JUST IN: Alabama EXECUTES Bald Mountain Killer With Gas Banned For Animals — Daughter Says “Wrong”

I don’t know what it is like to have a mother while going through life. I’ve had to experience life without her presence because all of those opportunities were stolen from her. >> Imagine watching a man die and walking away unsure if justice was served. That is exactly what happened on the evening of November 21st, [music] 2024.

A 50-year-old man named Carey Dale Grayson was strapped to a gurney inside William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama. A gas mask was placed over his face. The curtains to the viewing room were pulled open at just after 6:00 in the evening. Minutes later, he was dead. Pronounced gone at 6:33 in the evening.

 He was executed using nitrogen gas. A method so controversial that veterinarians across the United States and Europe have banned it for use on most animals. Alabama used it anyway. Not for the first time. Not for the second time. But for the third time in a single year. >> Alabama carried out its third nitrogen hypoxia execution.

>> 30 years after he killed a hitchhiker near Birmingham, now 50-year-old Carey Dale Grayson was pronounced dead tonight at 6:33. >> And here is the part that stopped everyone cold. The victim’s own daughter, the woman who lost her mother because of this man, stepped before the cameras that same night and said the execution was wrong.

 So, was this justice or something else entirely? What happened next is impossible to believe. Welcome back to Red Mark Files. If this is your first time here, you just found your new favorite true crime death row channel. Every week we go deeper into the real cases. Hit that subscribe button right now and turn on your notifications because the next case is already coming.

 And trust me, you do not want to miss it. Her name was Vicky Lynn De Blue. She was 37 years old. A mother, a daughter, a woman with a life that mattered deeply to the people who loved her. Vicky had roots in the southeastern United States with family in West Monroe, Louisiana, where her mother lived. She was the kind of woman who showed up for the people she loved, warm, real, full of life, and she was raising a daughter, Jody, largely on her own. Jody adored her mother.

 That much would become heartbreakingly clear years later. Vicki was traveling from southeastern Tennessee, making her way southwest toward her mother’s home in West Monroe, Louisiana. It was a long journey, hundreds of miles, and she was making it the way many people did in that era. In rural parts of the American South, she was hitchhiking.

 This was not unusual in 1994. Limited transportation options, long rural stretches, and a culture of roadside travel made hitchhiking a practical choice for many people. Vicki had no reason to believe the road was dangerous that day. She was heading home. That was all. The last known point along her journey placed her near Interstate 59, continuing southwest through the state of Alabama.

 She had accepted a ride. She was moving closer to her mother’s house with every mile. She never arrived. Her mother waited. Her daughter waited. The call never came. Jody was just 12 years old when her mother was murdered. 12. She would go on to graduate, get married, and have children of her own. Every single milestone reached without her mother beside her.

 Years later, standing outside the prison where Caril Dale Grayson had just been executed, Jody said, >> I don’t know what it is like to have a mother while going through life. Graduation, marriage, children, hurts and joys. I’ve had to experience life without her presence because all of those opportunities were stolen from her. >> Vicki D Blue was not just a name in a court file.

 She was a mother, a daughter, a woman on her way home, and someone made sure she never got there. Caril Dale Grayson was 19 years old in February of 1994. To anyone who crossed paths with him in Alabama at that time, he was not a notable figure. No public record of wide-scale criminal activity, no known history of making threats, just a teenager, one of many young men drifting through life without direction.

But, the details beneath the surface tell a darker story. Grayson lost his mother when he was approximately 3 years old. She had battled mental illness. That loss, at such a young age, left a wound that was never properly treated. His defense attorneys would later raise this in court as a mitigating factor, and court records confirm he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a serious condition that, by all indications, went largely unmanaged during his teenage years.

 By the time he was 19, Grayson had no clear career path, no structured environment, and no strong adult guidance noted in the records. What he did have was a group of friends, teenage boys like himself, and access to alcohol and drugs. Heavy substance use was part of the daily picture. So was a complete absence of any positive influence to pull him back from the edge.

