January 25th, 1996. Delaware Correctional Center, Smyrna, Delaware. The temperature outside had dropped well below freezing. About 30 official witnesses stood in the dark, gathered around a wooden structure that most of them had never seen used before. Some had never expected to see it used in their lifetime. There was a rope.

There were 23 steps leading up to a platform with a trapdoor, and there was a man about to climb them. This was not lethal injection. This was not an electric chair. This was a hanging, the first the state of Delaware had carried out in 50 years. Here is what makes this case different from almost every other execution in American history.

 The man standing at the bottom of those steps did not have to be there. The state had offered him a way out, a quieter end. He looked them in the eye and said no. >> [music] >> He had been given two choices. He refused one of them. And when the prison warden asked him, just moments before the end, if he had any last words, the man opened his mouth and said just two words.

>> [music] >> That was it. Two words. 15 years on death row, and two words. But what brought this man to those 23 steps, and why he chose to climb them, is a story that is almost impossible to believe. Welcome to Red Mark Files. If you’re new here, hit that like and subscribe button.

 We cover the cases that don’t let you sleep. Let’s get into it. Before we talk about what happened that night, you need to know who the victims were. Gilbert Lambertson was 80 years old. His wife, Clara Lambertson, was 73. They lived in rural Cheswold, Delaware, a small, quiet community where everybody knew everybody, and where life moved at the pace of farmland and open fields.

Their home was a farmhouse, and not just any farmhouse. The crossroads outside their front door was called Lambertson’s Corner. That name did not come from a map. It came from decades of a family planting roots so deep in that land that the community named the intersection after them. That is the kind of people they were.

Gilbert and Clara were not wealthy. They were not powerful. They were not connected to anyone in high places. They were an elderly farming couple who had spent the better part of their lives in that house, on that land, in that community. Long married, settled. The kind of couple that small towns quietly depend on without always saying so.

They had no connection to the man who would walk through their door. None. They had never met him. He had never met them. He did not choose them out of anger. He did not choose them out of hatred. He chose them for one reason only. Their farmhouse was approximately 1 and 1/2 miles from a crime he had just committed. That was it.

 That was the only reason. That fact alone is one of the hardest things about this case. On the evening of June 12th, 1979, Gilbert and Clara Lambertson were at home doing exactly what an elderly couple does on an ordinary evening. They had no idea what was already heading toward their door. Now, let’s talk about the man himself.

Billy Bailey was born in 1946 in South Carolina. He was the 19th of 23 children. That number alone tells you something about the world he entered. Court records show that his mother, Mazie Miller Bailey, died when Billy was just 6 months old. His father died when he was 6 years old. By the time most children are learning to read, Billy Bailey had already lost both parents.

 From the age of 6 to 14, he moved through a series of foster homes. No stability. No permanence. According to state records, Bailey suffered chronic physical abuse throughout those years. He was reportedly diagnosed as mentally ill at the age of 12. Let that sit for a moment. 12 old, no parents, no permanent home, abuse documented on record, and a mental illness diagnosis that, according to everything that followed, was never properly addressed.

 Court records show that as an adult, people who knew Bailey described him as a long-time alcoholic with, and these are the exact words used, a very, very violent, quick temper. Those around him said that if he wanted something and could not get it immediately, he would explode. His personal life reflected that pattern. He married and had at least one daughter.

When his infant daughter was severely burned in an accidental fire and had her hand amputated, his in-laws blamed him directly for what happened. Court records show his drinking became significantly worse after that point. Then in August of 1978, after his wife left him and refused to allow him any contact with their daughter, Bailey threatened to kill his wife, his daughter, his mother-in-law, and his father-in-law.

 That threat was documented. Court records would later show this was not a man standing on the edge. He had been falling for years and nobody caught him. What came next was a criminal history that had been building for over a decade, and it was about to reach its worst point yet. Billy Bailey’s criminal record did not start in 1979.

It started 12 years earlier. And every single year between then and the night of June 12th brought him one step closer to the Lambertson farmhouse. 1967. Bailey was arrested for disorderly conduct after running through the streets carrying a rifle. That was his introduction to law enforcement as an adult. 1968.

