Rick Rhoades was executed by the State of Texas for a double murder committed thirty years ago. According to court documents Rick Rhoades would force his way into a home and would murder Charles Allen, 31, and Bradley Allen, 33. Rick Rhoades had just been released from jail when the murders took place. Rick Rhoades would be convicted and sentenced to death. Rick Rhoades would be executed on September 27 2021 by lethal injection
Rick Rhoades More News
A Texas inmate was executed Tuesday evening for fatally stabbing two Houston-area brothers during a robbery in their home more than 30 years ago.
Rick Rhoades, 57, was executed by lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was condemned for the September 1991 killings of Charles Allen, 31, and Bradley Allen, 33. The brothers were killed less than a day after Rhoades had been released on parole after serving a sentence for burglary.
Rhoades, strapped to the death chamber gurney, turned his head and looked briefly at relatives of his victims as they walked to a window in a witness area a few feet from him. Asked by the warden to make a final statement, he declined.
Then as the lethal dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital began flowing through needles in each of his arms, Rhoades took several deep breaths, gurgled twice and began snoring, each breath becoming less pronounced. Within about a minute, all movement stopped. He was pronounced dead at 6:29 p.m. CDT, 17 minutes after the lethal injection began.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to delay Rhoades’ execution over claims his constitutional right to due process was being violated because he was being prevented from pursuing allegations that some potential jurors at his trial might have been dismissed for racially discriminatory reasons.
“We hope the Allen family finds peace after nearly 30 years of waiting for justice for their loved ones,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, who attended the execution, said in a statement.
“The death penalty should be reserved for the worst of the worst, and a Harris County jury determined long ago that this defendant fits the bill. Let us honor the memory of the victims, Charles and Bradley Allen, and never forget that our focus has and always will be on the victims.”
Marley Allen Holt, Bradley Allen’s daughter who now lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., and who was born during Rhoades’ trial, said she attended Tuesday’s punishment because Rhoades watched her father die and “I wanted to watch him die.”
“It’s a weird feeling,” Kevin Allen, whose two brothers were slain, said after witnessing the execution. “I can’t really describe what it’s like. It’s the most solemn thing I think I’ve ever been part of, if that’s the word that’s even appropriate.”
In July, Rhoades’ attorneys had filed a federal lawsuit against state District Judge Ana Martinez in Houston over a request they had made that the judge order prosecutors to release information related to allegations some jurors were dismissed based on racial discrimination.
Martinez ruled she lacked jurisdiction to consider the request. The suit was dismissed earlier this month by a Houston federal judge, who also declined to stay the execution. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday upheld the suit’s dismissal and also declined to stay the execution. The appeals court in 2019 had previously denied a similar claim by Rhoades’ attorneys on allegations that two Black jurors were dismissed due to racial bias. Rhoades is white.
Rhoades’ attorneys had previously unsuccessfully argued in other appeals: that his constitutional rights were violated when childhood photos depicting Rhoades in normal, happy activities and designed to show he was nonviolent and would do well in prison were excluded during his trial’s punishment phase; that a state investigator gave false testimony at his trial over whether Rhoades could receive an unaccompanied furlough if sentenced to life in prison; and that “evolving standards of decency” prohibit executions as a punishment for murder.
“A 2020 Gallup poll on Americans’ attitudes regarding capital punishment shows that public support for the death penalty is at its lowest in a half-century, with opposition higher than any time since 1996,” David Dow and Jeffrey Newberry wrote in a court motion last month.
Rhoades had a long criminal history, including convictions for burglary and auto theft in Florida, Iowa and Texas, when he broke into Charles Allen’s house in the Houston suburb of Pasadena.
The home, located near where the siblings’ parents lived, had just been custom built for Charles Allen and he had invited his brother to temporarily live with him. The two brothers had recently gone through separate divorces.
Charles Allen, who played the piano and had dreams of a musical career, worked as a chemical operator at a local refinery. Bradley Allen worked as a freelance artist.
At trial, prosecutors told jurors the siblings were asleep when Rhoades broke into their home in the early morning hours and attacked Charles Allen as he was in his bed. Bradley Allen was killed when he came to his brother’s defense.
