JUST IN: Tennessee EXECUTES Man in the ELECTRIC CHAIR for R4ping and Murdering Mother and Daughter

Steven West  was convicted of the kidnapping and murders of Wanda Romines and her daughter Sheila. West died at 8:27  Eastern Time.  The state executed Steven West by electrocution at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution  in Nashville. He was pronounced dead at 8:27.  A 56-year-old man, barefoot, shoulders trembling, sat strapped into an electric chair, sponges wrapped around his ankles, a metal helmet waiting above his head.

 The witnesses behind the glass watched in silence. And before anyone even touched a switch, the tears were already falling down his face. This was Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, Nashville, Tennessee, August the 15th, 2019, 7:27 in the evening, when the warden stepped forward and asked if he had any final words, the room went completely still.

 What this man said next, through broken sobs, with his voice barely holding together,    would leave every single witness in that room speechless. We will get to those final words, and trust  me, you will not see them coming. But here is where this story stops being simple. Steven West had spent 33 years on death row. 33 years.

 And for every single one of those years, he said the same thing. I did not stab those women. I was there, but I did not do the killing. The man he said actually did it, a 17-year-old boy named Ronnie Martin, his co-worker, his drinking buddy that very night,    the one the forensic evidence also pointed to as an active participant.

Ronnie Martin did not get the electric chair. He got life with the possibility of parole. So, why did Steven West die in that chair while Ronnie Martin is still breathing today? To answer that, we have to go back to a quiet home in Union County, Tennessee. The 17th of March, 1986. A mother and her daughter were home alone,    and they had absolutely no idea what was coming.

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 Now, let us go back to where this all began. Before we talk about what happened, you need to know who was lost. Wanda Lou Romans was born on the 10th of April, 1934. By 1986, she was 51 years old and had built a quiet, simple life in Union County, Tennessee. She was married to Jack Romans. She kept their home.

 She was the kind of woman neighbors felt comfortable around, warm, steady, and welcoming. The kind of mother who made a house feel like a safe place. Her daughter, Sheila Ann Romines, was born on the 26th of November, 1970. Just 15 years old, a freshman at Anderson County High School. Sheila had joined the school basketball team and was already making her mark.

 Her teammates remembered her as, and these are their words, “A good player, a good student who had everything going for her.” Sheila was Wanda and Jack’s only child, the apple of her father’s eye. Everything that family had built, their love, their hope, their future, was wrapped up in that one girl. Their home sat in rural Union County, modest, quiet.

 Jack worked long shifts to keep things running. That meant most evenings it was just Wanda and Sheila, the two of them at home together. It was a normal routine, the kind every family has, the kind no one thinks twice about. But someone had been paying attention to that routine. There was a boy at Sheila’s school. His name was Ronnie Martin. He knew Sheila.

 He had even told her how he felt about her. She turned him down, a simple teenage rejection, the kind that happens every day in every school across the country. Ronnie Martin never let it go, a grudge quietly simmering, a target already chosen. And one evening, Jack Romines came home from work to something no father should ever have to see. We will get there.

 But first, who exactly was Steven Michael West? Steven Michael West was born on the 16th of September 1962, not in a hospital, not in a family home. According to his clemency records, he was born inside a mental institution in Indiana. His mother had been committed there after attempting to take her own life by carbon monoxide inhalation while she was still pregnant with him.

 That is how Steven West entered this world. Before he could even draw his first breath, tragedy had already written itself into his story. It did not stop there. Court records and later attorney filings describe a childhood marked by serious abuse. His lawyers argued, decades later, that growing up in that environment created a deep psychological pattern in West, a pattern of shutting down, freezing,  going silent in the face of danger rather than fighting back or walking away.

 The jury that sentenced him to death never heard any of this, and the reason why is deeply troubling. His own parents paid for his lead attorney. That attorney chose not to surface any of it. As a young man, West enlisted in the United States Army and served for 3 years. He came out physically strong and disciplined. By 1986, he was 23 years old, living in Tennessee, and working an ordinary shift job at a McDonald’s restaurant.

