All U.S PRISONERS EXECUTED in MAY 2026: Crime + Last Meals + Final Words

In May 2026, the United States carried out four executions with no mercy. These are people who also showed no mercy when they committed their crimes. And these are Raymond Eugene Johnson in Oklahoma, Edward Lee Busby Jr. in Texas, Leroy McIll in Arizona, and Richard Knight in Florida.

 And in Tennessee, a fifth execution was stopped mid-process in a way that left everyone in that room speechless. These are not just names on a list. Behind every one of these cases is a story. A crime so disturbing it landed someone on death row. Years and sometimes decades of waiting, final meals, final words, and families on both sides of the glass who will carry that day with them for the rest of their lives.

 In this video, we are going through every single case. [music] We are going back to the crimes, the trials, the years spent on death row and the moments leading up to each execution. If you are new here, welcome to Redmark Files. Hit that like button and subscribe to our channel right now because we do this every single month and you do not want to miss what is coming next.

 And if you have been here before, drop a comment and tell us which case you remember most from a previous video. Now, let’s get into May 2026. On May 14th, 2026, the state of Oklahoma executed Raymond Eugene Johnson by lethal injection, a clawhammer, a gasoline can, a young mother, a 7-month-old baby girl, and a man who walked out the back door while they burned alive.

 Johnson was convicted of two of the most brutal murders in Tulsa’s history. He sat before the parole board, apologized, and called himself a changed man. The board voted 5 to zero against him. Governor Kevin Stit did not intervene. The execution moved forward. But here is what makes this case impossible to look away from. Johnson spent 6 hours inside that house with Brooke Whitaker still alive and conscious.

 6 [music] hours. Prosecutors said they had never seen anything like it. And when the jury finally got the case, their decision came faster than anyone expected. This story goes back further than that night. It starts with a criminal past, a relationship built on fear, and a series of warnings that nobody stopped in time.

Stay with us because what happened inside that house on June 23rd, 2007 will leave you speechless. Welcome back to our channel. If you are new here, this channel covers real cases, real victims, and real justice. Hit subscribe and turn on notifications because this one is going to stay with you. Brooke Whitaker was 24 years old.

 She lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and she was a mother of four children. People who knew her said she had a laugh that was impossible to ignore. Her aunt Angie Short told the clemency board that Brooke gave hugs so tight they were almost painful. She said she would give anything to feel that hug one more time.

 Her grandmother, Carolyn Short, described Brooke as the most beautiful baby girl she had ever seen. She said pure joy did not even come close to describing what Brooke brought into her life. Brooke had four children. Logan Click was 7 years old at the time of the murders. Alyssa Red Fern was five. Her third daughter was also named Brooke.

 And then there was Ka, just 7 months old, curlyhaired, and described by family as a baby who brought joy to everyone around her in her short 7 months of life. Ka never said her first word. She never took her first step. She never lost a tooth. Logan Kle wrote all of this in her victim impact letter. every milestone her baby sister never got to reach.

 [music] Brooke worked night shifts to provide for her children. On the night of June 22nd, 2007, she was at work. Her children were safe. She had no idea that Raymond Johnson was already at her house waiting for her to come home. Johnson had moved to Tulsa after his release from prison. He and Brooke entered a relationship around 2006.

 It did not take long before the abuse started. He hit her. He stalked her. He threatened to kill her on more than 10 documented occasions. In April 2007, Brooke filed a protective order. She told her mother what Johnson had said. She took her children and moved out temporarily. She tried to protect herself and her children. She did everything right.

 What happened next is impossible to believe. [music] Raymond Eugene Johnson was born on March 26th, 1974 in Oklahoma. Court documents reveal very little about his childhood or his family. [music] What the records do show is that by the time he was 21 years old, he had already taken a life.

 On 911 1995, Johnson got into an argument with 25-year-old Clarence Ray Oliver in Oklahoma City. The argument turned violent. Johnson pulled out a gun and threatened Oliver. Oliver tried to escape. He got into his car and drove away. Johnson fired a single shot through the passenger side window. Oliver’s car crashed into a ditch. His body was found the next day.

Two weeks later, Johnson was arrested. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter in Cleveland County and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He served only nine. He was parrolled in 2005. While in prison, Johnson was active in church. People described him as a light, but Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Crab pointed out at the clemency hearing that this was not new.

 Johnson had always maintained church involvement, even while committing crimes. The pattern was consistent. Crab also revealed something deeply troubling. Two murders in Cleveland County remain unsolved to this day. 30 [music] 1 years later, Johnson reportedly has information about the killer. He has refused to share it with police, citing gang loyalty and his belief that the suspect would face the death penalty.

After his parole, Johnson moved to Tulsa and entered a relationship with Brook Whitaker. The abuse began almost immediately. His legal team called him intense. His son, Kyar, said in a 2024 video, “I love you, daddy. He is the person to talk to. >> I love you, daddy.” Prosecutors called it something else entirely.

 A lifelong pattern of manipulating women interrupted only by prison walls. In February 2007, Raymond Johnson moved into Brooke Whitaker’s home on East Newton Street in Tulsa. Brooke had four children living in that house. Within weeks, everything fell apart. Court records confirm that Johnson physically assaulted Brooke repeatedly during this period.

 He threatened to kill her on more than 10 documented occasions. According to the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office, 10 times on record, by April 2007, Brooke had had enough. Terrified for herself and her children, she packed up and moved them all to her mother’s home. She stayed there for 2 weeks. During those two weeks, Johnson did not stop.

 He called Brook’s mother directly and told her he was going to kill Brooke. That threat was made to a third party. It was on record. Brooke filed a protective order against him in April 2007. On May 21st, 2007, a court hearing was scheduled to address that order. Neither Brooke nor Johnson appeared in court that day. The protective order was dropped.

 Brooke and Johnson reconciled. He moved back into the house on East Newton Street. By early June 2007, Johnson had begun making arrangements to leave. A woman named Laura Hendris, a friend of Jennifer Walton’s, arranged for him to stay at her place. Johnson was now moving between two households, living with Walton, a woman who was pregnant with his child, while Brooke remained at East Newton Street on the night of June 22nd, 2007.

 Johnson asked Walton to drive him. They drove past Brook’s workplace to confirm she was there. Then they drove past her house to confirm it was empty. He said he was going to get his clothes. Court records would later reveal exactly what Raymond Johnson was planning, and it had nothing to do with a clean exit.

 Raymond Johnson did not have a formal accomplice in the murders. But Jennifer Walton was there, and court records show exactly what role she played. On the night of June 22nd, 2007, Walton drove Johnson to Brook’s neighborhood. She dropped him off on a side street so he could walk to the house without being seen. She confirmed all of this in her police interview.

They had already driven past Brook’s workplace and her home earlier that evening to make sure the timing was right. Johnson told Walton he was going to pick up his clothes. She believed him, left him there, and drove back to her mother’s house. At 1:00 in the morning, Johnson called Walton. He told her he was at a Denny’s waiting for Brooke to get home from work.

 At around 5:00 in the morning, he called again. He told her a friend would bring him home shortly. By 10:00 that same morning, Johnson called Walton again. This time, his story had changed. He told her a friend had shot Brooke and was thinking about burning the house down. It was a deliberate misdirection.

 What Johnson did not tell Walton was that he had been using Brook’s own cell phone to make those calls. That detail became critical evidence against him. Walton was located and interviewed by police later that day. Her account broke the case wide open. Johnson thought he had covered every angle. He had not. We are just getting to the worst of it.

 If this case is hitting you hard, share it. Brooke and Ka deserve to be remembered. Now, let’s get into the night of June 23rd. June 22nd, 2007, East Newton Street, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Brooke Whitaker was at work. Her children were not home. Johnson let himself into her house and waited. Brooke came home in the early morning hours of June 23rd.