An arrest in the case wasn’t made until about a month later when Rhoades was caught burglarizing an elementary school. While in custody, Rhoades confessed to killing the brothers. But he claimed it was done in self-defense after exchanging words with Charles Allen as Rhoades took a walk at 2:30 a.m.
“I was tired of running. I wanted to tell what happened,” Rhoades said in his confession.
Bennie and Blade reed were two brothers from Indiana who went searching for beer on night that ended in murder. According to court documents sixteen year old Bennie Reed and his thirteen year old brother Blade Reed were in the search for alcohol that led them to an elderly neighbors home. The two brothers in the process of robbing the home would shoot and kill eighty four year old Richard Voland and attempted to murder the mans seventy seven year old wife. Bennie and Blade Reed would be arrested. Bennie Reed would ultimately be sentenced to sixty years and Blade Reed would receive a thirty year prison sentence. The teen killers would be featured in a documentary by Calamari Productions.
Bennie Reed 2023 Information
DOC Number
204028
First Name
BENNIE
Middle Name
Last Name
REED
Suffix
Date of Birth
12/0000
Gender
Male
Race
White
Facility/Location
Wabash Valley Level 3 Facility
Earliest Possible Release Date * *Offenders scheduled for release on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday are released on Monday. Offenders scheduled for release on a Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday are released on Thursday. Offenders whose release date falls on a Holiday are released on the first working day prior to the Holiday.
11/17/2037
Blade Reed 2023 Information
DOC Number
196682
First Name
BLADE
Middle Name
J
Last Name
REED
Suffix
Date of Birth
08/0000
Gender
Male
Race
White
Facility/Location
Branchville Correctional Facility
Earliest Possible Release Date * *Offenders scheduled for release on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday are released on Monday. Offenders scheduled for release on a Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday are released on Thursday. Offenders whose release date falls on a Holiday are released on the first working day prior to the Holiday.
03/05/2027
Bennie And Blade Reed More News
Police arrested two teenage brothers for the knife attack on a 77-year-old woman and the murder of her 84-year-old husband. Investigators believe the boys attacked Richard and Mary Voland in their Brown County home in November. The woman survived and gave police a description of the attackers.
The teens lived down the road from the couple they’re now charged with attacking. The 17-year-old, who was 16 at the time of the crime, is being held in the Brown County jail without bond. The even younger suspect, prosecutors say, will be charged in juvenile court.
He was quiet headed into court, but investigators say 17-year-old Bennie Reed admitted to attacking 84-year-old Richard Voland and his 77-year-old wife, Mary, in their rural Brown County home.
The crime paralyzed this community for nearly two months and sent gun permits soaring.
“The people of Brown County don’t have to be afraid anymore because these people have been caught,” said Jim Oliver, Brown County prosecutor.
Investigators say Reed painted a dark picture of the crime he says he committed with his younger brother. Court papers show the teens lived just down the street and rode their bikes to the Voland home that November night, toting a knife and a stolen gun, looking for alcohol.
They knocked on the door and asked to use the phone. Once inside, police say, Reed pulled a gun. That’s when investigators say Richard Voland fired his gun and hit Reed in the arm. Reed fired back, shooting Voland in the head, killing him.
Police say Mary Voland was afraid the gun was still loaded. Court documents show Reed told her, “Let’s find out,” and shot her in the stomach. Investigators say Reed’s brother also cut Mary across the neck with a knife. She survived the attack.
Reed admitted to police that after the crime, he rode his bike back home and went to bed. Then a few days later, he buried the murder weapon, shell casings and a sweatshirt in a creek near his house.
Investigators found a key piece of evidence at Reed’s home: a washcloth that matched the style of the Volands’. It was stained with Reed’s blood.
“The discovery of the washcloth really focused our case,” said Oliver.
Investigators also discovered Reed’s fingerprints in the Volands’ home, noticed two scars on Reed’s arm, which they say matched a gunshot wound, and the boys drew a map so police could find the murder weapon.
