Derrick Dearman Executed — His Crime, Final Meal & Last Words Revealed on Death Row

After spending six years on death row, Derek Ryan Dearman was executed by lethal injection in Alabama for one of the most devastating crimes in the state’s history, which claimed the lives of five people and that of an unborn child. It all started in August 2016. Derek and Lanetta Lester had been dating for just over 9 months, but it hadn’t been all rainbows and butterflies.

 It were months filled with fights, breakups, getting back together, and threats. Their relationship wasn’t just rocky, it was violent. Lanetta had finally had enough and left him for good this time. She ran to her brother Joseph Turner’s place in Citronel, sleeping on an air mattress in the living room. It wasn’t much, but it was supposed to be safe.

 The day before, Derek had been at the same house helping scrap an old trailer in the sticky Alabama heat. But even then, something about him felt off. Shannon Randall, Joseph’s wife, noticed it before anyone else. She watched from the porch, her 3-month-old baby tucked inside the house, and didn’t like what she saw.

 So, by the end of the day, she told the others flat out. Derek could come around to work, but he wasn’t sleeping under her roof. not with her child inside. So he left, driving back across the state line to the home he shared with Lanetta in George County, Mississippi. That night he injected meth. And like a switch flipping, his temper lit up.

 He turned cruel, even violent toward Lanetta. And by morning, Lanetta grabbed what she could and ran out of the house. And she didn’t look back. But Derek did. Fueled by drugs and rage, he got back in his car and drove straight to Citroenelli looking for Lanetta. He showed up at Joseph’s house demanding to see her, but they told him to leave.

 And at first, he did, but then came back again and again. And by the third visit, Joseph had enough and called the police. When the officers arrived, they drove past and scanned the area, but they couldn’t find anyone. So, they eventually left around 3:00 a.m. for a shift change and didn’t come back. They wouldn’t. Not until it was far too late.

Earlier that evening, inside the house on Jim Plat Road, life felt good. The grill was going, and the smoky smell drifted out into the warm, thick night air. Shannon played with their three-month-old as Joseph flipped the food. Their friend, Robert Brown, was cracking jokes while Justin and Chelsea Reed sat curled up on the couch with Chelsea’s hand resting gently on her growing belly.

 Chelsea was 5 months pregnant and glowing. The others tossed around name ideas between bites and laughter. And Lanetta, for the first time in a long while, felt safe. She laughed with the others, and it felt like a break from everything that had come before, especially from Derek. It felt like the kind of night they would all look back on and smile about.

 But no one knew it would be the last night any of them would ever get. Because Derek hadn’t really driven off, he had parked just far enough to stay out of sight and waited in the dark, watching, he stayed hidden until the porch light clicked off and the house finally went still. When he was sure they were asleep, Derek returned one last time, this time on foot.

 He slipped through the dark yard and into the house where he found Lanetta asleep on the air mattress in the living room. He woke her up and dragged her outside to talk. but she didn’t want to and tried to walk away. And for Derek, that was it, the final straw. He stormed back into the night, furious, but not finished. He crossed the lawn, grabbed an axe from the front yard, and headed straight for the house.

 It was just before 4:00 a.m. He saw his moment, and this time he wasn’t knocking. With the axe in hand, he forced his way through two locked sliding glass doors at the front of the house. Robert was the first to get hit. He had been asleep in a recliner just inside the living room before Derek raised the axe and brought it down on Robert’s head again and again.

 He didn’t die right away, but at one point, Derek stepped over him and started moving through the house, looking for the others. The first room he entered was the bedroom where Joseph, Shannon, and their baby were sleeping. Derek went straight for Joseph and hit him in the head without hesitation. He died instantly. Shannon woke up from the noise and when she tried to shield the baby, Derek turned the axe on her too, killing her right there.

 Then, without touching the child, he walked out of the room. But Derek wasn’t done yet. Down the hall was another room where Justin and Chelsea Reed were asleep. He opened the door and went straight for Chelsea, swinging the axe again and again until she stopped moving. Then he turned to Justin, but Justin didn’t give up that easily.