 An argument started. According to court records, Brooke pushed Johnson, called him names, and grabbed a knife. Johnson grabbed a clawhammer. He struck her in the head. She fell to the floor. She asked him to call 911. He struck her five more times. Prosecutors said Johnson struck Brooke up to 24 times in total, hard enough to expose her brain.

 And yet, Brooke Whitaker was still conscious. She told Johnson her head hurt and felt like it was going to fall off. She begged him to get help. She promised she would not tell the police. Johnson’s own confession told investigators exactly why he did not stop. He did not want to go back to jail. He walked to the shed. He came back with a gasoline can.

 He poured gasoline on Brooke. He walked to the room where 7-month-old Ka was lying and poured gasoline there, too. He doussed the rest of the house. He set Brooke on fire. Then he walked out the back door. Both Brooke Whitaker and her baby daughter Ka were alive when the flames took over that house. First Assistant Attorney General Amy Elely addressed the clemency board with words that were difficult to hear.

 She said Johnson made a deliberate decision to kill Brooke and her infant in a way that inflicted maximum suffering. She said he could have let the baby live without increasing the risk of getting caught. Instead, he left Kaa to die in the flames. At 11:11 in the morning on June 23rd, 2007, firefighters were called to East Newton Street.

 When they entered the house, it was pitch black with smoke. They ventilated the building and pushed through. Behind the couch near the front door, they found Kaa. She was dead. Her burns were so severe that first responders initially mistook her for a baby doll. Her mouth, her eyelids, and her nose were melted shut in a room off the living room.

 They found Brooke unconscious, without a pulse, not breathing, partially under a bunk bed. Paramedics worked to restore a pulse and succeeded. On the way to Hillrest Medical Center, they noticed blood pooling heavily around her head. Large depressions, fractures, indentations. Brooke Whitaker was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at the hospital.

The cause of death was blunt trauma to the head and smoke inhalation. Ka’s cause of death was thermal injury, the direct effect of heat and flames. Not smoke. The fire itself killed her. Every second of it. Prosecutors said they had never seen a case quite like this one. What the jury heard in that courtroom left people speechless.

 While Brooke and Kaa were still in that burning house, Raymond Johnson was already gone. He called Jennifer Walton and told her a friend had shot Brooke and might [clears throat] burn the house down. He asked her to come and pick him up near a school close to Brook’s home. When Walton arrived, Johnson walked out of the driveway of a vacant house carrying two garbage bags.

 She noticed it immediately. He smelled of gasoline. There was blood on his clothes. As she pulled away from the street, she looked back and saw flames pouring from the front window of Brook’s house. They drove to Laura Hendricks’s home in Katusa. Johnson emptied the bags. Inside was clothing and cash. Cash with blood on it. He washed the money. He showered.

He told Walton that a friend had hit Brooke with a hammer. He was still lying. Then Johnson asked Walton to drive him back to East Newton Street. He was worried his fingerprints were on Brook’s cell phone. When they got there, the street was blocked. Ambulances, fire trucks, and police everywhere. Johnson then went to a warehouse market and loaded money onto a prepaid card.

 He drove to a parking lot and threw his bloody clothes into a dumpster. He stopped at McDonald’s. He stopped at Quicktrip. He moved through that morning as if nothing had happened. Three of Brook’s other children were not home that night. They were with their fathers. Aunt Angie Short told the clemency board, “There is no doubt in my mind he would have murdered them all.

” Crime scene investigators went through Brook’s home on East Newton Street piece by piece. In the front yard, they found a burned gasoline can. Charred debris from inside the house tested positive for gasoline. Blood smears and blood soaked items were found throughout. The house told the story clearly.

 Someone had planned this. Then investigators found Brook’s cell phone on the living room floor. Two calls had been made from that phone to Jennifer Walton shortly before the fire was reported. That was the thread that pulled everything apart. Police located Walton the same day, June 23rd, 2007. She told them everything.

 She told them about Johnson. Officers went to the dumpster and recovered a white trash bag. Inside were boots, bloody clothing, Brooke Whitaker’s wallet with her driver’s license still in it, and a claw hammer. Blood was also found on the passenger side door handle inside Walton’s car. Johnson had returned to Laura Hendricks’s home in Katusa.

 Police set up surveillance on the property and waited. At approximately 6:00 in the evening on June 23rd, 2007, the same day Brooke and Kia were killed, Johnson walked out of the house and down the street. He was arrested on outstanding traffic warrants. His defense team would later challenge that arrest. They failed.

 Johnson thought the warrants were a technicality. What came next in that interrogation room would seal his fate. At the Tulsa police station, Raymond Johnson waved his Miranda rightites. Detective Victor Regalado sat across from him and conducted a recorded interview. Johnson did not stay quiet. He gave a full statement.

 He admitted he struck Brooke with the claw hammer. He admitted he went to the shed and retrieved the gasoline can. He admitted he set her on fire. His exact words per court records. I was trying to kill Brooke. They claimed officers beat him during transport and threatened to charge Jennifer Walton as an accessory to murder if he did not talk.

 Detective Regalado and Officer Philip Forbrri both took the stand and testified under oath. They said there were no threats and no physical force. Johnson showed no injuries consistent with an assault. The trial court reviewed every detail surrounding the statement and ruled it voluntary and admissible. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals agreed.

 The physical evidence backed up the confession at every single point. The hammer, the gasoline, the phone calls made from Brook’s cell phone, the bloody cash, and the dumpster bag. Johnson was charged with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of first-degree arson after former conviction of two or more felonies.

 He was booked into custody less than 12 hours after the fire was first reported. The case against Raymond Eugene Johnson was from the very start overwhelming in June 2009. Jury selection began in Tulsa County District Court. Case number CF 2007 3514. Prosecutors announced they were seeking the death penalty. The state filed a bill of particulars listing four aggravating circumstances.

 First, Johnson had previously been convicted of a felony involving the use or threat of violence. Second, he knowingly created a great risk of death to more than one person. Third, the murders were especially heinous, atrocious, and cruel. Fourth, there was a probability that Johnson would commit future acts of violence and remained a continuing threat to society.

 The defense took a different approach. Johnson’s attorney conceded in opening statements that Brooke had been set on fire. However, he argued that Kia’s position near the ignition point was accidental, suggesting that Brooke, while burning, had run toward her baby and transferred gasoline to her. The court later ruled this was not a full concession of guilt, but a deliberate trial strategy.

 The jury was not persuaded. Johnson was found guilty on all counts. He was sentenced to death on both murder counts and to life imprisonment on the arson count. All sentences were ordered to run consecutively. The jury found all four aggravating circumstances proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Brook’s family welcomed the verdict.

 Johnson said nothing. Every appeal that followed was rejected. He argued illegal arrest, involuntary confession, improper jury instructions, unconstitutionality of the death penalty, and ineffective assistance of counsel. Every argument failed. In November 2019, the United States Supreme Court denied his final appeal.

 On July 1st, 2022, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals set his execution date for May 2nd, 2024. Attorney General Gentner Drummond later postponed it, requesting 60 days between executions to reduce the burden on Department of Corrections personnel. On February 25th, 2026, a new date was set, May 14th, 2026. Raymond Eugene Johnson spent more than 15 years on death row at Oklahoma State Penitentiary in Mallister.

 During that time, he connected with a church in Indiana. His mentors described him as overflowing with life. His legal team stood before the clemency board on April 8th, 2026 and argued that executing Johnson now meant killing a different person from the one convicted in 2009. Johnson addressed the board himself. He said, “My crime doesn’t define who I am.

 It defines a moment I deeply regret.” He also said, “I know the love shared because to know Brooke and Kaa was to love them. Today, I sit here responsible for their deaths.” He told the board he had once tried to plead guilty in exchange for life without parole, hoping to spare the families from further court proceedings.

 Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Crab pushed back. She reminded the board that Johnson had been involved in church long before the murders. The pattern of faith had never stopped the pattern of violence. On April 8th, 2026, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 5 to zero against recommending clemency.