 He was not a calculated, cold-blooded predator who had spent years planning violence. The records do not paint that picture. What they show instead is a deeply troubled young man, shaped by childhood trauma, untreated illness, and a social circle that was heading nowhere good. But, here is where we have to stop and be very clear.

 None of that is an excuse. None of it explains away what happened on that mountain. His past does not cancel his choices, because when the moment came, when a 37-year-old woman’s life was in his hands, Carry Dale Grayson chose cruelty. Court records make that plain. The suffering was real. The violence was deliberate.

 And the evil of what he and his companions did was beyond anything most people will ever encounter in a courtroom. It was February 21st, 1994. On the surface, it looked like an ordinary day. Four teenagers in Alabama spending time together. Nothing about that picture seemed alarming to anyone watching from the outside. But court records tell a different story.

 The group consisted of Kerry Dale Grayson, age 19, Kenny Loggins, age 17, Trace Duncan, age 17, and Louis Mangiione, age 16. That afternoon, they were using alcohol and drugs together. Court records confirm this. It was not a minor detail. It was the condition that made everything that followed possible. Here is something important to understand.

When a group of young men feed off each other’s energy under the influence of substances, something shifts. Inhibition drops. Bad ideas stop sounding bad. The desire to impress each other overrides the voice that says, “Stop. This is wrong.” No one in that group stepped back. No one pumped the brakes.

 There was no adult present. No structure. No guardrail of any kind. Four teenagers, substances, free time, and absolutely nothing and no one to stop what was building. Then, somewhere along the Interstate Corridor in Jefferson County, Alabama, they encountered a woman hitchhiking by the roadside. Her name was Vicki Deblue.

 They offered her a ride. She accepted. She had no way of knowing what the inside of that car actually was. She could not have known what these four had already been doing or what they were already capable of in that state. She just needed to get to her mother’s house. Four teenagers, a car, drugs, alcohol, and a woman who just needed a ride.

 What they did next and what they did after shocked even the most seasoned investigators on the case. Let us look closely at who these four young men were because the details matter. Kerry Dale Grayson was 19 years old, the oldest of the group. And under Alabama law, that made him the only legal adult among them. That single fact, just a matter of a year or two in age, would ultimately separate his fate from the others in the most permanent way possible. Kenny Loggins was 17.

Trace Duncan was also 17. Louis Mangione was the youngest at 16. Three juveniles and one adult riding together, substances in their systems, and a woman sitting in their car who believed she was simply getting a lift down the road. According to court records, the group drove Vicky under the pretense of giving her a ride southwest.

 At some point during that drive, a decision was made. Not announced, not written down, but made collectively by four people who chose the same direction at the same time. They turned toward Bald Mountain in Odenville, St. Clair County, Alabama. A wooded area, isolated, elevated, approximately 15 mi northeast of Birmingham, far from the highway, far from help, far from anyone who might intervene.

 Court records indicate that Vicky sensed something was wrong. She attempted to escape. That detail is important. It tells us she was aware, she was fighting, she was trying to survive. But she was one woman against four. There was no weapon brought to that mountain in advance. No gun, no knife carried there with a plan. The weapon, according to what the evidence shows, was the group itself.

 Four people feeding each other’s worst impulses, each one making it easier for the next to continue. That is its own kind of planning. That is its own kind of conspiracy. Every step they took, from the car to the mountain, was a choice. A collective, deliberate, conscious choice. And Vicky DeBlue paid for every single one of them.

 What happened on Bald Mountain on the evening of February 21st, 1994, is not easy to recount, but it needs to be told. Because Vicky DeBlue deserves for the world to know exactly what was done to her. When Vicky got into that car, she believed she was moving closer to Louisiana, closer to her her The group drove southwest along the Interstate 59 corridor in Alabama, the right direction at first.

