JUST IN: South Carolina Executes Serial Killer Stephen Corey Bryant by Firing Squad | Last Meal &…

The curtain pulls back at exactly 6:00 p.m. In the far left corner of the death chamber sits Steven Cory Bryant strapped to a metal chair. His hands are covered in black mittens stretched out to his sides. His legs are shackled. On his chest, a white target with a red bullseye the size of a post-it note. He’s 44 years old.

 In just minutes, he’ll be dead. 15 ft away behind a wall with rifle ports. Three volunteer corrections officers wait with loaded weapons. 10 witnesses sit in silence behind bulletproof glass. Three of them are family members of the man Bryant tortured to death 21 years ago. At 6:1 p.m., a black hood is pulled over Bryant’s head.

 The shade covering the rifle ports rises. His breathing becomes shallow. Then, without warning, three rifle shots shatter the silence. The red bullseye flies off his chest, landing halfway across the room. Blood spreads across the black fabric. Bryant makes no sound, just shallow breaths. 30 seconds pass, then a cough-like noise, a jerk, and then stillness.

 3 minutes later, at 6:5 p.m. on the 14th of November, 2025, Steven Corey Bryant is pronounced dead. But this story doesn’t begin in that death chamber. It begins 21 years earlier in October 2004 when a 23-year-old man with a stolen gun wrote a message in his victim’s blood that would haunt South Carolina forever. Catch me if you can. This is his story.

Steven Corey Bryant was born on the 12th of April 1981. And from the very beginning, his life was marked by trauma. By age six or seven, Bryant was being sexually abused by four male relatives, his father, his grandfather, and others. But the abuse didn’t stop there. According to court records, he was also molested by his mother, a preacher’s wife, and several strippers in his neighborhood.

 His father beat him regularly. His mother drank heavily during her pregnancy with Steven, which his defense attorneys would later argue caused permanent brain damage. fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. In school, Steven struggled. His elementary records showed low mental and emotional intelligence. He had a low IQ and couldn’t keep up with other children.

 At just 11 years old, he was institutionalized in the juvenile justice system for the first time. By his early 20s, Steven had spent four of the last 5 years in prison. He served 18 months for burglary and was released on probation. But freedom didn’t bring peace. Steven turned to drugs, methamphetamine, marijuana sprayed with raid insecticide, massive doses of benadryil, anything to numb the memories that tortured him.

 In September 2004, just one month before the murders, Steven tried to get help. He confessed to his aunt and grandmother that he was having flashbacks of the sexual abuse of his father’s beatings. He was desperate. His aunt Terry Calder later testified about what she saw. He was very upset. He looked like he was being tortured.

 It’s like his soul was just laid wide open. In his eyes, you could see he was hurting and suffering, and he was living the abuse over again. His body would shake so violently that the table he sat at would rock. Steven begged his probation agent for help. He begged his aunt, but he couldn’t afford the $75 fee to see a counselor.

 Without help, Steven Bryant deteriorated rapidly and in October 2004, he snapped. The 5th of October 2004. Steven Bryant begins his crime spree with a burglary. He burglarizes another home and steals a 40 caliber Smith and Wesson handgun. Later that same day, he approaches the watery river where 56-year-old Clinton Brown is fishing.

 Without a word, Bryant shoots Brown in the back. Miraculously, Brown survives. Despite the bullet wound, he drives himself to the hospital. Bryant has tasted violence, and he’s not done. The 9th of October, 2004. The next day, Bryant picks up his friend and coworker, 36-year-old Clifton Gayy. The two men were close. They went on fishing trips together.

 They spent time with each other’s families. Gayy trusted Bryant completely. They drive to a convenience store to buy beer. Then Bryant suggests they go for a drive through the rural back roads of Sumpter County. At some point during the drive, Bryant pulls over. Gay steps out, perhaps to relieve himself, and Bryant shoots him in the head, killing him instantly.

 He leaves Geney’s body on the side of a rural road like discarded trash. Then Bryant drives to Geney’s rented trailer. He steals the TV, stereo, and even an aquarium. Then he sets the entire trailer on fire. Gay left behind two sons, a mother, and a brother. The community is on edge. Two shootings in two days, but they have no idea. The worst is yet to come.

 The 11th of October, 2004. 2 days later, Bryant knocks on the door of a secluded home in rural Sumpter County. Inside lives 62-year-old Willard TJT Jen Jr. a retired US Air Force Sergeant Tia Jen is disabled suffering from a heart condition and early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Bryant spins a story. His truck has overheated. He needs help.

 Titan, a kind man, invites him inside. The two talk for hours and then Bryant kills him. He shoots Tichin nine times, but unlike the previous murders, Bryant doesn’t leave immediately. Instead, he stays. He steals a ring off Tiain’s finger. He ransacks the house, stealing power tools and valuables. He smokes cigarettes and a cigar.

