman to have sex with him, but was unable to maintain an erection and had the audacity to ask for a refund. Pandeli later implausibly claimed that the hooker was upset and attacked him.

He had slit the victim’s throat and cut off her nipples, taking them as a trophy. Then he dumped her body in an alley. He later flushed the nipples down a toilet.

This inadequate man would provide work for a legion of psychiatrists, but they had better get there quickly before he is executed.

PARRISH, MELVIN LEE (KENTUCKY # 137802), DOB 24.6.1963

At the time of writing, Melvin Parrish is one of seven black inmates on Kentucky’s Death Row. He was sentenced to death on 1 February 2001, in Jefferson County. Already a persistent felony offender, he earned himself this place on ‘The Row’ when he was convicted of two counts of murder and criminal attempted murder, topped up with one count of robbery. A more disgusting and cowardly monster would be difficult to find outside the pages of this book.

On Friday 5 December 1997, Parrish stabbed and killed a six-month pregnant woman and her eight-year-old son. He also stabbed her five-year-old son no less than nine times. Parrish was trying to steal money from the woman when the attack took place.

PATTERSON, KELSEY (TEXAS # 999065), DOB 24.3.1954

Aged 38, Kelsey Patterson was convicted of the killings of Louis Oates, the 63-year-old owner of Oates Oil Company, Palestine, Texas, and his business secretary, Dorothy Harris. On Friday 25 September 1992, Oates was standing on the loading dock of his premises at 507 W Reagan. He was minding his own business when madman Patterson walked up behind him and shot him with a .38-calibre pistol.

The killer walked away after the murder, but he returned to shoot 41-year-old Dorothy Harris when she came out of her office and, understandably, started screaming. Then, and somewhat inexplicably, Patterson walked a short distance to a friend’s house, put down the gun and took off his clothes. He was standing naked in the street, altogether quite an unedifying sight, when the police arrested him.

This strange, tragic story assumed an even more bizarre aspect when puzzled investigators discovered the trivial motive behind their naked prisoner’s terrible crime. Louis Oates and Dorothy Harris had been murdered following an argument that the oilman had had with Patterson over who was the better footballer, Patterson or Oates’ son.

PENRY, JOHNNY PAUL (TEXAS # 999654), DOB 5.5.1956

From Comanche County, Oklahoma, labourer, rapist and murderer Johnny Penry was convicted of the October 1979 rape and scissor-stabbing of 22-year-old Pamela Moseley Carpenter. The victim came from Livingstone.

Penry, who had been released from prison just three months prior to the killing after serving time for rape, forced his way into Pamela’s home and held an open pocketknife to her throat. During the struggle, Carpenter, the sister of former Washington Redskin base kicker Mark Moseley, managed to grab a pair of scissors and stab her attacker. He knocked the scissors from her hand and dragged her into a bedroom where he raped her and then stabbed her in the chest.

‘I told her that I loved her and hated to kill her, but I had to so that she wouldn’t squeal on me,’ Penry told police in his confession. But although he received the death sentence, he got off the hook because he was mentally ill. A man with an IQ of 56, he now spends his days colouring in children’s books.

PERILLO, PAMELA LYNN (TEXAS # 999665), DOB 1955

In March 1980, Pamela Perillo hailed a police officer in Denver, Colorado, and asked to be arrested. Later, at police headquarters, she gave a full confession to the effect that she and James Michael Briddle, a 25-year-old labourer, together with his ex-wife, Linda Briddle Fletcher, had hitchhiked from California to Texas to avoid arrest for an armed robbery and the murder of two men.

On Thursday 21 February 1980, Bob Banks, a 30-year-old oil company worker, had picked them up near the Astrodome in Houston. Banks was in the process of moving house and agreed to let the three travellers stay at his home in the 2900 block in Hepburn, in exchange for their help. A friend of his, Bob Skeens, was also on hand if required.

Two days into their stay, the trio decided to rob and kill their host and his companion. As the two men brought their guests coffee and doughnuts, they were overpowered at gunpoint and bound hand and foot before being strangled with nylon rope. After stealing $800 in cash, credit cards, a camera and several guns from the house, the killers fled in Skeens’ car to Dallas, where they caught a Greyhound bus to Colorado.

Tried separately in 1980, James Briddle and Pamela Perillo were sentenced to death, and in both trials, Linda Briddle Fletcher was the State’s chief witness, claiming that she played no part in the killings. Nevertheless, she was subsequently sentenced to five years probation.

An error in jury selection won Perillo a second trial but, in November 1980, she was reconvicted and was again sentenced to death. Briddle was executed in Texas on 12 December 1995. On 14 March 2000, after a last-minute stay of execution, Perillo’s life was spared; her sentence was commuted to life plus 30 years.

