u/Leather_Focus_6535

A few years ago, I did some research about the Native American conflicts on the Mexican American border, the inspiration behind Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. From what I’ve read, the Apaches and Comanches mercilessly raided much of northern and central Mexico during the early and mid 19th century. They were mostly unimpeded, as the Comanches and Apaches outmatched the skeletal Mexican army. In their attacks, they killed thousands of peasants, abducted hundreds of others, displaced thousands of the remaining survivors, and stole tens of thousands of livestock.

Apaches and Comanches war bands were even bold enough to assault capital cities like Chihuahua in broad daylight. It got to the point that the Comanche and Apache raids left much of the border regions depopulated. As the Mexican army was in shambles, the government turned to loose gangs of bounty hunters and mercenaries to quell the depredations.

The bounty hunters and mercenaries were a motley and diverse bunch. Their ranks mostly consisted of Anglo-American settlers, displaced Woodland Native Americans from what is now the Eastern Coast states (such as the Seminoles, Shawnee, and Delaware), traditional enemies of the Apaches (such as the Pimas and the Tarahumara), and a few escaped slaves. Mexican officials commissioned them to kill and scalp any Apaches they could get their hands on. Including women and children, who had bounties of $50 and $25 US silver dollars per scalp respectively.

In retaliation to the Mexican government sanctioned genocide against them, the Apaches escalated their raids to the point of wiping out entire small towns and table turned would be scalp hunters left and right. Many scalp hunters decided that it was safer to prey upon peaceful Native American bands and Mexican peasants (ironically the very people they were hired to protect in the first place) and pass them off as Apache scalps rather than going after the Apaches themselves.

With the crippling financial costs and incessant cheating and backstabbing, the Mexican government abandoned the scalp hunting program. Though due to decentralization and lack of communication, some states were slower to drop the scalp hunters than others. Comanche and Apache raids still continued on until the 1870s and 1890s respectively. The Comanche raids into Mexico were only ended by the Americans forcing them into reservations.

In the later half of the 19th century, the Apaches virtually fought a two-front war against the Americans in the North and the Mexicans to the South, until pressure from both countries overwhelmed them. Although most of the major Apache bands surrendered to American and Mexican forces in the 1880s and 90s, some isolated individuals held out until as late as the 1910s-30s.

As a quick question, how much of a historical aberration is Mexico’s scalphunting program against the Apaches? Have there been other instances of states that used similar bounty hunting models as their primary means of suppressing rebellions? If so, what are other similar examples of this phenomenon happening?  

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Besides witches, what were the sorts of mythological creatures and entities that predominated the folklores of the Puritans of 17th century New England and the Scotch-Irish of the 18th century Appalachian mountains? Did these settler communities have any entities in their folk tales and legends unique to them? If so, how did they differ then their European counterparts?

Keep in mind, this isn't a question about the geopolitics surrounding the Gaza War, and I'll greatly appreciate if any responses here were kept as naturally toned as possible. In other words, would it be alright if we kept discussions such as if Israel is committing genocide in against Palestinians or if Hamas and other Palestinian insurgents are human shield wielding terrorists out for Jewish extermination out of this thread, and reserve them for other posts and subreddits specifically catered to such questions?

Anyways, Wikipedia claims that over 4,000 Hamas operatives and 2,000 members of other Palestinian armed groups participated in the Oct 7th incursions. Under the far reaching assumption that this is an answerable question, what is most feasible percentage of those ~6,000 fighters that might be still alive after three years of the Gaza War?

I've heard extremely controversial figures from Israel and the United States that approximately 70% of Hamas' entire fighting strength was destroyed by the IDF invasion. If the Institute for the Study of War's reporting is also to be believed, Hamas was also apparently reduced to a collective of cells held together by sticks and glue, and its remnants depended on using allied Palestinian armed groups to take the brunt of the fighting.

Assuming that such figures can be trusted, could it be safe to presume that Oct 7th also suffered similar casualties in the following Gaza War?

For some context into my question, I'm a hobbyist researcher who is currently conducting a personal research project in American death penalty cases. The case that I'm inquiring about here is that of David Esco Welch, who was initially sentenced to death by the state of California for a 1986 mass shooting that killed six people inside an Oakland home. The slain victims consisted of his teenage ex-girlfriend, two of her brothers and her toddler daughter, and a mother and toddler aged son pair of house guests.

Although I currently cannot find any sources announcing a sentence vacating, Welch has disappeared from CDCR's condemned prisoners roster. He also seems completely missing from CDCR records as a whole. From my searches in the CDCR inmate search database, there is a prisoner by the name of David Welch of a relatively similar age with a parole suitability hearing of September 2029. But that David Welch's admission date is listed as Aug 28, 2003, is interned from Sacramento county instead of Alameda, and has the middle name of "Carol" instead of "Esco", and thus they might be entirely different individuals.

If he were among the many other Alameda County's former death row inmates (like Ernest Dykes, Curtis Ervin, and Mark Schmeck) released under the direction of then Alameda County district attorney Pamela Price, I would think that the parole of a prisoner that killed two toddlers and four other people would receive some considerable media coverage, and there is currently no sources mentioning that at all. Indeed, the last article I was able to find of Welch on google searches was a 2021 Mercery News article about Bay Area mass shootings, which claimed that he was still on death row.

The Death Penalty Information Center's census database claims that he died on death row, but he isn't among the 201 deceased death row inmates listed on the Condemned Inmates Who Have Died Since 1978 list on CDCR's website. To repeat myself a bit here, I've also have yet to find any outlets announcing his passing.

What transpired of him after his disappearance from CDCR's records? I'm currently at a complete dead end with researching Welch's whereabouts, and would greatly appreciate any help.

Sources on Welch:

1.https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ca-supreme-court/1705414.html

2.https://www.upi.com/Archives/1986/12/09/The-massacre-of-six-people-including-two-children-was/9233534488400/

3.https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Mass-murderer-David-Moochie-Welch-s-death-6342985.php

In 2006, William Dickerson's girlfriend and another man allegedly engaged in a filmed sexual encounter. According to the prosecutorial narrative, Dickerson believed the affair partner to be his childhood friend, 29 year old Gerard Roper. At gunpoint, Dickerson confronted and demanded money from Roper at another friend’s residence and then pistol whipped and abducted him.

Reportedly over the course of 36 hours, Dickerson and two accomplices ripped teeth out of Roper’s mouth, sodomized him with a broomstick and gun, burned his scrotum, beat him with a vase and mirror, repeatedly slashed and cut his skin, and strangled him. According to court documents, Roper slowly succumbed to a combination of 200 external lacerations and dozens of internal blunt trauma injuries to his head, legs, hands, and rectum. Dickerson and his accomplices then abandoned Roper’s body in a vacant townhouse, and it was discovered hours later by a woman surveying the property.

During the torture, Dickerson called his girlfriend, and she recorded him and Roper discussing the details of the sexual assaults to her. Other acquaintances reported that Dickerson confessed to Roper’s murder to them. One of the accomplices also testified that Dickerson forced his involvement by threatening to cut out his unborn child from his pregnant partner’s womb.

After three years of proceedings, Dickerson was sentenced to death by the state of South Carolina. Per South Carolina Department of Corrections' records, Dickerson currently remains on death row.

Sources:

1.https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/sc-supreme-court/1581793.html

2.https://www.live5news.com/story/10322671/jury-hands-down-death-sentence-in-dickerson-trial/

3.https://www.wistv.com/story/5326005/prosecutor-says-he-will-seek-death-penalty-in-charleston-county-slaying/

4.https://deathsentences.wp.drake.edu/death-sentences/2009-2/south-carolina-2009/

5.https://www.live5news.com/story/15602559/jury-hands-down-death-sentence-in-dickerson-trial/

This is a roster of all death penalty cases in Wyoming after the 1972 Furman v. Georgia United States Supreme Court ruling that induced a nationwide moratorium on capital punishment. Between 1974 and 2004, the state of Wyoming sentenced a total of 12 inmates to death. Although the state of Wyoming still theoretically retains the death penalty as of writing, it has only carried out a single execution (of Mark Hopkinson in 1992) after the 1970s, and currently lacks any prisoners under a death sentence.

