Alvaro Calambro pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death for the killing of 2 people at a U-Haul business in Reno. He and Duc Cong Huynh arrived at the store on the evening of Jan. 3, 1994, and hogtied Peggy Crawford, 37, and Keith Christopher, 21. Duc Huynh, who had been fired from his job at the center just before the murders, also got the death sentence but hanged himself at Ely State Prison. Peggy and Keith were tied up and beat to death with a hammer and a crowbar, during a $2,400 robbery. Although Calambro has resisted appeals in his behalf, his mother is trying to stop the execution. Calambro got the death sentence for murdering Keith Christopher, 21, by beating him with a hammer and then driving a crowbar through his head. Calambro also got a separate death sentence for murdering Peggy Crawford, 38, another employee at the U-Haul center, and that sentence had been upheld earlier by the Supreme Court.

Williams was condemned to death for the Nov. 2, 1985, slaying and robbery of Harris T. Stone, 50. The robbery netted Williams, who was on parole at the time, $3. Stone was killed when he was struck in the chest with a garden tool. Williams was found guilty of capital murder Sept. 30, 1986, and sentenced to death Nov. 19, 1986. "Evidence that Williams presented a future danger to society was simply overwhelming. The murder of Mr. Stone was just one act in a crime spree that lasted most of Williams's life,'' an appeals court has said.

Ramon Martinez-Villareal, a Mexican citizen, was convicted in Arizona of killing James Thomas McGrew and Fernando Estrada-Babichi in 1982. Prosecutors said he shot the 2 to prove his manhood. In October 1982, Martinez-Villareal and another man stole rifles in Santa Cruz County. On their way back to Mexico, they came upon James T. McGrew, 57, and his employee, Fernando Estrada Babichi, 26, who were grading a road. Both workers were shot and McGrew's truck was stolen. Though who did the shooting never was clear, Martinez-Villareal was charged with 1st-degree murder because the killings happened while other felonies were being committed.

Dennis McGuire was sentenced to die for the 1989 kidnapping, rape and murder of Joy Stewart of West Alexandria, Ohio. McGuire claimed his brother-in-law killed Stewart after raping her. McGuire and Stewart were seen together on the day of her murder and the DNA evidence, while not conclusive, strongly implicated McGuire as the murderer. 

Antuan Bronshtein was sentenced to death on Aug. 10, 1994, for the 1991 execution-style shooting of Montgomery County jeweler Alexander Gutman, inside Gutman's jewelry store in the Valley Forge Shopping Center. Previously, Bronshtein had received a life sentence for the 1991 murder of Jerome Slobotkin, a Philadelphia jeweler. 

Larry Darnell Williams is sentenced to die for the 6/2/79 robbery murders of Eric Jones, a gas station attendant and, later the same night, Susan Verle Pierce, a convenience store clerk. Both were killed with a shotgun.

Frank Tamme, described by authorities as a marijuana farmer in Washington County, faces execution for the August 1983 murders of Harold Southerland and Jasper Neal Maddox, whom a witness said grew marijuana for Tamme in Washington County. Prosecutors said Tamme shot the 2 because of his affair with Southerland's wife.

Marion Pruett calls himself a "mad dog killer". He is known to have killed Peggy Lowe, a Mississippi loan officer, kidnapped and murdered an Arkansas convenience store clerk Bobbie Jean Robertson, and two others in Colorado and his wife in New Mexico. Bobbie Jean was abducted from a Fort Smith convenience store where she worked, taken to a wooded area behind the store and shot. From death row, he asked a Mississippi newspaper to pay him $20,000 to disclose the location of Peggy's engagement ring (his offer was refused) and offered to reveal the location of a Florida victim's body in exchange for a paid appearance on the Geraldo show. Pruett also has been given a life sentence in Mississippi and 2 life sentences in Colorado for additional slayings in those states. Pruett was in the federal witness-protection program when he killed the 5 people in 1981. While serving time in Georgia for bank robbery, he testified against another inmate in the slaying of his cellmate and was released in 1979 and placed in the protection program. He later said he committed the murder. Pruett's common-law wife, Pamela Sue Barker, was bludgeoned with a hammer and her body set afire; the others were shot.