PIERCE, ANTHONY LEROY (TEXAS # 999587), DOB 20.7.1959

‘FINGER-LICKIN’ NASTY’

Born in Louisiana, Anthony Pierce has spent more than half of his life on Death Row in Texas, following the 1977 murder of the manager of a fast food outlet in Houston. It was on Thursday 4 August of that year when, armed with a pistol, Pierce went into Church’s Fried Chicken Restaurant and demanded money. There was about $80 and this was put into a chicken box for the robber.

As he was leaving the premises, Pierce dropped the box and ordered a young employee to pick it up for him. He then turned to the manager, Fred Johnson, and said, ‘I’ve been wanting to kill you for a long time,’ before shooting him dead.

Shortly after the robbery and killing, Pierce made his way to a bar, where he stabbed a man. The victim, thankfully, survived. Police arrested Pierce in front of his apartment, where he was bragging to his friends about the evening’s incidents.

Evidently a highly sensitive man and very touchy too, A. L. Pierce claimed to have carried out the murder as he was angry at the manager’s earlier refusal to give him free chicken and money from the till.

PIKE, CHRISTA GAIL (TENNESSEE # 261368), DOB 10.3.1975

When she was sentenced on 29 March 1996, Christa Gail Pike, at the age of twenty-one, became the youngest woman on Death Row and the crime which earned her this distinction was one of the most savage and evil single killings in the history of the state of Tennessee. The story of the murder of Pike’s nineteen-year-old love rival is a disturbing account of uncontrolled violence with sexual and satanic undertones.

Christa Pike had had a poor upbringing with little or no parental guidance: when she was only fourteen, her parents had allowed her to have a sexual relationship with her live-in boyfriend. Moreover, with her parent’s permission, she had dropped out of high school but had later decided to enrol on the Job Corps Program in order to ensure that she received her diploma.

It was while attending the Knoxville Job Corps Center that Christa met up with two other youngsters, and close friendships developed. Tadaryl Darnell Shipp was sixteen and came from Memphis. He and Christa began dating. The other friend was eighteen-year-old Shadolla Renee Peterson, and the two girls became inseparable.

At the same time, a girl called Colleen Slemmer appeared on the scene. She was a year younger than Christa and the two just did not get on at all. The cause of the animosity was Christa’s suspicions about Colleen’s interest in Tadaryl Shipp. She became openly hostile towards the younger girl, calling her names and starting malicious rumours about her. After the two had eventually had a fight, Christa made up her mind to really teach her rival a lesson. She and Shadolla Peterson conspired to get the girl alone at a deserted spot on the University of Tennessee Agriculture Campus and give her a beating. The outcome of the plan was so terrible that it caused widespread panic among the 26,000 students in the city of Knoxville.

The murder took place on the night of Thursday 13 January 1995. Shortly before 9 p.m., Christa Pike, Shadolla Peterson and Tadaryl Shipp left the Knoxville Job Corps Center. As they were leaving, Pike persuaded Colleen Slemmer to join them on the pretext that they would go to smoke some marijuana as a peace offering.

After some debate it was decided that they would all go to an abandoned steam mill on the campus. According to one description of this place, it was so secluded that a person could scream at the top of their lungs and not be heard. The place was near a bike trail and a thick clump of bushes and, littered around the area, was a mess of old building materials, including lumps of asphalt and big pieces of plastic.

When the quartet arrived at the mill, Colleen began talking with Tadaryl Shipp. Christa saw this and flew into a rage. Screaming obscenities, she dragged the girl away from Tadaryl and the attack on her rival began. Colleen was taken completely by surprise. Her first reaction was to try to get away from the onslaught and she set off, running down a muddy trackway. However, in the darkness, she slipped and fell, allowing Shipp to catch up with her. The young man hauled her back before her tormentors who recommenced their ignominious treatment.

Pike forced Colleen to take off her sweater and bra, so that the girl would not run away, then she and Shadolla Peterson began to hit their terrified and humiliated victim with their knees and fists. Shipp turned away, but Colleen clung to him in the hope that he would somehow stop what was being done to her. The youth was having none of that, however, and pushed her away from him, slapping her when she wouldn’t let go of his arm. All the while, Pike was punching and kicking Colleen who eventually fell to the ground clutching her stomach.

Christa Pike pulled out a miniature meat cleaver and slashed her victim’s forehead. In great pain, Colleen covered her face with her hands and begged Pike to stop and try to resolve the issue without any more violence. Her plea was to no avail. Pike slashed Colleen’s pants open with the cleaver, taunting her with remarks about having sex with Tadaryl Shipp as she did it. The distraught girl struggled to her feet and made a dash for freedom but she slipped and fell. Shipp picked her up bodily and carried her back to the bushes where the merciless and depraved attack continued.

It was then that a box-cutter knife was produced and, for some thirty minutes or so, Colleen Slemmer was stabbed and slashed hundreds of times with the knife and the meat cleaver. Then, Pike and Shipp, working together in an act of appalling savagery, carved a pentagram into Colleen’s chest.

Throughout this attack – of terrifying proportions – Colleen remained alive and Pike maintained her barrage of taunts. The teenager’s life ended when the three attackers pounded her skull with chunks of asphalt.