As a warning, many of my write ups contain graphic descriptions of torture and sexual violence, and thus please read at your own risk. With that out of the way, here is my list of Wyoming's death penalty cases:

The sole execution carried out by the state of Wyoming:

Mark Hopkinson (condemned in 1979, dispute, executed by lethal injection in 2004): In 1977, one of Hopkinson's accomplices tossed a bomb into the home of an attorney, 67 year old Vincent Vehar, he was feuding with over water rights under his orders. The attack killed Vehar, his wife, 51 year old Beverely, and their son, 18 year old John. Other attacks relating to water rights feuds involved him and an accomplice beating a rival man with a hammer. To prevent him from testifying against him in the Vehar family murder trials, Hopkinson arranged the abduction of a former accomplice, 21 year old Jeffrey Green, in Iowa a year later. Hopkinson's other accomplices burned Green’s eyes out and other parts of his body 140 times with a cigarette lighter, and shot him to death. Prior to his own murder at the hands of Hopkinson's group, Green was suspected of taking part in the killing of a 15 year old girl. On death row, Hopkinson continued attempting to arrange the murders of witnesses against him and his other enemies, but were foiled by prison officials. According to court documents [Hopkinson v. State, 679 P. 2d 1008 - Wyo: Supreme Court 1984], one of those botched schemes involved the idea of a potential accomplice burning down a shopping center owned by Green’s older sister on Hopkinson’s behest.

The state of Wyoming's eleven other death penalty cases:

1. Billy Cloman (condemned in 1974, robbery, living): Cloman and his also (formerly) condemned accomplice Julian Turner reportedly walked to the residence of 57 year old Lloyd Witt, and asked him for a ride to a motel. Witt agreed to transport the pair to that location, and the group stopped at a bowling alley in the company of another man, 64 year old Ray Davis. After leaving the bowling alley, Coleman and Turner stabbed both Witt and Davis to death, and discarded their bodies in a snowdrift near an interstate highway. The pair were stopped by a police officer while driving Witt’s stolen truck that suspected them of possessing heroin. During the search, the officer noticed bloodstains inside the truck, and they arrested Cloman and Turner for answering “no” to a question asking if they were hunting. In 1977, the Wyoming Supreme Court vacated the death sentences of Cloman, Turner, and two other death row inmates after ruling the state of Wyoming’s death penalty statues unconstitutional, and resentenced all four to life terms. Per WDOC records, Cloman presently remains incarcerated.

2. Jerry Jenkins (condemned in 1974, sex, deceased): Jenkins and his also formerly condemned accomplice Ronald Kennedy laid their eyes on a duo of maternal half-sisters, 18 year old Rebecca Thompson and 11 year old Amy Burridge, at a grocery store. The pair discreetly slashed the tires of Thompson’s car as she and Burridge were inside shopping, and waited for them at the parking lot. As soon as the sisters approached their car, Jenkins and Kennedy offered assistance with changing the tires, and then abducted them at knifepoint. With Thompson and Burridge as their hostages, the pair drove to the Fremont Canyon Bridge. After gang-raping both sisters, the pair threw Thompson and Burridge off the 112 foot bridge. Burridge died of a spine injury on impact, and Thompson survived with broken leg and pelvis injuries and was rescued after waiving down an elderly couple for help. Police arrested Jenkins and Kennedy using descriptions Thompson gave of them and their car. A Casper Star-Tribune article published in 1974 also reported that Thompson described the brand of alcohol the pair kept inside their vehicle, and police canvassed bars and liquor stores in hopes of finding the sellers the pair purchased from. In 1977, the Wyoming Supreme Court removed Jenkins, Kennedy, and two other inmates from death row due to striking down the state of Wyoming’s death penalty statues, and resentenced them to life terms. Jenkins died incarcerated of a heart attack in 1998. On an unrelated note, Burridge’s murder has been the source of some extensive media coverage due to Thompson’s suicide by jumping off the Fremont Canyon Bridge in 1992.

3. Ronald Kennedy (condemned in 1974, sex, living): Kennedy was the second formerly condemned perpetrator of the Rebecca Thompson-Amy Burridge double kidnappings. As mentioned in his accomplice Jerry Jenkins’ entry, Kennedy participated in throwing Thompson and Burridge off the Fremont Canyon Bridge, which resulted in Burridge’s death from falling related impact injuries. In 1977, the Wyoming Supreme Court struck down death penalty statues that Kennedy was sentenced to death under, and he was resentenced to a life term. Per WDOC records, he presently remains incarcerated.

4. Julian Turner (condemned in 1974, robbery, unknown to me): Turner was the accomplice of the formerly condemned Billy Cloman, and he was also initially sentenced to death for the double fatal stabbings of Ray Davis and Lloyd Witt. As mentioned in Cloman’s entry, he was arrested while driving inside Witt’s stolen truck by a patrolman. In 1977, Turner was removed from death due to the Wyoming Supreme Court striking down the state of Wyoming’s death penalty statues, and he was resentenced to a life term. Due to his absence from WDOC records and my inability to find sources of him after 1978. If he is alive, Turner would currently be in his late seventies given that a Casper Star-Tribune article published in 1978 mentioned him to be 29 years old at the time.

5. Jose Flores (condemned in 1976, cop killing, deceased): While serving a four year term for grand larceny in the Wyoming State Penitentiary, Flores and another inmate ambushed a lone correctional officer, 43 year old Orville Ventling, in the recreation room. The pair stabbed Ventling at least 14 times with a broken pool cue and a knife sharpener. One other inmate that witnessed the attack rushed to other correctional officers for assistance, and they quickly subdued and arrested Flores and his accomplice. According to the Wyoming State Penitentiary warden, Ventling was involved in a “slight altercation” with his assailants hours before they murdered him. The Wyoming Supreme Court vacated Flores’ death sentence in 1977 due to the courts prosecuting him before determining if he was cognitively competent, and he was resentenced to a life term a year later. In 2014, Flores died of undisclosed causes while incarcerated.

6. Roy Engberg (condemned in 1982, robbery, deceased(?)): In 1964, while living in Missouri, Engberg held up a tavern and stole $235. As he was fleeing in a car with a woman and another man, Engberg shot at the occupants of a car parked next to them at a traffic light seemingly over a remark about his female driver [State v. Engberg, 376 SW 2d 150 - Mo: Supreme Court, 2nd Div. 1964]. The gunfire attracted the attention of a retired police officer working as a burglary alarm owner, 31 year old George Wilber. Wilber attempted to engage in a shootout with Engberg, but was shot dead by him. Before he was killed, Wilber used his police issued radio to call for police reinforcements. Despite the capture of his two companions, Engberg escaped the scene on feet. FBI agents found Engberg hiding in a Colorado apartment, and they arrested him after a gunfight that wounded a bystander.

For Wilber’s murder, Engberg received a life sentence. He broke off out of the Missouri State Penitentiary while serving his life sentence in 1978, and found refuge in Wyoming with a wife and children for three years. Reportedly under served financial stress, Engberg ambushed a brother and sister pair of Wells Fargo armored car security guards as they were delivering a deposit to a grocery store. During a gunfight, Engberg shot and killed the male guard, 36 year old Vernon Rogers, and then snatched a money bag containing $4,200 in cash and $9,200 in checks from Rogers’ sister. Rogers’ sister attempted to return fire, but he fled the scene before she could discharge her gun.