He was arrested for burglarizing a home near Dover, Delaware. That same period also brought a separate arrest for grand larceny, a theft that added another charge to a record that was already growing. 1974. Bailey was arrested for stealing $1,500 worth of tools from a Dover industrial plant.

 He was sentenced to 5 years in prison. He was paroled in 1977. It did not last. In January of 1979, he was arrested again, this time for violating the terms of his parole. A forgery charge followed. He received an 18-month sentence. By this point, court records show Billy Bailey had accumulated 10 prior convictions. Six of them were felonies.

 After serving just 4 months of that 18-month sentence, Bailey was assigned to the Plummer House, a work release facility in Wilmington, Delaware. It was meant to be a step toward reintegration, a second chance inside a system that had already given him several. Then came the piece of information that changed everything. Court records indicate that Bailey was informed he could face a potential 45-year sentence as a habitual offender.

45 years for a man who had spent his entire adult life cycling in and out of the system, that number must have felt like a life sentence with a different label. He walked away from the Plummer House that same day. He showed up at the home of his foster sister, Sue Ann Coker, in Cheswold, Delaware. He was agitated, erratic.

 He told her he was not going back. What happened inside that house stopped Coker cold. According to her own account, he tried to stab himself with a steak knife and cut my hand without meaning to when I was struggling with him for the knife. She fought the knife away from him. She stopped him. But what she could not stop was already in motion.

 After Sue Ann Coker pulled that knife away, Bailey did not calm down. He did not sit quietly and collect himself. He left the house with her husband, Charles Coker, in Coker’s truck. The two of them were going to run a simple errand. That was the plan. It was not the plan Bailey had. Along the route, Bailey asked Coker to stop at a liquor store.

 Coker pulled over. Bailey went inside. What Charles Coker did not know, what he had no reason to suspect, was that Bailey was armed. Inside the store, Bailey approached the cashier, Reba Lovegrove, and pointed a pistol directly at her. He demanded money. Lovegrove refused to hand it over. Bailey knocked her to the ground.

 He turned to the cash register and tried to force it open. It jammed. He could not get to the money. Court records confirm what happened next. Bailey raised the pistol and pulled the trigger. He intended to kill Reba Lovegrove where she stood. The gun clicked. It either jammed or had run out of ammunition. Lovegrove survived, not because Bailey chose to spare her, because the gun did not fire.

 He walked out of that store with the pistol in one hand and a bottle in the other. He got back into Coker’s truck and told Coker that the police would be coming. He needed to be dropped off. The location he gave was Lambertson’s Corner, roughly 1 and 1/2 miles away. Coker dropped him there and drove off.

 He had no idea what Bailey was about to do. There were no co-conspirators, no payment exchanged, no plan drawn up in advance. Charles Coker played no part in what followed. This was not a scheme involving multiple people. This was one man, armed, out of options, and moving toward whoever was closest.

 A gun that did not fire at the liquor store. What happened when Bailey reached his next stop would be very different. If you’ve made it this far, you already know this case is unlike anything else. Drop a like if you want to see more stories like this one. It genuinely helps the channel. Now, what happened next is something no amount of true crime viewing can fully prepare you for.

 Charles Coker dropped Bailey at Lambertson’s Corner and drove away. Now, he was standing less than 1 and 1/2 miles from that liquor store, outside the farmhouse of two people he had never met in his life. Court records confirm Bailey entered the property. Inside the Lambertson farmhouse, he came face to face with Gilbert Lambertson, 80 years old, and Clara Lambertson, 73.

 He raised his .25 caliber pistol. He shot Gilbert twice in the chest. Gilbert Lambertson was 80 years old. Two shots to the chest. Bailey did not stop there. He located the Lambertson’s own shotgun inside the home and picked it up. He returned to Gilbert and shot him once in the head with the shotgun. Then he turned to Clara.

 He shot her once in the shoulder with the pistol. Then he raised the shotgun again. He shot Clara once in the abdomen, then once in the neck. Both Gilbert and Clara Lambertson died inside that farmhouse. Now, here is the detail that the prosecution placed at the very center of this case. And once you hear it, it is very hard to shake.

