The transcript details the final words and actions of various individuals on death row. It includes statements from Wesley Allen Dodd, who expressed a desire to be executed due to his crimes against children, and Timothy McVeigh, who left a note quoting a poem. The text also mentions Ted Bundy's final words, Eileen Wuernos's haunting last statement, and Gary Gilmore's influence on Nike's tagline. The overarching theme is the varied perspectives on capital punishment and its application in the justice system.
1. Wesley Allen Dodd pleaded guilty to his crimes of taking the lives of three boys in 1989.
2. Dodd killed brothers William Neer, 10, and Cole Neer, 11, in a Vancouver park before strangling four-year-old Lee Iseli a month later.
3. In 1990, Dodd was sentenced to death and given the option of lethal injection or death by hanging, and he chose to be hanged for his crimes.
4. Dodd dropped all appeals, believing he had to die.
5. Dodd was hanged on January 5, 1993.
6. Timothy McVeigh took on the nickname "Oklahoma City Bomber" after setting off a bomb that killed 149 adults and 19 children at an Oklahoma City federal building.
7. McVeigh was sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001.
8. Robert Sullivan was convicted of murdering Donald Schmidt, an employee at the Howard Johnson restaurant where Sullivan used to work.
9. Sullivan was on death row for over 10 years and fought the death penalty with support from Pope John Paul II.
10. Sullivan was executed via electric chair on December 1, 1983.
11. Billy Wayne Coble was arrested for the murder of Robert and Zelda Vicha, his estranged wife's parents, and her brother, Bobby Vicha, in 1989.
12. Coble was executed via lethal injection on February 28, 2019.
13. Ted Bundy is one of the most notorious serial killers known to the world.
14. Bundy murdered more than 30 women during the 1970s.
15. Bundy was thrown in the electric chair on January 24, 1989.
16. Eileen Wuernos was a prolific criminal between 1989 and 1990.
17. Wuernos was arrested for the murder of seven middle-aged white men in central Florida.
18. Wuernos was executed via lethal injection on October 9, 2002.
19. Richard Ramirez terrorized California and was nicknamed the "Night Stalker" between 1984 and 1985.
20. Ramirez was sentenced to death for 13 murders, five attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults, and 13 burglaries.
21. Ramirez died in 2013, just before his execution.
22. John Wayne Gacy was responsible for the murders of over 33 young men and boys.
23. Gacy was executed via lethal injection on May 10, 1994.
24. John Spenkeling was a drifter who was charged and convicted of murdering a traveling companion.
25. Spenkeling was the first man to be placed on death row in Florida after the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.
26. Spenkeling was executed via electric chair on May 25, 1979.
27. Gary Gilmore was the first man to be executed following the Supreme Court decision allowing capital punishment to resume in the United States in 1976.
28. Gilmore was convicted of murdering a motel manager in Utah, which resulted in his death sentence.
29. Gilmore was executed via firing squad on January 17, 1977.