Prosecutors say they plan to use all of that evidence to put the teens behind bars. Bennie Reed faces 11 criminal counts and up to 105 years in prison. Prosecutors would not comment on the younger boy’s charges.
Justin Robinson was fifteen years old when he lured a 12 year old girl to his garage and murdered her. According to court documents Justin Robinson and the 12 year old girl Autumn Pasquale were familiar with each other. On the day of the murder Justin Robinson lured Autumn Pasquale to his garage where the 12 year old was beaten to death. Justin Robinson seventeen year old brother Dante Robinson would be arrested for helping his brother hide up the problem. This teen killer would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to seventeen years in prison with the first fourteen year old being mandatory
ust about everyone in New Jersey has heard about what happened to Autumn Pasquale, a spunky 12-year-old with a sprinkle of freckles and brilliant blonde hair.
They’ve heard how she climbed on her white BMX bike on a Saturday afternoon nearly 5 1/2 years ago, pedaled away from her High Street home and disappeared. Thousands in the small borough of Clayton and nearby towns searched backyards and fields, only to find her body two days later crumpled in a blue recycling container in front of a vacant home.
Less than 72 hours after Autumn was last seen, police announced the arrests of two teenage brothers, 15-year-old Justin and 17-year-old Dante Robinson. Prosecutors said the brothers lured Autumn to their home across town and killed her in a scheme to steal parts from her bike. In the waning days of 2012, the tragic story from this small corner of the state was bandied across the nation as a cautionary tale.
For the first time since 2013, when Justin Robinson was sentenced to 17 years in prison in her killing, both Robinson and his mother, Anita Saunders, have agreed to talk publicly about what happened the day Autumn died. Separately, they sat down with NJ Advance Media to tell their side of the story.
While Autumn’s family and many others believe the crime was simply a cold-blooded killing, Robinson insists the story reported for five years is a distortion of what really happened.
Justin Robinson sits at a table in a small meeting room at Garden State Youth Correctional Facility in Chesterfield, Burlington County, where he’s been for the past 4 1/2 years and will likely be until at least 2027.
He pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter, after initially being charged with murder. His brother Dante, also charged with murder, admitted to fourth-degree obstruction, and was jailed for 11 months.
Dressed in a beige prison uniform, the now 21-year-old spoke calmly for about 40 minutes about what happened in 2012.
Justin Robinson doesn’t deny strangling Autumn in his parents’ basement on Saturday, Oct. 20, 2012, and then hiding her body.
“I’m deeply sorry,” Robinson says. “I didn’t really want this to happen. If I could take it back I would.” But, he says, “I didn’t kill her for no bike.”
Autumn, he says, wasn’t a stranger. The high school freshman knew her older sibling and he would see Autumn, a seventh-grader, at school. Both Clayton Middle and High School share the same campus. “We used to talk in the hallways.”
Autumn was an outgoing, straight-A student and a tomboy. She loved her BMX bike and playing soccer. She was a dancer and cheerleader before soccer and softball drew her attention.
When she posted on Facebook about needing someone to install new rims on her bike, Robinson said he offered to help. On a Friday night, the two made small talk on Facebook messenger for about two hours.
“Can u put my stuff on mh bike tmw pls,” she asks.
“K can u meet me somwhere close cause i cant really walk tht well,” he responds. He had a childhood ankle injury that sometimes made it difficult to get around, his mother explained.
At another point in the conversation, he asked Autumn if she was single. “Ya,” she replies. He told her he thought she was attractive.
Autumn Pasquale and Justin Robinson communicated via Facebook the night before her death.
Breaking the rules
Robinson knew his mother and stepfather, Richard Saunders, were going to be a few blocks away Saturday afternoon, at the high school where one of his five brothers was playing in the Homecoming football game.
And he knew his mother had a strict rule for her boys: No girls in the house when their parents were away. But he broke that rule.
Autumn’s final message to Robinson came shortly before 3 p.m. Saturday. She had biked the half mile from her home to his street and was trying to find his house. “K ill b there just stay there,” she wrote.
Saunders shared those messages with NJ Advance Media, which she said were part of discovery in the case against her son. The messages show two kids planning to meet up, not the prelude to a premeditated crime, she said.