Engberg fled to Nevada with his wife and children, but his wife reported him to local police for domestic violence and implicated him as Rogers’ murderer in her complaints. Officers answering his wife’s calls were attacked by Engberg, and they arrested and injured him after a struggle. The responding officers also found .38 caliber Armenius ammunition in his hotel room and his abandoned trailer home, which was the same type of ammunition that struck and killed Rogers [Engberg v. Wyoming, 265 F. 3d 1109 - Court of Appeals, 10th Circuit 2001]. Initially sentenced to death by the state of Wyoming for Rogers’ murder, the Wyoming Supreme Court overturned his death sentence in 1991 due to it ruling that the jury “improperly overvalued” its consideration of aggravating factors, and resentenced him to a life without parole term. Although he is absent from WDOC records and I cannot find any sources referencing him after 2003, a Casper Star-Tribune article published in 1982 mentioned him to be 46 years old at the time. Given that age, Engberg would currently be in his early nineties if still alive, and thus my assumptions are that he is deceased.

7. Kevin Osborn (condemned in 1982, sex/robbery, living): After escaping from an Alabama prison while incarcerated for armed robbery, Osburn and his three companions fled to Wyoming. The group first used a female member to pose as a prostitute, and she seduced and manipulated a mark, 44 year old Jimmy O'Briant, into letting her inside a motel room he stayed. She unlocked the room’s door for Osborn and their other accomplices, and they bound O'Briant’s hands and feet before kicking him to death. According to court records [Osborn v. State, 672 P. 2d 777 - Wyo: Supreme Court 1983], Osborn and his accomplices stole $58, a pair of sunglasses, and boots from O'Briant.

Later that same day, the group found 60 year old Audrey Ditmars and her son stranded on a highway. After they lured Ditmars and her son into their U-Haul truck with the promise of driving them to Little America, Osburn and his accomplices took them both hostage at knifepoint. Osburn and his accomplices bound and gagged Ditmars’ son with torn pieces of clothing, and stabbed him more than fifteen times. As they left him on a grass field tied up and with severe stab wounds, Osburn and his group gang-raped Ditmars and strangled her to death. Ditmars’ son survived by freeing himself from his restraints and walked to a gas station for help. With descriptions of them and their U-Haul truck given by Ditmars’ son, police arrested Osburn and his cohorts a day later. In 1989, the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming vacated Osborn’s death sentence over reported ineffectual consul, and he was resentenced to three life terms. Per WDOC records, Osborn presently remains incarcerated.

8. Donald Benson (condemned in 1987, sex, deceased): Benson abducted a coworker, 20 year old Carrie Dailey, from their Bureau of Land Management workplace and took her to an unspecified “remote area near Cheyenne.” He then raped, beat, and strangled her to death. According to a Jackson Hole Guide article published in 1986, Dailey’s body was discovered by a group of hiking teenagers next to a creek. Another 1986 Jackson Hole Guide reported that Benson had previous convictions of aggravated assault in relation to assaulting a female hitchhiker in Montana and burglary involving him stealing a purse from a woman’s car, and was a person of interest in other murders and sexual assaults near Cheyenne due to him roughly matching eyewitness descriptions. In 1987, Benson hung himself in his cell on death row.

9. Martin Olsen (condemned in 1997, robbery, living): During a bar hold up, Olsen shot and killed the bartender, 35 year old Emma McCoid, and two patrons, 47 year old Art Taylor and 26 year old Kyle Baumstarck, after forcing them to lie on the floor. He then stole an undisclosed amount of money from the victims, and spent $50 of the stolen money on purchasing gas, soda, and snacks from a nearby gas station. Olsen confessed to the killings in a phone converstation with his mother, and he was arrested shortly after she reported him to the police. Police recovered stolen money from his truck, which Olsen identified during a recorded interview with investigators [Olsen v. State, 67 P. 3d 536 - Wyo: Supreme Court 2003]. In 2003, the Wyoming Supreme Court vacated Olsen’s death sentence while upholding his murder convictions due to reported procedural errors, and he was resentenced to a life without parole term. Per WDOC records, Olsen presently remains incarcerated.

10. James Harlow (condemned in 1998, cop killing, living): In 1985, a then 16 year old Harlow raped and stabbed his classmate, 16 year old Tammy Shoopman, to death and left her body on their high school’s school grounds. According to a Casper Star-Tribune article published in 1987, Harlow also stabbed an 18 year old John Doe and a 14 year old Jane Doe later that same day and was arrested. Harlow was additionally charged with rape pertaining to sexually assaulting the Jane Doe and aggravated armed robbery in relation to robbing the John Doe of $80. He was reportedly seen with blood covered hands and wearing bloodstained pants by his classmates around the approximate time of Shoopman’s murder. For slaying Shoopman, Harlow received three consecutive life sentences, and was further sentenced to 65 to 75 year terms pertaining to the robberies, rape, and attempted murders of the John Doe and Jane Doe.

Twelve years later, while incarcerated in the Wyoming State Penitentiary for those offenses, Harlow conspired with two other inmates to escape from prison. The trio stormed the prison’s shift commander's office while armed with shivs, and fatally stabbed a correctional officer, 27 year old Wayne Martinez, inside. They then hijacked a maintenance truck, but were forced to surrender after police reinforcements opened fire on them. Initially condemned for Martinez’s murder, the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming vacated Harlow’s death sentence in 2008 over the failure of Harlow’s defense to question jurors and the purported withholding of files pertaining to inmate prosecution witnesses, and he was resentenced to another life term on retrial. Although Harlow is absent from WDOC records, a 2025 Cowboy State Daily article reported he is currently incarcerated in an unspecified out of state facility.

11. Dale Eaton (condemned in 2004, sex, living): Eaton abducted a motorist, 18 year old Lisa Kimmell, that picked him up hitchhiking in 1988. He reportedly held Kimmell captive for several days on his property and repeatedly raped her. Eaton then fractured Kimmell’s skull with an unknown blunt instrument, stabbed her chest multiple times, and tossed her body into the North Platte River. At the time of her kidnapping and murder, Kimmell was traveling alone to Montana from Colorado, and she intended to stop in Wyoming to pick up her boyfriend. When she failed to arrive at her boyfriend’s residence, Kimmel was reported missing by her family, and her body was found in the North Platte River eight days after her disappearance. Kimmell’s murder was left as a highly publicized cold case until DNA testing in 2002 implicated Eaton, and a police search of Eaton’s property discovered her buried car.

Investigators believed Eaton to be a serial killer, and he was a person of interest in several murders of young women in Great Basin areas of Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, and Nevada. Eaton was also federally incarcerated for attempting to kidnap a couple with an illegally possessed knife while indicted for Kimmell’s murder, and he had a long history of petty theft convictions. In 2014, Eaton’s death sentence was overturned by the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming over purportedly ineffectual consul, and he was resentenced to a life without parole term in 2021. By the time of his sentence vacating, Eaton was the sole inmate on Wyoming’s death row. Per WDOC records, Eaton presently remains incarcerated.

https://preview.redd.it/jq18ttp2hg8h1.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5df2d613bb0b445070bbcd1c5976c59dc928112e

For some context, this artwork was concept made for the cancelled The Hero from Otherwhere movie. The Hero from Otherwhere was a planned live action/animation Disney film that was originally intended to be released in 1977. It was designed to be an adaptation of author Jay H. Williams' novel of the same name.

According to the Disney Wiki (which is my primary source for this post), the premise pertained to two feuding boys that were teleported together from their school to the planet of Gwyliath. In order to save the "dying planet" through unspecified means, the two protagonists needed to set their differences aside. The writers planned to have live action actors play in a traditionally animated medium somewhat akin to the later Who Framed Roger Rabbit or the animated scenes of Mary Poppins. Little else is publicly known about the project's creative aspects, but a few pieces of released concept art depict the two protagonists riding gigantic lizards, sailing on a sail boat under a storm, and confronting a giant wolf towering over them. Some other characters sketched in the concept art include a "grasshopper-like creature", a "dragon-like creature", and a "beetle-like creature."

