After 28 Years on Death Row, Tennessee Executed Blind Killer Lee Hall for Arson Murder of EX gir…

On December 5th, 2019, after spending more than 28 years on death row, Lee Hall was executed by electric chair at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee. He was 53 years old. In this video, I’m going to tell you what happened, his last words, and his last meal. But to uncover the events of that fateful night and why Lee ended up being executed, we have to go back to an April evening in 1991 and a breakup that would end in one of the most horrific murders Tennessee has ever seen.

Let me tell you about Tracy Crozier. She was 22 years old in April 1991, a young woman with her whole life ahead of her. Born on September 1st, 1968, Tracy grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She was the kind of girl everyone liked. Friendly, sweet, trusting, maybe too trusting. Because in January 1986, when Tracy was just 17 years old, she met a man named Lee Hall.

 He was 19 at the time, going by his birth name Leroy Hall Jr. They started dating and within weeks, Tracy moved in with him. 17 years old and living with her boyfriend. Her family wasn’t thrilled about it, but Tracy thought she was in love. For 5 years, from 1986 to 1991, Tracy and Lee lived together. But let me tell you something about Lee Hall.

He wasn’t right. He had problems, deep problems that Tracy either didn’t see or chose to ignore. Lee Hall grew up in a troubled home. His family moved constantly, never staying in one place long enough for him to build a stable life. As an adult, he abused drugs, crack cocaine, marijuana, alcohol. He would drink until he blacked out, smoke until he couldn’t think straight, and through it all, he had this obsession.

Fire. Lee Hall was a pyromaniac. He had been setting fires since he was a kid. Psychologists who later examined him said he would light fires to express his distress, to deal with emotions he couldn’t process any other way. And in the year before Tracy’s murder, 1990 to 1991, Lee Hall set fires four or five times.

Burned property, watched it go up in flames, got some sick satisfaction from it. But here’s what you need to understand. Lee Hall wasn’t just obsessed with fire. He was obsessed with Tracy. She was everything to him. His entire world revolved around her. And when that world started to fall apart, Lee couldn’t handle it.

 In March 1991, after 5 years together, Tracy had had enough. She moved out, left Lee, and went to live with her grandmother and uncle. She was done with him. Done with the drugs, the drinking, the instability. She wanted to move on with her life. But Lee Hall couldn’t let her go. He started calling her constantly. Late at night, early in the morning, all hours of the day.

 Begging her to come back. Telling her he loved her. Telling her he couldn’t live without her. Tracy kept saying no. She had made her decision. She was not going back to Lee Hall. And that’s when Lee started getting violent. In the weeks after Tracy left him, Lee Hall set her car on fire. Not once, twice. He burned her twice trying to send her a message, trying to punish her for leaving him.

 But Tracy still wouldn’t come back. She was scared of him by now, but she was also determined. She was not going to let Lee Hall control her life anymore. And that refusal, that strength to say no to a man who couldn’t accept rejection, is what got Tracy Crozier killed. Let me tell you what happened on the night of April 16th and the early morning of April 17th, 1991.

Lee Hall spent that entire day drinking. He drank an entire case of beer, can after can after can until he was drunk and filled with rage. Then he got in his car and drove around Chattanooga looking for Tracie. He knew where she was staying. He knew her grandmother’s house. And when he pulled up to that house in the middle of the night, he saw her.

Tracie was sitting in her car, probably getting ready to go somewhere or maybe just sitting there thinking. Lee parked, got out and walked over to her car. He opened the door and got in. Tracie must have been terrified. The man who had been stalking her, calling her, burning her car, was now sitting next to her in the dark.

Lee started talking. He told Tracie he loved her. He told her they belonged together. He begged her to move back in with him. He said they could make it work, that things would be different this time. And Tracie, sitting there in her car in the middle of the night with her obsessed ex-boyfriend, told him no.

She said she was not getting back together with him. She was not moving back in. It was over. And then, according to Lee’s own testimony at trial, Tracie laughed. She laughed at the idea of them getting back together, like it was the most absurd thing she had ever heard. And that laugh, that moment of rejection and humiliation, flipped a switch inside Lee Hall.

 He told Tracie to get out of the car. He said he was going to burn it. Tracie reached for her keys, trying to grab them and leave before Lee could do anything. But Lee was faster. He snatched the keys out of the ignition and threw them out of the car, far away where Tracy couldn’t reach them. She was trapped, locked in her own car with a man who had just told her he was going to set it on fire.