 He uses Tiain’s computer. Then he does something truly horrific. He takes a cigarette and burns Tichin’s face. He stubs it directly into the dead man’s eyes. He burns his beard. The phone rings. It’s Tia Jen’s wife. Bryant answers. TJ is dead. He says calmly. He tells her he’s the prowler. The phone rings again. This time it’s Tchen’s daughter, Kimberly De’s.

 She’s called five times already, getting increasingly worried. On the sixth call, a stranger’s voice answers. Can I speak to my father? She demands. You can’t. I killed him. The voice replies. This isn’t funny. Who are you? I’m the Prowler. Before Bryant leaves, he finds a pot holder. One that Tiain’s daughter made as a child. He dips the corner in Tiain’s blood.

 And on the wall in red letters, he writes a message to police. Victim 4 in 2 weeks. Catch me if you can. Tiain’s body is discovered that same day. The community erupts in terror. A serial killer is hunting in Sumpter County. The 13th of October, 2004. Around 4 30 in the morning. 35-year-old Christopher Burgess stops at a convenience store. He encounters Bryant.

The two talk. Burgess puts his motorcycle in the back of Bryant’s truck and they drive off together. A store clerk watches them leave. It’s the last time anyone sees Christopher Burgess alive. Bryant drives to an isolated rural road. Burgess steps out and Bryant shoots him twice. Once in the head, once in the chest.

 Less than 2 hours later, a hunter discovers Burgess’s body lying on a roaded in a [clears throat] rural area. For 8 days, Sumpter County has lived in absolute terror. Police stop nearly everyone driving on dirt roads. Residents lock their doors. Parents keep their children inside. Officers warn people to be wary of anyone they don’t know asking for help.

And then on the 13th of October 2004, police finally catch the prowler. Steven Bryant is arrested at his girlfriend’s home on the 13th of October 2004. The same day, Christopher Burgess’s body is discovered. The community is shocked. Bryant’s landlord, his workplace supervisor, and people who knew him all describe him as a nice person.

 They can’t believe he’s capable of such violence, but the evidence is overwhelming. Bryant confesses to all three murders. On the 14th of October 2004, he’s formally charged with three counts of murder, two counts of burglary, two counts of weapons possession, one count of armed robbery, and one count of arson.

 Sheriff Tommy Mims addresses the press. At the Ten residence, he left a message on the wall that challenged law enforcement. Catch me if you can. And I’m happy to say that law enforcement has responded to that challenge and we have caught him. But Bryant’s violence doesn’t end with his arrest. In October 2005, while awaiting trial at Sumpter Lee Regional Detention Center, Bryant brutally assaults a correctional officer.

 He punches the officer repeatedly, continuing to beat him even after the officer collapses to the ground. He’s charged with assault and transferred to another facility. The same month, he allegedly throws urine on a fellow inmate’s cell door, splashing the inmate with urine. In April 2007, Sumpter County prosecutor Kelly Jackson announces he will seek the death penalty for the murder of Willard Titchin.

 On the 8th of August 2008, Bryant pleads guilty to all three counts of murder and nine other charges. There is no plea deal. Jackson still plans to pursue the death penalty. A sentencing trial begins on the 2nd of September, 2008. Bryant’s defense team argues he should be spared. They present evidence of his horrific childhood, the sexual abuse by four male relatives, his mother, a preacher’s wife, and neighborhood strippers.

 They detail his drug addiction, his PTSD, his chronic depression. They argue his mother’s alcohol abuse during pregnancy caused brain damage that affected his ability to control his actions. But the prosecution paints a different picture. These weren’t impulsive acts from a damaged brain. They argue Brian demonstrated a high level of planning, decision-making, and calculation.

 The murders were premeditated. The torture was deliberate. The taunting message in blood was methodical. On the 11th of September 2008, Circuit Judge Thomas Russo makes his decision for the murder of Clifton Gay. Life in prison. For the murder of Christopher Burgess, life in prison. For the torture murder of Willard Tiain, death plus 100 years combined for all other crimes.

 Steven Cory Bryant, age 27, is sent to death row at Broad River Correctional Institution. He will spend the next 17 years waiting to die. Life on death row is a slow march toward the inevitable. Bryant settles into a routine at Broad River. But even here, violence follows him. In 2009, he’s disciplined for fighting without a weapon.

 In 2023, he’s caught possessing a weapon. Meanwhile, his lawyers file appeal after appeal. January 7, 2011. The South Carolina Supreme Court dismisses his direct appeal. For 14 years, Bryant’s case sits in legal limbo. Then on the 28th of January 2025, the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals rejects his claims.

 They don’t believe he has intellectual disabilities. They don’t believe the fetal alcohol spectrum disorder defense holds water. The 14th of October, 2025. The US Supreme Court declines to review his death sentence. Bryant has exhausted all federal appeals. Three days later on the 17th of October 2025, the South Carolina Supreme Court signs his death warrant.

 His execution is scheduled for November 14, 2025, exactly 28 days away. Under South Carolina law, Bryant must choose his method of execution: lethal injection, electric chair, or firing squad. If he doesn’t choose by October 31, he’ll be executed in the electric chair by default. His lawyers make one last desperate attempt.