Due to the reportedly high costs of combining the live action and traditionally animated segments, Disney executives cancelled the film. None of the few sources available to me mentioned how far The Hero from Otherwhere was in production before it was canned. As there is no mentioned of any animation completed, footage filmed, or casting choices, the cancellation seemed to have happened when the Hero from Otherwhere was in its earliest planned stages.

The artist behind the concept art shared in this post is Mel Shaw. Shaw worked for Walt Disney during the 1940s, but left the company due to enlisting in the Army Signals Corps during WW2. He was rehired by the Disney Company in the 1970s, and continued working for them until his retirement in the early 2000s. Disney films Shaw was involved in include Bambi, the Rescuers, the Fox and the Hound, the Black Cauldron, Beauty and the Beast, Tarzan, Lion King, and Brother Bear. In 2012, Shaw passed away from heart failure, and he was 97 years old at the time of his death.

While watching horror movies on Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming services, I noticed that many of them seemed to be what I'm going to loosely call "mindscrew horror". Essentially, the narrative is trying to make it as unclear as possible on whatever the protagonist is dealing with a paranormal entity or simply a manifestation of their own personal issues.

The majority of these movies have their protagonists be either a single mother with one child or a childless married woman to emphasize their loneliness. This is far from an established rule, and others also used small groups of female college students and middle aged men as their main characters. One particular film, The Wretched, about a forest witch with reality wrapping powers I saw on Netflix focused on a teenage boy.

With such works, the female protagonist will likely be introduced by moving into a new residence with her husband or child, and then live in isolation from her surroundings. If her companion is a husband, he will likely be extremely absent and distracted with work. The ones that featured children depicted the child character as very withdrawn from their mother, prone to emotional outbursts and other troubled behavior, and are almost always interacting with the strange activity.

Over the course of the film, she'll encounter phenomena, like hearing voices in walls, being jumped scared by an apparition screaming in her face before disappearing, seeing a vision of herself covered with blood before it all vanishes in the flash of a second, and objects moving around the room behind her back, etc.. To tease the viewers and keep them with the focal "driving mystery", many misdirecting clues on whatever the main character is facing a real supernatural enemy or her own mental health problems are thrown back and forth.

For the paranormal angle, the protagonist usually learns about the tragic fates of her home's past occupants (who just so happen to perfectly match the descriptions of the apparitions she encounters) from brief conversations with her exposition dumping neighbors and library documents she finds. However, the film will also often include a twist at the end that the protagonist's husband or child has actually died long ago, and she is in such denial that she hallucinates their presence.

Whatever direction the narrative sticks with in the end really depends on the movie. There were some that went with the "it's all in their head" approach, a few more had the paranormal force being real after all, and a couple others which simply left it up to the audiences' interpretation.

One specific "it's in the head example" example that comes to mind is The Beldham, which I watched on Paramount a week or two ago. The Beldham is about a single mother with a baby living with her parents. During the film, the single mother believes herself to be haunted by a shapeshifting demon-witch that wants to steal her infant. At the end, it is revealed that the single mother is actually an elderly women cared for by her daughter, and the film's events were purely delirium induced by dementia.

In contrast, the previously mentioned Wretched movie fully embraced the paranormal direction. In The Wretched, the forest witch uses her reality wrapping powers to gaslight and disorient the teenage protagonist, and he finds that she also has the ability to control and erase her targets' memories at the the end. The Wretched's climatic big twist is the protagonist had a younger brother accompanying him that the audience was previously unaware of, and the witch kidnapped the younger brother and erased the protagonist's and the entire community at large's memory of him.

A few other examples I can't really recall the names of at the moment include a divorced mother with her daughter and their pet rabbit, another with a Sudanese refugee couple in England, and a third had Amanda Seyfried moving into some remote house with her husband. 

The films with small friend groups take a slightly different direction, but usually hit the same beats. More specifically, their settings focus more on remote outdoor environments rather then the protagonist(s)' residence, but the isolationist atmosphere is relatively the same. Mindscrew horrors with friend groups almost always feature a central protagonist with a troubled history they are actively trying to suppress, and they tend to take the brunt of the strange phenomena (such as seeing fleeting figures in the surrounding forests, hearing disembodied voices, the forest constantly rearranging itself, and having foreboding dreams of doom while sleeping). Their refusal to acknowledge those issues is often fueling tensions in the friend group beforehand, and them reacting to activity that the others aren't seeing further tears rifts into the group throughout the film.

Although the small friends group narrative are initially careful to keep the supernatural force hidden as possibly hallucinations from the central protagonist's inner-demons, they often slowly emerge as real during the film's midpoint. The longer the friend group find themselves lost in the forest, the more active and predatory the supernatural force becomes. One by one, the friend group is picked off and killed by the unseen entity, and the central protagonist is left as the sole survivor. The essential example of this type of film is the Ritual.

What are your thoughts and feelings towards such writing styles and filming techniques, if any? What aspects makes them work or not in your personal opinion?

A mugshot of Bryan on death row

In June of 2000, Bryan was pulled over near a gas station by a patrolman, 32 year old Wayne Leon, for his car’s altered temporary license tag. At the time, Bryan was on parole for a robbery conviction, and had a warrant for his arrest over drug, theft, and parole violation related charges. Fearing arrest, Bryan climbed out of his car with a .45 caliber pistol in hand, and shot the approaching Leon in the face. Leon was killed instantly in the process. 

A bystanding motorist witnessed the shooting and chased Bryan as he tried to flee in his car. Despite Bryan repeatedly shooting at them, the undeterred motorist continued chasing him until he crashed his car into a parking lot. Bryan then escaped the scene on foot and bribed a group of men to drive him to a safe location. He tried to cover his tracks by discarding the pistol used to shoot Leon in a dumpster and replacing it with another handgun borrowed from his father. During their search, police traced the car's license tag to Bryan and obtained a description of a second car he borrowed and drove from his ex-wife. Only hours after the shooting, police also learned that Bryan and his girlfriend rented a hotel room with a paid stranger's help, and they arrested him while he was driving the car he borrowed from his ex-wife. 

He was indicted for Leon’s murder, and sentenced to death for it in November of 2000 by the state of Ohio. On death row, Bryan was found to have been a serial rapist. In 2007 and 2013, DNA testing implicated him in a series of abductions and rapes of women that occurred throughout the 1990s. The last documented rape took place only weeks before Leon’s murder. According to a 2014 Cleveland.com article, Bryan ironically impersonated a police officer to kidnap one of the victims. Another victim testified that he abducted her at knifepoint while she was walking home from an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and sexually assaulted her next to an abandoned house. She further recounted that Bryan threatened her life if she didn’t cooperate with him and if she reported him to the police. The victim also shared with the court that she was grieving the death of her son when she was abducted and raped.

As far as I'm aware, he was arrested at least once for a rape accusation before the Leon murder. However, the accuser refused to press charges after his arrest, and reportedly claimed that she only wanted payment for oral sex acts they performed together. Due to the accuser's lack of cooperation, prosecutors were forced to only charge Bryan for him illegally possessing a firearm he carried during his arrest. 

Bryan was charged with the rapes of four women in 2007, and he received an additional 48 year prison sentence. On appeal, the sentence was reduced to 22 years imprisonment by the Ohio Supreme Court after it ruled that the court wrongly used outdated statutes to convict him. He was also charged in 2014 with the rape of the above mentioned woman he kidnapped at knifepoint. During the proceedings, Bryan represented himself, and used arguments questioning the woman’s alleged criminal history and attacking the DNA evidence. In 2017, he was sentenced to 50 years imprisonment for the sexual assault. 

Beyond his murder and sexual misconduct convictions, Bryan was a career criminal and drug dealer according to court documents. As a free man, he sustained himself by robbing other drug dealers. A Plain Dealer article published in 2000 reported that one of his previous robbery convictions involved the abduction of a motorist while carjacking them.