 He fought back and reached for his gun, but Derek was stronger and he wrestled it away from him. Then he pulled the trigger. But after that, things escalated even more. With Justin’s gun in his hands, Derek walked back through the house and started shooting. He shot Chelsea. He shot Justin.

 He shot Joseph and Shannon again just to be sure. Then he returned to the living room where Robert was still breathing, bleeding from the ax wounds. And without flinching, Derek finished it with a bullet to the head. The only ones left were Lanetta and the baby. Derek grabbed Shannon’s car keys and drove off with them, crossing state lines to his father’s place in Mississippi, 30 m away.

 But by morning, he had cooled off, and he let them go. Just after sunrise, Lanetta Lester walked into the Citroronel Police Department barefoot, still clutching her brother’s baby in her arms. Her face was bruised and her voice shaky, and what she said next froze everyone in the room. Her ex-boyfriend, Derek Dearman, had killed everyone inside her brother’s home.

 Five people were dead and only she and the baby had made it out alive. Deputies rushed to the house on Jimplat Road and what they found inside confirmed every word. The peaceful country house had become the sight of a horrific crime. Blood was smeared across walls and floors, bodies lying in beds, on couches and doorways exactly where they had fallen.

 Each of them had suffered violent injuries. It was the kind of scene that even for seasoned officers would be hard to forget. But the question was, how did it come to this? Derek had been only four when the thought started. Dark ones far too heavy for a child. And by the age of 12, he was already on anti-depressants. But that didn’t help.

 He started self-medicating, chasing numbness through drugs. And at 14, he nearly died in a car crash. and something inside him changed. That’s when he started smoking crack. And within 2 years, he had moved on to meth. From there, the fall came fast. By the time he was 19, he drove off the road on purpose in what looked like a reckless moment.

 But underneath, it was a silent cry for help. Instead of getting the support he needed, he ended up in a psychiatric hospital strapped to a bed and labeled by diagnosis major depression, bipolar disorder with psychotic features and PTSD. But even with those labels, real help never came, so he kept using. His ex-wife, Crystal Dearman, later told the court what life with him had been like.

They had two boys together, but they divorced in 2010. She said, “Derek always had a temper, especially when he didn’t get his way. And it got worse. I once woke up to him holding a knife to my throat while our baby slept in the crib,” she said. “And it wasn’t a one-time thing, either. He had threatened her multiple times, both during their marriage and after they separated.

” By the time he stood in that Citronel yard with an axe in his hand, Derek wasn’t just troubled, he was gone. The boy who had once begged for help had vanished. But later that same day, after the drugs wore off and his father convinced him, Derek turned himself in. He walked into a police station in Mississippi and confessed to everything.

He said he had been high on meth and that he didn’t know what he was doing. But it was too late. The damage was already done. On August 22nd, 2016, police brought him back in cuffs. Derek, now a national headline, was extradited to Mobile, Alabama to face what he had done.

 As deputies walked him through the back of an administrative building, reporters caught a glimpse of him. He muttered, “Don’t do drugs.” Then offered something that sounded like an apology. He said the victims were his friends. And he said the reason he turned himself in was because it hit him finally what he had done.

 By August 31st, the charges were official. six counts of capital murder, including one for Chelsea’s unborn child, and two more counts for abduction. Then something strange happened just a couple of weeks after the brutal attack. On September 5th, the house where it all happened burned to the ground. The crime scene had already been processed at the time.

 Every photo had been taken and every bloodstained floorboard had been logged and tagged. But for the families left behind, that fire meant something else. They had been waiting for the chance to walk through that house one last time, hoping to find something worth holding on to. Wedding rings, baby clothes, family pictures, anything. But they never got it.

 The fire came first, and whatever pieces of their loved ones still lingered beyond the autopsy reports and case files were gone in the flames. And no one ever figured out if it was arson or just an unlucky coincidence. By September 2018, 2 years after the massacre, Derek stood up in court and pleaded guilty.

 But under Alabama law, a jury still had to decide whether he would live or die. Right before the trial began, he fired his attorneys, but the court ruled him competent anyway. And once the evidence was laid out, the jury took their time, then came back with a verdict. Guilty on all counts. And they voted for death. On October 12th, 2018, the court confirmed it.