 Then they turned off, away from the highway, away from other cars, away from people. They were heading to Bald Mountain in Odenville, St. Clair County, Alabama. Wooded, isolated, elevated, a place where no one would see, no one would hear. According to court records, once they reached the wooded area, the group turned on Vicki De Blue.

 The attack was sustained and brutal. She was beaten repeatedly, kicked, struck, and stomped. Court records confirm that at least one member of the group stood on her throat. She fought back. She tried to escape, but she was one woman against four attackers, and she was overwhelmed. After the beating, the group threw her body off a cliff.

 Take a moment with that. They threw her off a cliff. Whether they believed she was already dead at that point, or whether they simply did not care, court records do not fully resolve. What the records do confirm is what came next. They left, and then they came back. This is the part that stays with investigators, prosecutors, and anyone who has ever read the case file.

 The group returned to her body on that mountain, and what they did when they got there is almost beyond the limits of what language can describe. According to court records, they stabbed and cut her body approximately 180 times. They removed parts of her fingers. The violence inflicted on Vicki De Blue after she was already off that cliff, the deliberate, methodical nature of it, pointed to something deeply disturbing about the state of mind of everyone present.

 A medical examiner who later examined her remains testified that every single bone in Vicki De Blue’s face had been fractured at least once. Every single bone. The case file described massive blunt force trauma, extensive postmortem mutilation, and manual compression injuries to the the That is the clinical language.

 Behind those words is a 37-year-old woman who had done nothing more than accept a ride. Her body was eventually discovered by three rock climbers on or near Bald Mountain. What they found that day was described by investigators as one of the most brutal crime scenes in the history of the state of Alabama.

 Law enforcement was called immediately. Vicki De Blue had been found, but her killers were still out there, going about their lives as if nothing had happened. But here is where this case takes an almost unbelievable turn because one of the four killers kept a souvenir, and that souvenir is exactly what brought them all down.

 After leaving Bald Mountain, the four teenagers went back to their lives. No panic, no confession, no phone call to emergency services, nothing. According to everything in the record, the group returned to the routine of ordinary teenage life in Alabama as if the evening had been completely unremarkable. There was no 911 call, no remorse expressed publicly, no attempt by any member of the group to turn themselves in or report what had happened, just silence and the quiet confidence that comes from believing no one will ever find out. But one of them

could not help himself. Court records and prosecution evidence revealed that Louis Mangione, the youngest of the group at 16, showed one of Vicki De Blue’s severed fingers to friends after the murder. He kept it and then he showed it off. That single act, a teenager treating a dead woman’s finger like a trophy, became the thread that investigators would eventually pull.

 And when they pulled it, everything began to unravel. Meanwhile, no one who loved Vicki knew yet what had happened to her. In West Monroe, Louisiana, her mother was waiting, expecting her daughter to walk through the door in the same way mothers do, checking the time, listening for footsteps, telling herself there was probably just a delay on the road.

 Jody Haley was 12 years old. She was waiting for her mother to come home. Neither of them knew. Nobody knew except four teenagers in Alabama. Then the rock climbers found her body on Bald Mountain. Law enforcement descended on the scene. St. Clair County investigators now had a crime, one of the worst they had ever seen.

 What they did not yet have were suspects. The clock was ticking. Investigators had a body, a mountain, and no suspects. But somewhere in Alabama, a teenager was showing off a dead woman’s finger, and the walls were about to close in. When law enforcement arrived at Bald Mountain in Odenville, St. Clair County, they were not prepared for what they found.

St. Clair County investigators responded immediately after the three rock climbers reported the discovery. Forensic teams moved in to document the scene. What they encountered was not just a homicide, it was something far worse. The level of violence inflicted on Vicky Deblue’s body told investigators, right from the beginning, that this was not the work of one person acting alone.

