Executed After 29 Years on Death Row for Worst Family Murder | Richard Djerf Last Meal & Words

The night after he took four lives, Richard Jieruf called his girlfriend and described what he had done. He called it really awesome. Then he said, “You should have been there.” Over the next three days, he bragged to friend after friend, each version darker than the last. And that’s exactly how the police found him.

On October 17th, 2025, after 29 years on death row, Arizona executed Richard Jieruf for wiping out nearly an entire family. He spent 9 months planning his revenge, but he couldn’t keep his mouth shut for 9 days. It all began on a late summer morning in 1993, when revenge turned into one of the most brutal family murders Arizona had ever seen.

Richard had met Albert Luna Jr. while mopping the floors at a Safeway in Glendale. They were both loners, but in that isolation, they quickly became friends. But neither of them could have imagined how violently it would all end. By January 1993, 23-year-old Richard was living in a small apartment when he came home one night to find it torn apart.

The place had been ransacked. His television, VCR, stereo, car alarm, and even an AK-47 were all gone. He filed a report with the police, but nothing came of it. He told officers he suspected his friend Albert, but they didn’t lift a finger. No follow-up, no arrest, not even a knock on a door. The silence from law enforcement dug deep under his skin.

 And Richard, already prone to grudges, stewed in it. He told a friend the Lunas had messed with the wrong guy. Weeks passed, but the anger didn’t. It hardened, slow and stubborn, until it felt like something permanent. And by the time summer rolled around, all Richard wanted was payback. And that wish for revenge turned into action on the morning of September 14th, nearly 9 months after the break-in.

Richard drove to the Luna family home carrying a 9-mm Beretta, a knife, latex gloves, handcuffs, and a bouquet of fake flowers he used as a cover for what he planned to do. When Patricia, Albert’s 42-year-old mother, opened the door and smiled at the small gesture, Richard shoved his way inside and immediately pointed the gun at her.

He forced Patricia into the master bedroom, tied her hands, and let her 5-year-old son, Damien, wander nearby while he ransacked the house. He made Patricia pack the family car with electronics, jewelry, and even a money clip filled with food stamps. Then he taped her and Damien into chairs in the kitchen and kept asking over and over which of them should die first and where her older son, Albert Jr.

, was hiding. This wasn’t just a robbery anymore. It was something else entirely. Hours passed, and by 3:00 p.m. Patricia’s 18-year-old daughter, Rochelle, came home. The front door barely had time to shut behind her before Richard grabbed her and dragged her to her bedroom. He tied her down, gagged her with tissues and tape, and hurt her.

When it was over, he stabbed her four times and cut her throat. The wound severed her jugular, and she died instantly. Afterward, he walked back downstairs and told Patricia exactly what he had done to her daughter. An hour later, 47-year-old Albert Luna Sr. walked through the front door unaware of what he was walking into.

As soon as the door closed behind him, Richard pulled a gun and handcuffs. He forced Albert to crawl into the bedroom where he made him lie face down on the bed. Then he beat him with a baseball bat. The blows were loud and brutal and so violent that blood splattered across the walls. When Albert finally stopped moving, Richard taped his wrists together and left him there.

Then he went back to the kitchen and looked at Patricia, then told her that her husband was gone, too. But Richard still wasn’t done. And what came next was as cold as it was senseless. He grabbed Damian from behind and tried to snap his neck like in the movies, he later told investigators. But when the boy’s head turned too far and he kept breathing, Richard stopped.

It hadn’t worked, so he moved on to something else. He cut the cord from a kitchen lamp, stripped the wires, and taped them to Damian’s leg, planning to electrocute him. When police later found the cord, it appeared to be unplugged. So whatever Richard had intended, that attempt had failed as well. Upstairs, Albert Luna Sr.

, who was nearly beaten to death and taped at the wrists, managed to free himself. Bleeding and dazed, he stumbled into the kitchen clutching a pocket knife. With what energy he had left, he lunged at Richard and slashed him deep across his arm and torso. Caught off guard, Richard pulled his Beretta and opened fire.

 Six shots rang out, and Albert collapsed in front of his wife and son, dead. Then Richard turned to Patricia. “Do you want to watch your kid die, or do you want your kid to watch you die?” he asked. But before she could answer, he shot them both in the head. And he wasn’t finished. After that, Richard drenched the bodies, the walls, and the floor in gasoline.

 He lit a red fuse cord and watched it burn for a moment. But something stopped him. He later told his girlfriend he saw the neighborhood kids outside. He didn’t want to be seen. So he stomped out the flame, turned on the stove’s burners, placed a pizza box and a rag on top, and walked out the front door. But the fire never caught.

 He drove away in the family’s car, bleeding, shaken, and trying to play it cool. And when his girlfriend asked about the cuts on his body, he said he had been stabbed and robbed, but she knew better. Something was off. Later that night, the Lunas’ oldest son, 21-year-old Albert Jr., came home around 11:45 p.m. He had been worried.

 No one had answered the phone all evening. Inside the house, he found a scene no one would ever forget. His family was gone. He ran out of the house straight to his girlfriend’s place and called the police. By September 16th, Richard had been released from the hospital, where doctors treated the knife wounds Albert Sr. had given him during the struggle.

But instead of going home, Richard checked into a motel and kept a low profile. Still, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He called friends, talked to his girlfriend, and told bits and pieces of what happened, each version darker than the one before. Just 2 days later, on September 18th, the case took a turn. Word had gotten to the police, and they had heard enough.

 They tracked Richard down, arrested him, and began the search. What they found in his apartment and car left no doubt. They found several items belonging to the Luna family, along with the weapons used in the killings. But Richard wasn’t planning to stay behind bars for long. While awaiting trial in jail, he tried to end his own life.