Although his death sentence was overturned in 2015 by a district judge over the dismissal of a black juror, it was reinstated in 2016 by the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that the judge overreached their interpretation. Bryan’s death warrant was signed by the Ohio Supreme Court for a 2022 date, though Governor Mike DeWine twice delayed the execution to 2026 and 2028. 

As of writing, Bryan remains on Ohio’s death row, and is theoretically awaiting a November 15, 2028 execution date. 

Sources: 

1.https://www.odmp.org/officer/15414-police-officer-wayne-a-leon 

2.https://www.cleveland.com/rape-kits/2014/02/jury_xxxxx_death_row_inmate_qu.html 

3.https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=14004134389100871873&q=Quisi+Bryan+wayne+leon&hl=en&as_sdt=6,45 

4.https://fox8.com/news/gov-dewine-once-again-postpones-execution-for-man-who-killed-cleveland-police-officer/ 

5.https://www.cleveland19.com/story/24815590/trial/ 

6.https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/pdf_viewer/pdf_viewer.aspx?pdf=812840.pdf&subdirectory=2001-0253%5CDocketItems&source=DL_Clerk

7.https://scholar.google.com/scholar\_case?case=7010931756965866959&q=Quisi+Bryan+rape&hl=en&as\_sdt=6,45

A mugshot of Kirkland on death row

In 1987, Kirkland raped, strangled, and beat 27 year old Leola Douglas unconscious during on argument inside his residence and set her on fire. The sources available to me are quite inconsistent of the exact nature of Douglas and Kirkland's relationship, and they vary on them dating to her dating his uncle. For Douglas’ killing, Kirkland received a 10 to 25 year prison term for voluntary manslaughter, and was discharged from custody in 2003.

As a freeman, Kirkland abducted, raped, and murdered at least four women and teenage girls, 45 year old Mary Newton, 25 year old Kimya Rolison, 14 year old Casonya Crawford, and 13 year old Esme Kenney, between 2006 and 2009. Each victim was repeatedly stabbed or strangled with rope and cloth, and Kirkland burned their bodies to destroy any potential forensic evidence against him. He used various locations as disposal sites, and court documents reported that Newton's remains were found on a street corner, Crawford was discovered dead in a forest, and Rolison was left on a hill.

Photographs of Mary Newton (bottom right), Casonya Crawford (bottom left), Esme Kenney (top left), and Kimya Rolison (top right)

His last victim, Kenney, was reported missing by her parents after she failed to return home from a jog. Police searching for her found Kirkland sleeping 100 yards away from Kenney’s burnt remains, and he was arrested while carrying her iPod and watch in his pockets. In custody, Kirkland confessed to Rolison, Crawford, and Newton's murders. If his accounts were to believed, killed Rolison and Crawford after paying them for their sexual services, and strangled Newton to death after a consensual sexual encounter. Kirkland also reported that he picked up those victims from bridges, bus stops, and a road.

During his killing spree, Kirkland was arrested and prosecuted for a laundry list of unrelated offenses. Some of the other charges he faced involved him soliciting his girlfriend’s 13 year old daughter for sexual favors, repeatedly stabbing an acquaintance while burglarizing their home, threatening his infant son’s life while holding him hostage, fighting other tenants in a half way house, attacking another girlfriend with a knife, and a rape accusation he was later acquitted of. For publicly undisclosed reasons, a reverend’s family also filed a restraining order against Kirkland. Kirkland received a sex offender status for the attempted molestation of his girlfriend's daughter and was incarcerated for a year. He also served 117 days in prison on an unlawful restrain conviction for the threats against his son's life.

]After a year of proceedings, Kirkland was sentenced to death by the state of Ohio for Crawford and Kenny's murders. He additionally received 70 years to life terms for the killings of Newton and Rolison. Although the Ohio Supreme Court vacated Kirkland’s death sentence in 2016 over sentencing procedural changes, he was condemned again in a 2018 retrial. Per ODRC records, he currently remains on death row.

Sources:

1.https://mynbc15.com/news/nation-world/convicted-serial-killer-anthony-kirkland-returns-to-court

2.https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/pdf_viewer/pdf_viewer.aspx?pdf=665676.pdf&subdirectory=2010-0854%5CDocketItems&source=DL_Clerk

3.https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=4560979019009870698&q=%22Kimya+Rolison%22+%22Kirkland%22&hl=en&as_sdt=6,45

4.https://murderpedia.org/male.K/k/kirkland-anthony.htm

5.https://www.courtnewsohio.gov/cases/2020/SCO/0818/181265.asp

Here is another list of death penalty cases in Ohio I've made since my second post of Ohio death penalty cases last week. Again, it isn't a comprehensive overview of every Ohio death penalty case, and it rather pointedly excludes executions and what the Death Penalty Information Center considers to be "exonerations." This list is instead another sample sized collection of 24 entries I've written so far for my personal death penalty research project. Since last week, I've written a total of 53 entries for Ohio, and I'm planning to complete more after this post is published.

Like the first post, many of the 20 cases listed here involve extreme sexual violence (including against child victims), and some of the gory details are discussed in depth. Please read at your own risk.:

1. Dallas Stuckey (condemned in 1976, dispute, living): Stuckey lived with a married teenage girl, her husband, and another man. Their neighbor’s daughter, 8 year old Karen Kollar, reportedly informed the teenage girl’s husband that his wife skipped a probation hearing, and the girl, Stuckey, and their housemate abducted her in apparent retribution. The trio left Kollar tied up and gagged inside an abandoned brewery for several hours. After the group returned, they threw Kollar off the brewery’s roof, and stoned her to death with bricks and rocks on top of train tracks she landed on. Neighbors nearby recounted hearing a girl’s screams, but they reported an inability to call emergency services due to the lack of phone infrastructure. In 1978, Stuckey was resentenced to a 20 year to life term due to the United States Supreme Court striking down Ohio’s capital punishment statues. Although Stuckey presently remains incarcerated, he is eligible and/or slated for parole in March 2029 per Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (ODRC) records.

2. Milton Bryant (condemned in 1978, sex, deceased): Bryant kidnapped 13 year old Tonia Robinson as she was walking alone to a corner store. After raping and stabbing her, Bryant bound Robinson’s neck to the rear of his car, and he dragged for 900 feet. A pair of hunters who witnessed the dragging attempted to confront him with their guns, and Bryant escaped from them by driving away after throwing Robinson’s body into his car. He discarded Robinson’s body off a roadside, and was arrested after causing a multiple vehicle accident on a highway while trying trying to flee from police. Prior to Robinson’s murder, Bryant had convictions for gross sexual imposition of a 14 year old girl and aggravated menacing of a 16 year old girl. In 1978, Bryant was removed from death row due to a United States Supreme Court ruling striking down Ohio’s capital punishment statues, and was resentenced to a life term. In 1998, he died incarcerated from causes reportedly related to a heart attack.

3. David Steffen (condemned in 1983, sex, living): Working as a door to door salesman, Steffen persuaded 19 year old Karen Range into allowing him entry into her parent’s home under the pretenses of helping her with cleaning fluid. He then struck a rag into her mouth to silence any screaming, slashed her throat, and stomped on her to death. After the killing, Steffen tossed his bloodied clothes into a bush, and called a police station from a nearby phone booth to falsely report himself as a victim of robbery. Steffen further spoke with officers at the police station, who were extremely skeptical of his story. Only a few hours after he left the station, Range’s parents discovered her body in their kitchen, and they called the same police station. Investigators immediately suspected Steffen, and he confessed to the killing after they question him in his residence a day later. Due to the presence of semen on Range’s body, Steffen was condemned under the state of Ohio’s capital punishment statues pertaining to rape. Although he freely maintained guilt to the murder itself, Steffen staunchly denied sexually assaulting Range despite his admitted intention to do so due to his inability to form an erection during the attack. DNA testing conducted in 2008 verified Steffen’s version of events, and instead implicated the semen to a morgue worker. An investigation into the worker found he was a necrophilic who performed sex acts on at least a hundred female corpses, including the bodies of two other murdered women, interned at the morgue he worked. In 2013, Steffen’s death sentence was vacated by the Ohio First District Court of Appeals due to the DNA revelations, and he agreed to a life without parole term in exchange for surrendering his appeals in 2016. Per ODRC records, Steffen presently remains incarcerated.