 180 stab and cut wounds, fractured facial bones, severed fingers, manual compression injuries to the throat. The forensic picture was clear. Multiple attackers had been present. The violence had been sustained and prolonged. This was a group, but who? Identifying Vicky was its own challenge. She was a hitchhiker passing through Alabama.

 She had no local connections in the state. No one in the immediate area knew her. Investigators canvassed the roads around Interstate 59 and the mountain access routes, looking for anyone who might have seen her on the roadside or getting into a vehicle. Early leads were thin. The group of teenagers, meanwhile, showed no visible signs of panic. No one fled the state.

No one dramatically changed their behavior. They simply went quiet, and apparently counted on the silence of everyone around them holding. It almost worked. But in small communities, secrets have a way of moving. Word began to circulate, quietly at first, that Louis Mangiione had shown something disturbing to people he knew.

 Something taken from the mountain, something that belonged to Vicki De Blue. Investigators were building a case brick by brick, and when they finally got the break they needed, it came from the most unexpected source. What one teenager said to his friends in casual conversation would seal the fate of all four of them.

 The break in the case came not from high-tech forensics or a dramatic confession. It came from a teenager who could not keep quiet. Court records indicate that investigators received information linking Louis Mangione directly to the crime. He had shown one of Vicki De Blue’s severed fingers to people he knew.

 He had talked, and the people he talked to eventually talked to law enforcement. That was the thread, and once investigators pulled it, the silence the group had built around themselves came apart completely. Friends and acquaintances who had been shown the finger or told details about what happened on that mountain cooperated with law enforcement.

 They provided names. They provided enough information for investigators to move from a gruesome unsolved scene on a mountain to four specific teenagers in Alabama. Kerry Dale Grayson, 19. Kenny Loggins, 17. [music] Trace Duncan, 17. Louis Mangione, 16. All four were identified. All four were arrested.

 All four were charged in connection with the abduction and murder of Vicki Lynn De Blue. Beyond the witness testimony, court records confirmed that physical evidence also tied the group to the crime scene on Bald Mountain. The severed fingers matched remains from Vicki’s body. Forensic evidence placed the group at the location.

 The case against them was being built on multiple fronts simultaneously. From the moment of arrest, Grayson’s case was immediately separated from the others. At 19, he was the only legal adult in the group. That distinction meant he alone would face the full weight of a capital murder prosecution. The other three, all juveniles, would face a different legal path. The community exhaled.

 Vicki’s family finally had names. They had faces. Now, for the first time, Vicky’s family had names. They had faces. And in 1996, they would get a verdict. In 1996, Kerry Dale Grayson stood trial for the capital murder of Vicky Lynn DeBlue. Prosecutors laid out everything. The abduction, the beating on Bald Mountain, the cliff, the return, the 180 stab and cut wounds, the severed fingers, and the medical examiner’s testimony that every single bone in Vicky DeBlue’s face had been fractured at least once.

 The jury convicted him of capital murder. They recommended the death penalty. The judge imposed it. His three co-defendants faced their own legal outcomes. Louis Mangione, who was 16 at the time of the crime, received a life sentence. His age shielded him from the death penalty. Kenny Loggins and Trace Duncan, both 17 at the time, were originally sentenced to death.

 But in 2005, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Roper v. Simmons that executing individuals for crimes committed while under the age of 18 was unconstitutional. In 2006, both Loggins and Duncan had their death sentences commuted to life in prison. Grayson’s defense team spent nearly three decades filing appeals.

 They raised his bipolar disorder, his mother’s death when he was three, his traumatic and unsupported childhood. Courts acknowledged these factors and still upheld the sentence every single time. The painful irony was impossible to ignore. Three co-defendants, separated from Grayson by just a year or two in age, would spend their lives in prison.

 Grayson, at 19, had crossed the one legal threshold that put his life directly in the hands of the state. That invisible line cost him everything. From the day of his conviction in 1996 to the night of his execution in 2024, Kerry Dale Grayson spent nearly 30 years on death row at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama. 30 years.

