Excerpt
The priest walked to the execution chamber rosary in hand. Within the confines of his mind Father Richard O’Halleron was thinking in a half drunken fog that this would be his last execution. He’d been drinking for years, Chivas Regal scotch being his demon. It seemed that for a devout catholic his faith had taken a plunge southward. With the way the world is these days, murder, rape, increased gang and domestic violence, all of it heaped in one gargantuan mass, no wonder his faith was shaken. Hard lines and sunken cheeks, yellowed eyes, red bulbous nose made up his facial features. At six foot tall and sixty one years of age the almost white haired man ambled his way down the long corridor flanked by guards at Parchment penitentiary in Sunflower County Mississippi. He’d performed many last rites for executions at the prison but none for a more sinister and heinous prisoner than the one he was about to perform now. This was to be his last, for his faith was gone.
The prisoner, Vincent Lee Railey, was a six foot six inch, two hundred eighty pound brute of a man. Not only was he huge, but he was chiseled from stone. Muscles rippling throughout his arms, legs, and chest. A very imposing figure indeed. One look at him was like looking at impending doom itself. He had a military style sandy blonde buzz cut with piercing ice blue eyes that held no emotion but hate. Some say he had the eyes of a killer. A killer is exactly what he was. Swastika, Nazi SS, and Ku Klux Klan tattoos adorned his arms and chest, making Vincent an even more intimidating presence.
Vincent Lee Railey was convicted on September 13th 1985 for the torture and murders of five black men in McHenry Mississippi in a span of five days in June of 1980. Sentenced for execution, Vincent pled not guilty on the grounds that; “He was doing his country a service by eradicating nigger vermin from the general populace”. Showing no remorse for his crimes, Vincent was led out of court, chained and shackled, smiling as he went. This action caused an outrage by both the black and white community. Now the time for execution is at hand; on this day of March 15th 1990.
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