Following their brutal and monstrous act, Pike, Peterson and Shipp went to a service station where they washed off the blood and changed their clothes. At around 10.15 p.m. the trio returned to the Job Corps Center and, some time later, Pike went to the room of fellow student, Kim Iloilo, where she brandished a piece of Colleen Slemmer’s skull and gave a graphic and detailed account of the atrocity that she and the other two had carried out. She told Iloilo that Colleen had begged them to stop cutting and beating her, but Pike didn’t stop because her victim had continued to talk. The triumphant killer told her friend that she had thrown a large piece of asphalt at Colleen’s head and, when it broke into smaller pieces, she had thrown those at her as well. She went on to tell the horrified student that a meat cleaver had been used to cut the victim’s back and a box-cutter had been used to slit her throat. Finally, she told her bewildered listener that a pentagram had been carved onto the dead teenage victim’s chest and forehead. All the time that Pike was narrating the tale, she was dancing in a circle around the room.

The next morning, during breakfast at the Job Corps Center, Iloilo saw Pike and asked her what she had done with the piece of Colleen’s skull. Pike replied that she still had it and then said, ‘And, yes, I’m eating breakfast with it.’

Later in the day, according to court records, the garrulous Pike made a similar statement to another student, Stephanie Wilson. She pointed to brown spots on her shoes and said, ‘That ain’t mud on my shoes, that’s blood.’ She then pulled a napkin from her pocket and showed Wilson a piece of bone which, she asserted, was a piece of Colleen Slemmer’s skull. Pike went on to say that she had slashed Colleen’s throat six times, adding that the victim’s blood and brains had been pouring out at the time that she had looted the piece of skull as a grisly trophy of the macabre orgy.

Both witnesses testified that the ghoulish braggart was in an extremely happy and triumphal mood as she told them of her crime.

At the time that Christa Pike was relating details of how she had overcome her love rival, horrified and sickened officers from the University of Tennessee Police and the Knoxville Police Department were taping off the area around the butchered remains of Colleen Slemmer. Her corpse, naked from the waist up, had been found at 8 a.m. Her bra and sweater were found in nearby bushes. At first, Officer Terry Johnson, the man who had discovered the body, believed he had found the remains of a dead animal. It was only upon closer inspection that he saw the victim’s clothes and her nude breasts and realised it was the body of a human female.

The savagery of the killing and its location, led to some panic in the university and 2,000 flyers were posted around the campus advising students not to walk alone at night, nor to take short cuts.

The Knoxville Police Department soon came to the conclusion that the murder was the work of people with Satanist connections. The pentagram carved on Colleen’s chest was the source of this and the idea was not entirely without foundation: evidence shortly came to light which demonstrated that both Pike and Shipp had shown some interest in Satanic worship, although it is doubtful if this was to any profound extent.

On the Saturday, two days after the killing, Pike and Shipp were arrested, following calls from informants who had listened to Pike’s boasting. The two confessed to the crime and implicated Peterson, whose arrest followed quickly.

In a search of Pike’s room, police found a copy of The Satanic Bible and a silver Satan figurine. A visit to Tadaryl Shipp’s room revealed other evidence of Satanic worship. Most damning of all, however, was the evidence which was found in Christa Pike’s leather jacket: it was a piece of Colleen Slemmer’s skull.

Christa Pike’s statement, made to Detective Randy York, contains details of the murderous events which make chilling reading as they highlight the overpowering level of evil displayed by Pike and her two accomplices. At one point, she had begun to cut Colleen across the throat when the victim sat up and begged for her life. Pike’s response was to cut her throat several more times.

The Knox County Medical Examiner, Dr Sandra Elkins, performed the autopsy on Colleen Slemmer’s body and she testified that she had attempted to catalogue the slash and stab wounds on the girl’s torso by assigning a letter of the alphabet to each one. There were so many that, eventually, Dr Elkins decided to catalogue only the most serious and major wounds. She explained that to catalogue every wound she would have been required to ‘go through the alphabet again and stay in the morgue for three days’.

However, perhaps the most chilling fact of all, according to Dr Elkins, was the certain knowledge that Colleen Slemmer was conscious throughout the time that she was being cut, slashed, punched and kicked. Blood in the sinus cavity and the appearance of some of the wounds bore testimony to that. The young victim would have slipped into unconsciousness only after her skull had been hit by the large lump of asphalt.

Soon after she and Shipp had been questioned and had confessed to their involvement, a bizarre episode occurred as the police put the finishing touches to their case. Christa Pike went to the murder scene with investigators, where she carried out a grotesque re-enactment of her role in the murder before a video camera.

Although Christa Pike was sentenced to death, Tadaryl Shipp, because of his age, was sentenced to life imprisonment, with the possibility of parole. Shadolla Peterson, however, escaped with six years probation.