 Governor Kevin Stit did not intervene. For his last meal, Johnson requested a 12piece boneless chicken meal, a pint of gizzards, a side of fried pickles, four packets of hot sauce, and four packets of ranch dressing. On May 14th, 2026, at 10:00 in the morning, Central time, Johnson was strapped to a gurnie inside the death chamber.

 His spiritual adviser, Kurt Borgman. A single tear rolled from Johnson’s left eye as Borman began to speak. Johnson’s final words were directed at Brooke and Ka. I want to apologize for my actions and the pain I caused you. I hope people can speak your names without my name attached to it. I hurt you. one day. I hope you can forgive me.

 6 minutes after the first drugs began to flow, a doctor entered the room and declared Johnson unconscious. Oklahoma used the sedative misolam followed by vuronium broomemide to halt breathing and potassium chloride to stop the heart. At 10:12 in the morning, Raymond Eugene Johnson was pronounced dead. The execution lasted approximately 11 minutes.

 He was 52 years old. On May 14th, 2026, the state of Texas carried out its 600th execution since 1982. Inside a prison chamber in Huntsville, this 53-year-old man named Edward Lee Busby Jr. is strapped to a gurnie. His arms are outstretched. Witnesses sit behind the glass, among them, the family of his victim.

 He looks directly at them. 22 years earlier, a 77year-old woman named Laura Lee Crane drove to her local grocery store on an ordinary Friday morning. She never made it home. What happened to her over the next 36 to 48 hours is something quite unimaginable. And what she said to the man who took her in those very first minutes, you will not believe it.

 But to understand that execution gurnie on May 14th, 2026, we have to go back way back. [music] Hit the like button, subscribe to this channel, and turn on the notification bell so you never miss a case. Now, let’s get into it. Before we talk about what happened in that parking lot, you need to know who Laura Lee Crane was. Laura was born and raised right there in Fort Worth, Texas.

 She attended Pascal High School, graduated, and then left Texas to earn her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Sweet Brier College in Virginia. She came back home to TCU, Texas Christian University, and earned her Master of Arts degree there. And then she gave her life to a cause that most people would never even think twice about.

 She joined the founding faculty of the Starpoint School at TCU, a school built entirely for children with learning disabilities. Children who sat in regular classrooms and were told in so many ways that they just were not good enough. Laura saw those children differently. She believed in them. She did not just teach there, she led it. For over 20 years, she served as the school’s director.

 She wrote a reading program for students with learning differences, a program that became nationally recognized. She was also a member of the Assembly Fort Worth’s Club and the Fort Worth Junior League. TCU’s provost at the time, William Kohler, said her impact on the university was profound, [music] that she was beloved, that her students loved her.

 One of those students was historian Brian Mark Rig. Decades later, he would stand as a witness at her killer’s execution, representing her family. He said that a woman who had spent her entire life helping struggling children was discarded in a field like a piece of trash. This was not a woman who had enemies.

 She was not in a dangerous situation. She was not involved in anything that put her at risk. She was 77 years old. Friday was simply her regular grocery. She knew the Tom Thumb store on Hule in Bair Drive. She had been there dozens of times. It was familiar. It was safe. It was the last morning of her life. And the first thing she did when a stranger forced his way into her car, she tried to connect with him as a human being.

 Let that detail sit with you for a while. Now, let’s talk about Edward Lee Busby Jr. At the time of the crime, Busby was in his early 30s. [music] He lived in the Fort Worth, Texas area. He did not have a prominent job. He was not a public figure. On the surface, there was nothing about him that would make you look twice.

 But beneath that surface was a world built around crack cocaine. Court records show that Busby was not a long-term planner. He did not sit down and map out a crime. What the record shows instead is a man who made impulsive, opportunistic decisions. Someone who acted on what was in front of him in the moment based on immediate need.

 That pattern of thinking is exactly what put Laura Crane in danger. Now, there is one more thing about Busby that would become the center of a 20-year legal battle. His attorneys argued that he was intellectually disabled. IQ tests taken over the years came back with different results. Both a defense expert and an expert hired by the Tarant County District Attorney’s Office reportedly found that he met the criteria for intellectual disability.

[music] At one point, the district attorney’s own office recommended reducing his sentence from death to life in prison. That argument would follow this case all the way to the United States Supreme Court. But Kitty Latimer, speaking from prison years later, had no patience for it. When asked about the intellectual disability claims, her answer was short and sharp.

 [music] He was not mentally impaired. He was plain mean. Here is what was happening in the days leading up to January 30th, 2004. Kitty owed drug money in Fort Worth. That kind of debt does not stay quiet for long. She and Busby needed to get out of town. And to do that, they needed two things. A car [music] and cash.

 There was no master plan, no detailed preparation. Court records make that clear. This was not a kidnapping that had been plotted over weeks. Busby and Kitty were simply moving through Fort Worth looking for an opportunity, looking for the right moment, looking for someone vulnerable. That morning, they ended up in the parking lot of the Tom Thumb grocery store on Hulin and Bair Drive.

 A man named Steve Humble worked next door at a men’s clothing store called the Squire Shop. He would later testify about what he witnessed just moments before the abduction. He saw a man moving through that parking lot, pulling on car door handles, testing them one by one, checking for an unlocked car, looking for a way in. About 30 yard behind him, [music] a very blonde woman was walking fast, trying to keep up. That man was Busby.

 That woman was Kitty. Then Busby saw Laura Lee Crane, 77 years old, sitting alone in her car in a busy parking lot on a bright Friday morning. He stopped. He made his decision and he walked straight to her driver’s side door. What he did next in broad daylight in front of a store full of shoppers. And what she said back to him is something that has never left the people who heard it.

 This was not a large operation. There was no group, [music] no network, no layers of planning. It was just two people, Busby and Kitty. One stolen car and a series of decisions that kept getting worse. When investigators later sat both of them down separately, they told completely different stories. Kitty told Fort Worth detectives that Busby was in control from the very first moment.

 She said he directed everything. She said that when she asked what he was doing, testing car door handles in that parking lot, he told her to shut up. According to her, she was following him, not leading him. Busby told investigators the exact opposite. He said Kitty was the one running the show, that he was just going along with her instructions, that it was Kitty who told him to tape Laura’s head.

 Two people, two completely opposite stories. So, how do you figure out the truth? [music] You look at the evidence. Court records show that at one of the stops along Interstate 35 heading north toward Oklahoma, Kitty walked into a store and bought a roll of duct tape. Busby was outside in the parking lot, honking the horn, rushing her to hurry up. The tape was purchased.

 They got back in the car. Meanwhile, Laura Crane was still locked in the trunk. They checked into a motel along the highway. They drove around looking for cracked cocaine, and at some point during those 36 to 48 hours, that duct tape was used. When forensic investigators later tested the tape recovered from Laura’s face, they found fingerprints.

 Just one set, not kitties. Edward Lee Busby’s. Whatever either of them said inside those interrogation rooms, the physical evidence had already told its own story and it pointed in one direction only. If you are finding this one hard to look away from, same. Hit subscribe if you have not already. [bell] New cases every week.

 Now, back to what happened on that highway. January 30th, 2004. Afternoon, [clears throat] Fort Worth, Texas. Busby walks up to Laura’s car in the Tom Thumb parking lot. He pulls open the driver’s side door. He looks at her and says two words, “Slide over.” Kitty climbs in from the rear. The car pulls out of the parking lot.

 And then Laura Crane does something that says everything about who she was. She does not scream. She does not beg. She turns to Kitty in the back seat and says, “Hi, darling.” Then she looks over at Busby behind the wheel and asks him a question that has stayed with this case ever since. What would your mother say if she knew you were doing this? A 77year-old woman just carjacked.