4. Terry Coffman (condemned in 1984, robbery, deceased): Over a debt pertaining to a tool related transaction, Coffman and the also condemned Danny Hooks lured a salesman, 39 year old Donald Danes, out of his residence, and slashed his throat inside a van parked on the driveway. The pair then stormed into the Danes family home, and tied up Donald’s wife, 39 year old Karen, and son, 15 year old Rodney, at knifepoint. Both Karen and Rodney were repeatedly beaten with crowbars before Coffman and Hooks cut their throats and strangled them to death with electrical cords. Only Donald and Karen’s 5 year old daughter, who was found hidden in a closet, was spared by Coffman’s urging if his confession to police interviewing him is to be believed. Coffman and Hooks netted a total of $300 and three firearms from the residence. According to a 1984 News Journal article, Coffman was previously convicted for a 1975 armed robbery. In 1985, he succumbed to a heart attack on death row.

5. Willie Jester (condemned in 1985, robbery/cop killing, living): After walking into a AmeriTrust bank, Jester approached a policeman, 31 year old Benjamin Grair, on security guard duty. As Grair was speaking on a telephone, Jester shot him in the chest, and then held the tellers at gunpoint. He fled with $3,000 in hand and carjacked a motorist to escape the scene. A day later, Jester was arrested after a Towel Tower security guard recognized his description, and investigators recovered the stolen money from his possession. In 1991, then governor Richard Celeste commuted Jester’s death sentence to a life without parole term. Per ODRC records, he presently remains incarcerated.

6. John Stumpf (condemned in 1985, robbery, living): Although they initially planned on robing a gas station, Stumpf, his accomplice, and their getaway driver decided to target the isolated home of 54 year old Mary Stout and her husband instead due to opportunistic convenience. After they broke into the residence, Stumpf and his accomplice held the couple at gunpoint while ransacking their rooms for valuables. They then repeatedly beat and shot both Stout and her husband multiple times, killing Stout in the process. Stout’s husband survived with two gunshot wounds to his head, which left him comatose for three weeks and permanently paralyzed on the right side of his body. Near the timeframe of Stout’s murder, Stumpf and his accomplices also ambushed a motorist they drove past on a highway, and shot them in the head. The motorist survived the shooting, and Stumpf’s accomplice was charged for felonious assault as the triggerman. After the getaway driver was arrested for unsuccessfully shooting at a pair of gas station clerks that confronted him for stealing gas, he implicated both Stumpf and his accomplice as the perpetrators of Stout’s murder, which lead to their arrests in Texas. Despite admitting to shooting Stout’s husband, Stumpf deflected blame on Stout’s shooting to his accomplice against Stout’s husband identifying him as the assailant who shot her. Initially scheduled for execution in 2017, Stumpf’s execution date was repeatedly delayed due to alleged drug shortages. Per ODRC records, Stumpf remains on death row, and is currently awaiting a tentative August 18, 2027 execution date.

7. Danny Hooks (condemned in 1985, robbery, deceased): Hooks was the accomplice to the also condemned Terry Coffman. As previously mentioned in Coffman’s entry, Hooks participated in the fatal stabbings, beatings, and strangulations of couple Donald and Karen Danes and their teenage son Rodney while burglarizing their home. According to a News Journal article published in 1984, Hooks had a prior conviction for armed robbery under the state of Florida’s jurisdiction. In 2004, he died of undisclosed health issues on death row.

8. Billy Slagle (condemned in 1988, sex/robbery, deceased): Slagle broke into the home of a neighbor, 40 year old Mari Pope, while she was babysitting a brother and sister pair of children. According to the children, they overheard him confronting and demanding Pope to lie on her stomach at knifepoint. They further recounted that Slagle was enraged by Pope praying and pleas to find her cats. He then attempted to rape Pope and stabbed her at least seventeen times with a pair of scissors. The children fled to the safety of another neighbor’s residence after seeing Slagle mounting Pope, and the neighbor called emergency services. Responding officers found Slagle hiding in Pope’s closet while covered with blood, and arrested him without incident [Slagle v. Bagley, 457 F. 3d 501 - Court of Appeals, 6th Circuit 2006]. Although scheduled for execution in 2013, Slagle hung himself in his death watch cell three days before it could occur.

9. Warren Spivey (condemned in 1989, sex/robbery, deceased): During a break in of a home, Spivey held the resident, 53 year old Veda Vesper, at knifepoint and attempted to rape her. He then repeatedly stabbed and beat her to death. Spivey stole several pieces of Vesper’s jewelry, fled the scene in her car, and was arrested several hours later by police. According to an Akron Beacon Journal published in 2017, Spivey was indicted for the unrelated sexual assault of a 19 year old Jane Doe at the time of Vesper’s murder. In 2020, he died of a heart attack on death row.

10. Angelo Fears (condemned in 1997, robbery, living): After Fears and his accomplice learned that a drug dealer purchased 28 ounces of cocaine that amounted to $21,000, they selected him as a target to rob. Under the pretenses of a cocaine transaction, Fears and his accomplice convinced the targeted drug dealer into letting them inside his apartment. To force the dealer’s compliance, Fears shot one of the dealer’s companions, 16 year old Antwuan Gilliam, in the head execution style. The pair then forced their target and the target’s second companion to hand over the 28 ounces of cocaine, $2,000 in cash, and several rings and bracelets. Fears and his accomplice fled the scene in their van, and they were both identified by many eyewitnesses to investigators at the scene [State v. Fears, 86 Ohio St.3d 329, 1999-Ohio-111]. Police arrested Fears’ accomplice in possession of the handgun used in Gilliam’s shooting hours later, and ballistic testing linked the bullet lodged inside Gilliam’s skull to the firearm. Although scheduled for execution in 2019, the Ohio Supreme Court overturned Fears’ death sentence before it could occur due to prosecutors and Fears’ defense agreeing to resentence him to a life without parole term. Per ODRC records, he presently remains incarcerated.

11. Alva Campbell (condemned in 1998, robbery, deceased): In 1972, Campbell held up a tavern, shot and killed the bartender, 24 year old William Dovalosky, and snatched $500. Although sentenced to a life term for Dovalosky’s murder, Campbell was granted parole in 1992. Five years after his release from prison, Campbell was indicted for another armed robbery charge, which he received a bullet grazing wound to his head. During the proceedings, Campbell feigned “hysterical paralysis”, and was taken to a courthouse on a wheelchair. At the courthouse, he escaped by surprising and overpowering a deputy, and fled with their stolen gun. Using the stolen firearm, he carjacked a motorist, 18 year old Charles Dials, in a nearby Kmart parking lot. Campball held Dials hostage for several hours, and then shot him twice in the head execution style. After Dials’ murder, Campbell hijacked the vehicle of a female motorist, quickly abandoned her vehicle, and was captured by police pursuing him in a foot chase. Initially scheduled for execution in 2017, it was called off due to the execution team’s inability to find a vein, and he died of cancer and lung disease related causes in 2018 on death row.

12. James Hanna (condemned in 1998, dispute, living): In 1977, Hanna stabbed a clerk, 18 year old Edward Tucker, to death during a grocery store robbery. He also stabbed Tucker’s manager over 37 times, but the manager survived their injuries. For Tucker’s murder, Hanna received a life term. Some 21 years after Tucker’s murder, Hanna bludgeoned his cellmate of four days, 43 year old Peter Copas, with a sock stuffed with a padlock while incarcerated at the Lebanon Correctional Institution. He then repeatedly stabbed Copas’ right eye with a sharped paintbrush and punctured his brain. Copas screamed for the assistance of correctional officers after he regained conscious, and was taken to the Corrections Medical Center for treatment. Despite neurosurgeons successfully removing the paintbrush, Copas’ condition rapidly deteriorated after the surgery, and he died of “extensive brain damage” three weeks after the attack. Due to Copas’ 8 to 20 year sentence for a “corruption of minors” related conviction, Hanna bragged of “making the maggot baby-raperkiller suffer before he croaked” in written letters. Sentenced to death for Copas’ murder, Hanna was initially scheduled for execution in 2019 before it was called due to purported drug shortages. Per ODRC records, Hanna currently remains on death row.

