James Hampton was executed by the State of Missouri for the murder of Frances Keaton
According to court documents James Hampton would go to the home of Frances Keaton where he demanded a large sum of money. Hampton would tell her fiance to come up with the money or else he would kill her. Hampton would take Frances Keaton from the home to a remote location. Hampton learned through a police scanner that the authorities were looking for him and would beat Frances Keaton to death using a hammer
James Hampton would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
James Hampton would be executed by lethal injection on March 22 2000
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When Was James Hampton Executed
James Hampton was executed on March 22 2000
James Hampton Case
Killer without a conscience – Jim Hampton got his wish and was executed early Wednesday morning. His final words were, “Take the phone off the hook.” Apparently, he wanted to make sure there would be no last-second phone call from the governor. He need not have worried. Despite the efforts of death penalty opponents who argued that Hampton was incompetent to decide his own fate — I guess they had to argue something — there was no way the governor was going to spare Hampton’s life.
He had been given the death penalty for the 1992 murder of Frances Keaton, a 58-year-old beautician who worked in Florissant and lived in Warrenton. Her two children, both adults, attended the execution. “He got off easy,” said LaVon Bowlin, Keaton’s daughter. “It was like he just went to sleep.” Keaton’s death had not been so peaceful. Hampton beat her to death with a hammer. It was part of a kidnapping for ransom plan that went bad. Also in attendance at the execution was a daughter of Christine Schurman, a New Jersey woman who was murdered by Hampton. He shot her after another botched kidnapping attempt.
I visited Hampton a few days before his execution, and I asked if he felt any remorse for either of the murders. He seemed to think the question was off-base. He said he had not intended to kill anybody. Instead, he had decided that if his plans went bad, the people would have to die. The plans went bad. The people had to die. Why would he feel remorse? I left the interview thinking that Hampton was a bad man. Way to go, Dr. Freud, you might be saying to yourself. How astute. What an unlikely observation. For me, though, it was unlikely. I’ve talked to a lot of guys in prison, and I almost always have some sympathy for them. You don’t have to be a bad person to do a bad thing. That’s the way I look at it.
But Hampton struck me as just plain bad. I asked him if he had committed any murders other than the two for which he had been convicted. Yes, he said. There had been six others during his long career as a criminal. Hampton, you may remember, was 62 years old. I asked about these other murders. Were they fellow criminals? Killed when drug deals went bad, or something along those lines? Or were they like the two women we know about — innocent citizens? More like that, said Hampton. They were people who maybe saw something they shouldn’t have seen, or heard something they shouldn’t have heard. For whatever reason, I thought they were a threat to my personal freedom, he said. More than that he wouldn’t say. With a fellow like Hampton, it’s impossible to know what to believe. But still, he was a career criminal, a drifter, an amoral man. Other murders were possible, maybe even likely.
I talked to Hampton one last time on the phone. You’ve got a chance to do something good, something right, at the very end of your life, I said. Write me a letter about the other six murders. Put in enough details so we’ll know you did them. Mail it to me, and I’ll get it after your execution. Why would I do that? asked Hampton. Because there’s a chance that somebody is doing time for a murder you committed, I said.
That’s very possible, Hampton said. But I’m not going to do it. If I were to write a letter, the state could get ahold of it before I’m killed. If I admit to some other murders, those jurisdictions will want to talk to me, and my execution could be put on hold. I don’t want to take that chance, he concluded. And so he died — went to sleep, as LaVon Bowling described it — without taking advantage of an opportunity to do, at long last, a good thing.
http://www.missourinet.com/CapitalPunishment/Case_notes/hampton_james.htm