At 19 years old, Robert A. Robbins was sentenced to death for the Nov. 4, 1997 murder of his former girlfriend Bethany White, 19, of Jonesboro. Police found White dead in her apartment kitchen, her head wrapped in duct tape. The jury heard Robbins' taped confession in a trial in which Robbins acted as his own attorney. In his opening statement, Robbins told the 6-man, 6-woman jury he would show them what happens when someone is rejected. "You'll see how horrible a person can become," he said during his 2-minute statement. In an unusual move, Robbins asked Circuit Judge David Burnett if he could act as his own attorney, claiming Craighead County Public Defender Val Price had a conflict of interest in the case. Price said before the trial began that he was concerned about the ethics of defending someone who wants to be executed. "It's an extremely odd situation," he said. "It's putting me in an awkward position. My obligation is to do what is in his best interest. "He wants to die," Price said. Robbins assisted in selecting his jury, asking potential jurors if they had objections to sentencing him to death if they found him guilty. Robbins cannot enter a guilty plea to capital murder and receive the death penalty, Price said. If he did plea guilty, he would receive life in prison without parole. Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Mike Walden played a recording of a Poinsett County 911 emergency notification call in which Robbins said he killed White. The tape, which lasted nearly an hour, riveted jurors as Robbins calmly described what happened. "I'd like to confess to a murder, please," Robbins said to the 911 dispatcher. Robbins, who was calling from a car telephone, asked Poinsett County Deputy Sheriff Kenny Pogue to make sure the conversation was being recorded and then talked with the sheriff for 45 minutes. He would not tell Pogue the victim's name or where she lived. "I'm not completely sure she's dead yet," he said. Robbins told Pogue that White had broken up with him and was dating another man. He said he picked her up after work and drove her to her north Jonesboro apartment. When she refused to let him in, he grabbed her neck and began choking her. Robbins said he was not sure she was dead and tried to break her neck. He then told Pogue he shoved a kitchen knife up White's nose. Later testimony by Jonesboro police also indicated Robbins attempted to stab her with a blunt replica sword. Robbins told Pogue he wrapped White's mouth and nose with duct tape to suffocate her. "I made sure I could see her eyes," he said. "She really was a beautiful girl. I killed her, dude," he said, laughing. Robbins changed subjects at times while talking with Pogue. He asked Pogue if he was married and commented on role-playing games popular with teen-agers. He also told Pogue he was afraid to pull over to the side of the road and sleep because it was "illegal." Robbins also said he wanted to pull in front of a tractor-trailer rig and kill himself. Robbins drove from Jonesboro to Conway, where he was arrested by Conway police the morning of Nov. 5 in the parking lot of the Ramada Inn. Three Conway police officers testified that Robbins confessed to the murder after he was apprehended. "He said he had been planning this for some time," said patrol officer Brandon Tyner. "He said he choked her until his hands turned blue. He said it was such a rush, he could hear his heart beating. He wanted to know if the death penalty could be speeded up in trial." Prosecuting Attorney Brent Davis said he, Walden and Price have looked over the case carefully to assure Robbins cannot later decide to appeal the verdict based on a claim of ineffective counsel.