13. Ralph Lynch (condemned in 1999, sex, deceased): Lynch lured his neighbor, 6 year old Mary Love, inside his apartment on the pretenses of watching television together. He brought Love into his bedroom, and fondled and kissed her genitals. For her screaming against his unwanted touching, Lynch manually strangled Love unconscious, and drowned her in his bathtub. After the murder, he stuffed Love’s body inside a cardboard box, and abandoned it in a nearby forest. Due to his prior “contributing to the delinquency” conviction pertaining to exposing himself to a pair of underage girls, Lynch was the immediate person of interest to investigators, and he confessed to detectives him questioning while detained at a police station. One part of Lynch’s confession involved directions to Love’s body disposal site, which enabled police to find and recover Love’s decomposed remains a week later [State v. Lynch, 98 Ohio St. 3d 514 - Ohio: Supreme Court 2003]. In 2022, Lynch died of undisclosed causes on death row.

14. Nawaz Ahmed (condemned in 2001, familial disturbance, living): Ahmed confronted his estranged wife, 39 year old Lubaina Bhatti, inside a home where she was staying with her family while armed with a knife. He slashed the throats of Lubaina, her sister, 35 year old Ruhie Ahmed, their father, 78 year old Abdul, and Ruhie’s daughter, 2 year old Nasira, and fractured their skulls from beatings. Ruhie was supposed to meet her husband with Nasira in California a day after the murders, and the man reported his wife and daughter missing to the local sheriff’s department after they failed to arrive at their destination and answer his phone calls. A deputy responding to Ruhie’s husband’s report found all four bodies inside the residence’s basement and garage. Due to the discovery of an employee badge from Ahmed’s workplace barring his name next to three of the bodies, Ahmed was the immediate person of interest, and he was arrested while attempting to board a flight to his native Pakistan. DNA testing on blood found in the residence’s kitchen found it to be of Ahmed’s profile [State v. Ahmed, 103 Ohio St. 3d 27 - Ohio: Supreme Court 2004]. According to testimony from Lubania’s divorce attorney and Lubania and Ruhie’s surviving sister, Lubania repeatedly confided to them of suffering sexual misconduct at Ahmed’s hands. Per ODRC records, he currently remains on death row.

15. Grady Brinkley (condemned in 2002, domestic disturbance/robbery, living): Brinkley was initially arrested and charged for a robbery involving him punching the female victim, but was freed on bond paid for by his ex-girlfriend, 18 year old Shantae Smith, during the proceedings. Only a day after his bond was paid, Brinkley broke into Smith’s apartment, strangled her unconscious, and slashed her throat as she was incapacitated. He then stole Smith’s ATM card, and was recorded by security cameras unsuccessfully attempting to withdraw money from the card while wearing her jacket too small for him. Police arrested Brinkley at his mother’s residence in Illinois in possession of the stolen jacket, bloodstained shoes, and a bloodstained quilt. DNA testing on the bloodstained shoes and quilt linked the blood to Smith [State v. Brinkley, 105 Ohio St. 3d 231 - Ohio: Supreme Court 2005]. According to a 2002 Toledo Blade article, Brinkley was convicted of rape at the age of 16, and he served 12 years in prison for the offense. Per ODRC records, he currently remains on death row.

16. Jeronique Cunningham (condemned in 2002, robbery, living): Assisted by his also condemned maternal half-brother Cleveland Jackson, Cunningham walked into the home of a cocaine peddler to rob him. Inside the home was a total of eight people, which consisted of the dealer himself, the dealer’s girlfriend, her brother and her brother’s daughter, 3 year old Jayla Grant, a female friend of the dealer’s girlfriend, the dealer’s teenage nephew, and the teenage nephew’s two visiting friends (including 17 year old Leneshia Williams). At first, Cunningham and Jackson socialized with the targeted dealer and the home’s other occupants to lower their guard, and even watched television with them. The half-brothers then drew their firearms, lined the eight occupants against a wall at gunpoint, and searched the home for drugs and money. Enraged by the little amount of money given to them, Cunningham and Jackson repeatedly shot all eight of their hostages, killing Grant and Williams. The six survivors all suffered gunshot wounds to their heads, backs, arms, stomachs, and mouths, and one lost a left eye. Despite his gunshot wounds, the dealer dialed emergency services and identified Cunningham and Jacksons as the shooters. Police tracked the half brothers to a motel room three days later, and the pair surrendered without incident. Per ODRC records, Cunningham currently remains on death row, and is presently awaiting a tentative June 13, 2029 execution date.

17. Cleveland Jackson (condemned in 2002, robbery, living): Jackson is the maternal half brother and accomplice of the also condemned Jeronique Cunningham. As mentioned in Cunningham’s entry, Jackson participated in the fatal shooting of Leneshia Williams and Jayla Grant while robbing a drug dealer they were both acquainted with. Per ODRC records, Jackson currently remains condemned. On an unrelated side note, court documents [State v. Cunningham, 105 Ohio St. 3d 197 - Ohio: Supreme Court 2004] mentioned that Jackson and Cunningham’s shared mother stabbed Jackson’s father to death during an argument, and the brothers reportedly witnessed the killing.

18. Gregory McKnight (condemned in 2002, dispute, living): In 1992, a then 15 year old McKnight shot and killed a publicly unidentified man during a robbery. Due to his age, McKnight was tried and convicted as a juvenile for the killing, and discharged from custody in 1997. Only three years after his release, McKnight either lured or forcibly abducted an acquaintance, 20 year old Gregory Julious, from a home and shot him dead. McKnight dismembered Julious’ body, burned some of his remains, and buried them in his trailer’s root cellar and cistern. Julious was last seen in McKnight’s company by his girlfriend, and the woman reported that Julious’ belongings were still inside the home when she noticed him missing. She also reported that she called Julious’ pager for his whereabouts, and Julious and McKnight answered together with curt responses to her questions. A few months later, McKnight kidnapped his coworker, 20 year old Emily Murray, as they were leaving a shift from a restaurant together. He shot Murray in the head, and wrapped her body in a carpet. Due to the discovery of Murray’s car parked near McKnight’s trailer, police searched inside the trailer, and recovered Murray’s body from a living room and pieces of Julious’ remains wrapped in plastic from the cistern and root cellar [State v. McKnight, 107 Ohio St. 3d 101 - Ohio: Supreme Court 2005]. Although McKnight initially waived his appeals in 2015, the initially volunteered execution was cancelled due to his decision to resume pursuing further appeals. On death row, McKnight and his attorneys filled appeals accusing jurors of racial prejudice. Per ODRC records, he currently remains under a death sentence.

19. Robert Bethel (condemned in 2003, organized crime, living): Bethel was a South Side Mafia Crips hoodlum. Three other South Side Mafia Crips members shot and killed a homeowner, Rodney Cain (age unknown), during a burglary, and the gang feared that one of the participants, 18 year old James Reynolds, would testify against the other perpetrators. To silence him, Bethel and a teenage hoodlum lured Reynolds and Reynolds’ girlfriend, 14 year old Shannon Hawks, into a field belonging to the grandfather to a number of other gang-members. Both Reynolds and Hawks were shot dead, and their bodies were discovered a day later. During the investigation into the Reynold and Hawks double murders, Bethel’s girlfriend and other informants implicated Bethel to police with a videotaped confession, and he also confessed to the killings for an unsuccessful peal deal to avoid the death penalty [State v. Bethel, 192 NE 3d 470 - Ohio: Supreme Court 2022]. Per ODRC records, Bethel currently remains on death row.