And her first instinct is to speak to her kidnappers like they are human beings. Not out of weakness, out of character. [music] That was Laura Crane. Busby drove to a gas station first. They used Laura’s ATM card to pull out cash. Then, according to court records, he drove to the back of a vacant property near Airport Freeway and Beach Street in Fort Worth.

 He got Laura out of the front seat. He walked her around to the back of the car. [music] He lifted the trunk open and he told her to get in. Laura got in. Busby shut the trunk. He got back behind the wheel and [music] he pointed the car north toward Oklahoma on Interstate 35. For the next 36 to 48 hours, Laura was sealed in that trunk while Busby and Kitty made stops along the highway stores, a motel, driving around searching for crack cocaine.

 At some point during those hours, Busby took that roll of duct tape and pressed it against Laura’s face. [music] He wrapped it around her nose, around her mouth, layer after layer after layer, over everything. At trial, the Tarant County Medical Examiner took the stand and testified to what the autopsy revealed.

 Approximately 23 ft of duct tape had been wrapped around Laura Crane’s face, applied with enough force to physically push her nose sideways, completely out of its natural position. She could not breathe through her nose. She could not breathe through her mouth. Every airway was sealed shut. Laura Lee Crane suffocated slowly alone [music] in the dark inside the locked trunk of her own car while Busby drove through rural Oklahoma looking for drugs.

 When Busby and Kitty discovered she had died, they wrapped her body in a motel bed sheet. They drove to an embankment off an Interstate 35 service road near Davis, Oklahoma, just north of the Texas border. [music] They rolled her body down the slope and they kept driving north. 2 days later, a routine traffic stop in Oklahoma City would crack the entire case open.

 And what investigators found in that car would leave no room for doubt. After they left Laura’s body on that Oklahoma embankment, Busby and Kitty did not run. They did not ditch the car. They kept driving north in Laura’s car using Laura’s money. Court records show that Busby and Kitty used her credit cards and a blank check to spend more than $775.

They checked into motel. They continued searching for crack cocaine. Life for them appeared to go on as normal. Two full days after the abduction on February 1st, 2004, Busby was still behind the wheel of Laura Crane’s vehicle, still driving it through Oklahoma City, making no effort to abandon it, making no effort to hide.

There was no visible guilt, no documented panic, no sense based on their behavior during those 36 to 48 hours that anything in that trunk had shaken them. [clears throat] Back in Fort Worth, the picture was completely different. Laura Crane had not come home from her Friday morning grocery run. The woman who had given over 20 years of her life to children with learning disabilities, who was loved by her students, respected by her colleagues, and known throughout the TCU community, was simply gone. Her family had no

answers, no phone call, no explanation, nothing. And here is what makes this case so deeply painful to sit with. This was not a crime with a financial motive that had been planned out over time. It was a drug debt, a stolen car, and a string of decisions made by two people who treated a 77year-old woman’s life as a minor inconvenience.

 That is the truth of it. February 1st, 2004, Oklahoma City. An Oklahoma City police officer pulls over a vehicle for multiple traffic violations. He runs the plates. The car does not belong to the man behind the wheel. It belongs to Laura Lee Crane of Fort Worth, Texas. The man behind the wheel is Edward Lee Busby Jr. He is arrested on the spot.

Over the following days, Busby is questioned by the FBI, Oklahoma authorities, and Fort Worth homicide detectives. And from the very beginning, his stories do not hold up. His first account goes like this. He and Kitty did not take the car. A man named JD back in Fort Worth gave it to them. and Laura’s body already in the trunk when they received it.

 They simply got rid of it along the highway. Investigators listened, then they pushed back. There is no JD. No one can confirm this story. Not a single piece of evidence supports it. The ATM withdrawals made on Laura’s card, the duct tape, the fingerprints, none of it fits a story about a car received from a stranger. The story falls apart completely.

 Then on February 3rd, 2004, something significant happens. Busby does not wait to be taken there. He leads investigators himself to the embankment near Davis, Oklahoma, the spot where Laura’s body had been left off the Interstate 35 Service Road. Standing at that embankment, Busby gives a tape recorded statement.

 He abandons the JD story entirely. He admits that he and Kitty took Laura from the Tom Thumb parking lot, robbed her, and that she died in the trunk. But then he points the finger directly at Kitty. Standing at that embankment in Davis, Oklahoma on February 3rd, 2004, Busby gives his tape recorded statement.

 He admits the abduction. He admits the robbery. He admits that Laura died in that trunk. But he is not done talking. He tells investigators that Kitty was the one running everything, that he was simply following her lead from start to finish. That when it came to the duct tape, it was Kitty who gave the order. He says several times that he never meant for Laura to die.

 He even claims that before it happened, he prayed with her. Fort Worth detectives then sit down with Kitty separately. Her account is the complete opposite. She tells detectives that Busby was in control from the moment they stepped into that parking lot, that he was the one checking car doors, that when she questioned what he was doing, he told her to shut up.

 She says he directed every step of what happened from the abduction to the drive north. Two people, two completely different stories. One of them is lying. The crime lab settles it. When forensic investigators process the duct tape recovered from Laura Crane’s face, the results leave no room for argument. Only one set of fingerprints is found on that tape. Not Kitty’s fingerprints.

 Edward Lee Busby’s. Every piece of physical evidence now lines up. The fingerprints on the duct tape. The tape recorded confession at the Oklahoma embankment. Laura’s ATM withdrawals made on her stolen card. Steve Humble’s eyewitness account from the Tom Thumb parking lot. Together, they form a case that Busby cannot talk his way out of.

 In February 2006, Kathleen Latimer pleads guilty to murder. She is sentenced to life in prison and sent to the Mountain View unit in Gatesville, Texas. Behind those walls, she earns her first Braille certification. Other inmates come to know her as Mama Kitty. Her parole eligibility date is 2034. She is currently 61 years old.

 Busby does not plead. He goes to trial. November 2005, Tarant County courthouse, downtown Fort Worth. Edward Lee Busby Jr. stands trial for capital murder. His defense attorneys build their case around his own recorded statements. The argument is straightforward. Busby did not plan to kill anyone. He was following Kitty’s instructions.

 This was a robbery and a carjacking that went wrong, not a deliberate murder. There was no intention to end Laura Crane’s life. Then the prosecution calls the Tarant County Medical Examiner to the stand. The testimony stops the courtroom. 23 ft of duct tape wrapped around the face of a 77year-old woman with enough force to physically push her nose out of its natural position.

 She could not breathe through her nose. She could not breathe through her mouth. She was completely sealed inside the trunk of her own car. She did not die quickly. She did not die painlessly. She suffocated slowly while Busby drove through rural Oklahoma. On November 11th, 2005, the jury returns its verdict.

 Guilty of capital murder, sentenced to death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals later affirms both the conviction and the sentence, but Busby’s legal team is not finished. They begin a fight that will stretch across two decades built around one central argument, that Busby is intellectually disabled. In 2002, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Atkins versus Virginia that executing an intellectually disabled person is unconstitutional.

Busby’s lawyers argue he qualifies. IQ tests taken over the years come back with different numbers, making the picture unclear. Then comes the extraordinary twist. Both a defense expert and an expert hired by the Taran County District Attorney’s Office reportedly conclude that Busby meets the criteria.

 The district attorney’s own office recommends reducing his sentence to life in prison. The trial judge disagrees. In 2023, he reviews all the findings and upholds the death sentence. And Kitty from her prison cell in Gatesville has three words for the intellectual disability argument. He was plain mean. After the verdict on November 11th, 2005, Edward Lee Busby Jr. was sent to death row.

 He would spend over 20 years there. In that time, his legal team fought his sentence through every court they could reach, and his execution was scheduled and stopped not once, not twice, but three times. The first date was May 6th, 2020. It was stayed because of the CO 19 pandemic. The second date was set in 2021.