 No violent criminal record, no public red flags, on the surface, unremarkable. At that same McDonald’s worked a 17-year-old named Ronnie Martin, younger,  smaller, but bolder. The two men had developed a casual working friendship, the kind built on shared shifts and small talk. Here is the detail that matters most.

 Steven West had absolutely no connection to the Romines family. He did not know Wanda. He did not know Sheila. He had never been to their home. Everything that followed, he walked into through Ronnie Martin. Ronnie Martin knew Sheila Romines long before that night. He knew where she lived. He knew her family. And at some point before the 17th of March, 1986, he had told Sheila exactly how he felt about her.

 She said no. That should have been the end of it. For most people, it would have been. But Martin held on to that rejection. He carried it. And while Sheila went on with her life, her basketball, her classes, her home, Martin had already begun fixing his attention on her in a way that went far beyond a teenage crush.

 Now, fast forward to the evening of March the 17th, 1986. West and Martin clock out from their shift at McDonald’s. They head out together. They start drinking. Two men, 123, 117, sitting somewhere in Tennessee with the night ahead of them. Then Martin says something. According to court records, Martin told West he knew a girl who would have them.

 That was all West heard. He had no name, no face, no idea whose home they were about to walk into. By his own later admission, Steven West had never met the Romines family in his life. But Martin knew exactly where he was going. One man had a grudge. The other had no idea who they were going to see.

 But by the end of that night, both of their lives and two innocent women’s lives would be destroyed forever. Two men driving through the dark, heading toward a house where a mother and her daughter were home alone. There was no large conspiracy here. No third party pulling strings. No money exchanged. Just two men, Steven Michael West, age 23, and Ronald David Martin, age 17.

That was it. But do not let the simplicity fool you. Because while this may not have looked like a carefully plotted operation, the choices that were made that night did not happen by accident. Martin knew the Romains family. He knew Sheila from school. He knew where they lived. He knew Jack Romains worked long shifts and would not be home. He picked the location.

 He picked the night. Every piece of knowledge that made this attack possible came from Martin’s side. West brought none of that. He did not know the family. He did not know the house. The two men approached the Romans home and knocked on the door. Their cover story was simple. They needed to borrow money. A calm, ordinary request.

 The kind a neighbor might make. And Wanda Romans, warm and trusting as she was, had no reason to suspect anything. The door opened. What happened next inside that home was documented in painful, clinical detail by forensic pathologist Dr. Cleland Blake. His findings would later confirm something critical, that two different knives were used during the attack.

 Two weapons, two sets of wounds, two active participants. The evidence would not let either man walk away clean. Jack Romans left for work that morning like any other day. Wanda stayed home. Sheila was there, too. A quiet evening in their modest Union County home. Nothing unusual. Nothing alarming. Just a mother and her 15-year-old daughter alone together the way they had been countless evenings before.

 They had no reason to be afraid. West and Martin finished their shift at McDonald’s that same evening. They left together. They started drinking. And as the night moved forward, Martin steered everything toward one destination, the Romans home. Then came the knock at the door. The two men stood outside with a simple story.

They needed to borrow money. It was calm. It was ordinary. And Wanda, trusting and warm the way her community always knew her to be, opened that door. The moment she did, everything changed. Both women were confronted immediately. Overpowered. Held inside their own home by two men who had no intention of leaving quietly.

 What followed inside those walls was documented in precise and devastating detail by forensic pathologist Dr. Cleveland Blake, and his findings are not easy to hear. Dr. Blake’s testimony, entered into court records, showed that Sheila was stabbed 17 times in the abdomen. 14 of those wounds were described in court records as torture-like cuts.

 They were not fatal on their own. They were inflicted first while Sheila was still alive and conscious. Three additional stab wounds were delivered directly to her heart. Each one was over 5 in deep. Dr. Blake testified that the knives used were at least that length. The blood drainage patterns told the most painful part of the story.

