Brian Dorsey Execution | Last Meal, Final Words and Crime | Death Row (US) 

On April 9th, 2024, after more than 15 years on Missouri’s death row, Brian Joseph Dorsy was executed by lethal injection. In this video, we’ll uncover what happened, his last meal, and his last words. [Music] But to understand how he ended up on death row, we have to go back to a cold night just before Christmas in 2006.

It was December 23rd and 34year-old Brian was already slipping. He was pacing his apartment, desperate and on edge. Two drug dealers sat on his couch waiting to get paid. But Brian had no money, no options, and no way out. So, he did the one thing he thought might save him. He picked up the phone and called his cousin Sarah.

 He told her he was in trouble, that drug dealers were after him, and that he needed a place to lay low. Sarah didn’t hesitate. She was 25. Her husband Benjamin was 28. And together they had a 4-year-old daughter. They were preparing for the holidays. But when Brian called, they gathered a few friends and drove straight to his apartment.

 And the moment they went inside, the dealers took one look at the group that walked in and bailed. Whatever threat Brian had faced vanished. But they didn’t just rescue him. They brought him home to New Bloomfield, Missouri. Sarah and Ben opened their door to him without a second thought. They gave him their guest room, poured him drinks, and tried to lighten the mood.

 That night, they all hung out in the garage, their little hangout spot they called the shop. There was a pool table. They had some beers, and they were laughing with some other family members and friends. It felt safe, familiar. But no one realized what they had invited in. Brian drank beer after beer. Seven, maybe 10, trying to hold it together, trying to act normal, but something in him had already cracked.

 After everyone went to bed, he found a bottle of vodka, and took a few long sips. Then he walked back out to the shop, picked up the shotgun he had noticed earlier, and headed toward the bedroom. At some point after midnight, he stood over the bed where Sarah and Ben slept. Then he pulled the trigger. The first blast tore through Sarah’s face.

 Then he reloaded, turned, and shot Ben in the head. Neither had a chance to wake up. They both died instantly. But he wasn’t finished. After they were dead, Brian assaulted Sarah’s body. Then he poured bleach over her. Maybe trying to cover what he had done. Maybe out of panic. Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter.

 Any bond they might have shared as cousins was already broken. What he did to her, there was no coming back from that. In the next room, the couple’s daughter slept through it all. He didn’t touch her, and she stayed safe in her bedroom, unharmed and unaware of the nightmare that had just unfolded. After he was done, Brian ransacked the house, stealing whatever he thought could be sold.

 He took valuables, loose bills, even Sarah’s car keys. And before leaving, he locked the bedroom door, protecting the girl from what lay behind it. He used the stolen goods to pay off another drug debt, and spent the rest of the night trying to sell what was left, including the shotgun, but no one would buy it.

 The next day, on December 24th, Christmas Eve, Sarah’s parents waited. Sarah, Ben, and their little girl were supposed to arrive for the family gathering, but when they didn’t show up, they immediately knew something was off. So, they got in the car and drove over, thinking maybe the roads were bad or someone got sick. The house looked normal from the outside, but when they knocked, no one answered.

 Inside, the TV was on, and they found their 4-year-old granddaughter sitting alone, confused and scared. She had been watching cartoons on TV all day. She told them her mommy and daddy had locked themselves in the bedroom all day and they wouldn’t wake up. Sarah’s parents forced the door open and they immediately froze.

 Their nightmare had just become real. Sarah and Ben lay in bed soaked in blood. And not just the sheets, but the floor, the furniture, and the walls. The room looked like it had been torn from a horror film. The police zeroed in on Brian almost immediately as he was supposed to be staying in their house. He was seen with them the night before the murders and he disappeared from the house somewhere in the middle of the night.

 But when detectives swabbed Sarah’s body, they got a full DNA profile, her own, no one else’s. But he wasn’t ruled out just yet. In fact, he couldn’t be eliminated at all. Two days later, on December 26th, Brian walked into a police station and turned himself in. “I’m the right guy concerning the deaths of the Bonnies,” he said.