 The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed that one, too, ordering a further review of the intellectual disability claims. A third date was set, May 14th, 2026. 6 days before that date, on May 8th, 2026, the fifth United States Circuit Court of Appeals issued another temporary stay. Judge Steven Higginson wrote that in a matter of life and death, the court must be certain it applies the proper constitutional rule before a state can execute someone.

 For what looked like the third time, the execution was not going to happen. But Texas was not finished. Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office filed an emergency application directly with the United States Supreme Court. Their argument was clear. Busby’s claims were meritless and had already been argued and rejected for years.

 On the afternoon of May 14th, 2026, the Supreme Court issued its ruling 6 to3 in favor of Texas. The stay was vacated. The execution would proceed that evening. All three liberal justices dissented. Justice Katanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, wrote that the court finds itself unable to tolerate even a brief delay.

 She wrote that in capital cases, the court rarely steps in to preserve life and that she could not understand the rush to end it. Busby’s attorneys filed one final emergency motion with the fifth circuit that same evening. It was denied within the hour. Every door was closed. Inside the Huntsville unit, Busby was led into the execution chamber and strapped to the gurnie.

 Laura’s family members watched through the witness room glass. So did Brian Mark Rig, her former student, now representing her family. Texas had abolished the special last meal program in 2011. Busby ate what everyone else in the prison ate that evening. When the warden asked for his final statement, Busby looked toward Laura’s family and spoke directly to them.

 Miss Crane was a lovely woman. I never meant anything bad to happen to her. I had no right to even get in that car. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. He spoke to his sister watching through the glass. He urged her to find a church, to surrender her life to God. His last words were, “I’m here because this is the will of God.

” The lethal dose of pentobarbital began flowing. Busby took a sharp breath. He closed his eyes. He gasped. Snoring sounds filled the chamber, growing quieter and quieter. Within 40 seconds, all movement stopped. Edward Lee Busby Jr. was pronounced dead at 8:11 in the evening on May 14th, 2026. He was 53 years old.

 He became the 600th person executed in the state of Texas since 1982. May 20th, 26, the state of Arizona strapped a man to a table and ended his life by lethal injection. His name was Leroy Dean McIll. And what he did 24 years earlier inside a small Phoenix duplex was not something the state of Arizona was willing to forget.

 He did not use a gun. He did not use a knife. [music] He walked into an apartment carrying a homemade mixture designed to stick to human skin and burn as long as possible. He did not just want his victims dead. He wanted them to feel every single second of it. He became the first person executed in Arizona in 2026.

 His death came more than two decades after a crime so brutal that the jury that convicted him needed less than 1 hour to reach a verdict. What he carried into that apartment on the morning of July 13th, 2002 is something you will not forget. This is the full story. Welcome to this channel. If you are new here, hit that subscribe button, turn on notifications, and give this video a thumbs up. Let’s get into it.

Before we get into what really happened, let’s talk about the victim. Charles Perez lived in a duplex complex in North Phoenix, Arizona. It was not a large place. Several people shared the same space, Eddie and Kim Keefe, along with their two daughters, [music] Janna Hardesty, and her brother, Jeff. a man named Jack Yates.

 The complex was owned by Sophia Barnharst who lived there with her eldest son. Charles was not alone either. His girlfriend Nova Bant lived there with him. By all accounts, the two were close, but the complex was tense. Arguments were frequent. Conflicts between tenants had been building for months.

 Hardesty and Bant in particular clashed often. Then came the moment that changed everything. A shotgun went missing from Charles Perez’s apartment. He believed he knew exactly who took it. He pointed his finger directly at Leroy McIll and McIll’s girlfriend, Janna Hardesty. Charles Perez was the kind of man who spoke up when he believed he had been wronged.

 [music] He did not stay quiet. He made his accusation known. That decision cost him his life. He simply accused a man of stealing. [music] What followed is almost impossible to believe. Leroy Dean McIll was born on February 22nd, 1963 in Arizona. By the time he walked into that duplex on July 13th, 2002, he was 39 years old and he was not a stranger to the justice system.

 Before the murder of Charles Perez, McIll had already served time in prison in Arizona. His prior offenses were serious, [music] including armed robbery. This was not a man with a minor record. [music] This was a man who had already shown the state of Arizona exactly what he was capable of. At the duplex complex in North Phoenix, McIll lived with his girlfriend, Janna Hardesty.

 The two were a unit where one went, the other followed. When McIll later faced the death penalty, his defense team went to work building a case for mitigation. Court records show they argued that McIll had suffered abuse during his childhood. They also argued that he was psychologically immature and that Hardesty had been overly dominant in their relationship.

 As if the decisions he made were somehow not entirely his own. But here is where it gets complicated. In those same appellet filings, McGill himself stated that his family had cared about him. He used that as a reason for the court to spare his life. So on one hand his childhood was abusive and damaging. On the other hand, his family loved him.

 He used both arguments at the same time to try to avoid execution. The courts were not convinced because the record told a different story. A man with a violent past. A man who had already been to prison. A man living in a tense situation with a short fuse. This was not a man acting out of character. This was a man acting exactly as his history predicted.

 By mid 2002, the duplex complex in North Phoenix had become a pressure cooker. The tension between tenants had been building for months. At the center of it were two women, Janna Hardesty and Novabanta. The two clashed constantly. [music] Arguments were frequent. Fights broke out. The hostility between them was impossible to ignore.

 and everyone living in that complex felt it. Then came the shotgun. Charles Perez and Novabanta accused Leroy McIll and Janna Hardesty of stealing a shotgun directly from their apartment. It was a serious accusation and it had serious consequences. McIll and Hardesty were evicted from the complex. Just like that, they were out homeless with nowhere to go.

 For most people, that would have been the end of it. A bad situation, a forced move, and a lesson learned. McGill was not most people. Court records show that the eviction did not cool his anger. It deepened [music] it. The days that followed were not days of moving on. They were days of planning. Migill sat with his humiliation and his rage, and he made a decision. He was going back.

The other tenants had seen the tension building, the arguments, the threats, the bad blood. None of it had been hidden. The danger was right there in plain sight. But no, one could have predicted [music] just how far Leroy McIll was willing to go. Leroy McIll did not act on impulse. He prepared. After the eviction, McIll put together what investigators would later describe as a homemade accelerant.

>> [music] >> He sourced gasoline and dissolved pieces of styrofoam directly into it. The [music] result was a thick gel-like mixture sticky enough to cling to skin and clothing designed to burn hotter and longer than gasoline alone. This was not something that happened by accident. The mixture had to be made ahead of time.

That preparation alone told investigators everything they needed to know about McIll’s intentions before he ever stepped foot back into that complex. Former Phoenix homicide detective Tommy Kullesa later described exactly what that mixture was capable of. In his own words, “What that does is it makes the subsequent fire burn hotter and harder to put out. His crime.

” >> Leroy McIll showed up outside the apartment with a can of gas and he had cut up some styrofoam and put it inside the gas. [clears throat] And and what that does is the styrofoam the gas dissolves the styrofoam basically and it turns it into like a gel like a gel-like substance. And what that does is it makes the fire the subsequent fire burned hotter and harder to >> Miguel did not walk back into that duplex on a whim.

 He walked back in with a weapon he had built himself. He also made sure certain people were out of the way before he acted. Janna Hardesty’s brother Jeff Uol was present in the broader situation and left the scene before the attack at McGill’s direction. If you have not subscribed yet, now is the time. Hit that button and keep watching.

 It only gets heavier from here. July 13th, 2002. Early morning, North Phoenix, Arizona. Leroy McIll returned to the duplex complex he had been evicted from. He was not there to talk. He was not there to settle things peacefully. He arrived carrying the gasoline styrofoam mixture he had prepared. Ready to use it. Before he went inside, he found Eddie Keith outside the complex.

 He told Keith to take his family and leave right now. Keith did not argue, but he did plead for one thing. He asked Migill to spare Jack Yates, who was inside the apartment. Migill agreed. Yates would be left alone. Then McGill threatened Keith one final time. If Keith said anything about what was about to happen, his daughters would not be safe.

