By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2024-12-19 00:37:36 | Updated at 2024-12-19 04:14:53
3 hours ago
A “deeply evil” Oklahoma inmate facing execution for torturing and killing a little girl as part of a cannibalistic fantasy admitted he deserves to die during a hearing in which a final clemency plea was shot down.
Kevin Ray Underwood, 44, made the jarring statement in front of the state’s Pardon and Parole Board, which voted unanimously against his clemency on Friday more than a decade after he was convicted of murdering 10-year-old Jamie Rose Bolin.
Underwood lured the child, who was a neighbor, to his Purcell apartment before beating her on the head with a cutting board and then suffocating her in 2006.
He admitted to the gruesome slaying, in which he almost beheaded little Jamie in his bathtub, was part of a twisted cannibalistic and sexual fantasy, though he did not end up eating the young girl.
He reportedly said at the time he tried to have sex with her corpse as part of his sick fantasy.
“I recognize that although I do not want to die … I deserve to for what I did,” he said over video from prison on Friday, according to the Oklahoman. “And if my death could … change what I did, I would gladly die.”
Underwood also apologized to the victim’s family and his own family.
“I can’t believe I did those things,” he continued.
“The person I was in the weeks leading up to that event is not who I am now.”
Attorney General Gentner Drummond applauded the board voting to deny clemency “for this deeply evil monster and ensured that justice will be delivered for Jamie Rose Bolin.”
Underwood’s legal team argued he should not be sentenced to death because he has a long list of mental health problems, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar and panic disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizotypal personality disorder and deviant sexual paraphilias.
An assistant attorney general rejected that mental health issues should excuse the cruel behavior.
“Mr. Underwood chose Jamie because he thought that she was small and defenseless and easy prey,” Aspen Layman said.
“And while we, as an enlightened society, can give grace to those struggling with mental illness, we can still expect them to refrain from planning the murder, rape, torture and cannibalism of 10-year-old little girls.”
Underwood will receive a three-drug lethal injection for his scheduled death Thursday, the 25th and final execution in the US this year.
It’s slated for the day after Joseph Corcoran was killed by lethal injection in Indiana for killing four people, including his brother and his sister’s fiancé, in July 1997.
With Post wires
