ILLINOIS BE DAMNED, WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE TEXAS!!

TEXAS LAST MEAL
SAMUEL GALLAMORE
January 14, 2003

The first of the year....

LAST MEAL: A disheartening...no final meal request.

The Skinny: Samuel Gallamore was sentenced to death for the 1992 murders of Clayton Kenney, 83; his partially-paralyzed wife, Juliana, 74, and their daughter, Adrienne Arnot, 44, at their rural home near Kerrville in central Texas.

Gallamore and an accomplice were on crack cocaine the night of March 29, 1992, when they went to the Kenney house looking for drug money. His partner had once cared for Mrs. Kenney at an area nursing home. After killing them, they fled with cash and valuables, including silver servings and a rare spoon collection.

It took 18 months for police to track down Gallamore. He had moved to Chicago, where he was working as a home repairman.

ROBERT FROST MOMENT: At the trail, jurors heard a poem Gallamore wrote from his jail cell during his trial in which he described the begging and pleading of "the people I sat and watched bleed. I say I am guilty and that is true. Now I ask mercy from all twelve of you."

Last words and writings and such: In a written statement Gallamore prepared before the execution the condemned man apologized for the murders to a relative of the victims who was a witness.

"I would like to apologize and say how sorry I am but words seem so hollow and cheap," he said. "Their death should not have happened, but it did. I'm so sorry that all of this took place."

GRINCH MOMENT: Gallamore also said that in the last hour of his life, his heart grew because relatives of the slain victims said they forgave him.

"You have given me more hope than I have had in a long time," he said in his note. "If I could change things I would, not for my sake but for all those who have loved me over the years and for those who have forgiven me."

REFLECTION IS GOOD: "My life is worthless since I've done this," said Gallamore, who says he began using marijuana when he was 5, dropped out of school as a teenager and often fought to protect his older brother who was in a gang.

"When it comes to having a life, you can pretty much say mine was a failure," he said. "I was just a mixed-up, confused kid. A lot of it had to do with the drugs. ... If it wasn't for me shooting the bathtub crank we were making, I wouldn't be (on death row.)"

Factoids: The accomplice received a life sentence.

Both the victim’s family and the family of the individual sentenced to die can have up to five people attend the execution,

Gallamore was the first of 18 convicted killers currently scheduled for execution in Texas this year. Six others also are set to die in January. Thirty-three were executed last year by the state and 290 have been put to death since the state restored the death penalty in 1982.