And Tracy knew in that moment that she was in serious danger. Let me tell you what Lee Hall had prepared. Before he went looking for Tracy that night, he had made a weapon, a Molotov cocktail. He took a tea jug and filled it with gasoline. Then he stuffed a paper towel into the top, creating a fuse. He had stopped at a gas station earlier and bought a cigarette lighter specifically for this.

Lee Hall had planned this. He had driven around Chattanooga with a homemade fire bomb in his car, looking for the woman who had rejected him. And when he found her, when she laughed at him and told him no for the last time, he decided to use it. Lee got out of the car. Tracy was still inside, screaming, begging him not to do it, but Lee didn’t care.

 He pulled out the lighter, flicked it on, and lit the paper towel fuse sticking out of the tea jug. The flame caught. And then Lee Hall threw that jug of gasoline through the driver’s side window, right at Tracy. The container exploded on impact. Gasoline sprayed everywhere. The inside of the car erupted in flames, and Tracy Crozier was engulfed in fire.

She was burning alive, trapped in her car, flames covering her body, her skin blistering and melting in the heat. Tracy screamed. A neighbor who lived nearby heard the screams and ran outside. He saw the car on fire and a woman inside covered in flames. He ran to the car, pulled the door open, and dragged Tracy out onto the ground.

He rolled her, trying to put out the flames, trying to save her life. But as he touched her, Tracy’s skin came off in his hands. It was falling off her body, peeling away in sheets, exposing raw burnt flesh underneath. The neighbor kept trying, kept rolling her, and finally the flames went out. Tracy was alive.

Barely. She was alert, conscious, in unimaginable pain. The neighbor asked her name. She told him. He asked for her phone number so he could call her family. She gave it to him. And then he asked the most important question. “Who did this to you?” Tracy looked at him, her body burned beyond recognition, and she said two words, “Lee Hall.

” An ambulance rushed Tracy to Erlanger Hospital. Doctors examined her and were horrified by what they saw. 95% of her body was covered in third-degree burns. 95%. Her arms, her legs, her torso, her face, almost every inch of her skin had been destroyed by fire. And here’s the worst part. Tracy was conscious.

 She remained awake and aware for most of her time in the hospital. She knew what had happened to her. She knew she was dying. She spent hours in agony, every nerve in her body screaming in pain, before she finally died on April 18th, 1991, the day after Lee Hall set her on fire. 22 years old. Her whole life stolen because she had the courage to say no to a man who couldn’t accept rejection.

Police arrested Lee Hall almost immediately. Tracy had identified him before she died. The neighbor had heard her say his name. Investigators went to Lee’s home and brought him in for questioning. At first, Lee denied everything. He said he didn’t know what happened to Tracy, that he hadn’t seen her that night.

But the evidence was overwhelming. Witnesses had seen him near Tracy’s grandmother’s house. The arson investigator found gasoline residue at the scene. And when detectives kept pressing him, Lee finally confessed. He admitted he had thrown the firebomb into Tracy’s car. He admitted he had set her on fire. But he claimed he hadn’t meant to kill her.

 He said he only wanted to burn her car, not her. He said when she laughed at him, he got so angry he just threw the bomb without thinking. The prosecution didn’t buy that excuse for a second. Lee Hall went to trial in March 1992 charged with first-degree premeditated murder and aggravated arson. The trial took place in Hamilton County, Tennessee and lasted from March 3rd to March 11th.

The prosecution laid out their case. They called the neighbor who had pulled Tracy from the burning car. He testified about how her skin fell off in his hands, about how she had identified Lee Hall as her attacker. They called the arson investigator, Mike Donnelly, who testified that gasoline had been poured directly onto the victim and that the fire had started from the driver’s seat.

They called doctors who described Tracy’s injuries in horrific detail. 95% of her body burned. Hours of conscious suffering before death. The prosecution painted Lee Hall as a pyromaniac with a history of setting fires, a man with abandonment issues who couldn’t handle being rejected. They said he had planned the attack, prepared the firebomb in advance, and deliberately thrown it into the car knowing Tracy was inside.

This wasn’t an accident. This was premeditated murder. The defense tried their best with a difficult case. Lee Hall testified in his own defense. He admitted he had initially lied to police. He admitted he had been drinking heavily that night. He admitted he threw the firebomb, but he insisted he only meant to burn the car, not Tracy.