 They ask for a delay because of the federal government shutdown. They work for the federal court system and can’t properly represent him during the shutdown. The South Carolina Supreme Court rejects the request. Bryant chooses the firing squad. He becomes the third person in South Carolina to select this method since the state resumed executions in 2024 following Brad Sigman and Mikall Motti.

 On the 6th of November 2025, Bryant’s lawyers file one final appeal. They submit a 2024 interview with a clinical psychologist detailing the full extent of Bryant’s childhood abuse. They argue he never received a full brain scan before his 2008 trial that could have identified the brain damage from his mother’s drinking.

 4 days later on the 10th of November 2025, the South Carolina Supreme Court unanimously denies the appeal. The justice is right. By any stretch, Bryant demonstrated a high level of planning, decision-making, and calculation. Even if he had fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, it wouldn’t change the outcome.

 Bryant’s last hope is clemency from Governor Henry McMaster. No South Carolina governor has granted clemency since the death penalty resumed in the United States in 1976. Minutes before the execution, McMaster makes his decision. Clemency denied. The 14th of November, 2025. Steven Bryant’s final day on Earth. For his last meal, he requests an elaborate Asian feast.

 Spicy mixed seafood stir fry, fried fish over rice, egg rolls, stuffed shrimp, duck with soy sauce, two zero candy bars, and German chocolate cake. Outside Broad River Correctional Institution, about 20 protesters gather. They’re members of South Carolinians for alternatives to the death penalty. They’ve attended every execution since South Carolina resumed the practice in September 2024.

 Vigils are held in Colombia, Spartanberg, and North Charleston. Inside the prison, preparations are underway. At 4:30 p.m., three media witnesses are escorted into a navy blue Dodge minivan. As the sun sets over South Carolina, they drive past trees with fall leaves, meadows with grazing cows, and flocks of geese bedding down for the night.

 They stop at a training center. Wallets, phones, and watches are placed in Ziploc bags. No personal items are allowed in the death chamber. The convoy of six cars carries the witnesses toward death row. In the other vehicles, three members of Ten’s family, Bryant’s federal public defender, and the prosecutor who sent him to death row.

They pass through three gates guarded by heavily armed members of the corrections department’s elite special operations team. Just before 6:00 p.m., the car doors open. No one is allowed to speak. The witnesses are led across the yard into a small red brick building with no windows.

 They’re handed orange foam earplugs. The witness room is shockingly small. Three rows of pink beige chairs face bulletproof windows covered with metal bars. A brown curtain shields the room beyond. At exactly 6:00 p.m., the curtain pulls back. In the center of the death chamber sits the electric chair covered in a black cloth.

 In the far left corner, Steven Corey Bryant is already strapped to a metal chair. His legs are shackled. His hands are covered in black mittens stretched out to his sides. He wears black scrubs and slippers. On his chest, a white target with a red bullseye. Bryant doesn’t look at the witnesses. He stares straight ahead, breathing shallowly.

 Three members of the THN family sit together, holding hands. At 6:1 p.m., a prison employee places a black hood over Bryant’s head. Then he walks across the room and raises the black shade covering the rifle ports. 15 ft away, three volunteer corrections officers aim their rifles at the red bullseye. There is no audible warning, no countdown.

 The shots ring out. Bryant’s body jerks slightly. The Red Bull’s eye flies off his chest, landing halfway across the room behind the electric chair. Blood begins to spread across the black fabric on his chest. Bryant makes no sound, not a scream, not a gasp, nothing. He continues to breathe shallowly. 30 seconds pass.

 Then, about 70 seconds after the shots, the witnesses hear a cough-like noise. Bryant’s body makes a jerking motion. A few more shallow breaths, then stillness. A doctor emerges and examines Bryant with a stethoscope for one minute. At 6:5 p.m., 3 minutes after the shots were fired, Steven Cory Bryant is pronounced dead.

 He made no final statement. He spoke no last words. 21 years after he wrote Catch Me If You Can in Willard Ten’s Blood, Steven Bryant’s story is over. Steven Bryant became the 43rd person executed in the United States in 2025. He was the seventh person executed in South Carolina since the state resumed executions in September 2024 after a 13-year pause.

 He was the third person executed by firing squad in South Carolina, a method that hadn’t been used in the United States since 2010. In Utah, outside the prison, Bo King, Bryant’s federal public defender, released a statement tonight, South Carolina gave Mr. Bryant his final wounds in a lifetime of suffering. Mr.

Bryant’s final wish was that no other person in need of aid face that rejection. We will remember his unlikely friendships, his fierce protectiveness, and his love for nature, the water, and the world. We will miss him. The debate continues. Was Steven Bryant a monster who deserved to die? Or was he a broken man, damaged from birth, abandoned by a system that could have saved him? The victim’s families have their answer, the protesters have theirs.

 And you? Well, that’s for you to decide. If you found this case compelling, please subscribe to True Crime Matters for more deep dives into death row cases. Hit that notification bell so you never miss an upload. Until next time, stay safe out