 Jeff Ool, Hardesty’s brother, also cleared the scene. One by one, McIll made sure the people he wanted out were gone. Then he walked inside. Charles Perez and Novabanta were seated together on a sofa. Jack Yates was resting on another couch nearby. The apartment was quiet. McGill did not waste time. According to court records, he confronted Perez and Bant, accusing them of talking about people behind their backs.

 It was a reference to the shotgun accusation, the same accusation that had gotten him evicted, the same accusation that had been eating at him for days. The confrontation was brief. Then Miguel raised the container and doused both Charles Perez and Nova Bant with the gel-like mixture. It covered them thick, sticky, clinging to their skin and clothing. He lit it.

 Both Perez and Bant were engulfed in flames within seconds. The fire did not stay contained. It spread fast, moving through the apartment and into the rest of the complex. Neighbor Mary Near was forced to flee her own unit to escape the blaze. Perez and Bant ran out of the apartment screaming, their bodies on fire. Both were rushed to the hospital.

Charles Perez had burns covering approximately 80% of his body. Novabanta had burns covering approximately 75% of hers. Jack Yates, who had been spared at Keith’s request, suffered only minor injuries. At the hospital, Perez was in unbearable pain. There was nothing doctors could do to save him. On July 14th, 2002.

One day after the attack, Charles Perez died from his injuries. Court records confirmed what investigators had suspected from the moment they arrived on scene. The fire was deliberately set. This was not an accident. This was murder. Leroy McIll did not stay to watch what he had done. He left. While Charles Perez and Novabanta were being rushed to the hospital, their bodies covered in burns, Miguel walked away from the scene.

 He did not call for help. He did not turn himself in. He simply disappeared. Back at the complex, emergency responders arrived to a fully involved structure fire. The building was burning. Multiple people had been injured. Former Phoenix homicide detective Tommy Klesa was among those dispatched to the scene. He later recalled exactly what they were told when they arrived.

 We got dispatched out to a fire, a structure fire with people that had been injured inside. And the fire, we were told, was deliberately set. When investigators arrived, Charles Perez was still alive. He had not yet died from his injuries. As Clesa put it, “At the time that we arrived, no one was deceased yet.

 The case began as an arson investigation.” It did not stay that way for long. As detectives worked the scene, witness accounts began to surface. Tenants who had been warned to leave, a father who had been threatened into silence, people who had seen Migill’s behavior in the days and hours leading up to the attack. The picture that emerged was not one of a random act.

 It was one of a man who had planned every step, and that man was nowhere to be found. McIll had fled Arizona entirely. He made his way to Minnesota, putting as much distance between himself and Phoenix as he could. Behind him, he left a destroyed complex, a community in shock. One man dying in a hospital bed, and a woman fighting to survive. Investigators did not have to work long to figure out what had happened.

 Arson investigators examined the scene and confirmed what had already been suspected. The fire was deliberately set. It was not an accident. It was not a malfunction. Someone had started it on purpose. Then came the forensic detail that told the full story. The gel-like residue left behind at the scene was identified as the gasoline styrofoam mixture Miguel had prepared.

 That substance did not end up inside that apartment by chance. Someone had brought it there and someone had used it. Witness accounts began to fill in the rest. Eddie Keith told investigators what McGill had said to him outside the complex that morning, the warning to leave, the threat against his daughters, the declaration that he was going to deal with Perez.

 Jeff Ul and others who had been present in the hours before the attack added their own accounts. One by one, the pieces came together. Then Nova Bant spoke. Despite the severity of her injuries, burns covering approximately 75% of her body, Bant identified Leroy McIll as the man who had set her and Charles Perez on fire. Her identification was direct. It was clear.

And it became the cornerstone of the entire case against him. There was only one problem. McIll was gone. Investigators established that he had already left Arizona and tracked him all the way to Minnesota. He was located, arrested, and extradited back to Arizona to face charges. The case against McIll was strong from the very beginning, multiple witnesses, a surviving victim who named him directly, forensic evidence, and a motive that every tenant in that complex already knew about.

 The charges were serious firstdegree premeditated murder for the death of Charles Perez. Attempted first-degree murder of Novabanta, multiple counts of arson, endangerment of Jack Yates, Jeff, and neighbor Mary Mir, the prosecution’s case was built on four pillars. The prepared accelerant, McIll’s warnings to Eddie Keith, his threats to silence witnesses, and the deliberate targeting of Perez and Bant.

 Every piece pointed in the same direction. The defense called a single witness. That witness claimed McGill had nothing to do with the fire. No evidence was offered to support that claim. Nothing. Nova Bant had already identified him. Eddie Keith had already told investigators what McGill said that morning. The forensic evidence had already confirmed the accelerant.

 The jury saw exactly what the evidence showed. The trial was held in Arizona Superior Court. The jury deliberated for less than one hour. They returned guilty verdicts on every single count. The penalty phase followed. The prosecution presented two aggravating factors. The murder had been committed in an especially heinous, cruel, and depraved manner, and McGill carried prior serious felony convictions, including armed robbery.

 The defense pushed back with mitigation, childhood abuse, psychological immaturity, alleged over dominance by hardesty, marijuana use before the attack, family members who cared for him. The jury rejected every argument. During the penalty phase, one juror stated that her religious beliefs might prevent her from voting for death. She was dismissed.

 The remaining jurors voted unanimously. Death. On October 27th, 2004, Leroy Dean McIll was formally sentenced to death. His lawyers appealed. They argued a legal gap existed in Arizona’s death sentencing statute at the time of the crime between June 24th and August 1st, 2002. They also raised ineffective counsel and insufficient weight given to mitigation.

 Both Arizona courts and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected every claim, describing the crime as heinous and depraved. By approximately 2022, McIll had exhausted every appeal at every level. Leroy Dean McIll spent more than two decades on death row in Arizona. For over 20 years, his lawyers filed appeal after appeal.

 State courts reviewed his case. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed his case. Every single time the answer was the same. The sentence stood. By 2022, every legal door had been closed. McGill had exhausted every option available to him under both state and federal law. In early 2026, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office took the next step.

They formally requested an execution warrant from the Arizona Supreme Court. On March 26th, 2026, the court granted that request. The Arizona Supreme Court issued the execution warrant and set the date May 20th, 2026. Medil’s execution would be carried out by lethal injection at the state prison complex in Florence, Arizona.

 It was the first execution scheduled in Arizona in 2026. The state’s last execution had taken place in October of the previous year. In the days leading up to the execution, former Phoenix homicide detective Tommy Klesa spoke publicly about the case. His words were measured and deliberate. I’m of the belief that my opinion doesn’t matter on it.

 I believe in a case like this, the only people whose opinions matter are Charles Perez’s family, Novabanta, and her family and Leroy McIll’s family. Leroy McIll has the ability to talk for himself right now. Charles Perez doesn’t. Someone has to talk for him. Charles Perez had been silent since July 14th, 2002. On May 20th, 2026.

 At exactly 10:00 in the morning, Leroy Dean McIll climbed onto a gurnie inside the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence. He was 63 years old. Four men in black hats strapped him down. Miguel flashed a quick smile at them. A second team of four men in white scrubs rolled up the sleeves of his white coveralls, revealing arms covered in tattoos.

Electrodes were placed on his chest. Catheters were inserted into both arms. The entire process took 3 minutes. When the curtains opened, McGill turned to the witness window. He found his attorney’s eyes. She waved, clutching a tissue. His friend, Grover Rididgeway, raised a fist and held it in the air. a pre-arranged signal that McIll’s family was thinking of him.

 Migill smiled broadly. When asked for his final words, he said, “I just want to thank everybody for being so accommodating and nice. I’m going home.” Media witness Josh Kelly from the Associated Press reported hearing McIll say earlier, “I’m going home soon.” His last meal consisted of onion rings, bread and butter, chocolate cake, and a green salad.