It is seldom understood just how much a tragedy of this magnitude can blight the lives of the victim’s family and loved ones. Colleen’s mother has lost her home as a result of her having had to spend an enormous amount of money travelling to and attending innumerable court hearings involving the three murderous conspirators. She has pursued every option to ensure that her daughter’s killers receive the fullest punishment for their terrible crime and are not released on parole.

Many of the proceedings seem calculated to ride roughshod over the sensibilities of the bereaved and can be downright harrowing in their lack of sensitivity. However, there are few examples that can compare to the treatment of Colleen Slemmer’s parents at the behest of Christa Pike’s legal team. Colleen’s skull, which was introduced as evidence at the original trial, is still, seven years later, being retained until Pike has exhausted the appeal system. Until that time, the murdered girl’s parents cannot bury her skull with the rest of her body and finally lay their daughter to rest.

PIPPIN, ROY LEE (TEXAS # 999170), DOB 30.4.1977

Roy Lee Pippin is a name you might expect to be the property of a cheery old soul living in a gingerbread cottage, or even a children’s entertainer. But you would be very much mistaken. In the real world, Roy Lee was something of a big wheel in a Colombian-linked organisation which moved millions of dollars in drug sale proceeds across the Mexican/US border.

Potato-faced, overweight and describing himself as an air-conditioning technician from Harris County, Pippin was convicted of the kidnapping and murder of Elmer and Fabio Buitrago in Houston on Wednesday 4 May 1994.

When $1.6 million in drug money went missing, Pippin and his chums were understandably upset, so they kidnapped the Buitragos and two other men, taking them to a warehouse where Pippin ran his more legitimate business interests. There, Elmer, Fabio and Javier Riasco were lined up and shot. The fourth man, Jair Salas, escaped after being beaten. Fabio Buitrago died at the warehouse. His brother, Elmer, miraculously managed to reach a neighbouring apartment complex before collapsing in the courtyard. He died fourteen hours later in hospital.

PLANTZ, MARILYN KAY (OKLAHOMA # 178478)

Almost thirteen years after Jim Plantz was beaten and burned to death in a murder-for-insurance money scheme, his wife, 39-year-old Marilyn Kay Plantz, died by lethal injection on Tuesday 1 May 2001 for her part in the murder. She was pronounced dead at 9.11 p.m., after being injected with a poisonous mixture of drugs at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.

Her death sentence came after her plot to kill her husband and collect $300,000 from a life insurance policy taken out in his name.

Jim Plantz, a press supervisor for The Oklahoma newspaper, was ambushed by William Clifford Bryson and Clinton Eugene McKimble as he came home from work in 1988. Marilyn Plantz recruited the pair to carry out the murder. They attacked him and left him on the floor of his bedroom, bloody and in great pain. After pulling his vehicle around to the back of the house, they threw him in the truck, drove to an isolated spot and set fire to the car. He was burned alive.

Relatives said that they initially believed the accident story she concocted, and they offered to help her, even after her arrest.

‘That’s how unbelieving we were,’ said Karen Lowery, Jim’s sister. ‘We even tried to get a lawyer for her. Then the detectives started telling us what they found.’

The couple had been married for eleven years, and their two children were in a bedroom when the attack occurred. McKimble testified against Plantz and Bryson in exchange for a life sentence. Bryson was executed on 15 June 2000. Plantz was executed on 1 May 2001.

She became the eleventh condemned inmate, and the second female, to be put to death in Oklahoma in 2001, and the 41st overall since America resumed executions.

PLATA, DANIEL ANGEL (TEXAS # 999214), DOB 2.8.1975

On Thursday 5 June 1995, Murlidhar Mahbubani was working the late shift at the Stop N Go convenience store at 17654 Keith Harrow in Houston, when four somewhat unsavoury-looking customers walked in. Appearances can be deceptive, but not on this occasion. Daniel Plata, Jose I. Hernandez, Raul F. Castro and Juan C. Morales were not intending to make a purchase, they were there to steal the takings.

At first the courageous clerk refused to hand over the cash. In response, Plata took out a .25-calibre pistol and pointed it at him. Now looking down the business end of a gun, the brave Mahbubani reluctantly conceded to their demands. With the money now in his possession, Plata leaned over the counter and senselessly shot the heroic man three times.

As the robbers left the store, Plata brutally discharged a further three bullets into the dying shop assistant, and before climbing into a getaway car, he turned back to the door of the premises and wiped his fingerprints from it.

However, Mahbubani was not yet dead. Clinging on to life, he managed to dial 911 and was life-flighted to hospital where he subsequently died of his wounds.

The robbery and shooting was recorded by the store’s surveillance camera and, for all his efforts to erase evidence of his visit, Plata’s distinctive, unattractive features, were there for all to see. These days, his features can be seen on Death Row.

POYSON, ROBERT A. (ARIZONA # 140419), DOB 15.8.1976

Leta Kagen, 39, lived in a trailer home fifteen miles west of Kingman, in Golden Valley, Mohave County, Arizona, along with her son, Robert Delahunt, aged fifteen, and Roland Wear, aged 50.