In the basement of his house, Robinson said Autumn offered him $10 to install the rims.
After he was finished with her bicycle, he asked for the money. She said she didn’t have it with her.
Autumn Pasquale died in the Robinson home on East Clayton Avenue. (File photo)
“You can’t get the bike unless you give me the money,” Robinson recalled telling her.
But she had no plans of leaving without her bike and Autumn began hitting him, Robinson claims.
“I didn’t know what to do,” he says. “I didn’t want to hit her physically. I just threw my hands around her neck and I just choked her until she stopped hitting me. When she went limp, I let her go.”
She died, investigators said, from “blunt force trauma, consistent with strangulation.”
s Autumn’s lifeless body lay on the basement floor, Robinson said he went into a “frantic panic mode” as he tried to figure out what to do next.
“A lot of people thought I planned it,” he says. “There was nothing planned about this. There was never no intention to lure her or kill her for her bike. No traps. Nothing.”
His tone remains calm and focused as he explains his next actions.
Robinson thought about how to get her body out of the basement.
“At first I got a trash bag and that didn’t really work,” he said.
Then, he went to the vacant house next door and retrieved the recycling container. He struggled to bring her body up from the basement and some of her clothing came off as he pulled her up the stairs, he said. Investigators later found the clothing in a trash bag in the family’s kitchen.
Robinson dropped her body in the recycling container and wheeled it back to the neighbor’s house.
When his parents returned home around 4 p.m., his mother asked him why he was sweating. Robinson assured her that everything was fine.
In reality, he said he felt like he was caught in a bad dream.
“I was just really numb,” he said. “I was really just trying to wake up.”
In an apparent effort to cover his tracks, Robinson sent another Facebook message to Autumn that night, “Just got home sorry tomrow,” following by a later message saying “hey wassup.”
Autumn’s father, Anthony Pasquale, reported her missing around 9:30 p.m. Saturday. In the two days that followed, her family, friends and complete strangers mobilized a massive community search for a girl in a yellow T-shirt, navy sweatpants and bright blue high-top sneakers.
State Police flew helicopters, K-9 units were brought in and school kids handed out fliers.
After investigators learned that Justin Robinson was the last person in contact with Autumn before she disappeared, police visited the Robinson home. Robinson told them he only spoke with her outside, according to one investigation report. Then he denied she had been there at all.
Based on his shifting stories, detectives asked both Justin and Dante, their mother and stepfather to come to the police station for an interview on the evening of Monday, Oct. 22
That night, while the Robinson family was being interviewed, police found Autumn’s body.
When Justin and Dante learned this, they “became upset and angry,” according to an investigator’s statement.
A patrolman on duty said he prayed with Justin in the station’s processing room. During their prayer, “Justin asked if Jesus would forgive him, and told them he strangled Pasquale in the basement of his residence,” according to the police report.
Dante was upstairs in his room listening to music when Autumn was killed, Saunders said.
He told investigators he heard Autumn scream, but “I didn’t think nothing of it.”
Apparently unaware of what happened in the basement, Dante said he yelled from his room to “hurry up and get that girl out of here before mommy got home.” Dante saw his brother a short time later and asked him if she had left. He said she had.
An investigator’s report describes the moment Justin Robinson confessed to the killing.
Dante later pleaded guilty to obstruction, was sentenced to six months and released on time served in 2013. The obstruction charge stemmed from Dante supposedly blocking investigators from seeing that Autumn’s bike was in the house, Saunders said, but she denied that he had done this.
“Dante did 11 months for something he didn’t do,” she said.
Saunders insists Autumn’s death was an “accident.”
“Something went wrong between two kids,” she said. “It was a genuine accident that wasn’t planned. … She was not leaving her bike. You had two kids and they’re both trying to stand their ground.”
None of the prosecutors in Gloucester County or Camden County, where the case was later transferred, would talk about the Robinson family’s claims.
The Clayton community grieved Autumn’s death publicly. Thousands attended her funeral and various memorial events. A scholarship was established in Autumn’s memory and a memorial park on East Avenue was dedicated in her honor.