 The shotgun Bailey used had only one barrel. A single barrel shotgun must be manually reloaded after every shot. Court records confirm that Bailey fired that shotgun three times during the attack on the Lambertsons. That means he reloaded it three times. Three times he cracked that barrel open. Three times he pushed a fresh shell into the chamber.

 Three times he raised it again. This was not a moment where a man lost control and everything happened in a blur. Reloading a single barrel shotgun three times requires a person to stop, act deliberately, and choose to continue three separate times. The prosecution made that point clearly at trial. And it was difficult to argue against.

After both Gilbert and Clara Lambertson were dead, Bailey arranged their bodies in chairs, then he left. Outside, a Delaware State Police helicopter picked up movement. A man running across the open field behind the Lambertson property. That man was Bailey. From the ground, he raised his pistol and fired at the helicopter’s co-pilot.

He missed. The pilot brought the helicopter down. An officer jumped out and ran after Bailey on foot across the field. Bailey tripped. He fell to the ground. The officer reached him, placed his foot directly on the shotgun, and ordered Bailey to get up. As Bailey rose to his feet, he reached to his belt, pulled out a second weapon, and fired it at the officer at point-blank range.

 He missed. Bailey was taken into custody. At his arraignment, standing before a judge, Billy Bailey did not express regret. He did not ask for understanding. He did not stay quiet. According to court records, he looked at the judge and said, “Go ahead and hang me, you son of I killed them. Go ahead and kill me.

” Those words would follow him for the next 16 years. When word reached the Chesaw community, it landed like a weight that did not lift. Two elderly people, known by their neighbors, tied to their land for decades, had been shot dead inside their own home. The crossroads outside still carried their family name.

 Now the family that name belonged to was trying to make sense of something that had no sensible explanation. There was no financial motive connected to the Lambertsons. No insurance, no scheme. [music] Bailey had never met them. He had no reason to target them specifically. He had no plan walking through their door.

He had nothing to gain and nothing to hide afterward. He simply stopped there because their farmhouse was the closest door to where he had been dropped off. That fact made it harder, not easier, for the community to process. Bailey, now in police custody, told investigators that he had been drinking heavily and taking pills throughout the entire day of June 12th, 1979.

He claimed he did not remember the killings. That statement became the foundation his defense would later build on. But two people directly connected to the events of that day told a very different story. Charles Coker, who had driven Bailey in his truck and dropped him at Lambertson’s corner, cooperated fully with investigators.

His account established the timeline, what Bailey said, how he behaved, and the state of mind he was in before reaching that farmhouse. Reba Lovegrove, the cashier Bailey had attacked at the liquor store, survived. Her testimony placed Bailey at an armed robbery and a deliberate attempt to shoot her, all within the same hour as the Lambertson murders.

 For the people of Cheswold, the shock eventually gave way to something colder. Bailey had a record stretching back 12 years. He had been convicted. He had been paroled. He had been given a work release placement, and still two people were dead. Bailey’s arrest did not require a lengthy investigation. He was caught in the field directly behind the Lambertson property, still carrying weapons within minutes of the killings.

Investigators confirmed the evidence at the scene was extensive. The .25 caliber pistol was recovered. The Lambertson’s shotgun was recovered. The accounts from Charles Coker, Reba Lovegrove, the Delaware State Police helicopter crew, and the pursuing officer, all aligned and placed Bailey at the center of everything that happened that evening.

 Court records established there was no question about who committed the crimes. The real battle was about something else entirely. Bailey’s legal team built their case around one central claim, that Bailey had been drinking heavily and taking Valium throughout the day and had no memory of killing Gilbert and Clara Lambertson.

 They argued that because of his state of mind, the charge should be reduced from first-degree murder to manslaughter. They pointed to his upbringing, his worsening alcoholism, and the pressure of facing a 45-year habitual offender sentence as factors that had pushed him past the point of rational control. Furman Franklin, an alcoholism counselor who had previously seen Bailey on an outpatient basis, testified that Bailey was impulsive and emotionally unstable.

The prosecution’s response was grounded in a single documented fact. The shotgun used inside the Lambertson farmhouse had one barrel. Court records established that it was fired three times. Every single shot required Bailey to manually stop, open the barrel, reload, and raise the weapon again.