During the summer of 1996, nineteen-year-old Bobby Poyson turned up at her door, homeless and hungry. Leta took pity on him and gave him a home.

The young man had been living there for some weeks when two strangers turned up – a middle-aged man, Frank Anderson, 48, and his fourteen-year-old girlfriend, Kimberly Lane. These two had been neighbours on a trailer park, and had run away together. They had been hitchhiking in the area, and Leta agreed to let them stay for a few days. Despite the seemingly romantic picture of two lovers on the run, the true nature of the relationship between Anderson and his under-age partner was unsavoury and sordid. Kimberly had an IQ of 84, which is well below average, and the maturity level of a ten-year-old.

During the days that followed the newcomers spent a lot of time talking with Bobby Poyson. He and Anderson were old acquaintances. Anderson confided that he was trying to get to Chicago where he had connections with organised crime, and the three conspired to kill Leta, Robert and Roland in order to steal Roland’s pick-up truck, which they would use to drive to Illinois.

The first to be killed was going to be the adolescent Robert and Kimberly was the bait. Slightly younger than Robert, but sexually more experienced, she lured the teenager to a nearby travel trailer with an offer of sex. It was an offer the boy could not refuse, but it was the biggest mistake he had ever made in his short life. When he reached the trailer, it was murder and not sex that was on the agenda. Anderson was waiting for him.

The boy was no match for the grown man who attacked him, but he fought desperately. Using a bread knife, Anderson cut the lad’s throat from ear to ear, and still Robert struggled. Poyson arrived on the scene and while Anderson held Robert down, drove the bread knife into the boy’s ear so hard that it emerged through his nose. Robert somehow did not die, continuing to fight tenaciously until Poyson finally ended his life by crushing his skull with a cinder block. The teenager had defended his life against his savagely brutal attackers for an astonishing 45 minutes, and it is impossible to imagine the intense pain and terror he was subjected to as he lost the battle to ward them off.

Back in their trailer home, Leta Kagen and Roland Wear had heard nothing of Robert’s dreadful murder and both of them went to sleep, unaware of the danger they were in.

Outside, the murderers cleaned themselves up and located a .22-calibre rifle belonging to Roland. However, they could not find any ammunition for the gun, so Bobby Poyson borrowed a couple of rounds from a girl in a nearby trailer. Then, they cut the phone lines to Leta’s home.

Using a lantern for light, the killers entered Leta’s trailer and Poyson shot her in the head, killing instantly the woman who had shown him so much kindness. Roland awoke and Poyson fired at him, shooting him in the mouth. The bullet did not kill Wear so, while Poyson clubbed him round the head with the rifle, Anderson bludgeoned him with the lantern.

Like the teenager Robert Delahunt, Roland Wear fought fiercely for his life. The struggle spilled out into the yard, where Anderson crushed the victim’s skull using the same cinder block with which Poyson had ended Robert’s life. The killings had taken almost five hours to carry out.

Roland’s last words were: ‘Bobby, stop. Bobby, don’t. I never did anything to hurt you.’

Their grisly task accomplished, the murderous trio, Poyson, Anderson and Lane, drove off on their journey to Chicago, leaving behind the corpses of three people who had provided hospitality and kindness. The bodies were found on 16 August by Leta’s former husband.

A few days later, on 23 August, Poyson was arrested at a homeless shelter in Evanston, Illinois, but now has a roof over his head in the form of a cell on Death Row. Both he and Anderson received the death sentence for their callous, barbaric crimes.

The juvenile seductress, Kimberly Lane, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. However, that was overturned on appeal and, in January 2002, she received a sentence of only eight years. See also ANDERSON, Frank W.

PRION, LEMUEL (ARIZONA # 59399), DOB 27.4.1962

On Saturday 24 October 1992, the arms of a 21-year-old female were discovered in a trash dumpster in downtown Tucson, severed below the shoulders and wrapped in plastic garbage bags. Their owner was identified through fingerprint comparison. The rest of the body has never been found.

Over the years, Lemuel Prion had boasted of taking a woman out into the desert, raping her, killing her and cutting her up. This eventually came to the attention of the Arizona authorities, who arrested him on 31 October 1997, while he was in prison in Utah.

During the investigation, he was also linked to another incident in Tucson in late 1992 in which he kidnapped a woman and took her to a secluded area, threatening her with a knife; charges of kidnapping and aggravated assault from that incident were joined for trial with the murder of the first victim.

For his butchery, Prion was sentenced to death on 20 August 1999.

R

RABY, CHARLES DOUGLAS (TEXAS # 999109), DOB 22.3.1970

A sandblaster by profession, Charles Raby was convicted for the attempted rape and the murder of 72-year-old Edna Mae Franklin. A grandmother of one of his friends, she was attacked by her killer after he broke into her home. He stripped off her underwear, attempted to rape his victim and then stabbed her fifteen times before slitting her throat. He ransacked the house and fled, confessing to police after he was arrested two days later.