There was an inverse response by the community to the Robinsons. In the hours after their arrest, rumors spread swiftly. Some claimed Autumn was raped, even though investigators found no evidence of a sexual assault.
There were rumors that Justin Robinson was laughing at a vigil for Autumn, even though the brothers were already at the police station the night the vigil was held.
The boys’ own father, Alonzo Robinson, told the Star-Ledger after the arrests that his sons were known bike thieves. Robinson was estranged from his kids and ex-wife.
It wasn’t true, Justin Robinson said. His mom had bought him a $500 Subrosa BMX-style stunt bike for his birthday, so he says he had no need to take from others.
When announcing the brothers’ arrests, prosecutors said their mother had contacted police to say she found something suspicious on one of their Facebook pages that led her to think they may be involved. Saunders denies this ever happened.
Anthony Pasquale sought legislation — called Autumn’s Law — that would hold parents criminally responsible when their kids commit violent crimes. The bill hasn’t received legislative support.
He didn’t have much to say after being told about the Robinson family’s recent comments. “They know how I feel,” he said.
Saunders said the prosecution of her son’s case and ongoing litigation prevented her from speaking out publicly at the time.
“I was told that I could not talk because we were not sure if he was going to go to trial,” she said. “After a couple of years, I felt like it is what it is. I cannot bring Autumn back. I cannot bring my son back from prison.”
Criticism of her family and what she describes as lies about her son’s mental status forced her to finally speak up, she said.
Saunders and Justin Robinson dispute the idea that anything that happened in the house before Saunders divorced the brothers’ father in 2006 would lead the kids to be violent.
“None of my kids have any kind of learned behavior to where they could do harm to people,” Saunders, a funeral director, says. “I took a strong resentment to that.”
Robinson denies that he has any disorder, despite his public defender’s revelation in a 2013 hearing that he was diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental disorder, intellectual disabilities, low-IQ, post-traumatic stress disorder and attention deficit disorder.
Before Autumn’s murder, Saunders says she believed everyone in Clayton, a town that’s about 70 percent white, got along. After Autumn’s death, her perceptions about the town of 8,000 changed.
She said people drove past their home yelling racial epithets and throwing trash in her yard, and talked on social media about burning down her house and killing her family.
“Everybody made it a racial thing,” she said.
Others wanted to buy the family’s home from the borough, Saunders said. “They just assumed that I was behind on my taxes,” she said, adding that she wasn’t.
‘I pray for Autumn’
During Saunders’ regular visits to see her son in prison, she says she has seen him mature. Religion has played a big part in that process, she said.
“He told me, ‘Mom, I pray for Autumn,'” she said. “He even prays for her family. That just knocked me off my feet to hear him say that.”
Religion, he says, is also the reason why he stopped participating in any psychological care in prison. This care was directed as part of his sentencing.
“I didn’t need anymore,” he says. “I got deep in my religion. It opened my eyes a lot … it brings me peace.”
When he looks to the future, Robinson speaks about attending college and pursuing a career. He’ll be 30 by the time he’s eligible for parole, according to Department of Corrections records.
He doesn’t, however, plan to return to Clayton. “There’s really nothing for me there anymore,” he said.
Before returning to his cell, Robinson asks for forgiveness and insists he’s not a “stone-cold murderer.”
“It was an honest mistake. I’m being punished for it,” Robinson said. “I hope they can just forgive me. It’s hard to forgive a person when they take one of your loved one’s life. I want them to know that I really am sorry.”
Carl Blue was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of his ex girlfriend in 1994. According to court documents Carl Blue would douse his ex girlfriend with gasoline and set her on fire. The woman would die from her injuries. Carl Blue would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Carl Blue would be executed by lethal injection on February 21, 2013
Carl Blue More News
On Aug. 19, 1994, Carl Blue stood outside the College Station apartment of his former girlfriend, Carmen Richards-Sanders, holding a cup of gasoline. When she opened the door to leave for work, Blue tossed the liquid onto her, flicked his lighter, and set her afire. When Lawrence Williams, who was also in the apartment, tried to come to her aid, Blue allegedly doused and set him ablaze too. Williams survived, but Richards-Sanders died in the hospital two and a half weeks later. Blue was convicted of the crime and sentenced to die.
