JANUARY'S RESERVATIONS....

10 diners slated...

January
14 Samuel Gallamore - Texas
15 John Baltazar - Texas
16 Daniel Revilla - Oklahoma
16 John Schmitt - Virginia
22 Robert Lookingbill - Texas
23 Elkie Taylor - Texas
24 Henry Hunt - North Carolina
28 Alva Curry - Texas
29 Richard Dinkins - Texas
30 Granville Riddle - Texas

The NYTimes (res. req.) notes there are fewer potential diners....

THE 2001 YEAR IN REVIEW...

For First Time Since 1976, Drop in Inmates on Death Row
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 (AP) — The number of death row prisoners dropped last year for the first time since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, the Justice Department reported today.

The death row population fell to 3,581 in 2001 from 3,601 in 2000, the first year-to-year decrease in 25 years. The 155 defendants sentenced to die last year were the the fewest since 1973.

In 1998, 303 people were sentenced to death, while in 1996 it was 319, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Sixty-six people were executed last year, compared with 85 the year before. Through Dec. 11 of this year, 68 people were executed.

Death penalty experts say juries and prosecutors appear to be exercising greater care in using the death penalty, especially after recent cases in which DNA evidence proved that people had been wrongly convicted. More prosecutors also appear to be accepting plea bargains in which a defendant accepts a sentence of life without parole.

"There is more selective use of the death penalty going on," said Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a group critical of capital punishment. "The key issue, which is disturbing to people, is that they've seen inmates who may have been close to execution walk off from death row."

The government figures show that 63 men and 3 women were put to death last year, all by lethal injection. Forty-eight were white, 17 were black and one was American Indian.

A death row inmate is most likely to have previous felony convictions and have no more than a high school education, the statistics show. Only 10 percent have attended college.

Oklahoma executed the most people in 2001, with 18, followed by 17 in Texas and 7 in Missouri. In all, executions were carried out last year by 15 of the 38 states that have a death penalty. The federal government executed two men, Timothy J. McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, and Juan Raul Garza, a murderer.

Preliminary statistics for this year show that Texas has conducted 33 of the 68 executions nationwide.

THE KITCHEN IS CLOSED FOR THE HOLIDAYS...

Next updates...December 30th

Until then a couple of things to nosh on...

OKLAHOMA LAST MEAL
ERNEST CARTER
December 17, 2002

Last Man Served...the kitchen is closed for the year...

Last Meal: a deep-dish supreme pizza, 7-Up and one slice of cherry cheesecake.

The skinny: Carter was executed for firing a fatal shot into a night watchman's head so he could steal a $500 tow truck. Carter, who had been fired from the auction for sleeping on the job, crawled through a hole in a fence, cut the lights to the guard shack and killed so he could steal a wrecker,

Last Words and such.... "I'll be with you all on the other side," Carter said, smiling at his family and lifting his head from the gurney. "I'm going home now." His mother, sister and spiritual advisers strode into the execution viewing room singing "Thank you, Jesus. Thank you for my child."
As her son was dying, Carter's mother stood and walked toward the glass that separated them. Two guards gently took her arms and told her to sit.

"Please God, don't let this happen to no one else's child," she said after Carter was pronounced dead. "Spare the rest of the inmates, Lord. "His eyes might be closed, but he's not gone. He's tired of being accused of a crime he did not commit."

Backstage machinations...Carter's attorneys failed at a last-ditch plea for his life after Gov. Frank Keating denied the convicted killer clemency. They sent the governor a letter Monday asking him to reconsider last month's unanimous recommendation from the state Pardon and Parole Board to spare Carter's life.

It was the first time in more than 50 years that the board voted unanimously to recommend clemency for a condemned inmate.

Keating rejected the recommendations.

Factiods: Cartet was the seventh and last inmate executed in Oklahoma this year. Two executions are scheduled in January.

Carter is the 55th person executed in the state since Oklahoma reinstated the death penalty in 1977 and resumed executions in 1990.

In the 20 minutes before the execution, some of the 105 other inmates on death row banged on their cell doors and hollered - a show of respect for the condemned man.

WHAT HAPPENED TO KEN AFTER HE KILLED BARBIE....

The Jersey Killing Machine...

Serial Killer Fun Facts...from the New York Times. reg. req.

This appeared after the disgruntled white guy turned out to be two black guys....

Some Highlights:

Serial Killing's Squarest Pegs: Not Solo, White, Psychosexual or Picky

The middle-aged man and the teenager were footloose traveling companions on a fathomless mission of horror. For three weeks, investigators say, they killed — callously, wantonly, ceaselessly, driven by a logic known only to themselves — and thus qualified themselves for inclusion in the macabre fraternity of the serial killer.