RAMIREZ, DAVID MARTINEZ (ARIZONA # 39656), DOB 7.4.1957

During the early morning hours of Thursday 25 May 1989, David Ramirez, a parolee, murdered, in what can only be described as a bloodbath, Mary Gortarez and her fifteen-year-old daughter, Candice, in their Phoenix apartment. He stabbed Mary eighteen times in the neck, in the back, in the stomach and in her left eye. He stabbed Candice fifteen times in the neck area. Neither of the two women died instantly.

For half an hour, neighbours heard sounds of a violent struggle coming from the apartment and, when police entered it, they found blood smeared and spattered throughout every room. Ramirez also sexually assaulted Candice while she was close to death. The killer was arrested at the scene and sentenced to death on 18 December 1990.

RAMOS, ROBERT MORENO (TEXAS # 999062), DOB 23.5.1954

Good things come in little bundles, they say, but that certainly does not appear to be true in the case of Robert Moreno Ramos who, at five feet one inch tall, could never be described as riding tall in the saddle.

Bravely overcoming his remarkable lack of height, this 37-year-old Mexican battered his family to death in Progreso, Texas, on Friday 7 February 1992. Ramos’ wife, Letitia, aged 42, daughter Abigail, aged seven, and son, Jonathan, aged three, were all beaten with a blunt object and died of head injuries, their skulls smashed like eggshells. Their bodies were found more than a month later, interred beneath the bathroom floor of their home, after Letitia’s sister reported them as missing. Abigail’s hands had been bound and her mouth gagged prior to her death.

At first, Ramos told relatives that his family had died in an auto accident but, astonishingly, he did not seem to know where this had taken place. During questioning by police, he changed his story, telling his interrogators that he had found them dead after returning home from a day of job seeking. Inexplicably, he was unable to recall where, precisely, he had been seeking work. Eventually, however, he confessed to the murders, saying that afterwards he fled to Arkansas. The murder weapon was never recovered.

Bizarrely, Ramos had married another woman only three days after the slayings and had moved her into the home where the bodies were buried.

REEVES, REGINALD (TEXAS # 9991100), DOB 21.4.1974

From Red River County, Texas, factory worker Reginald Reeves was nineteen years old when he raped and strangled fourteen-year-old Jenny Lyn Weeks, a runaway from a group home in Paris, Texas. Weeks ran into her killer and his accomplice after fleeing the Willow Creek home with another girl. Following the murder, Reeves, weighing only 140 lbs and just five foot five inches tall, dumped his victim’s body in a vacant house on North Vine Street in Clarksville.

REEVES, WHITNEY LEE (TEXAS # 999363), DOB 21.8.1981

On Friday 20 August 1999, Whitney Reeves, with an accomplice, shot and killed a fourteen-year-old girl and her father using a 12-gauge shotgun. The double homicide occurred at the victim’s apartment in Beaumont. The apparent motive for the shooting was that the fourteen-year-old had testified at a grand hearing that had resulted in charges of aggravated sexual assault of a child against Reeves.

RHOADES, RICK ALLAN (TEXAS # 999049), DOB 10.5.1964

A menial worker hailing from Iosco County, Michigan, Rick Rhoades, with blue eyes and blond hair, was convicted of the Friday 13 September 1991 killings of two brothers, Bradley Dean Allen, aged 33, and Charles Ray Allen, aged 32. The killings happened the day after he had been released from prison on parole. Rhoades crept into the house while the brothers slept and he attacked them with a steel bar and a butchery knife. He then took money from the wallet of Charles Allen before fleeing the scene.

The murderous Rhoades was arrested and charged on 12 October 1991, after being caught trying to burgle a school.

RICHARDSON, MIGUEL A. (TEXAS # 999867), DOB 7.7.1954

After eating a last meal of five chicken breasts and 20 wings without skin, carrot cake, white coconut cake and cheesecake with cherry topping, this sweet-toothed killer was executed on 26 May 2000 without making a final statement.

Miguel Richardson, a labourer from Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, was convicted for the Saturday 31 March 1979 murder and robbery of John G. Ebbert, one of two security guards shot to death at a Holiday Inn in San Antonio.

Ebbert and the second victim were investigating a complaint from a motel guest when they found Richardson attempting to break into a room. As they were escorting the would-be burglar to the front office, a gun in Richardson’s waistband fell to the floor. He grabbed it and held the guards at gunpoint. Then he handcuffed one of the guards, took their money, and shot them both to death.

Richardson was arrested on 19 June 1980 in Denver, Colorado, on a charge of aggravated assault and later extradited to Texas. Three women, identified as prostitutes, were with Richardson at the time of the killings and they testified against him at his trial.

