Scenes of Prison
31. Graduating to Death Row
T wo of the most sensational crimes in recent Nebraska history were committed by former inmates from LCC whom I knew. Both of the crimes involved multiple killings. Both inmates had committed earlier crimes for which they had completed their prison sentences, and both had served these sentences at LCC in units where I worked, so I got to know them, and they got to know me. When they finished their sentences, they had been released, but they were not finished with their crimes.
Here are their stories.
The first story involves a young man named John who lived in a general population unit where I worked. John was personable, handsome, tall, and athletic. He attracted others to him. He was the life of the party. He was an excellent guitar player, and he was quite musical. He could strum a chord sequence with a steady rhythm until it became hypnotic, and he could riff a melody line with embellishments that made his playing quite thrilling. He played familiar songs, and he would softly sing the lyrics to these songs as he played them on his guitar which invited others to add their voices and sing along. Whenever John sat in a day area, picked up his guitar and began to play and sing, a group inevitably formed, and soon everyone was singing. It was a party, and everyone wanted to be there, even the staff.
When John left LCC, we had no doubts that he would make it. He had all the skills he would need. He went back to the rural part of Nebraska from which he had come and picked up life where he had left it off. I never saw John again, but I did see his picture in the newspaper, and the rest of John’s story that I recount here are details I learned from reading our local newspaper as these events were reported.
As had occurred in the prison, John attracted a group of companions outside the prison, too. They all spent time together and did the kinds of things young adults do in rural Nebraska to entertain themselves.
One of these companions attracted to John’s group was a young man who used the name Bill, but Bill had a secret. The young man Bill was actually a young woman named Tina. Why Tina wanted to be Bill, no one was ever able to learn. She never had a chance to offer an explanation.
Bill/Tina was very attentive to a young woman who also joined the group which had formed around John. Bill/Tina began to court her. He/she proposed marriage, and for a time, they were engaged. They were a couple, and the young woman never suspected that Bill/Tina was actually another woman.
One day, John’s suspicions about Bill/Tina took action. He forcefully stripped off Bill/Tina’s clothing and exposed her actual gender. The lurid details need not be repeated, but by the time the ordeal was over, he had raped Tina, and when she was able to do so, Tina went to the police. She was hoping to be protected from further attack, and she reported the rape. The police were initially confused. Wasn’t Tina actually Bill, a young man? They did not immediately act.
In the days that followed, John began to worry that he would be arrested for the crime he had committed and sent back to prison, so John made a plan.
If he killed Bill/Tina, he would destroy the evidence of his crime. There would be no one alive to testify against him. But as he carried out his plan, it also became necessary to kill Bill/Tina’s brother. So he killed two people.
His crimes were exposed. There was a sensational trial, and John was indeed on his way back to prison, but this time, there would be no future release date. John was sentenced to death, and that's where he is right now as I write this, on Death Row waiting for his execution.
A second inmate I knew was named Jose. Jose was about average in size and appearance, and he lived in E Unit, a general population unit where I worked. He was Hispanic, and English was his second language. Although he lived in my unit, I didn’t get to know him. He didn’t stop and chat. He limited his associations to other Hispanics, and when I did speak to him, he seemed mildly amused by my conversation. It was as though he knew something that I didn’t know . . . a secret, and once the secret was revealed, I would see him in a whole new light. Looking back on it with the advantage of knowing what actually happened after he left our prison, I think I know what was on his mind.
I think Jose had made a couple of decisions while he was living in our Unit. First, he decided to embrace evil, to go to the Darkside as Darth Vader would urge. Second, he decided to commit a spectacularly evil crime that would make him famous. It was a look I saw in his face as he bided his time on our Unit waiting for his release from prison and for his big chance to act. A look, or perhaps just a feeling that nagged me. I recall not having a good feeling about releasing him. Something just wasn’t right.
One day, Jose did complete his sentence, and we did release him. The rest of the story of Jose that I present here are details I learned from reading our local newspaper and especially from the reports of the testimony at his trial.
When Jose completed his prison sentence, he went to a central Nebraska town and assembled a gang. They were all Hispanics, and they would all become bank robbers, famous bank robbers he told them, just like the famous gangs from the Old West. This was what he told his new friends, but this wasn’t what he actually intended to do.
Part of the plans he shared with his companions included recruiting an outsider to the gang. This person would not really fit in, he would also not be told why the others wanted to include him. He may not even have been told there were plans for any criminal activity. Jose selected a local fellow, a young man who was not Hispanic, and he was included. The young man did not have many friends, and he enjoyed the attention and the acceptance he felt from his new friends. But Jose had plans for him that he kept to himself.
Including an outsider in a group of criminals isn’t unusual. You might refer to him as the fall guy. He’s the one who drives the get-away car without ever being told that a crime has been committed. And if the crime is discovered and arrests are made, the others will have coordinated stories that this outsider was the one who actually planned the whole thing. These others will also be perfectly willing to testify against him in court in exchange for leniency in their own cases. The fall guy becomes the stooge who takes the blame for the crime.
Great friends!
This is what Jose told his gang, but even this wasn’t true. Jose recruited this outsider as a test. The gang would kill this outsider! That was Jose’s plan, and Jose would watch it, and he would see who could actually do the killing and who could not. It was real killers, proven killers who Jose wanted at his side, because killing, lots of killing, was what Jose actually planned to do.
The gang murdered this outsider. It was a group activity, and Jose watched and approved. His gang had passed their first big test.
One day soon after this killing, Jose and his gang entered a bank. The gang thought they were there to rob it, and that's what they began to do. But Jose was there to kill. To kill on camera, to end lives, over and over where everyone could watch. On TV, in court, on national news outlets. And that’s what he did. Deliberately, purposefully, and systematically, he killed one bank patron or staff member after another.
Jose had no purpose to be served by a successful escape. It was fame that he sought. It was the power of evil that he wanted to show to the world. It was the ability to destroy life that he commanded and wanted the world to witness, and so they were all caught. Their crime was indeed a sensation, and there was a sensational trial. They were all convicted, and as I write this, Jose and one of his fellow bank robbers occupy cells on Nebraska’s Death Row waiting to be executed.
To be fair, both John and Jose would insist today that they have now changed and are not the same people they were when they committed these terrible crimes. They have found God, or religion, and we should not think badly of them. They’ve been forgiven, so maybe we should forgive them, too.
These sentiments may be genuine, or they may be contrived and manipulative in an effort to avoid their death sentences. Which of these is true, only they know.
Discussion
- John and Jose reported a religious conversion while residing on Nebraska’s Death Row. Do you think they would have had a similar conversion if they had been sentenced to life without parole?
Next |