 Derek Ryan Dearman would be executed. Derek didn’t want to fight his sentence, at least not for himself. Not after what he had done. But for years, he went through the appeals anyway, because his family couldn’t bear to let him go without a fight. “No father wants their son to die,” he said in a quiet voice during an interview. “They had a right to try.

” The appeals started in late 2018, just weeks after the jury sentenced him to die. He told his family he would give them a few years, time to file, to argue, and to hope. But deep down, he already knew. They saw a drug addict, he said. They saw a man curled up in his own mind like a child. And in February 2024, Alabama’s highest court slammed the door shut, denying another motion. That was it for Derek.

He was done. By April, he wrote two letters. One to the governor, the other to the state’s attorney general. But in it, he didn’t ask for mercy. He asked for a date. I am guilty, he wrote in another letter to a judge, adding that it’s not fair to the victims or their families to keep prolonging the justice that they so rightly deserve.

It’s time to do what I know is right. He said, “My family has had their chance. Now it’s the victim’s families who deserve peace. Justice is justice.” And he got what he wanted. On September 3rd, the Alabama Supreme Court signed off and the death warrant was approved. After spending 6 years on death row, his execution was officially set for October 17th, 2024.

On Wednesday, October 16th, Derek was moving through his final full day with calmness. That morning, the steel doors opened for three visitors, his father, his sister, and Reverend Jeff Hood, a spiritual adviser who had walked others down the same path. They sat with him for a while, shared some memories, and said a few prayers.

That day, he ate what was brought to him, breakfast, and an extra tray with grits, two biscuits covered in apple jelly, eggs, brown gravy, and raspberry tea. Later, he had a cheeseburger and a cold Dr. Pepper as a snack. But when lunch came, he didn’t touch it. For dinner, he had the standard prison meal. Chicken, cabbage, cornbread, and peas.

Then came his final calls. One to his sister, one to a friend. Reverend Hood again and his father. The next morning, his last began quietly on October 17th. In the quiet hours before his execution, he was allowed visitors one last time. A close friend came. So did two of his sons, his brother-in-law, his father, and his sister.

 They were the ones who still showed up even after everything. Even now, they came to say goodbye. He didn’t talk much that day, but the guards remembered the picture clearly. Him sitting there with a sub sandwich in one hand, a Dr. Pepper in the other, and a bottle of strawberry sun-kissed resting on the table. What he did say was quiet, but stuck with them.

 He told his sons he was giving up his life because it was the only way to save his soul. That morning, he enjoyed his breakfast. Oatmeal, scrambled eggs, three biscuits, orange juice, and brown gravy. And by lunchtime, he was still hungry. He ate macaroni salad, cornbread, corn, potatoes, green beans, carrots, and sloppy joe.

The final meal he requested came from a local seafood spot. He chose two pieces of fried catfish, three boiled shrimp, three fried shrimp, a deileled crab, three fried oysters, three onion rings, and two sides. That night, he was strapped to the gurnie. When asked for his final words, Derek turned toward the observation rooms.

 Two of them were filled by the victim’s families. To the victim’s family, forgive me. This is not for me. It is for you, he said. I have taken so much. To my family, y’all already know. I love y’all. It wasn’t clear exactly when the chemicals began to flow, but by 5:58 p.m., the execution had officially started. Derek lay with his arms extended and his eyes open.

 The room was silent and the guard stood by waiting. At 6:00 p.m., he raised his head slightly and seemed to speak to one of them. A minute later, he started to lose consciousness and his breathing became shallow. At 6:02, his abdomen fluttered a few times. A guard stepped closer, bent down, and did a consciousness check by yelling his name into his left ear, touching his left eyelid, and pinching and twisting the skin inside his elbow.

But Derek didn’t respond. His left hand twitched, slight, but clearly visible. His breathing appeared to stop at 6:04. At 6:08 p.m., the curtain closed. From the viewing room, a low, aching sound broke the silence. His father, seated among media witnesses, called out his name once, then again, each cry more broken than the last. Derek. Oh, Derek.

Derek, don’t go. He was pronounced dead at 6:14 p.m. Derek Ryan Dearman was 36 years old. What do you think? Has justice been served? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.