David Gibbs was condemned for breaking into the apartment of Marietta Bryant, 29, of Conroe, and slitting her throat with a knife after raping her. Bryant's roommate, Carol Ackland, 46, was killed in the same fashion July 1, 1985, although Gibbs was not tried for that slaying. Gibbs was paroled in January 1984 from the Texas Department of Corrections on a robbery and theft conviction out of Johnson County and had lived and worked as a caretaker at the women's' apartment complex, the Montgomery Co. Mental Health-Mental Retardation Center. Authorities said Gibbs was listed as a tenant at the apartment complex, but was living with a friend near Cleveland, TX when the bodies were found. Gibbs was found with a radio belonging to one of the victims. Blood-stained clothing was also found. Gibbs admitted breaking into an apartment at the complex on July 1, 1985, the night the women are thought to have been killed. Autopsy reports indicated the women died of cuts to their throats five days to a week before their bodies were found. In Gibb's statement to authorities, he said he went to see Carol at her Conroe apartment about midnight on July 1. "I knocked on the door and Carol answered. She was mad and upset that I came over so late and had come over while Mary was there," he said. He said he and Carol fought, waking up Mary . "Mary wanted to know who I was and why I was there," he said in the statement. "I was mad and got a knife from somewhere in the apartment and made them go back into the bedroom. We sat on the beds; Carol and Mary on the one in the corner and me on the other one." Gibbs said he then made Mary go into the bathroom while he and Carol went into the kitchen to make coffee. "I told her to keep quiet," he said of his instructions to Mary. "I gave her magazines, I believe People magazines, which I think came off the dresser in the bedroom." He said he tried to hold and talk to Carol, "but she would not have any of it. "As Carol was fixing to have coffee, I told her to lay down on the kitchen floor. I forced her to have sex with me. While I was having sex with her, I cut her throat. I don't know why I did it. Gibbs said he left Carol lying face-down in the kitchen and approached Mary in the bathroom. "I went in and sat down on the bathroom sink staring at her and thinking to myself that if she hadn't been there, these things wouldn't have happened," he said in the statement. He raped Mary , he said, and slit her throat the same way he had Carol's. "After I finished having sex with Mary, I was behind her as she was laying there in the bathroom and I cut her from behind," Gibbs said in a statement read to jurors. "After she was cut, she flopped over on her side and sat up for the first time since I had come into the bathroom, she looked me straight in the eyes, seeming to know what was happening." He then tried to make the apartment look as though it had been burglarized, he told authorities. He said he took a radio from the apartment "where I would have something of Carol's." The radio was later found by police at a northeast Montgomery County home that Gibbs had briefly occupied. After the statement was read, jurors heard from state witness Cheryl Bryant , the victim's sister-in-law, who described Bryant as having the mental development of a 13- or 14-year-old child. In 1991, Gibbs pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter in a murder that authorities said was his "initiation hit" into a prison gang, the Aryan Brothood. He received a 20-year sentence in exchange for his plea in the August 1990 strangulation of Calvin Williams, a 30-year-old condemned killer from Houston. Williams was found tied to a prison fence with a jump rope. 

Jamal D. Brown, a 21-year-old sophomore at the University of Texas at Arlington, and Aaron Christopher Foust, 24, were arrested for the capital murder of David Ward, 43, a senior vice president at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth. Police said the two men robbed and strangled Ward in his east Fort Worth home May 18, 1997 and fled with his car, credit cards and electronic equipment. In a statement, Foust said he and Brown went to Ward's house to borrow money, but when Ward refused to provide any, and Foust saw a wallet on a dresser, he struggled with Ward, put him in a chokehold until he passed out and then tied him with stereo speaker wire so he would stop moving. Foust said Brown loaded Ward's BMW with the stereo parts, VCR's and wine and liquor bottles. Ward's body was found after he did not arrive in England for a planned visit with his family. Authorities found his bound body in the master bedroom of his home after family members became worried when he missed a flight to England, where he was to visit his parents. Cryptic letters and phrases that were believed to be personal messages to Ward had been spray-painted on the walls. The victim's stolen American Express card led to the suspects' arrests. They were found a few days later at Brown's Arlington apartment where Foust was temporarily living. 