 He had hidden a sharp piece of metal inside a Halloween card and used it on his wrists, but he survived. By 1995, the case had finally made it to court, and it came with a mountain of charges. The Maricopa County Grand Jury indicted Richard on 18 counts. Four were for first-degree murder in the deaths of Albert Sr., Patricia, Rochelle, and little Damien Luna.

The rest covered burglary, kidnapping, assault, aggravated assault, arson, theft, and weapons misconduct. From the beginning, it was clear the state wanted the death penalty. Richard had been assigned two defense attorneys, but he didn’t want them. He stood in front of the judge and made it clear he would represent himself.

On February 15th, 1995, he filed a motion to fire both lawyers and take full control of the case. That meant managing his own defense in a capital trial where his life was on the line. But prosecutors weren’t ready to let that slide. They argued that a man who had recently tried to end his own life in jail might not be capable of representing himself.

The judge ordered a mental competency evaluation. Psychiatrist Dr. Jack Potts met with Richard and later took the stand. According to Dr. Potts, Richard wasn’t out of touch with reality. He wasn’t irrational or disoriented. In fact, he described him as cold, calculated, and completely in control. He was found fully competent.

 And based on that report, the judge ruled that Richard had the right to represent himself. Soon after, Richard made his next move. He didn’t fight the charges. In March 1995, he pleaded guilty to all four murders. But the plea didn’t spare him the death penalty. It only meant the state dropped the lesser counts. He knew full well the state could still ask for execution.

 And at the time, he accepted that. But that didn’t last. Within weeks, Richard changed his mind again. He dropped his attempt at representing himself and brought his lawyers back. The case moved into a tense round of presentence hearings where both sides laid everything out, every detail of what made the crimes worse, and every reason the defense believed he deserved mercy.

But the judge wasn’t moved. He found that Richard had acted out of pure greed, that the killings were especially cruel and depraved, and that one of the victims was under 15. The defense tried to argue for mercy, pointing to Richard’s rough childhood, his mental health struggles, and his claimed remorse, but the court wasn’t buying it.

Records also showed a pattern of violence long before the arrests. Before the September arrest, Richard had already been arrested three times, once for shoplifting and twice for extortion at Independence High School, which he attended until 1988. School paperwork even recorded a threat he made on November 16th, 1988, when he told a student to pay him $35, “or else I’ll take you to the desert, beat your face in, and bury you.

” In 1995, Richard agreed to plead guilty to four counts of first-degree murder. Maybe he thought it would save him. Maybe his attorneys told him it was the only shot at avoiding a death sentence, but it didn’t work. On May 22nd, 1996, the judge sentenced him to die, not once, but four times. Richard didn’t flinch.

 He just smirked and said, “They can only kill me once.” But later, away from the cameras, he admitted the arrest had crushed him. “I started crying,” he said quietly. He claimed that everything had started over a stolen gun and $2,600 worth of electronics. According to Richard, Albert had broken into his apartment after being released from jail for other burglaries.

“When Albert got out, he wanted some stuff I had,” Richard said. “I told the police, but they didn’t do much. Then I called his mom, and she said she didn’t believe it. The whole thing made me pretty upset.” For years after, Richard filed appeals in Arizona’s courts, and when those failed, he turned to the federal courts.

But each time the answer came back the same. He would spend the next decades lying on the thin mattress of his prison cell trying not to think about the murders or the sentence hanging over him. “I listen to songs on the radio and write down the words.” He once said with a soft laugh. “I’ve got about 25 done.

” Then he paused, the weight of it all sinking in. “I can’t imagine being in a place like this the rest of my life.” He whispered. “I want to get out of here.” And eventually he did, but not in the way he hoped. In 2019, the ninth circuit upheld both his conviction and his death sentence, closing the door on any more appeals.

Then in May 2025, nearly 29 years to the day after he was first sentenced, the Arizona Supreme Court signed his death warrant. And this time Richard didn’t fight it. A month before his execution, he wrote a letter to reporters. In it, he apologized for the murders and said he wouldn’t ask for clemency. He wrote, “I have some brain dysfunction that likely contributed to the horrible crimes that I committed.

 But that can never excuse the harm I caused.” His final day came at October 17th, 2025. At 5:30 p.m. the evening before his execution, he got his final meal. For that, Richard requested a double cheeseburger with lettuce and tomato, deep fried onion rings with ketchup, and a slice of cherry pie topped with whipped cream, all from a local restaurant.

The next morning at 10:01 a.m., he was led into the execution chamber. Witnesses were already in place. Richard wore all white with black flip-flops. The curtain opened at 10:07. He lay down calmly on the gurney. When asked if he had any final words, he said, “I do not.” When someone asked if he was okay, he nodded and said, “Yes.

” But placing the IV lines proved difficult. Medical staff had to insert and remove them multiple times, up to four times. The right arm alone took nearly 5 minutes, and it wasn’t until 9 minutes in that both lines were finally secure. Arizona’s execution process has faced heavy scrutiny in recent years, especially over its repeated failures to properly set IV lines.

But in Richard’s case, officials said his weight made it more difficult than usual. Still, once the lines were finally set, the rest of the process moved forward without delay. At 10:24 a.m., the first dose was administered. Within 2 minutes, Richard took several heavy breaths, his mouth slightly open, and after 6 minutes, his chest stopped moving.

At 10:32, a staff member entered to check for any signs of life. Richard’s eyes were closed. He lay completely still without a pulse. He was pronounced dead at 10:40 a.m. Richard Kenneth Jerf was 55 years old. What do you think? Has justice been served? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.