RING, TIMOTHY (ARIZONA # 131722), DOB 29.10.1964

Timothy Ring, a former Department of Corrections officer, and his accomplices, James Greenham, also a former prison officer, and William Ferguson, a former City of Phoenix police officer, plotted to rob an armoured car. They executed their plan on Monday 28 November 1994. The target was a Wells Fargo truck, which was driven by John Magoch. David Moss was the messenger (also known as a ‘hopper’), who made the deliveries and pick-ups from the various businesses throughout the day.

At 1.27 p.m., about halfway through their route, they stopped outside the Dillards store at Arrowhead Mall and Moss went in. Magoch, a smoker, opened the driver’s door of the vehicle to have a cigarette. Ring, an expert marksman, shot Magoch from the parking lot across the street. Greenham rushed over, got into the armoured truck and drove it away, while his accomplices followed in separate vehicles. The trio met at a church, where they transferred the money into Ring’s car.

At about 6 p.m. that same day, a churchgoer noticed that the Wells Fargo truck looked like the vehicle he had seen in a television report earlier that day, and called 911. When police arrived and entered the van, they found Magoch, who was dead from a fatal gunshot wound to the head.

A Wells Fargo investigator confirmed that the van had contained a total of $833,798 in cash.

Ring was arrested on 16 February 1995, following a tip-off. When the police executed a search warrant on his residence, they found, inside a cabinet in the garage, a green duffel bag, with a name tag for Timothy S. Ring. Inside the bag, they found ‘bundles of US currency’ totalling $271,681. Ring was tried separately from his co-defendants, and was found guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit armed robbery, armed robbery, first-degree burglary and theft.

He was sentenced to death by Judge Gregory H. Martin on 29 October 1997.

RIVERS, WARREN DALE (TEXAS # 999928), DOB 31.3.1967

A 20-year-old black construction worker, Warren Rivers, was convicted of the May 1987 sexual assault, stabbing and strangling of eleven-year-old Carl Nance Jr in Houston, Texas. The lad lived in an abandoned house, and it was there that he was sexually assaulted, beaten and sexually mutilated with a broomstick. He was then stabbed four times in the back and chest. Rivers was arrested after people told police that they had seen him with the boy before the killing.

Rivers had also bragged regularly about having killed someone and leaving them for dead. He later confessed to the crime.

ROANNE JR, JAMES H. (VIRGINIA # 206197)

Indicted under a 1989 federal statute, James H. Roanne Jr, Cory Johnson and Richard Tipton were accused of eleven drug-related murders committed between January and February 1992. The State argued that the three men had been importing cocaine from New York to Richmond, where they used it to manufacture ‘crack’.

Their victims included people who owed them money as well as innocent bystanders.

The three men were tried together in 1993. Johnson was convicted of seven murders, Tipton of six, and Roanne of three. Johnson received seven death sentences; Tipton, three; Roanne, one death sentence and two of life imprisonment. The three men are currently incarcerated in the Powhattan Correctional Centre, State Farm, Virginia.

RODGERS, JEREMIAH (FLORIDA # 123101), DOB 19.4.1977

‘I’m positive, a good listener. I am outgoing, generous, respectful, friendly, caring and humorous.’ This is how necrophiliac Jeremiah Martel Rodgers describes himself on the Internet.

This killer awaits his fate in Florida’s electric chair for shooting a man in what only can be described as a ‘thrill killing’, in Santa Rosa County, Florida. Weighing 174 lbs, with brown eyes and brown hair, he has his birth sign, the Ram’s horns, tattooed on his head.

Rodgers loosed off a volley of shots at an unidentified address but missed his intended target. He later returned to the scene, shot a man dead and committed sexual acts on the corpse.

Rodgers, who advertises for pen friends on the Internet, describes his eye colour as blue – they are brown – and enjoys reading, crosswords, playing volleyball, chess, and ‘learning new things’. You bet he does!

RODRIGUEZ, TORIBIO R. (ARIZONA # 102936), DOB 3.3.1967

During the commission of a burglary on Thursday 25 August 1988, Toribio Rodriguez attacked Dawn Dearing in her Tucson apartment. He stabbed the woman several times and slashed her throat using knives from a butcher block. When a handle broke, he rammed it, along with a curling iron, into Dawn’s vagina. This monster left the body with the curling iron plugged in and turned on. Mrs Dearing was not found until more than a day later.

Rodriguez remained at large for five years following the repugnant crime but was arrested in 1993 when the police, after receiving a CRIME-88 tip, checked his fingerprints against those on the blade of the broken knife.

ROGOVICH, PETE C. (ARIZONA # 114642), DOB 21.2.1966

‘SPREE KILLER’

On Sunday 15 March 1992, Pete Rogovich robbed a Super Stop food mart and shot and killed Terkerberhan Manna, who was the clerk. He later went to the Palo Verde trailer park, where he encountered Phyllis Mancuso and shot and killed her. Following that, he entered two more homes, shooting and killing Marie Pendergast and Rebecca Carreon.

Fleeing on foot to a local restaurant, he stole a vehicle from an employee at gunpoint and then held up a Circle K store. Rogovich was arrested after a police chase.