....If anything is clear in that roll call of malevolence, it is that all serial killers are their own story, with their own idiosyncrasies and twisting plot lines, their own tumble of complexities. Ted Bundy is not Jeffrey Dahmer is not John Wayne Gacy. The only true common denominator among them is skill at bringing about death.

The Team Killer

The fact that there are two of them sets them apart. Serial killers are usually loners, who strike without accomplices or companions, propelled by their personal demons and objectives. Several experts estimate that no more than 10 to 28 percent of serial killers are teams, although some of the pairs qualify as among the most infamous of all criminals. The Hillside Strangler, for instance, was actually two cousins, Angelo Buono Jr. and Kenneth Bianchi, who were convicted of kidnapping, raping, torturing and murdering young women in Los Angeles in the late 1970's.

Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo, a Canadian husband and wife known to friends as Ken and Barbie, were accused of raping and murdering young girls. Mr. Bernardo was convicted of two murders, while Ms. Homolka pleaded guilty to manslaughter and testified against him.

Leonard Lake and Charles Ng acted as partners in turning the fortified bunker that Mr. Lake had built into his house near Wilseyville, Calif., into a grisly torture chamber where at least 25 people were thought to have died, their suffering recorded on videotapes made by the killers.

In team killings, according to students of serial killers, one member usually dominates.

Mr. Muhammad seemed to hold considerable sway over Mr. Malvo. Though apparently unrelated, Mr. Malvo called Mr. Muhammad father and is said to have adhered to a rigid diet of crackers, honey and vitamin supplements he insisted upon.

The Race Factor

He would be white. That was the consensus of many experts who furnished educated guesses on the sniper's identity before the arrests. Serial killing, they said, was a white man's game.

Both suspects are black.

There have been few studies of the race and ethnicity of serial killers, but the handful that have been done suggest that black serial killers occur in roughly equal — or even slightly greater — proportion to the number of blacks in the population. These studies estimate that between 13 and 22 percent of American serial killers are black.

But the cases so indelibly imprinted on the public consciousness by Hollywood and book publishing are generally white killers like David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam killer; and Jeffrey L. Dahmer, the Milwaukee killer of men and boys.

Most serial killers, black and white, kill within their race. This was true of Wayne Williams, who killed at least five black children in Atlanta in the 1980's, and Henry Louis Wallace, who killed nine young black women in Charlotte, N.C., between 1992 and 1994. Cleophus Prince Jr. was unusual in that he murdered six white women in San Diego in the 1990's.

The sniper suspects are particularly atypical in that the police believe they killed whites and blacks.

In one trait, however, they are unmistakably the usual suspects. They are men. As few as 5 percent of serial killers are thought to be women. Women who kill tend to choose family members and acquaintances as victims, and they usually use poison. There are exceptions, like Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute who shot truck drivers along Florida highways in 1989 and 1990.

The Nonspecialist

White. Black. Men. Women. Young. Old. The snipers killed them all. It did not seem to matter.

Almost always, though, serial killers specialize, and by now the categories of choice are familiar: prostitutes, children, young women, gay men, hitchhikers.

John Wayne Gacy preyed on young men and boys. Ted Bundy trafficked in young college women. David Berkowitz selected couples necking in parked cars.

Random killers are rare.

The Speeded-Up Timeline

The timing was strange.

Most serial killers begin slowly, tentatively, almost testing the waters of death. With success, their confidence builds and they begin to speed up the death count. Generally, though, there are pauses between killings that can last days, weeks or years.

The snipers, the authorities say, turned that protocol on its head. They began with a burst of violence, gunning down six people in just over 24 hours, and then followed that explosion with a series of single killings that slowed in frequency as time passed.

The Childhood

Are serial killers made or born?

Criminologists still know little about what makes these killers kill.

Some experts cite a so-called homicidal triad — fire setting, bed-wetting beyond an appropriate age, and animal torturing — that frequently shows up in the backgrounds of murderers. Other experts say physical or sexual abuse in childhood may also be a factor.

Many serial killers interviewed by researchers after they were convicted have described parents who were brutal, neglectful or, at the very least, difficult. What is clear, experts agree, is that few serial killers suffer from major mental disorders like schizophrenia.

The Motives

Why kill? Why kill again and again?

Various profilers and researchers try to divide motivations into broad classifications. Dr. Fox settles on five: power and control; profit; revenge; terror; and loyalty.

This is just a taste of the many full-filled factoids in the article....A must read...