 He said when she laughed at him, something inside him snapped and he acted without thinking. The defense brought in a clinical psychologist, Dr. Roger Meyer, who testified that Lee Hall was immature, introverted, emotionally unstable, and suffered from low self-esteem. Dr. Meyer said Hall was easily influenced and had serious mental health issues.

 The defense presented evidence of Lee’s troubled childhood, his drug and alcohol abuse, and the volatile nature of his relationship with Tracy. Lee’s step-sister testified that he was very sad when he and Tracy fought, but always believed they could work through their problems. His cousin testified that Lee had gone to Oklahoma in December 1990 to get away from drugs and find work, but Tracy called him and he immediately came back to Tennessee to be with her.

The defense was trying to paint Lee Hall as a broken man who loved Tracy too much and couldn’t cope when she left him, but the jury wasn’t sympathetic. On March 11th, 1992, after deliberating, they returned with their verdict. Guilty of first-degree premeditated murder, guilty of aggravated arson, and the sentence, death.

Lee Hall was sentenced to die in Tennessee’s electric chair. He was also given 25 years for aggravated arson to run consecutively with the death sentence. Lee Hall was transported to Tennessee’s death row. He would spend the next 28 years there waiting to die. Now, let me tell you something that happened during Lee Hall’s time on death row that would become a major point of controversy.

Lee Hall went blind. When he arrived on death row in 1992, he could see. But over the years, his vision deteriorated. He suffered from glaucoma, a condition that causes pressure to build up inside the eye and damages the optic nerve. If treated properly, glaucoma can be managed and blindness can be prevented.

 But according to Lee Hall’s attorneys, the prison provided inadequate medical care. They say the glaucoma was improperly treated, that the prison neglected his condition, and that as a result, Lee Hall lost his vision. By the time his execution date arrived in December 2019, Lee Hall was completely blind. He couldn’t see anything.

 Fellow death row inmates had to help him pack his belongings when he was moved to death watch. Lee Hall became only the second blind person to be executed in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The first was Clarence Ray Allen, a 76-year-old man executed in California in 2006. The blindness raised ethical questions.

Should the state execute a man who went blind because of their alleged neglect? Does it matter? Does being blind make an execution more cruel? But here’s what you need to know about Lee Hall’s time on death row. Despite being blind, despite spending nearly three decades waiting to die, Lee Hall had a clean disciplinary record.

 He didn’t cause problems. He didn’t attack guards or other inmates. He expressed remorse for what he had done to Tracy. He converted to Christianity. He even changed his name from Leroy Hall Jr. to Lee Hall while he was in prison. Some people saw this as genuine redemption. Others saw it as a man trying to save his own life.

Lee Hall’s case went through the standard appeals process. In December 1996, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed his direct appeal. In December 1997, the Tennessee Supreme Court dismissed his appeal. In 1998, the US Supreme Court denied his petition. In August 2005, the Tennessee Supreme Court turned down his appeal for post-conviction relief.

In March 2010, a federal appeal was rejected by US District Judge J. Ronnie Greer. Every court that reviewed Lee Hall’s case said the same thing. The conviction was solid, the sentence was appropriate, the appeals were denied. But Lee Hall kept fighting. In 2014, a court order scheduled his execution for January 12th, 2016.

But that execution was stayed because of legal issues surrounding Tennessee’s execution drugs. The state was having trouble obtaining the chemicals needed for lethal injection, and courts put executions on hold while that was sorted out. Lee Hall got a few more years to live. Then on November 16th, 2018, Tennessee set a new execution date, December 5th, 2019. This time, there would be no stay.

And Lee Hall made a decision that would make his execution international news. He chose the electric chair. Let me explain. In Tennessee, death row inmates convicted before 1999 are allowed to choose their method of execution. They can pick lethal injection or the electric chair. Most inmates choose lethal injection because it’s considered more humane.

But since Tennessee restarted executions in 2018, something strange has been happening. Inmates have been choosing the electric chair. Between 2018 and 2019, four people were executed in Tennessee. Three of them, including Lee Hall, chose the electric chair. Why? Some legal experts believe it’s because Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol has been challenged in court.

Inmates may think that choosing the electric chair avoids potential legal issues and ensures the execution will actually happen. Others believe inmates choose the electric chair because they want their deaths to be more shocking, more brutal, hoping it will turn public opinion against the death penalty. Whatever Lee Hall’s reasons, he chose the electric chair.

