The Silence of the Lambs was one of Kevin Ray Underwood's favorite movies, or so the sick psycho wannabe cannibal killer wrote in the personal profile area of his Internet "diary." It was his obsessive cannibalistic fantasies, prosecutors contended, that prompted the 28-year-old grocery store stock boy to lure innocent 10-year-old Jamie Rose Bolin into his Purcell, Oklahoma apartment on April 12, 2006 where he brutally bashed in the girl's head with a cutting board before finishing her off by suffocating her. The cute, rosy-cheeked, bespectacled girl had lived with her father in an apartment on the floor above Underwood's; when the police raided his unit two days later, they found the little girl's naked body stuffed into a plastic storage tub that had been sealed with duct tape. Her head had been nearly decapitated, and tool marks, later determined to have been made with a decorative dagger, were clearly visible on her neck. It was later shown that she had also been sexually assaulted.
Closer examination of his Internet writings showed that Underwood had been engaging in perverted fantasies about cannibalizing a victim for some time. In one passage, he wrote: "If you were a cannibal, what would you wear to dinner?" His response to his own question: "The skin of last night's main course." Later, the day after he had slaughtered the little girl, he wrote about his fear of being apprehended by the cops: "I've been nervous all day. I'm afraid the cops would come into my apartment and see all the knives and swords and horror movies and commentaries about serial killers on my DVD rack and suspect me."
Underwood's fears were, of course, soon realized—the cops found all of those things and more, including meat tenderizers and meat skewers, as well as sex toys. By the time they were finished examining his apartment, they had uncovered enough evidence to show what he had intended to do to his victims, but found no evidence that he had actually cannibalized anyone.
"This appears to have been part of a plan to kidnap a person, rape them, torture them, kill them, cut off their head, drain the body of blood, rape the corpse, then dispose of the organs and bones," said David Tomkins, Purcell's chief of police.
At Underwood's trial in March 2008, District Attorney Greg Mashburn, in his push to get the death penalty for the defendant, pointedly described little Jamie's last moments of life as she gasped for air while being suffocated. The jury viewed gruesome photos of the crime scene, and watched Underwood's videotaped confession that detailed his fantasies of torture, murder, and cannibalism.
"This was the worst of the worst," Mashburn said as he pointed out to the jury many of the items found inside Underwood's apartment. "There are cases for life without parole and for the possibility of parole. This just isn't it. He should forfeit his life because this was so bad."
The defense, citing psychiatric reports, argued that Underwood was afflicted with bipolar disorder and suffered from sexual problems. He also suffered from a socially isolating personality disorder, and one of his attorneys, Wayne Woodyard, contended that it was Underwood's underlying mental illnesses that caused his deviant sexual urges to take over and surge to the forefront.
"Mr. Underwood suffers from several severe psychiatric disorders," Woodyard told the jury. "Is there any question that Kevin Ray Underwood was a sick and disturbed young man when he committed this homicide?"
Woodyard said that his client had expressed remorse for the murder, and argued that medication could help him. He had also been emotionally and verbally abused by his parents as a child, according to the attorney.
"I stand before you on behalf of Kevin Underwood and ask for mercy," Woodyard pleaded. "You have other options to punish Kevin Underwood and protect society other than sentencing Kevin Underwood to death."
"Even if he was depressed, what does that do?" Mashburn countered. "Does that give him a green light to butcher a little girl?"
One of the legal requirements for a jury to sentence Underwood to death was that prosecutors needed to prove that Underwood was a continuing threat to society. This was accomplished, in part, by the testimony of a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist who told the jury that if Underwood "walked out of here today, yeah, he'd be a danger."
The jury unhesitatingly sided with the prosecutor and recommended that Underwood be sentenced to death for what he did to Jamie Rose Bolin. On Thursday, April 3, 2008, McClain County District Judge Candace Blalock approved the jury's death sentence and ordered that Underwood be executed by lethal injection.
Appeals are, of course, certain.
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