 The torture wounds came before the fatal blows. Sheila’s liver and mesentery were penetrated, causing massive internal bleeding. She suffered for an extended period of time before she died. She also had defensive wounds on her left arm and her thumb. She fought back. Against two grown men, a 15-year-old girl tried to defend herself.

 Sheila was also West later admitted to this. Dr. Blake confirmed in his findings that her suffering was severe and prolonged. Wanda did not escape. Court records show she suffered multiple deep stab wounds across her body. One wound collapsed her right lung. Others tore through her colon, her liver, and her gallbladder. Like her daughter, Wanda bore torture-like wounds alongside the ones that ultimately killed her.

 The fatal blow severed her right common iliac artery. That single wound caused massive internal bleeding. Dr. Blake estimated that Wanda died within 5 to 10 minutes of that injury. When Dr. Blake examined the full crime scene, the bodies, the blood patterns, the wound angles, his conclusions were clear.

 Two different knives had been used. The women had been attacked in different locations inside the home. Some of Sheila’s wounds were inflicted on her bed. Others were inflicted on the floor beside it. The victims had been separated during the attack. Dr. Blake’s final conclusion, two attackers, both actively inflicting wounds, both involved.

 This was not a crime of impulse. The forensic evidence told a story of deliberate, extended torture. And what the jury heard next would seal one man’s fate for the next 33 years. West and Martin left. The house went silent. Later that evening, Jack Romines came home from work. He found his wife and his only daughter, the apple of his eye, dead on the floor of the home he had built for them.

 No parent should ever come home to that. No husband, no father, ever. Jack Romines called it in. Law enforcement responded to the Romines home in Union County on the night of March the 17th, 1986. Officers arrived to find a crime scene that was, by every account, deeply disturbing. Two women, a mother and her teenage daughter, murdered inside their own home.

 Meanwhile, West and Martin had walked away, back into the night, back into the ordinary world, as if nothing had happened. There was no insurance policy behind this crime, no financial motive to chase. This was not about money. Court records make the motive clear. This was about obsession and unchecked violence. Ronnie Martin had targeted Sheila Romines specifically, and that night, it had ended in the deaths of both her and her mother.

 For Jack Romines, life as he knew it was over. For Eddie Campbell, Jack’s nephew, the news arrived like a wound that would never fully close. He would carry this case for decades. Long after Jack himself was gone, Eddie would be the one still watching, still waiting for justice to arrive. And across Union County, the community felt the shock.

Sheila’s basketball teammates, her classmates, her teachers, a 15-year-old girl with everything going for her, gone. No suspects had been named yet, but the investigation was already moving. Union County law enforcement wasted no time. A double homicide and rape investigation was opened immediately.

 The crime scene was processed, the bodies were examined, and Dr. Cleland Blake, the forensic pathologist, was brought in to conduct the autopsies and analyze the physical evidence. His work would become the backbone of the entire case. While the forensic process was underway, investigators began working the personal connections, and the first one surfaced quickly.

 Ronnie Martin knew Sheila Romines, not from a distance. He knew her personally. They attended the same school. He had told her how he felt about her. She had rejected him. That prior relationship put Martin in investigators’ crosshairs almost immediately. Motive, familiarity with the victim, knowledge of the home. It all pointed in one direction.

 West’s connection came through Martin. The two men worked together at McDonald’s. They had been seen together the evening of the murders. That link was enough to pull West into the investigation alongside Martin. Within 24 hours, on the 18th of March 1986, both men were arrested. Less than one day after Wanda and Sheila Romines were found dead, the two people responsible were already in custody.

 But even as the arrests were made, one question was already beginning to form. A question that would haunt this case for the next 33 years. Who actually did the stabbing? Because somewhere in a jail cell, a recording was being made. A recording in which Ronnie Martin allegedly said something that should have changed everything, and almost no one would ever hear it.