Carl Chichester murdered Timothy Rigney, 30, a Little Caesars pizza shop manager on Aug. 16, 1991, in Manassas, Virginia. Rigby was shot in the chest when he failed to open the cash register promptly. Two armed, masked men entered the store at 10:30 p.m. and demanded cash. One man, the shorter of the 2, hopped the cashier's counter where Rigney was standing and took money from one of the 2 cash registers. The other masked man remained on the other side. Both pointed their semiautomatic guns at the Little Caesars employee and told him to open the second register. Rigney tried to open the drawer, but when he couldn't, witnesses say the man on the other side of the counter, the taller man, shot Rigney in the chest, killing the teen with a single bullet. The 2 masked men fled the restaurant on foot with $100 in cash. Months later, the gunman was identified as 28-year-old Carl Hamilton Chichester, a Washington, D.C., resident who had been staying at the Red Roof Inn in Manassas. In 1992, Chichester was charged with capital murder, and in 1993, convicted by a Prince William jury and sentenced to death.

Dennis Counterman received 3 death sentences for burning his Allentown house down and killing his 3 sons (6 years old, 4 years old and 2 months old) who were trapped inside. Counterman's 3 sons -- Christopher, 6, James, 4, and Scott, 10 weeks -- died in the July 25, 1988, fire in their Chestnut Street row house. His wife, Janet, suffered burns over half of her body. 5 firefighters were injured. Minutes before the fire swept through their home, 2 of the boys entered Janet Counterman's bedroom and told her, "Daddy is downstairs starting a fire," according to court testimony. Janet Counterman and the boys went downstairs and saw Dennis Counterman in the dining room with a bucket and a lighter. They went back upstairs after he told them he would set them on fire if they didn't. Counterman started the fire with a flammable liquid that was first poured onto the dining room floor, then up the stairs to the second floor. Flames on the stairway prevented the boys from escaping. Their mother was unable to rescue them. Janet Counterman escaped onto the roof through a second-story window and was helped into a neighbor's home. Dennis Counterman was convicted in 1990, and the state Supreme Court upheld his conviction in October 1998. Stephens credited arson experts with convincing the jury of Counterman's guilt. He recalled Wednesday that Counterman, who has denied setting the fire, told him he went outside and saw a fire after smelling smoke, then jumped onto the roof with a hose when he couldn't get back in the house. Stephens believed that story until forensic evidence indicated that injuries Counterman sustained more likely came from starting a fire than trying to reenter his burning home through the second floor. "I don't think we ever got to" his motivation for starting the fire, Stephens added. "I think that there was anger there, and I think that anger turned on his wife and his family. And I think he was a very selfish person. He didn't like not having his way with things." The day before the fire, Counterman had smoked marijuana and played video games, according to trial testimony. Early the next day, he tried to have sex with his wife, but she rebuffed him because of his marijuana use. He slapped her and went downstairs. Stephens said the case was a tough one for him. "I have 3 children and they were the same age as those children at that time, so it was tough for me -- having to go to the autopsy of those three children who were burned beyond recognition," he said. Asked if he thought Counterman's sentence was just, he said: "It's not our job to say this guy deserves to die, this guy deserves to live. My job is to prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law. After that, it's up to the jury." UPDATE: In 2006, after winning a new trial, Dennis Counterman entered an Alford Plea of guilty to 3rd degree manslaughter in the deaths of his three children. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison and 5 years of probation. He had already served his sentence so he was immediately released to probation.

Arthur Martin Boyd, Jr. was sentenced to death for the stabbing death of his ex-girlfriend, Wanda Phillips Hartman in Mount Airy, North Carolina on August 7, 1982. Wanda had known Boyd for three years. They had lived together for a while and had been separated for several months at the time of the murder. Boyd confronted Wanda at a shopping mall parking lot where she was attending a church car wash. They talked for a few minutes but then Boyd pulled a knife that he had just bought at the mall and began stabbing Wanda as her mother tried to stop him. Wanda was stabbed 37 times and died a short time later at the hospital. Boyd calmly walked away and was arrested within minutes of the attack. Boyd had a criminal record dating back to age 14. His defense to the murder was that he was drunk.