Unless his final appeals are successful, Blue will be the first person executed in Texas in 2013 when he is taken to the death chamber on Feb. 21. He would be the 493rd inmate sent to death in Texas since reinstatement of the death penalty, and the 253rd to die under the watch of Gov. Rick Perry.
Blue was first convicted in 1995, but his death sentence was overturned by an appeals court, which ruled that a state witness improperly testified that because Blue is black he is more likely to be dangerous in the future. Although Blue was given a new sentencing hearing and again sentenced to die in 2001, questions still remain about whether his punishment fit the crime. At issue now is whether the court-appointed attorney who represented him in that retrial was ineffective, in part for failing to present evidence related to Blue’s troubled background and mental impairments. To wit: Blue was born prematurely to a 13-year-old mother in a severely impoverished family; at birth he weighed less than 3 pounds. Because he was born at home in a two-room shack shared by 22 people, the family could not afford to take him to the doctor; they warmed him in an oven for a week before taking him to the emergency room. He remained there in an incubator for two months, but even then weighed only 5 pounds, according to an appeal filed Jan. 22 in Brazos County by his current lawyer, Michael Charlton. Blue’s premature birth and seriously low birth weight make it more likely that he would suffer from hypoxic brain injury. Furthermore, Blue only functions at the level of a third-grader – he can barely read or write – and was bullied and abused as a child. Yet none of these issues were raised – mitigating factors that Charlton argues might have persuaded jurors to spare his life.
Moreover, Charlton argues that an ineffective assistance of counsel claim was never before raised because the same attorney, John Wright, represented Blue both at trial and on appeal. “Clearly … Mr. Wright had a conflict of interest that materially and adversely affected the representation of Mr. Blue,” Charlton wrote.
Whether the court will grant a stay in order to consider whether Wright was ineffective remains to be seen. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that the failure to raise an ineffective assistance claim in an initial appeal does not necessarily preclude a later appellate review. If the Brazos County court rejects the appeal, it will be up to the Supremes to decide whether to stay Blue’s date with death.
Robert Gleason was the last person to be executed by the State of Virginia after he was sentenced to death after two prison murders. According to court documents Robert Gleason was initially sentenced to life in prison for a murder. However once behind bars he would not stop killing. Robert Gleason would murder his first cellmate in 2009. Robert Gleason would be transferred to a super max prison known as Red Onion where he would again murder another prisoner. Robert Gleason would be sentenced to death for the two murders. Gleason demanded that he would be executed and he wanted to be executed by the electric chair. On January 16, 2013 Robert Gleason would get his wish and would be executed in the electric chair.
Robert Gleason More News
Robert C. Gleason Jr. died with fists partially clenched and smoke rising from his body.
He was faceless Wednesday night, the throes of death hidden behind a thick, black mask that allowed enough space only for his nose to poke through.
Death came on his own terms: He sought execution for a pair of murders in two Southwest Virginia prisons and asked for the electric chair.
There was the customary, last-minute flurry of appeals rejected by the governor and the U.S. Supreme Court. But those weren’t his appeals. Instead, they were filed by a team of capital defense attorneys arguing Gleason’s mental incompetence and hoping for the chance to represent him.
And Gleason, like the governor and federal judges, rejected their help to the very end.
His last words in the execution chamber at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Va., were cryptic.
“Well, I hope Percy ain’t going to wet the sponge. Put me on the highway to Jackson and call my Irish buddies. Pog mo thoin. God bless,” he said.
The translation of the Irish Gaelic wording is “kiss my a–.”
Death took roughly eight minutes from the time the condemned man entered the chamber.
The execution, taking place on the other side of a two-way window, was like a play that began with Gleason taking a few steps into a cinderblock room and ended with someone mumbling a “time of death.”
It culminated with someone drawing a blue curtain across the witness room window and a prison official telling the witnesses it was time to leave.
Robert Gleason died violently as more than 1,000 volts of electricity jolted his body in a pair of 90-second cycles.