And as December 5th, 2019 approached, his attorneys made one last desperate attempt to save his life. In November 2019, just weeks before Lee Hall’s scheduled execution, a bombshell dropped. A woman came forward publicly and identified herself as Juror A. She had served on Lee Hall’s jury in 1992 and voted to sentence him to death.

 But now, 27 years later, she was revealing something she had never disclosed during jury selection. Juror A admitted that before serving on Lee Hall’s jury, she had been repeatedly raped by her former husband. She had also suffered domestic violence and abuse at his hands. And she said that because of her personal trauma, she hated Lee Hall.

She hated him before the trial even started because his crime reminded her of her own abuse. During jury selection in 1992, attorneys had asked prospective jurors if they had any experiences that would prevent them from being fair and impartial. Juror A never mentioned the rape. She never mentioned the abuse.

She never mentioned that she hated defendants like Lee Hall. She sat on that jury, heard the evidence, and voted to send Lee Hall to death row, all while harboring a bias she had never disclosed. Lee Hall’s attorneys argued this was a clear violation of his constitutional right to a fair and impartial jury. They said juror A’s failure to disclose her history of abuse deprived Lee Hall of a fair trial.

They filed an emergency appeal asking the courts to stop the execution and grant Lee Hall a new trial. And here’s where it gets really controversial. Just 1 week before Lee Hall’s execution, a Tennessee court granted a new trial to another death row inmate in a nearly identical situation. That inmate’s jury had included a woman who failed to disclose that she had been sexually assaulted, and the court ruled it violated the inmate’s right to a fair trial.

The exact same issue. But when Lee Hall’s case came before the courts, the judges ruled differently. On November 19th, 2019, a Hamilton County judge turned down the petition to rehear Lee Hall’s case. On December 3rd, 2019, just 2 days before the execution, the Tennessee Supreme Court dismissed Lee Hall’s appeal and rejected the juror bias claims.

On December 4th, 2019, the eve of the execution, Lee Hall lost a follow-up appeal to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. And on December 5th, 2019, at 6:18 p.m., less than 1 hour before Lee Hall’s execution was scheduled to begin, the US Supreme Court rejected his final appeal. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee declined to intervene.

In a statement, Governor Lee said the justice system had extensively reviewed Lee Hall’s case over the course of almost 30 years, and he would not intervene. Lee Hall had run out of options. He had run out of time. The execution would proceed. December 5th, 2019. Lee Hall’s final day on Earth. He had been moved to death watch 3 days earlier on December 3rd.

Death watch is a 72-hour period before execution where the condemned inmate is placed in a cell next to the execution chamber under 24-hour surveillance. It’s the final countdown. Lee spent those 72 hours saying goodbye to the people he loved. Friends he had made in prison over 28 years came to visit.

 Family members came. Lee ate his meals, slept in a cell just feet from the electric chair that would kill him, and waited. On his final day, Lee was offered the opportunity to request a last meal. He asked for a Philly cheesesteak, two orders of onion rings, a slice of cheesecake, and a Pepsi. It was a simple meal, comfort food, the kind of thing you might order at a diner.

Lee ate his last meal knowing that in just a few hours he would be strapped into an electric chair and killed. At 6:18 p.m., Lee Hall’s attorney, Kelly Gleason, received word that the US Supreme Court had denied the final appeal. There was nothing left to do, no more courts to appeal to, no more legal options.

The execution would happen. Witnesses began arriving at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Among them were members of Tracy Crozier’s family. Her sister, Stacy Crozier Wooten, was there. Her father, Gene Crozier, was there. They had waited 28 years for this moment.

 28 years since Tracy was burned alive. 28 years of grief and anger and pain. And now they would finally see justice done. At approximately 7:00 p.m., the curtain in the execution chamber was raised. Lee Hall was already strapped into the electric chair when the witnesses saw him. He was seated upright, his arms and legs secured with leather straps.

Correctional officers moved around him making final preparations. They sponged his head, his ankles, and his arms with a wet sponge. This is done to improve electrical conductivity and ensure the current flows through the body properly. Then they affixed an electrode to the top of Lee Hall’s head, a metal cap connected to a thick cable designed to deliver 1,750 volts of electricity directly into his brain.

 Witnesses said Lee was nervously tapping his right hand on the arm of the chair, a small repetitive motion like he was waiting for them to start and couldn’t sit still. The warden asked Lee Hall if he had any final words. Lee, blind and unable to see the people watching him die, spoke clearly. People can learn forgiveness and love and will make this world a better place.