Roy Ramsey Jr. received the death penalty in connection with the Nov. 21, 1988, murders of Garnett and Betty Ledford of Grandview. Ramsey denied any involvement in the murders, blaming the shootings on his younger brother, Billy, and Billy's former girlfriend, Angela Ray. Ramsey said he was selling drugs the day of the murders. But according to court records, Ray drove Ramsey and his younger brother, Billy, to the Ledford home. When they arrived, Ray waited in the car, while the two brothers walked to the front door. Roy flashed a .22-caliber Ruger semiautomatic at Garnett Ledford, who then let them into his home. Once inside, the Ledfords were forced to open their safe. Billy Ramsey testified that he ransacked the house while Roy Ramsey took Ledford, 65, and his wife, 63, into a back bedroom, where he fatally shot them at close range. The couple's son-in-law found the bodies the next day.

On October 12, 1991, when Arthur Ray Jenkins was 22, he and a 16-year-old accomplice went to the home of Jenkins' uncle, Floyd Jenkins. They murdered Floyd and his 69-year-old friend Lee Hopewell Brinklow and robbed them of their wallets, cash and various other valuables from the home. According to a court summary of the case, Arthur Jenkins and a younger brother, Kevin Frame, had been drinking when they went to a house shared by Jenkins' uncle and Brinklow. An argument ensued, and the younger Jenkins took a .22-caliber rifle from a bedroom and shot his uncle and Brinklow, then repeatedly stabbed the uncle. Jenkins then broke into his aunt's bedroom and stole money and other items.

A former Camp Hill corrections officer, George Banks was sentenced to death for a bloody rampage on Sept. 25, 1982, that left 5 of his children and 8 other people dead. He received 12 death sentences.

Dover resident David J. Lawrie, who murdered his wife and three young children during a drug-induced rage in 1992, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection April 23 at the Delaware Correctional Center in Smyrna. Lawrie, 37, has been on Delaware's death row since July 1993. He was sentenced to death after a jury voted 9-3 that the aggravating circumstances of his crime far outweighed any mitigating factors. He was convicted following the Aug. 6, 1992, deaths of his estranged wife, 25-year-old Michelle Lawrie, two of the couple's children and a neighbor's child. Testimony and court documents revealed that Lawrie, who lived two blocks away, broke in the front door of his wife's home just south of the Dover city limits. He said he had spent a sleepless night, high on cocaine, and was angry at her because she had filed for divorce. The hour was early and Michelle Lawrie was home. So were two of the couple's children - 2-year-old Tabatha and Fawn, 4. Michelle also was babysitting two other children, Charles Humbertson, 3, and Charles' sister, Lisa, who was 7. A third Lawrie child, Marcus, 7, lived with David Lawrie. After kicking in the front door, Lawrie poured gasoline throughout the residence while Michelle and the children were still inside. He then broke into a bedroom where Michelle, their daughters, and the other 2 children were hiding, stabbed Michelle in the chest, and escaped through a window. Only Lisa Humbertson, then 8 years old, survived. She testified that Michelle handed her out the window to her estranged husband, but when Michelle tried to escape, he shoved her back inside. Her brother, Charles, and two of the Lawries' children, Fawn and 2-year-old Tabitha, died in the fire along with Michelle. Lisa was treated at the hospital for minor injuries and released. Lawrie left the fire scene and ran almost a mile to a stranger's house. Bloodied and dazed, he told the man he had just hurt his wife and kids and asked him to call police. He surrendered without incident. Autopsy reports from the state Medical Examiner's Office reported Michelle died of stab wounds to her chest and smoke inhalation. The three children also died of smoke inhalation. He was convicted of first-degree murder in the deaths of the children and second-degree murder for killing his wife.

Orlando Baez was convicted in 1993 for torturing and stabbing a 22-year-old city woman to death. Baez was convicted of stabbing Janice "Sissy" Williams to death on Jan. 6, 1987. Williams' autopsy showed that she had been stabbed 86 times in the chest, back and torso; and 15 times in the face. She also had been raped and beaten, and would have been conscious while many of the wounds were inflicted, according to trial testimony. Her body was not discovered until Jan. 7, when a motorist stopped after finding Williams' two toddlers wandering outside their home. The children led the motorist to their dead mother. The murder went unsolved for 4 years until a witness came forward and told police he saw Baez stabbing Williams. Henry Gibson told police that Baez threatened to kill him if he talked. Initially, Baez told police he didn't know Gibson. Later Baez told police he did know Gibson, and that Gibson had killed Williams.