 That process, repeated three separate times, directly contradicted any claim of a blackout or uncontrolled state. Two state psychiatrists examined Bailey independently. Both testified that he was neither psychotic nor mentally ill. Court records also established Bailey’s full criminal history, 10 convictions, six felonies, stretching all the way back to 1967, and entered it formally into evidence.

The defense thought they had an argument. What the prosecution had built around that single-barrel shotgun made that argument nearly impossible to sustain. There was no dramatic turning point in this investigation. No single piece of evidence that suddenly cracked the case open. Bailey had been caught at the scene, still armed, with multiple witnesses who had seen him that day.

 The breakthrough was not a revelation. It was an accumulation, layer upon layer of documented evidence that left his defense with very little ground to stand on. In court, Reba Lovegrove took the stand. Her account confirmed the armed robbery at the liquor store and Bailey’s deliberate attempt to shoot her, all within the same evening as the Lambertson killings.

 Her testimony established that what happened at the farmhouse was not an isolated moment of confusion. It was part of a continuous chain of violent decisions. Charles Coker testified about Bailey’s movements and state of mind throughout that day. What Bailey said, how he behaved, and what he did from the moment he left the Coker home to the moment he was dropped at Lambertson’s corner.

 The helicopter crew and the pursuing officer both testified about Bailey’s attempts to shoot law enforcement after leaving the farmhouse. Two more deliberate acts, two more pulls of a trigger, and then there was the shotgun. One barrel, three shots fired, three manual reloads. Prosecution forensics confirmed every detail.

 The defense argued that the threat of a 45-year sentence had broken Bailey completely that day, but their own witness, Firman Franklin, could only speak to Bailey’s impulsivity. He could not speak to an absence of intent. The jury had heard everything. The case moved to verdict. In 1980, a Delaware court delivered its verdict. Billy Bailey was convicted on every count.

Court records confirmed the following findings. First-degree murder, two counts, one for Gilbert Lamberson, one for Clara Lamberson. First-degree robbery for the armed hold-up of the liquor store and the attack on Reba Lovegrove. Forgery [music] tied to his earlier criminal proceedings.

 Possession of a deadly weapon during the commission of a felony, two counts. Possession of a weapon by a prohibited person. Each conviction was read into the record. Each one carried weight. Together, they painted a complete picture of everything that had happened on the evening of June 12th, 1979 and everything that had led to it.

 When the jury turned to sentencing, they applied a specific legal standard. Court records confirmed they found that Bailey’s crimes were outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible, or inhuman. On that basis, they fixed his punishment, death by hanging. At the time of sentencing, hanging was Delaware’s legally designated method of execution.

Bailey’s attorney filed appeals and those appeals moved slowly through the court system over the years that followed. Then, in 1986, Delaware changed its official method of execution to lethal injection. However, any inmate sentenced before that change was given the option to choose between the two methods. Bailey rejected that choice entirely.

 He later said, “Asking a man to choose how to die is more barbaric than hanging. The state chose it for me. But then, in 1987, something shifted. Court records indicate that Bailey changed his position completely. He no longer wanted to die. He wanted to live out the rest of his life inside prison walls. His appeals continued.

 The man who had told a judge to hang him was now fighting to survive. Billy Bailey spent over 15 years on death row. His attorney, Edmund D. Lyons, filed appeals that worked through state courts, federal courts, and eventually reached the United States Supreme Court. Every appeal was denied. A few days before the scheduled execution, the Delaware Board of Pardons met to consider whether to recommend clemency.

 Bailey’s attorney argued for it. His sisters argued for it. They cited his childhood, the abuse, the foster homes, the losses he suffered before he was old enough to understand them. The board refused. Bailey’s sister, Betty Old 53 years old would be among the last people to see him alive. Delaware had not carried out a hanging in 50 years.

That created a practical problem. Nobody in the corrections system could remember how to properly prepare for one. Four corrections officials traveled to Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington, where hangings had recently been performed to observe the procedure first hand and bring that knowledge back to Delaware.

The state worked from an execution protocol originally developed by Fred Leuchter. Although the state had cut professional ties with Leuchter after he testified in defense of a Holocaust denier, the protocol itself was reviewed, deemed reliable, and retained. It was cross-referenced with the United States Army manual on executions to confirm accuracy.