The State charged this madman with four counts of murder, two of aggravated assault, two counts of armed robbery, and one count of unlawful flight from a law enforcement vehicle. He was sentenced to death for three of the murders and to a total of 74 years for the other offences. When all is said and done, however, one death sentence is all he will need.

ROLLING, DANNY (FLORIDA # 521178), DOB 26.5.1954

The Gainesville murders began on Sunday 26 August 1990, with the discovery of the bodies of Christina Powell, aged seventeen, and eighteen-year-old Sonja Larson in their town-house apartment. The corpses had been arranged in positions that would cause maximum shock to whoever was unfortunate enough to find them. There was no evidence of sexual interference, but the victims had suffered extensive bodily mutilation.

The next day, another student, eighteen-year-old Christina Hoyt, was found murdered in her apartment about a mile and a half from the scene of the previous killings. Again, there was the peculiar posing of the body, added to which the teenager had been decapitated and her head placed on a shelf. Apart from the gross mutilations, this victim had also been raped.

Then, on the following day, a second double murder was discovered. Twenty-three-year-olds Tracy Paules and Manuel ‘Manny’ Taboada, who was an athletic 200 lb ex-bouncer, were found knifed to death in their room at the Gatorwood Apartments, a popular complex between the two crime sites.

Danny Rolling, who had a long criminal record, was soon arrested following a supermarket robbery. It was learned that he was sought over the attempted murder of his father, a retired police officer. But even further information came in.

One of the first leads that pointed to him was a VICAP printout from the FBI. Nine murders that had been committed nationally were listed as similar to the Gainesville cases, and among them was a triple murder in Rolling’s home town, Shreveport, Louisiana.

Julie Grissom, aged twenty-four, a petite model who modelled clothes at her local shopping mall, her father Tom Grissom and her eight-year-old nephew, Sean Grissom, were found in their home in November 1989, slain in a fashion similar to the Gainesville cases. The killer used duct tape to bind Julie, raped her and assaulted her with a knife, left bite marks and saliva on her breast, then carefully cleansed her vaginal area and posed her body, removed the tape, cleaned the crime scene of prints and blood and later left her just-washed blouse in the washing machine.

While the initial evidence showed that the killer was blood type B and a secretor – like Danny Rolling – later DNA testing failed to conclusively link him to this crime, and to date, although he is still considered the prime suspect, he has not been charged. However, he was sentenced to death for the Gainesville homicides. As his sentence was passed, he told the judge, ‘There are some things you can’t run from, this being one of them.’

ROSCHA, FELIX (TEXAS 999291), DOB 7.5.1976

A wetback (illegal immigrant from Mexico), the five-foot-one-inch-tall Roscha had a mental age of four years when, aged twenty-two, he was convicted of the murder of Rafael Funtes, a security guard at the La Camellia apartment complex, Houston, Texas.

Roscha and a friend, Virgilio Maldonado, approached Funtes and attempted to steal his gun. In the ensuing struggle, Roscha shot the guard twice in the face. The offence stemmed from a previous confrontation between Roscha and Funtes a week earlier. Maldonado confessed to the crime and told police that he had stolen the dead man’s .38-calibre pistol and pager. Reports indicate that both men had been involved in a second capital murder case, but Roscha denies committing this offence.

RUIZ, ROLAND (TEXAS # 999145), DOB 4.7.1972

From humble beginnings, and of previous good character with no prior convictions, Roland Ruiz Jr is the smallest of small-time triggermen. Caught up in that most lethal of get-rich-quick schemes, the insurance killing, his first day on the job proved to be his last.

Ruiz jumped in at the deep end on 14 July 1992 when 29-year-old Theresa Rodriguez was killed by a single shot to her head. The weapon was a .357 Magnum, so a second shot was never going to be required and, despite this being only his first day in his new career, Ruiz charged a preposterous $2,000 for his services.

Quite predictably, the motive for this appalling act was life insurance to the tune of $400,000, and the beneficiary was to have been the victim’s husband, Michael, whose brother, Mark Rodriguez, had hired the novice hitman.

Showing steely resolve, the aspiring assassin cracked quickly under questioning, confessing all in no less than three statements to the police.

RUNNING-EAGLE, SEAN BERNARD (ARIZONA # 71847), DOB 7.12.1968

Around 6 a.m. on Sunday 6 December 1987, Sean Bernard Running-Eagle, Corey Tilden and Orva Antone were burgling Robert Davis’ residence in Phoenix. A neighbour, 72-year-old Herbert Williams, came outside and told the men to leave or he would call the police, and this act of bravado cost him his life.

Running-Eagle began to tease the elderly man with a large hunting knife. Mrs Jacqueline Williams then came outside to help her husband and she started shouting for help. Tilden hit her over the head with a flashlight, then the men forced the couple into their home, where they brutally beat and stabbed the Williamses to death.

Running-Eagle and Tilden were both sentenced to be executed, while Antone entered into a plea-bargain in return for a charge of second-degree burglary.