 Arizona’s current execution protocol involved two syringes of the seditive pentobarbatital. Media witness Shawn Rice from Phoenix television station KPNX observed that the process went smoothly, noting no issues finding a vein on either arm. He reported a slight twitching on the right side of McIll’s head approximately 4 minutes before death.

 At 10:26 in the morning, Leroy Dean McIll was pronounced dead. He became the first person executed in Arizona in 2026 and the 12th person executed in the United States that year. May 21st, 2026, 6:00 in the evening, Florida State Prison, Rafford, Florida. The room is cold and quiet. A single gurnie sits in the center of the death chamber.

 Straps hang from its sides, waiting behind a thick pane of glass. Witnesses take their seats. Victims, family members, state officials, journalists, defense attorneys. Nobody speaks. Nobody moves. All eyes are fixed on one man. His name is Richard Knight. He is 47 years old. He is Florida’s seventh execution of 2026, a number that has already drawn outrage from human rights organizations around the world.

But here is what makes tonight different from any other execution. Somewhere in Washington, DC, at this very moment, a final appeal is sitting before the United States Supreme Court. His attorneys are fighting for his life. The clock is ticking, and the state is not waiting. 26 years ago in a quiet home in Coral Springs, Florida, a 21-year-old woman was stabbed 21 times.

 Her 4-year-old daughter woke up that night and never saw morning. But here is the detail that will stop you cold. The knife broke mid attack. Most people would have stopped. Richard Knight did not. He walked away, found a second knife, and came back. What kind of rage does that take? Before we get to that death chamber tonight, what happened inside that Coral Springs home in June 2000 is almost impossible to believe.

This is the story of Odessia Stevens, her daughter Hanosia, and the night one man’s rage destroyed an entire family. Before we talk about what happened that night, like this video and hit that subscribe button. You really need to know who was lost because this story is not just about a crime. It is about a life.

 two lives and a third that never even got the chance to begin. Her name was Odessia Stevens. She was 21 years old. She lived in Coral Springs, Broward County, Florida, a quiet suburban community just northwest of Fort Lauderdale. By all accounts, Odessia was the kind of person who made a room feel warmer just by being in it. Relatives who took the stand during court proceedings described her in simple powerful words, loving, hard-working, devoted.

 She was in a relationship with a man named Hans Mullings. And together they were building something real, a home, a family, a future. Their daughter was 4-year-old Hanessia Mullings, nicknamed Nessie by the people who loved her. Family members said Odessia absolutely doted on that little girl. Hanessia was her world. Anyone who saw them together could see it.

 The three of them, Odessia, Hans, and little Hanesia, shared a home in Coral Springs. It was not a perfect life. But it was theirs, and they were working to make it better every single day. Hans worked the night shift. That meant most evenings Odessia was home alone with Hanosia. She was the one who tucked her daughter in.

 The one who kept the house running while Hans was away. What the family did not know, what none of them could have predicted was that Odessia was also 6 weeks pregnant at the time of her death. That detail came from the autopsy. It is confirmed in court records. Three lives were taken that night in Coral Springs. Not two, three.

 At night’s sentencing, Hans Mulling stood before the court and said what every grieving person in that room was feeling. His words were raw and unfiltered. He deserves to die for what he’s done. I just wish he died in a graphic way. They suffered a lot. And he won’t. He’s just going to be put to sleep and he’s gone.

 Odessia Stevens was not just a victim. She was a mother, a partner, a daughter, a woman who fought to protect her home and her child with everything she had. And she paid for it with her life. Now, let’s talk about Richard Knight. Because before he was the man strapped to that gurnie in Rafford, he was something else entirely.

He was family. Richard Knight was born around 1978 or 1979 in the Broward County area of Florida. He is 47 years old at the time of his scheduled execution. And here is the first thing you need to understand about him. He was not a stranger who broke into that Coral Springs home. He was Hans Mullings’s cousin.

 That means Odessia Stevens opened her home to him. She and Hans took him in. They gave him a roof over his head, food on the table, and a place to sleep. By June 2000, Knight had no stable home of his own, no independent household, no steady foundation to stand on. He was entirely dependent on the generosity of his cousin’s family. According to advocacy organizations, including the Florida Association for the Death Penalty and the Catholic Mobilizing Network, Richard Knight’s childhood was marked by severe and prolonged sexual abuse. They also allege

he developed serious mental health conditions and possible neurological impairment as a result of that trauma. Here is what makes that significant. Those claims were never presented to the jury that sentenced him to death. They were raised only in postconviction proceedings years after the verdict. Advocates call that a fundamental failure of the system.

 Whether you agree or not, the jury made a life ordeath decision without ever hearing that side of his story. There is no public record of Knight ever having a spouse or children of his own. What court records do show is this. The arguments between Knight and Odessia were not occasional. They were frequent. They were escalating, and others in the household were aware of them.

 Those who knew the household said the tension between Richard and Odessia had been building for weeks. What no one knew was just how far he was willing to go. By the time June 2000 arrived, the tension inside that Coral Springs home had become impossible to ignore. Richard Knight had been living with Odessia, Hans, and little Hannesia for an extended period in the early months of that year, and from the beginning, it was not easy.

Court records confirm that Knight and Odessia argued frequently and specifically about his presence in the home. This was not a one-time disagreement that got out of hand. It was a pattern, a chronic recurring conflict that kept coming back like a wound that would not heal. And it was getting worse.

 Hans worked the night shift. That meant evening after evening, Odessio was alone in that house with her 4-year-old daughter and with Richard Knight. No buffer, no backup, just a young mother trying to hold her household together while managing a situation that had long since worn out its welcome. Odessia had reached her limit. She made a decision.

 Night had to go. Not eventually, not soon. The next morning. That night, Hans left for work as usual. The house settled into its nighttime quiet. Hanosia was home. Night was home. And Odessia delivered her ultimatum clearly and directly. He needed to move out in the morning. That was it. No threats, no cruelty, just a woman drawing a firm and reasonable line in her own home.

 Court records describe what happened next in one word. Rage. Not argument. Not push back. Not a slam door or a raised voice. Immediate explosive rage. Think about that for a moment. A young mother, her own home, a simple, reasonable request. That was the trigger. Something so ordinary, something so human. And it became the last conversation Odessia Stevens would ever have.

 She simply told him it was time to go. What Richard Knight did next would shock an entire community and send him to death row for the next 26 years. In many capital murder cases, there is a web of people to untangle. Accompllices, planners, someone who drove the car or made the call. A conspiracy that investigators have to piece together one threat at a time.

 This is not one of those cases. Richard Knight acted alone. There were no co-conspirators, no hired hands, no elaborate plan mapped out in advance. But that does not mean there was no premeditation. And this is where the story gets even more disturbing. When the first knife broke during the attack, Knight stopped. He walked away from Odessia, gravely wounded, bleeding, crawling across the floor, and went to find a second knife.

Then he came back. Prosecutors pointed to that moment as proof of deliberate continued intent. This was not a man who lost control for a few seconds. This was a man who made a choice twice. The jury also convicted Knight of sexual battery, a finding that added yet another dimension to the violence of that night.

That conviction is part of the official court record. And then after his arrest, Knight made another revealing decision. While sitting in Broward County Jail, he confessed the killings to a fellow inmate. That inmate came forward. He testified at trial. His account, combined with DNA evidence recovered from the crime scene, formed the backbone of the prosecution’s entire case.

 Knight’s own words, helped convict him. Odessia Stevens deserves to have her story told exactly as it happened. Knight begins stabbing Odessia repeatedly, violently. But Odessia does not simply fall. She fights back. The autopsy confirms it. Defensive wounds on both hands. She raised her hands to protect herself. She struggled. She refused to give up without a fight.

