Kevin Ray Underwood, an Oklahoma man who planned to eat a 10-year-old girl after raping and killing her, has died by lethal injection on his 45th birthday — a move he called “needlessly cruel” during his execution.
On Thursday morning (December 19), Kevin Ray Underwood, a man on death row in Oklahoma, received a lethal injection on his 45th birthday, also marking the nation’s 25th and final execution of the year and the fourth and final in Oklahoma. The Oklahoma man was sentenced to death after raping and killing a 10-year-old girl, who happened to be his neighbor, Jamie Rose Bolin; whom he also planned to eat as part of a cannibalistic fantasy. The incident took place on April 12, 2006.
The Oklahoma man has admitted to luring the 10-year-old girl to his apartment in Purcell, about 40 miles south of Oklahoma City, and beating her over the head with a wooden cutting board before suffocating, sexually assaulting, and mutilating her. According to court documents, the Oklahoma man raped the girl “as she lay unconscious or dead.”
He told investigators that he invited the girl inside to play with Freyja, his white pet rat. As the girl watched “SpongeBob SquarePants” on his television, he began to beat her and then suffocate her. He then claimed he sexually molested her body before moving her to the bathtub, where he attempted to decapitate her with a decorative dagger.
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However, after partially beheading the victim in his bathtub, he abandoned his plans to eat her in a cannibalistic fantasy. He then wrapped her body in a plastic sheet and stored her body in a sealed plastic tub in his bedroom closet.
According to The Oklahoman, two days later, during a missing persons search, local authorities found and interviewed Underwood, who said he saw the 10-year-old girl and spoke with her the day she went missing. He also consented to police searching his apartment, where FBI agents located the tub in his closet, along with a disassembled purple bike, meat tenderizer, and skewers. He reportedly told police, “Go ahead and arrest me … She’s in there. I hit her and chopped her up. I’m going to burn in hell.”
State Department of Corrections spokesperson Lance West told the Associated Press that at 10:04 a.m., Underwood’s execution began at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. At 10:09 a.m., a doctor entered the execution chamber and shook him a few times, declaring him unconscious. At 10:14 a.m., the Oklahoma man was pronounced dead by lethal injection. In Oklahoma, the lethal injection cocktail contains three drugs: midazolam (which sedates the inmate), vecuronium bromide (which paralyzes the inmate), and potassium chloride (which stops the inmate’s heart).
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During his execution, Underwood was strapped to a gurney inside the death chamber, and outside stood prison officials, his legal team and his family, including his mother, plus several relatives of the victim, including her sister, Lori Pate. Before his execution, the Oklahoma man shared his final words, which included him calling his death on his 45th birthday “needlessly cruel.”
He said, “The decision to execute me on my birthday and six days before Christmas was a needlessly cruel thing to do to my family. But I’m very sorry for what I did and I wish I could take it back.” Reacting to Underwood’s execution, the victim’s sister said, “This doesn’t bring our Jamie back but it does allow the space in our hearts to focus on her and allow the healing process to begin.”
During a hearing last week, Underwood, via video from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, told the 10-year-old girl’s family that he was sorry. Before the state’s Pardon and Parole Board, he said, “I would like to apologize to the victim’s family, to my own family, and to everyone in that room today who had to hear the horrible details of what I did.”
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The Pardon and Parole Board ultimately denied Underwood clemency, unanimously voting 3-0, despite his attorneys arguing that he didn’t deserve the death penalty due to his long history of abuse and serious mental health issues. They claimed he suffered from autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar and panic disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, and various deviant sexual paraphilias.
Prosecutors countered that the Oklahoma man could not be given leniency after raping and killing a 10-year-old girl. They wrote, “Whatever deviance of the mind led Underwood to abduct, beat, suffocate, sexually abuse, and nearly decapitate Jamie cannot be laid at the feet of depression, anxiety or (autism). Underwood is dangerous because he is smart, organized, and driven by deviant sexual desires rooted in the harm and abuse of others.”
Attorney General Gentner Drummond also asked the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board to reject his clemency in mid-November, claiming he was a “child sexual predator and murderer who committed one of the most depraved and gruesome crimes in Oklahoma history.”
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