 The wooden gallows at the Delaware Correctional Center near Smyrna had been constructed in 1986, but had never been used. Before Bailey’s execution, the structure required significant renovation and reinforcement to make it functional. The platform holding the trapdoor stood 15 ft from the ground. It was reached by climbing 23 steps. The protocol was precise.

 It called for 30 ft of 3/4 in Manila hemp rope boiled in advance to remove any stretch and any tendency to coil. The length of rope inside the sliding knot was treated with melted paraffin wax to allow it to move freely. A black hood was required. A sandbag was used to test the trapdoor before the execution. Bailey was weighed at 220 lb.

 Based on that weight, the calculated drop was set at approximately 5 ft. Bailey was moved from his regular prison cell into the execution trailer, a separate space used for the final period before lethal injection executions, now repurposed for his final hours. He slept. He ate. He watched television. He spoke with prison staff.

 He met with his sister Betty Odom, the prison chaplain, and his attorney Edmund D. Lyons. For his last meal, Bailey requested a well-done steak with steak sauce, a baked potato with sour cream and butter, buttered rolls, peas, and vanilla ice cream. January 25th, 1996. Just before midnight, two guards escorted Bailey to the base of the gallows.

 He climbed all 23 steps and stood on the platform above the trapdoor. Prison Warden Robert Snyder faced him and asked if he had any last words. Snyder did not hear the reply. He said, “Pardon?” Bailey repeated himself. “No, sir.” Prison officials placed a black hood over his head. The hangman’s noose was fitted around his neck.

 Bailey squeezed his right fist into a tight ball. At 12:04 in the morning, Warden Snyder gripped a gray wooden lever with both hands and pulled it. The trapdoor opened with a thud. Bailey dropped. His body spun rapidly five or six times at the end of the the before coming to a stop. Guards lowered a white cloth around the hanging man, blocking the view of the approximately 30 official witnesses gathered below.

 Only his white sneakers were visible beneath the cloth. He was pronounced dead 15 minutes after midnight. Outside the prison, in sub-freezing temperatures, approximately 150 demonstrators had gathered. Some in support of the execution, some opposed. Officials placed fencing between the two groups. The victim’s great-grandson, Chris Lambertson, 20 years old, stood outside waiting for word.

 “I’m out here to see that justice is served,” he said. “Just because Billy Bailey wanted their truck, he killed my great-grandparents. Without a doubt, he should die.” A 17-year-old student, Kathleen Day of Baltimore, Maryland, had come with classmates from Notre Dame Prep School in Towson to protest. “I’m against the death penalty because killing Billy Bailey doesn’t solve anything,” she said. “Two wrongs don’t make a right.

” Two voices, two positions, both standing in the same freezing dark. Two other inmates, two different outcomes. William H. Flamer, convicted of murdering his uncle and aunt in 1979, had chosen lethal injection when given the option. He was executed 5 days after Bailey, on January 30th, 1996. James W.

 Riley, who killed a man during a liquor store robbery in 1982, had not made a choice, meaning hanging would have been his default method. But on May 19th, 2003, Riley was resentenced to life in prison without parole after winning a retrial. That same year, in July of 2003, Delaware’s gallows were dismantled. No remaining inmates on death row were still eligible to choose hanging over lethal injection.

 The structure that had stood for 17 years without being used, and had been used only once, was taken apart and removed. Billy Bailey first appeared in Delaware’s criminal record in 1967. He left this world on January 25th, 1996, nearly 30 years later at the end of a rope. As of 2026, he remains the last person lawfully executed by hanging in the United States.

Gilbert and Clara Lambertson never saw another summer. They spent their lives on that farmhouse. Their family name marked the crossroads outside their front door. That name is still there. They are not. No financial motive, no personal history between them and the man who walked through their door. Two lives ended because a desperate man with a loaded weapon and nowhere left to run chose the nearest farmhouse.

 In 1980, Bailey told a judge he hoped they bought a strong enough rope. Court records show that by 1987, he was doing everything in his power to make sure they never used it. They used it. Which moment in this case hit you the hardest? Was it the reloading, the arraignment, those white sneakers? Tell me in the comments.

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