 Then the knife breaks. Most people, even in the grip of anger, would stop at that point. The weapon is gone. The moment has passed. Knight does not stop. He steps away from Odessia, bleeding, wounded, crawling across the floor toward the living room. and he goes to find a second knife. He finds one. He comes back.

 Court records show he returns to Odessia in the living room and continues the attack. When it is finally over, the autopsy tells the full story. 21 stab wounds and signs of strangulation on her body as well. 21 stab wounds, a broken knife, and then he went back for another one. What kind of rage does that take? That question and its answer is exactly what sent Richard Knight to death row.

 But the night is not over. Somewhere in that house, a little girl wakes up. 4-year-old Hannah Mullings. Nessie. She is barely old enough to understand what is happening around her. She is old enough only to be frightened. Court records state that Knight then turns on the child. He stabs her five times.

 She also shows signs of strangulation. A four-year-old girl in her own home stabbed five times. There are no words adequate enough for that. And then there is the detail that the autopsy would later confirm. The detail that makes this tragedy even more unbearable. Odessia Stevens was 6 weeks pregnant at the time of her death.

 Three lives ended in that Coral Springs home that night. Not two. Three. Hans Mullings finishes his night shift and comes home. What he walks into is beyond description. His girlfriend, his daughter gone. The home they were building together destroyed in a single night of violence. He calls the authorities.

 Investigators arrive at the scene. They begin to process what they are looking at. The blood, the wounds, the broken knife, the evidence of a struggle that was fierce and desperate and ultimately one-sided. The investigation into the murders of Odessia Stevens and Hannesia Mullings has begun. And Richard Knight is still out there.

 The quiet neighborhood of Coral Springs woke up to a horror it had not seen coming. Neighbors who had gone to sleep on an ordinary summer night opened their doors to police tape and flashing lights. A community was shaken to its core and Richard Knight was nowhere to be found. This is one of the most troubling facts of this entire case.

 Knight was not arrested that night. He was not arrested the next week. He was not arrested that month. Richard Knight walked free for more than 14 months after the murders. He was not apprehended until August 2001, over a year after Odessia and Hanessia were killed. For Hans Mullings and the rest of the family, that meant living every single day with the weight of what happened while the man responsible was still out there.

 Grief does not pause for an investigation. It does not wait for an arrest. It simply sits with you every morning, every night. Meanwhile, investigators were quietly and methodically building their case. They were gathering evidence, interviewing witnesses, and following every thread they could find. They were not done yet. The crime scene that investigators walked into that night in Coral Springs told a brutal story, two victims, multiple stab wounds on each, signs of strangulation on both bodies, a broken knife recovered at the scene, and the

physical evidence of a struggle, defensive wounds on Odessia’s hands that confirmed she had fought back with everything she had. Broward County investigators began the painstaking work of processing every inch of that home. DNA evidence was collected. It would become one of the most critical pieces of the prosecution’s eventual case.

 A direct forensic link between Richard Knight and the crime scene. But there was a complication. An unidentified fingerprint was found on one of the knives at the scene. Knight’s defense team would later seize on that detail, arguing in postconviction appeals that it pointed to the possibility of another perpetrator.

 It was an argument they would return to years, even decades. The Florida Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the fingerprint had been known about and properly addressed during Knight’s original trial. It was not new evidence. It did not change the outcome. The deeper challenge for investigators was this.

 There was no surviving adult witness from inside that home. No one who saw what happened. The prosecution would have to reconstruct the entire night from physical evidence alone. That is until Knight made a critical mistake. After his eventual arrest in August 2001, Knight was held at Broward County Jail. While there, he confessed the killings to a fellow inmate.

 That inmate agreed to testify. Suddenly, investigators had something more powerful than forensics. They had Knight’s own words. He was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, sexual battery, and armed burglary. The charges reflected the full scope of what happened inside that home. Not just the deaths of Odessia and Hanessia, but the totality of the violence committed against them that night.

 For the Mullings family, the arrest brought something they had been waiting over a year for. But Hans Mullings knew the truth that every grieving family eventually learns. An arrest is not justice. It is only the beginning of the road to it. The case went to trial in Broward County, Florida. And the prosecution came prepared.

 They laid out their evidence methodically and without hesitation. DNA forensics placing Knight at the crime scene. The broken knife and the second knife recovered from the home. The autopsy findings, 21 stab wounds on Odessia Stevens, five stab wounds on four-year-old Hanessia, signs of strangulation on both victims, and confirmation that Odessia was 6 weeks pregnant at the time of her death, and then the jailhouse confession, Knight’s own words delivered through the testimony of the inmate he had confided in at Broward County Jail. The defense

raised questions about the unidentified fingerprint found on one of the knives at the scene. It was an argument designed to plant doubt. It was an argument they would return to again in the years that followed. The jury was not persuaded. In 2006, Richard Knight was convicted on all counts. Two counts of first-degree murder, sexual battery, and armed burglary.

 The jury deliberated and came back unanimous. They recommended the death penalty for both murders. A judge imposed consecutive death sentences, one for Odessia, one for Hannisiah. The court formally described the murders using the legal language reserved for Florida’s most extreme cases. The killings were labeled heinous, atrocious, and cruel, but the legal fight was far from over.

Postconviction appeals began almost immediately and would stretch across nearly two decades. Knight’s attorneys argued ineffective assistance of counsel. They returned to the fingerprint argument. They challenged Florida’s lethal injection protocol, specifically a procedure that allows executioners to cut into an inmate’s body without anesthesia to place an IV line known as a central venus cutdown.

They also challenged Knight’s death sentence based on a 2016 United States Supreme Court ruling that struck down Florida’s judge sentencing system. Florida’s courts disagreed, citing a 2002 cutoff date that excluded Knight’s case. On April 27th, 2026, the Florida Supreme Court denied both a pending petition and an emergency stay of execution.

 On the same day, the machine was moving and it was not stopping. After his conviction in 2006, Richard Knight was moved to death row at Florida State Prison. He would spend approximately 20 years there. 20 years of appeals, 20 years of filings in state courts, federal courts, and the United States Supreme Court. Every available legal avenue was pursued and one by one, every door closed.

 Then on April 22nd, 2026, Governor Ron DeSantis signed Richard Knight’s death warrant. The execution was set for May 21st, 2026, just 29 days away. Knight’s attorneys made one final push. They filed an application to the United States Supreme Court, challenging the constitutionality of his death sentence and the lethal injection protocols central Venus cutdown provision.

 Then, on the very morning of the execution, something happened in Tennessee that made Knight’s attorneys move even faster. Tennessee was attempting to execute an inmate named Tony Kurthers. Officials established the main IV line, but could not find a suitable vein for the required backup line. The execution was called off.

 Reports emerged that Kurthers had been in agony and bleeding during the failed attempt. Knight’s attorneys immediately filed an emergency stay with the Florida Supreme Court. They argued that Tennessee and Florida share similar execution protocols and that what happened in Tennessee could happen in Florida that same evening.

 The Florida Supreme Court denied the request. The United States Supreme Court rejected Knight’s final appeal without comment. May 21st, 2026. 6:00 in the evening, Florida State Prison, Rafford. The curtain of the death chamber went up at exactly 6:00. Richard Knight was already strapped to the gurnie, arms extended, an IV line in place. Witnesses sat behind the glass.

Family members, state officials, media, defense attorneys. The warden asked Knight if he wished to make a final statement. Knight’s last words were brief and composed. I want to give thanks to Yahweh who is the most high. He declined a last meal. The three drug injection began immediately after his statement.

 A seditive, a paralytic, a drug to stop the heart. Knight closed his eyes. He barely moved. After approximately 10 minutes, a medic entered the room. At 6:13 in the evening, Richard Knight was pronounced dead. Florida’s seventh execution of 2026 was complete. And that wraps up every execution carried out in the United States in the month of May 2026.

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