20. Roland Davis (condemned in 2005, sex(?)/robbery, deceased): In 2000, while living in Ohio, Davis worked as a taxi cab driver. He was a frequent source of transportation for 86 year old Elizabeth Sheeler, and she often depended on him to assist with grocery store errands. After he learned that Sheeler lived alone and possessed large sums of money, Davis broke into her residence with a knife. During a struggle, he stabbed Sheeler’s neck and chest multiple times, and struck her head. Davis reportedly stole thousands of dollars from Sheller’s apartment, which he spent on a car and gift purchases for children of women he dated. Two days after the murder, a male acquaintance walked into Sheeler’s apartment to check on her, and called emergency services after noticing a pool of blood while peeking in her bedroom. Although Davis remained a few man for four years, he was arrested for the unrelated beating of a prostitute and his involvement in a theft and fencing scheme. His probation conduction for those offenses required him to file samples of his DNA, which was used by DNA testing conducted in 2004 to implicate him in Sheeler’s murder. Court documents [State v. Davis, 880 NE 2d 31 - Ohio: Supreme Court 2008] reported that despite Sheeler’s body being found undressed and oral swabs detecting the presence of semen, the evidence of rape was deemed too insufficient to charge Davis of her sexual assault. On death row, Davis was also linked to the 1990 murder of 42 year old Sharon Gill by DNA testing in 2020. Gill was stabbed 39 times by an assailant in her Florida home, and found dead by her teenage daughter. The state of Florida filled charges against Davis, but he died of undisclosed causes in 2023 on Ohio’s death row before any proceedings could take place.

21. Anthony Kirkland (condemned in 2010, sex, living): In 1987, Kirkland raped, strangled, and beat his girlfriend, 27 year old Leola Douglas, unconscious during on argument inside his residence and set her on fire. For Douglas’ killing, Kirkland received a 10 to 25 year prison term for voluntary manslaughter, and was discharged from custody in 2003. As a freeman, Kirkland abducted, raped, and murdered at least four women and teenage girls, 45 year old Mary Newton, 25 year old Kimya Rolison, 14 year old Casonya Crawford, and 13 year old Esme Kenney between 2006 and 2009. Each victim was repeatedly stabbed or strangled with rope and cloth, and Kirkland burned their bodies to destroy any potential forensic evidence against him. His last victim, Kenney, was reported missing by her parents after she failed to return home from job. Police searching for her found Kirkland sleeping 100 yards away from Kenney’s burnt remains, and he was arrested while carrying her iPod and watch in his pockets [State v. Kirkland, 157 NE 3d 716 - Ohio: Supreme Court 2020]. During his killing spree, Kirkland was arrested and prosecuted for a laundry list of unrelated offenses that involved him soliciting his girlfriend’s 13 year old daughter for sexual favors, repeatedly stabbing an acquaintance while burglarizing their home, threatening his infant son’s life while holding him hostage, fighting other tenants in a half way house, and a rape accusation he was later acquitted of. A reverend’s family also filed a restraining order against Kirkland for publicly undisclosed reasons. Although the Ohio Supreme Court vacated Kirkland’s death sentence in 2016 over sentencing procedural changes, he was condemned again in a 2018 retrial. Per ODRC records, he currently remains on death row.

22. James Mammone III (condemned in 2010, familial disturbance/domestic disturbance, living): As part of a scheduled visit, Mammone picked up his two children, 5 year old Macy and 3 year old James IV, from the residence of his ex-wife’s mother, 57 year old Margaret Eakin. While sitting in his car with Macy and James, Mammone engaged in a bitter texting argument with his ex-wife over the children’s future, which involved him making threats against the lives of their children and his own. He then slashed both Macy and James’ throats with a butcher knife. After killing his children, Mammone redirected his attention to Eakin, and he shot and bludgeoned her to death with a lamp post after breaking into her home. Mammone also drove to his ex-wife’s apartment, and attempted to burn down another man’s truck parked in the parking lot over his belief he was seeing her. However, the lighter in his hands disintegrated, and he was forced to leave the truck intact by his inability to find another lighter. Before departing, Mammone threw an object at his ex-wife’s window as she was watching from another next door apartment, and she reported him to the police. By his admission, Mammone further planned to forcibly sterilize his ex-wife by crushing her uterus with an axe handle, breaking her ankles, and cutting out her tongue, but wasn’t able to do so by his inability to find her. Responding officers arrested Mammone near his home, and they recovered Macy and James’ bodies, several knives (including a switchblade knife, pocket knife, and a bayonet), an axe handle with nails drilled into it, and the .32 calibre handgun used to shoot Eakin [Mammone v. Jenkins, 49 F. 4th 1026 - Court of Appeals, 6th Circuit 2022]. Hours before his capture, Mammone confessed to killing his children to his friend through a voice mail, and he wrote a letter to the Canton Repository claiming he murdered Macy and James to protect them his ex-wife’s family’s abuse while awaiting trial. Prior to the killings, Mammone’s ex-wife complained of domestic violence at his hands, and she citied such abuse for their divorce. Per ODRC records, he currently remains on death row.

23. Anthony Belton (condemned in 2012, robbery, living): Belton fatally shot a clerk, 34 year old Matthew Dugan, during a gas station hold up, and stole $600 in cash and prepaid phone cards. Security cameras recorded Belton shooting Dugan. He then spent some of stolen money on sneaker purchases or divided it up with his getaway driver. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, investigators picked up Belton’s name while canvasing around the area, and he was recognized in the security footage by a detective acquainted with him. Police arrested Belton, the getaway driver, and another man at his residence in possession of the gas station’s prepaid phone cards, the clothing worn in the shooting, and the gun hidden underneath a log in the backyard [State v. Belton, 149 Ohio St. 3d 165 - Ohio: Supreme Court 2016]. Belton also confessed to Dugan’s murder during questioning while insisting that it was an accident. In 2026, the Lucas County Common Pleas Court vacated Belton’s death sentence over claims of mental illness, and he was resentenced to life without parole. Per ODRC records, Belton presently remains incarcerated.

24. Shawn Grate (condemned in 2018, sex/robbery, living): Between 2006 and 2016, Grate murdered a minimum of five women, 43 year old Stacey Stanley, 31 year old Rebekah Leicy, 29 year old Elizabeth Griffin, 29 year old Candice Cunningham, and 23 year old Dana Lowery over money disputes and as acts of predations. Most of the victims were women he dated or were acquainted with him, and they were lured into houses that Grate squatted or lived in. Each victim was tied up, raped, and sodomized for several hours, and then stabbed and/or strangled to death with his hands. After killing them, Grate stored Cunningham and Leicy’s bodies in vacant homes he burned down, and left Lowery’s body in a forest. By Grate’s admission, he returned to Lowery’s body months after her murder, and set it on fire to further cover his tracks. Grate also occasionally appropriated possessions and valuables from his victims, such as $43 from Stanley’s purse and her car [State v. Grate, 172 NE 3d 8 - Ohio: Supreme Court 2020]. Police arrested Grate after an escaped Jane Doe reported her three day abduction, rape, and torture at his hands to them, and they discovered Stanley and Griffins’ bodies while searching the vacant house he stayed in. Investigators also recovered videos of Grate raping the Jane Doe and Stanley recorded on his cellphone. In custody, Grate confessed to all five murders, and directed investigators to Cunningham and Lowery’s body disposal sites. Leicy’s body was found a year before Grate’s capture, and she was assumed to have died from a drug overdose by authorities before Grate’s confession to murdering her. Prior to his killing spree, Grate was arrested on multiple occasions for non-fatally choking and assaulting women and teenage girls with knives, and had a number of burglary convictions. Although he was initially scheduled for execution in 2025, it was cancelled by further appeals. Per ODRC records, he currently remains on death row.