Jamal D. Brown, a 21-year-old sophomore at the University of Texas at Arlington, and Aaron Christopher Foust, 24, were arrested for the capital murder of David Ward, 43, a senior vice president at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth. Police said the two men robbed and strangled Ward in his east Fort Worth home May 18, 1997 and fled with his car, credit cards and electronic equipment. In a statement, Foust said he and Brown went to Ward's house to borrow money, but when Ward refused to provide any, and Foust saw a wallet on a dresser, he struggled with Ward, put him in a chokehold until he passed out and then tied him with stereo speaker wire so he would stop moving. Foust said Brown loaded Ward's BMW with the stereo parts, VCR's and wine and liquor bottles. Ward's body was found after he did not arrive in England for a planned visit with his family. Authorities found his bound body in the master bedroom of his home after family members became worried when he missed a flight to England, where he was to visit his parents. Cryptic letters and phrases that were believed to be personal messages to Ward had been spray-painted on the walls. The victim's stolen American Express card led to the suspects' arrests. They were found a few days later at Brown's Arlington apartment where Foust was temporarily living. 

Likening Eric Payne to a mad dog, Hanover Circuit Judge Richard Taylor sentenced him to death for the murder and attempted rape of Ruth Parham. At the end of a 3-day sentencing hearing, Taylor said that "when you have a mad dog in the pack, you get him out. The only question is whether you put him in another pen or take him down the river and put him in a gunnysack with a brick." In opting for the gunnysack, Taylor said that "under certain circumstances, he (Payne) would do the same thing again." After hearing that, Payne stood and said, "no, sir," when Taylor asked him if he had anything to say before the sentence was formally pronounced. Minutes later, Jeff Fazio and Anthony Parham stood by themselves in the courthouse lobby and wept, each with an arm on the shoulder of the other. Parham is the son of the 61-year-old custodial worker whose body was found June 6, 1997 in a dental office in Richmond. Fazio is the son of Sally Marie Fazio; Payne raped, robbed and bludgeoned Fazio to death on June 11, 1997 in her home with the same hammer that he used to kill Parham. A Richmond Circuit Court jury recommended the death penalty in November 1997 for Payne in Fazio's death. Payne, 25, pleaded guilty in December to capital murder in the death of Parham and placed the decision between death and life in prison without parole in Taylor's hands. Anthony Parham said that "I am pleased with the decision." His aunt, Ida Butts, added that "I'm glad this phase of it is over. Maybe we can pick up and go on and not having to keep going back" to the death of Ruth Parham. Fazio noted that his sister, Lisa Moseley, was not present because she recently gave birth to her 1st child; "it is a new lease of on life for them," he said. Earlier yesterday, Gerald Payne, who adopted the defendant when he was 8 years old and surrendered custody of him when he was 14, testified that he spent about $70,000 in counseling for Payne, but "we never felt in those 6 years that we were able to penetrate Chris." He lied, stole and never really became part of the family, the elder Payne said. Despite that, Payne "had every opportunity for a good life" while he was in his home, Gerald Payne added. Although the witness stand is barely 10 feet from the defendant in the Hanover courtroom, the 2 men never made eye contact while the father was testifying. Earlier testimony had shown that Payne was orphaned at 4 months when his father shot and killed his mother, and then hanged himself the next day. Over the next 18 years, Payne was in 22 homes, shelters and institutions before spending 6 years at a correctional center on an LSD distribution charge. He married in July 1996 while in prison; he was released in January 1997, obtained a job with a dry-wall company and moved into an apartment with his wife in western Henrico County. But he also started abusing alcohol and crack cocaine and exposing himself to women. Psychologist Nelson Evans testified that the sexual attacks on the women were an abnormal extension of the exhibitionism and his seeking sexual gratification by touching strange women in crowds. The stress of trying to build a normal life despite his mental problems helped explain but did not excuse the attacks, Evans said. In urging Taylor to sentence Payne to death, Senior Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney William R. Coleman acknowledged that Payne had a miserable upbringing. He told Taylor: "We'd ask you to pity the child but punish the man." Defense attorney Patrick Bynum responded that there is no evidence of violence or aggressiveness at all" on Payne's part other than the 2 murders and an attack on a woman and her 8-year-old son just before Fazio was killed. He had adapted well in prison and would not be a threat there, Bynum said. Taylor recalled that Payne had said he deserved to die and asked his attorneys to abandon any appeals when he was sentenced in Fazio's death last month. Taylor said that "he is entitled to be relieved of his of his misery. I think probably it is the best thing for everybody."