 Those were his last words. Forgiveness. Love. A better place. And then the warden gave the signal. At 7:19 p.m., the first jolt of electricity hit Lee Hall’s body. 1,750 volts surged through him. Witnesses described hearing a humming sound like an elevator running. Lee Hall’s body tensed and then smoke appeared above the right side of his head.

 Witnesses saw it rising from where the electrode was attached. Prison officials would later claim it was steam, not smoke, caused by the liquid on the sponge and the heat from the electrical current. But to the people watching, it looked like smoke. Like Lee Hall’s head was burning. The first jolt lasted several seconds, then it stopped.

 Lee Hall’s body slumped slightly forward. Approximately 20 seconds later, the second jolt hit, another 1,750 volts. Lee Hall’s body lifted back up as the electricity coursed through him. More smoke or steam appeared over the right side of his head. The humming sound continued, and then it stopped. The execution was over. At 7:26 p.m.

, a doctor examined Lee Hall and pronounced him dead. He had been killed by two jolts of electricity, each one delivering enough voltage to cook his internal organs and stop his heart. Lee Hall, the man who had set Tracy Crozier on fire 28 years earlier, was dead. After the execution, Tracy’s family released a statement.

 Stacy Crozier Wooten, Tracy’s sister, said this, “The day has come and gone now, today my family has waited on for 28 years. Now our family’s peace can begin, but another family’s hell has to begin. Today will not bring my sister and my father’s daughter back, but now may she find her peace in heaven with our mom. She will always be greatly missed by her family and everyone who knew her, but hopefully today an end to this monster’s life will bring some peace within everyone who has had to suffer over these 28 years without my beautiful

sister. We all fought this battle for you, Tracy, and today we won.” Lee Hall’s family also released a statement. They said they were devastated by the loss of Tracy and now Lee. They said Lee loved Tracy more than anything, and they had welcomed her into their family and loved her, too. They said Lee did not intend to cause her death, nor the pain she endured, that he admitted the truth and accepted his punishment, and that he had accepted Jesus Christ.

 They said Lee only wished for the Crozier family to accept his sincere apology and hoped they would find the peace and closure they deserved. Lee Hall was the fourth person executed in Tennessee since the state restarted executions in November 2018. He was also the fourth person to choose the electric chair over lethal injection, making Tennessee the only state in America still regularly using the electric chair.

Three out of five recent Tennessee executions were carried out using the chair, a method most states abandoned decades ago because of how brutal and primitive it is. But Tennessee keeps using it and inmates keep choosing it and the executions keep happening. So let me ask you this, was justice served? Lee Hall set Tracie Crozier on fire and watched her burn.

 She died in agony, 95% of her body destroyed. He took a 22-year-old woman’s life because she had the courage to leave him. Because she said no. Because she laughed when he asked her to come back. He deserved to be punished. No one disputes that. But did he deserve to die blind after 28 years on death row? Did he deserve to be executed when a juror who voted for his death sentence admitted she hated him because of her own trauma? Did he deserve to die when another inmate in Tennessee got a new trial for the exact same juror bias

issue bias issue just one week earlier? These are the questions that haunt death penalty cases. Because once the state kills someone, there’s no going back. There’s no fixing mistakes. There’s no second chance. Lee Hall is dead. Tracie Crozier is dead. And the only thing we can do now is ask whether the system that killed them both, Tracie by fire and Lee by electricity, actually served justice perpetuated more violence.

 I can’t answer that for you. But I can tell you this. Tracey Crozier deserved to live. She deserved to grow old, to fall in love again, to build a life beyond the man who couldn’t let her go. She deserved better than to die screaming in a burning car while her skin fell off her body. And maybe Lee Hall deserved to die for what he did to her.

Maybe that’s justice. Or maybe justice would have been keeping him in prison for the rest of his life, blind and alone, thinking every day about the woman he killed. I don’t know. What I do know is that on December 5th, 2019, the state of Tennessee strapped a blind man into an electric chair, sent 1,750 volts through his body twice, and watched smoke rise from his head as he died.

And whether you think that was justice or cruelty, whether you think Lee Hall got what he deserved, or whether the system failed him, one thing is certain. Trace Crozier is still dead. And no amount of electricity, no execution, no last words about forgiveness and love, will ever bring her back. The case of Lee Hall is closed.

 The electric chair has gone silent. And somewhere in Tennessee, two families are left to grieve the people they lost, wondering if any of this made the world a better place.