 Less than 24 hours after the murders, it was over. On the 18th of March 1986, one day after Wanda and Sheila Romines were found dead in their home, both Steven Michael West and Ronnie Martin were arrested. The investigation had moved fast, and the evidence that brought them in was hard to ignore.

 Martin’s personal connection to Sheila was immediate and damning. He knew her from school. He had confessed romantic feelings to her. She had rejected him. He knew her home, her family, and her routine. That alone placed him at the center of the investigation.    West was pulled in through his connection to Martin.

 Same workplace, same shift, same night out drinking together. The two men had been seen together the very evening the murders took place. On top of that, Dr. Blake’s forensic findings confirmed that two attackers had been actively involved. Two different knives, wounds inflicted in two different locations, victims separated during the attack.

 The physical evidence would not allow for a single perpetrator theory. Both men were charged with aggravated kidnapping, aggravated rape, and two counts of first-degree murder. One for Wanda, one for Sheila. Under Tennessee state law, both men faced the possibility of the death penalty.

 Their cases were formally severed. They would face separate trials. But before those trials began, something happened inside that jail. A recording was made in which Ronnie Martin allegedly stated that he, not West, had carried out the killings. West’s attorneys obtained that recording. And then, in a decision that would follow Steven West to his grave, they chose never to play it.

 On the 16th of March, 1987, almost exactly 1 year after the murders, Steven Michael West, now 24 years old, stood trial before a Union County jury. The prosecution built its case on the forensic evidence. Dr. Blake took the stand and walked the jury through every wound, every blood pattern, and every conclusion his analysis had produced.

 Two killers, two knives, extended torture, active participation by both men. The science did not leave much room for doubt. West’s defense argued he had been coerced, that he froze under pressure from Martin, and never personally stabbed either woman. But the Tennessee Supreme Court, in later proceedings, addressed that argument directly.

 West had served 3 years in the United States Army. He was physically larger than Martin. The idea that a a 17-year-old boy had forced a trained, full-grown man into participation was, in the court’s view, not believable. The jury never heard about West’s birth inside a mental institution. They never heard about the abuse he suffered as a child.

 They never heard about the psychological patterns his attorneys would later describe. His own parents had paid his lead attorney, and that attorney chose not to put any of it before the court. The jail recording in which Martin allegedly claimed sole responsibility for the stabbings was also never played. That decision, made to avoid opening the door to other recordings that implicated West, meant the jury heard only one side of that particular story.

 On the 16th of March, 1987, the verdict came in. Guilty on all counts. Two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of aggravated kidnapping, one count of aggravated rape. Nine days later, on the 25th of March, 1987, all 12 jurors voted unanimously to sentence Steven West to death. Three additional consecutive sentences of 40 years each were added for the kidnapping and rape convictions.

Now, Ronnie Martin. Because of his age, 17 at the time of the murders, Martin was ineligible for the death penalty under Tennessee state law. He pleaded guilty to all counts and received two consecutive life sentences, with the possibility of parole now projected for 2027. Let that sit for a moment. The man Steven West said carried out both stabbings will be eligible to walk free.

The man convicted under Tennessee’s felony murder law, which allows execution even of those who did not personally kill, died in an electric chair. Tennessee is one of 27 states in the United States that permit the execution of what the law calls a non-triggerman. A person can be put to death for involvement in a deadly felony, even without proof that they personally delivered the fatal blow.

That law put Steven West on death row, and it kept him there for 33 years. Steven West was sentenced to death on the 25th of March, 1987, and then the waiting began. He appealed immediately. On the 6th of February, 1989, less than 2 years after his sentencing, the Tennessee Supreme Court rejected his direct appeal.

 The judges addressed his claim that he had been threatened into participating. They pointed to his military background, his physical size compared to Martin, and Dr. Blake’s forensic conclusion that two people actively carried out the stabbings. The court was not convinced. On the 12th of May, 2000, his second appeal was rejected.