Ralph Davis, an insurance broker, murdered Susan Davis, his wife in 1986. Susan had been having an unhidden affair and Davis killed her as a result. The trial was the first in Missouri in which DNA fingerprinting was used. The body of the 35-year-old woman was never found. Mrs. Davis disappeared in 1986 after leaving her job at Westinghouse Electric Corp. in Columbia. 3 weeks earlier, she had filed assault charges against her husband. She claimed he was abusive and had once held a gun to her head. On the same day she vanished Davis bought a .12-gauge shotgun from a sporting goods store. Davis told police he didn't know what had become of his wife. He claimed she abused drugs and speculated that she had run away with another man, perhaps to Texas. Investigators lacked solid evidence until 1988, when they found the woman's car in Davis' storage locker near Jefferson City. Shotgun pellets had blasted through the driver's side window. Bone fragments, blood and human tissue were found inside. The investigators were looking for her 1986 Ford Escort since Davis had failed to keep up with payments. A medical examiner determined there was so much blood it could only have resulted from a fatal wound. DNA evidence showed that Mrs. Davis was the victim.

In December 1990, Ronald Dale Yeatts was sentenced to death for the capital murder of Ruby Meeks Dodson, 70. Yeatts was 28 years old at the time of the crime. Ruby Dodson was stabbed to death on Sept. 23, 1989. That afternoon Yeatts and a friend, Charles Michael Vernon, drank beer and smoked marijuana and crack cocaine together. Yeatts asked Vernon if he knew anyone who had some money. Vernon knew Dodson, and he knew she kept money in her home. Vernon drove the two of them to her house. As they neared her home, Yeatts asked Vernon if he had a knife and Vernon handed him a pocket knife with a 3-inch blade. When they arrived at the house they opened the car's hood and the 2 men began looking at the motor. They told Dodson they were having trouble with their car. Yeatts asked for a glass of water. He then asked for a 2nd glass and as Dodson entered the house Yeatts went in after her. Vernon also went in and went straight for Dodson's bedroom, where he began looking for money. Yeatts then joined Vernon in the bedroom. Yeatts grabbed Dodson's purse before the 2 fled. When they got to the car, Vernon noticed that Yeatts still had the knife and had blood on his hand. Yeatts told Vernon he killed Dodson because she had seen his face. They opened the pocketbook and divided the money. Vernon's share came to $700. After his arrest, Yeatts gave police several statements implicating himself, and he also admitted to his sister-in-law that he had killed Dodson. He was found guilty of capital murder and robbery and sentenced to death for the murder and given 20 years for the robbery. Vernon received 2 life sentences for murder and robbery.

Daniel Gwynn of Philadelphia received a death sentence on Nov. 6, 1995, for setting fire to a building in Philadelphia, killing Marsha Smith, who was trapped inside. 

In Springfield Missouri, on 12/14/92, 45 year old Donald Joe Hall shot and killed William White during a robbery of William's store, Mary's Custom Jewelry. Hall's ex-wife provided testimony against him while he implicated her in the killing.