He smiled to the room full of witnesses as soon as he stepped into the execution chamber and winked at his spiritual advisor, who was sitting in the crowd. He gave a thumbs up as he sat in the chair.
Robert Gleason wore flip-flops, a blue shirt and dark blue pants with the right pant leg cut off at the knee. A skullcap was placed on his head and a brine-soaked sea sponge was strapped to his right tattoo-covered calf.
A pair of cables snaked up along the electric chair to the top of the skullcap and along the ground onto the floor to his calves.
A guard stood with a red phone in his hand that was a direct line to the governor’s office. But there would be no intervention.
At 9 p.m., a man with the phone nodded for the executioner to begin. One man turned a key in a wall to activate the system and another man in an adjacent room started the electrocution.
Gleason’s body spasmed with each series of jolts, smoke rising from the mask.
The jolts were administered at 9:03, and after five long minutes of silence a doctor in a white coat entered from a side room, put a stethoscope to his tattooed chest and then nodded that he was dead.
He then pronounced the time of death as 9:08 p.m.
Sitting in another room to view the execution was Kim Strickland, the mother of the last victim, Aaron Alexander Cooper.
“May God have mercy on his soul,” she said Monday of her son’s killer. “I have been and will be praying for his family throughout this ordeal.”
In a letter sent to her, Robert Gleason described Cooper’s death and noted that he was holding on to the mother’s address.
“Everyone will be O.K. if I get the death penalty,” he wrote.
Strickland, fearing his reach beyond prison walls, has moved several times since her son died and remains on the run.
“A very reliable source told me I was not safe and I have moved four or five times,” she testified during a 2011 sentencing hearing. “I have no sense of home anymore.”
Now penniless, she lives out of her car and shelters.
Amy Taylor, the mother of one of Gleason’s children, said she will miss him.
“He will always be remembered by those who truly knew him as a very fun, loving, compassionate person who cared more for those he loved than he ever did for himself,” she said.
Robert Gleason spent his last two hours with his spiritual advisor, Tim “Bam Bam” Spradling, a former biker buddy who now preaches at a Richmond church.
“We talked about how my life went one way and his went in the opposite direction,” Spradling said.
In those last hours, Robert Gleason cried for his victims and asked God for forgiveness, he added.
No one seems to know the real reason Gleason demanded execution. In court, he said it was to teach younger relatives that murder comes with severe consequences.
Yet, a case worker’s report from 2011 suggests that Gleason had a mental history filled with feelings of paranoia, anxiety and depression, ultimately leading to exhaustion and a need to escape. Life in prison, according to the report, would simply be too intolerable.
Initially, Gleason earned life in prison without parole for shooting to death truck driver Michael Kent Jamerson on May 8, 2007, to cover up the tracks of a methamphetamine ring already eyed by federal investigators.
Robert Gleason, during his 2011 sentencing hearing, said they had stopped by a wooded area in Amherst County and he pulled a pistol from Jamerson’s own belt, told him to get right with God, and began shooting.
A turkey hunter found Jamerson’s body the next day. A Liberty University student fishing along the bank of the James River, about three miles from the body, found the gun several days later.
Two years later, Gleason ended up in a cell with 63-year-old Harvey Gray Watson Jr. at Wallens Ridge State Prison in Big Stone Gap. Watson was serving a 100-year sentence for killing a man and wounding two others when he fired a shotgun into his neighbor’s Lynchburg home in 1983.
The older inmate was mentally impaired and known for such antics as singing nonsensical tunes throughout the night and drinking his own urine. Gleason tired of him after about a week and tied him up, beat and strangled him on May 8, 2009 – the two-year anniversary of Jamerson’s murder.
Guards didn’t notice the body in the cell for 15 hours.
Soon after that, Gleason threatened to kill again unless given the death penalty.
Then, on July 28, 2010, he strangled convicted carjacker Aaron Alexander Cooper, 26, in the recreation yard of the supermax security Red Onion State Prison near Pound.
It was done with ripped apart strips of braided bed sheet threaded through the chain link fence separating the two inmates.
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