 And in his back pocket, officers found Sarah’s social security card. Her car had been abandoned. The stolen items were still in his possession, and the shotgun was also recovered. Then, a witness confirmed what Brian had already admitted. He tried to sell the items that very morning. That afternoon, Brian Dorsey was charged with two counts of first-degree murder.

 But this wasn’t a cleancut case of a career criminal. Brian’s damage started long before the murders. His childhood was a mess. Alcohol, instability, and no one steering the ship. By high school, he was already drinking heavily, drinking not just to party, but to numb things. His father wrestled with the same demons, depression, drinking, and detachment.

 Addiction ran through the family like a cracked foundation, and no one knew how to fix it. Relatives shuffled in and out, many of them deep in their own battles with drugs and alcohol. Brian learned to live in the background, but the damage stuck. He tried to take his own life twice, but both times he survived.

 However, neither time was he truly saved, and the drugs stayed. And the debt that only got worse, deep enough that one day he would be willing to kill for it. In March 2008, Brian stood before the court and pleaded guilty. There was no fight over what happened. He admitted to it all. The only question left was punishment. And in August, the jury gave their answer.

They ruled that both murders were part of another crime and that Brian had done it for himself for personal gain. They also found the murder of Sarah involved depravity of mind and included an extra layer of cruelty, assault. The verdict was unanimous and Brian was sentenced to death twice.

 The judge agreed and on November 10th, 2008, it became official. Brian Dorsey was sent to death row in Missouri. But even with his guilty plea on the record, he spent the years that followed fighting the sentence with everything he had. Over the next 15 years, he filed appeal after appeal. He blamed his lawyers, picked apart the evidence, and pleaded for life without parole instead of death.

 But none of it worked. Each time, the courts pushed his case aside. And year after year, appeal after appeal, Brian remained on death row, waiting. Then came December 2023 when Missouri’s attorney general asked the state’s highest court to set a date, and they did for April 9th, 2024. The clock started ticking. But what happened next took everyone by surprise.

 More than 70 correctional officers, people who had worked with him day after day, signed a letter asking Governor Mike Parson to stop the execution. They said Brian was a model inmate. Said he was respectful, steady, even helpful. He was a barber for other prisoners, someone they could turn to when needed.

 Even some former jurors who had once voted to sentence him to death changed their minds. They said he had grown and that he wasn’t the same man anymore. They argued that Brian had been in a state of drug induced psychosis during the attack. His mind, they said, wasn’t clear. But that wasn’t the only issue raised.

 His attorneys, according to later filings, were dealing with a financial conflict of interest during the trial, something that may have limited how hard they could fight for him. At the time, Missouri’s public defender system paid court-appointed lawyers a flat fee of just $12,000 for capital cases. It was argued that such low pay barely scratched the surface for trials that demand hundreds, sometimes thousands of hours of work.

 and this may have limited how hard his defense team could fight for him. Still, the governor saw it differently, and on the day before it was scheduled, he denied clemency. The execution would go forward. Brian’s final day came as quietly as he had been for the last 15 years. On April 9th, 2024, at 11:00 a.m.

, he received his last meal. He requested two bacon double cheeseburgers, two servings of chicken strips, two large orders of seasoned fries, and a sausage and pepperoni pizza loaded with onions, mushrooms, and extra cheese. He received no visitors. Only his spiritual adviser came to see him. Just before the drugs were administered, Brian was given a last chance to speak.

 He stayed silent, but he had written something. In his final statement, Brian tried to put guilt into words. To all of the family and loved ones I share with Sarah, and to all of the surviving family and loved ones of Ben, I am totally, deeply, overwhelmingly sorry, he wrote. Words cannot hold the just weight of my guilt and shame. I still love you.

 I never wanted to hurt anyone. I am sorry I hurt them and you. If you want to read the full statement, I suggest you pause the video here. At 6 p.m., the execution began. Brian took a few deep breaths as the drug entered his system, then shifted to short, rapid gasps. For a moment, he lifted his head from the pillow and blinked hard like he was trying to fight it. Then he went still.

 His spiritual adviser sat in silence beside the gurnie while his lips moved in steady rhythm. But whatever he was saying was lost behind the thick soundproof glass. At 6:11 p.m. he was pronounced dead. Brian Joseph Dorsy was 52 years old.