Every appeal filed, every petition denied. His co-defendants grew older inside prison walls. The laws around juvenile sentencing changed, and the method Alabama planned to use to kill him changed, too. In 2018, Alabama introduced nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method, pumping pure nitrogen through a mask, cutting off all oxygen until death.

 Supporters called it more humane than lethal injection. Grayson chose it as his method before a full protocol was even in place, a detail his lawyers would later use in court arguments. But, the two executions that came before his told a different story. In January of 2024, Kenneth Eugene Smith became the first person in United States history to be executed by nitrogen gas.

Witnesses reported he writhed and convulsed on the gurney for several minutes. In September of 2024, Alan Eugene Miller was executed by the same method. Witnesses reported him gasping and pulling against his restraints for approximately 6 minutes. Grayson would be third. His lawyers filed a lawsuit in June of 2024, arguing the method would cause him to suffer, citing poor mask fitting, no medical exam before execution, and no sedative.

 He requested either a sedative beforehand or a lethal dose of fentanyl instead. A federal judge rejected the arguments. The 11th Circuit denied the appeal. On the day of his execution, the United States Supreme Court refused to grant a stay. On November 21st, 2024, Grayson refused his breakfast and lunch trays. He drank coffee and Mountain Dew.

His final meal, ordered from local restaurants, was Tex-Mex, soft tacos, beef burritos, a tostada, chips and guacamole, and a Mountain Dew Blast. He had 11 visitors and three phone calls the day before. On execution day, three visitors and two phone calls. At just after 6:00 in the evening, the curtains opened.

 Grayson was strapped to a gurney, a gas mask covering his face. When Warden Terry Raybon asked if he had any final words, Grayson cursed at him directly. Officials cut the microphone. He raised both middle fingers to the witness room. His lawyer, Casey Keaton, later shared what he had intended to say, that he had committed a horrible crime, that he had been sorry for 30 years, that he had repented, repented, and that he hoped for forgiveness.

 He also accused prison authorities of being murderers. The witnesses never heard any of it. The gas began to flow. Grayson shook. He rocked his head. He pulled hard against his restraints. At 6:14 in the evening, his sheet-wrapped legs lifted off the gurney. He took more than a dozen gasping breaths over the minutes that followed.

 He appeared to stop breathing at 6:21 in the evening. The curtains closed at 6:27. He was pronounced dead at 6:33 in the evening. The nitrogen had flowed for approximately 15 minutes. His heart stopped roughly 10 minutes after the gas began. Then Jodie Haley, Vicki De Blue’s daughter, stepped to the microphone outside the facility.

 She did not celebrate. “Murdering inmates under the guise of justice needs to stop,” she said. “No one should have the right to take away a person’s possibilities, days, moments, life.” The daughter of the victim defending the humanity of the man who killed her mother. That moment stopped the room.

 Today, Kenny Loggins, Trace Duncan, and Lewis Mangione remain inside Alabama State Prison, serving life sentences, protected, in the end, by their age at the time of the crime. Jodie Haley grew up without a mother. No phone call for graduation. No one to call when the hard days came. And yet, on the night her mother’s killer was executed, she became the most morally powerful voice in that entire story.

 She did not ask for vengeance. She asked for something harder, change. Carey Dale Grayson was the sixth person executed in Alabama in 2024, the most executions in a single year in that state since 2011. Alabama remains the only state in the United States currently using nitrogen hypoxia. Vicky De Blue never made it to her mother’s house.

 Her daughter grew up without her, and the state that killed her killer killed him in a way that to the witnesses in that room looked a great deal like suffering. Which moment in this case hit you hardest? The crime, the execution, or Jody’s words outside that prison? Drop it in the comments below. If this story stayed with you, hit subscribe because every week we go deeper into the cases that demand to be told.

 Vicky De Blue deserved better, and her story deserves to be remembered.