 In March of 2001, West came within hours of execution. He had agreed to die by electrocution. The electric chair was tested. It was working. Everything was in place. Then, at the last moment, a federal court challenge brought the process to a halt. The execution did not happen. A second death warrant was issued on the 30th of November, 2010. Again, it was stayed.

This time to allow West to challenge the constitutionality of Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol. That lawsuit was rejected on the 1st of April, 2012. On the 25th of June, 2015, the 6th United States Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed his appeal entirely. West then joined other condemned Tennessee inmates in arguing that the state’s use of a drug called midazolam, part of its three-drug lethal injection process, risked causing prolonged and torturous deaths.

 In March of 2017, the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the protocol and rejected the lawsuit. In November of 2018, West and three fellow death row prisoners filed a lawsuit requesting the right to be executed by firing squad instead. At that time, only three states, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Utah, permitted firing squads, and the method had last been used in 2010.

 The Federal District Court rejected the motion. The 6th Circuit upheld that rejection. Every door had been tried, every avenue had been exhausted. In February of 2019, it was confirmed. West was one of four Tennessee inmates scheduled for execution that year. His date was set, the 15th of August, 2019. Under Tennessee law, inmates whose crimes occurred before 1999 could choose between lethal injection and electrocution.

 The deadline to choose was the 31st of July, 2019. West did not make a decision in time. He defaulted to lethal injection. On the 6th of August, the 6th Circuit rejected his final appeal. On the 13th of August, 2019, Governor Bill Lee denied clemency. West’s petition had stated clearly, he admitted to the rape and the kidnapping, but maintained he did not stab Wanda or Sheila Romines.

 His attorneys also argued that his abusive childhood, his birth inside a mental institution, and his diagnosed mental illness had all been kept from the jury. And that on humanitarian grounds, his sentence should have been reduced. The governor said no. That same day, West was moved to a special cell and placed on death watch.

 72 hours of intensive surveillance leading up to an execution. On the morning of the 15th of August, 2019, just hours before the scheduled execution, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear his final appeal. And then, at the last moment, West made one final decision. He did not want to die by lethal injection.

 He asked to die in the electric chair. The request was granted. The curtains opened at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution at 7:16 in the evening. Stephen Michael West sat barefoot in the electric chair, sponges around his ankles, a metal helmet above his head. He was already crying. Before the execution began, he had eaten his final meal.

 We promised you that moment, and here it is. His last request was a Philly cheesesteak and french fries. When the warden asked for his final words, West looked up, voice broken, tears falling, and said, “In the beginning, God created man, and Jesus wept. That is all.” At 7:27 in the evening on the 15th of August, 2019, Steven Michael West was pronounced dead.

He was the fifth inmate executed in Tennessee since the state resumed executions in 2018, the third to choose electrocution over lethal injection. He had spent 32 years, 10 months, and 29 days on death row.    Ronnie Martin, the 17-year-old who West said carried out the killings, remains incarcerated.

 He will be eligible for parole in 2027. After the execution, Eddie Campbell spoke to the media. Eddie was the nephew of Jack Romines, the husband and father who found his family that night in 1986. Jack died in 2008, never fully free of what he had seen. Eddie had spent years following every development in this case, determined to honor his uncle’s wish that justice be served for Wanda and Sheila.

 Eddie said he chose to forgive both West and Martin, but he also said that justice still needed to happen, and that he would keep their memories alive by continuing to tell their story. Sheila’s basketball teammates remembered her as a good player, a good student with everything going for her. That wound never fully healed.

 And Steven West, the man who said he froze, who said someone else did the killing, made one final choice at the end. He chose the chair. In the end, the only decision left to him was how he died. What moment in this story hit you hardest? Was it Sheila’s teammates remembering her? The jail recording that was never played in court? Or the fact that Ronnie Martin could walk free as early as 2027? Drop your thoughts in the comments.

 I want to hear from you. And if this story moved you, if you believe these stories deserve to be told, subscribe to this channel because justice does not tell itself.