McALESTER — The 25th and final execution of 2024 in the United States was carried out Thursday when an admitted child killer was put to death on his birthday at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.
Kevin Ray Underwood, 45, was pronounced dead at 10:14 a.m.
“I would like to apologize again for all the terrible things I did,” he said from the execution gurney. “I hate that I did those things, and I wish I could take them back.”
He blinked rapidly after finishing his last words, and a tear rolled down his face.
Eight other states carried out executions in 2024, including Indiana on Wednesday for the first time in 15 years. Underwood was the fourth inmate to be executed this year in Oklahoma.
He was given a lethal injection for murdering a 10-year-old neighbor, Jamie Rose Bolin, in 2006 in his Purcell apartment. The victim’s older sister, Lori Pate, said afterward, “This does not bring our Jamie back, but it does allow the space in our hearts to focus on her and allow the healing process to begin.”
The grocery store stocker hit Jamie over the head with a cutting board and then suffocated her on April 12, 2006. He was 26 at the time of the crime. The FBI found the girl’s nearly decapitated body in a plastic tub in his bedroom closet two days later.
He confessed he had prepared for months to carry out his sexual and cannibalistic fantasies. He said he chose Jamie, whose nickname was “Coppertop,” because she was a convenient victim.
In his confession, he said his original plan was to cut off his victim’s head and set it on his desk “so it could like watch me.” He said he wanted to keep the corpse in his bed, “sleeping with it and having sex with it for a day or two,” before butchering and cooking it.
He said he did try to have sex with Jamie’s body but abandoned his plan to cook and eat it.
His attorneys described him as a mentally ill genius who gave in to his fantasies after becoming addicted to internet pornography. They also said he was a victim of bullying.
His diagnoses since his arrest included autism spectrum disorder. “He ultimately lost his ability to discern fantasy from reality,” said Kim Spence, an expert on that disorder who evaluated Underwood at the penitentiary for over 11 hours.
Jurors at a 2008 trial quickly found him guilty of first-degree murder. They were split 10-2 on punishment at first but reached a unanimous decision on a death sentence after eight hours.
Witnessing the execution with the victim’s family was District Attorney Greg Mashburn, who prosecuted Underwood at the trial in Cleveland County District Court.
“Today justice was done for Jamie,” said Mashburn, who announced Wednesday he will retire March 1. “It’s like I told the jury. The death penalty in Oklahoma is reserved for the worst of the worst. And this case was exactly that.”
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The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-0 on Dec. 13 not to recommend clemency. Attorney General Gentner Drummond and his assistants had told the board Underwood’s crimes “remain some of the most depraved and notorious in Oklahoma history.”
The execution went forward shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his emergency request for a stay. His attorneys had complained his clemency hearing was unfair because it wasn’t before a full board of five members.
In dispute in his final days was whether he truly regretted what he had done. When he was caught, he had told the FBI, “I’m going to burn in hell.”
At his clemency hearing, he apologized for his crimes. “I recognize that although I do not want to die … I deserve to for what I did,” he said via a video feed from the penitentiary. “And if my death could … change what I did, I would gladly die.”
However, the state’s attorneys called him remorseless and manipulative. They showed the Pardon and Parole Board a recent message he sent a female acquaintance. “What I did doesn’t weigh on me and constantly torment me the way the state wishes it would, partly as I have virtually no memory of the event,” he wrote Nov. 12.
The execution was completed in 10 minutes without issue and Underwood was cooperative beforehand, Oklahoma Department of Corrections executive director Steven Harpe said.
“It was really pretty textbook for us,” Harpe told reporters.
Underwood received his last meal at 5:40 p.m. Wednesday and was given Xanax Wednesday night and again Thursday morning, Harpe said. He said sedatives are typically offered to all inmates facing execution but they are rarely taken.
Underwood’s last meal was chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, pinto beans and a hot roll, a cheeseburger and fries, reporters were told.
Observing the execution for the media were reporters for The Associated Press, The Oklahoman, The Norman Transcript and two Tulsa television stations
“I’ve witnessed a number of executions now. And I would say the process seemed to go quicker than usual,” said KOTV reporter Reagan Ledbetter.
Oklahoma has now carried out 210 executions at the state penitentiary since they started there in 1915, according to the statistics kept by the Corrections Department.
In an annual report released Thursday, the Death Penalty Information Center said 2024 is the 10th consecutive year in the United States with fewer than 30 executions.
The nonprofit organization also said new death sentences had been imposed in only 10 states in 2024, as of Dec. 16. Oklahoma had none.
The scheduling of Underwood’s execution on his birthday was a coincidence that came about in part because the procedures are only done on Thursdays. Two years ago, death row inmate Richard Fairchild also was executed on his birthday.
In his last words, Underwood called the decision to hold the execution on his birthday and six days before Christmas “a needlessly cruel thing to do to my family.”
While strapped to the gurney, he looked over more than once at his mother, Connie Underwood. He apologized to his family as well as to the victim’s family.
Demonstrators gathered in the cold outside the governor’s mansion Thursday morning. “We grieve for Jamie and Kevin and the senseless loss of their lives,” the Rev. Don Heath, chair of the Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said after the execution.
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals will schedule the next execution after being notified of Underwood’s death. Next on the list is Wendell Grissom, who was convicted of murder for a fatal shooting in 2005 during a burglary of a rural Blaine County home.
(This story was updated to add new information and photos.)
