Jason Massey was executed by the State of Texas for two murders
According to court documents Jason Massey would help thirteen year old Christina Banjamin sneak out of her home in the middle of the night. The teen would be sexually assaulted before being stabbed, shot and disembowled. The body of fourteen year old James King would also be found nearby
Jason Massey would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Jason Massey would be executed by lethal injection on April 3 2001
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When Was Jason Massey Executed
Jason Massey was executed on April 3 2001
Jason Massey Case
Convicted murderer Jason Massey apologized profusely, revealed where he disposed the missing body parts of one of his victims and then prayerfully went to his death today for the murders of two siblings almost eight years ago.
Massey, in a lengthy final statement, addressed relatives of his murder victims and his own relatives in seeking forgiveness for the double murders.
“I can’t imagine what I’ve taken from you,” he said looking at relatives of Christina Benjamin, 13, and her stepbrother, James King, 14.
“I want you to know I did do it. I’m sorry for what I have done,” Massey said.
Massey was sent to death row for fatally shooting the teen-agers, whose bodies were found in a rural area of Ellis County three days after they disappeared from their home in Garrett, about 30 miles southeast of Dallas.
Besides being shot, the girl’s hands and head were severed. The body parts never have been found. There also was evidence of sexual mutilation.
“I want you to know that Christina did not suffer as much as you think she did,” Massey continued while strapped to the death chamber gurney. “I know you guys want to know where the rest of her remains are. I put her remains in the Trinity River.”
Prosecutors speculated that the missing body parts were thrown in the river and were washed downstream but were never found.
Massey turned to his parents and a grandmother watching from another window nearby and also apologized to them, saying, “All of this pain has brought us closer together and all of this suffering that we have been through has brought us closer to the Lord and in the end that is what counts.”
He expressed love and recited a Biblical verse, then gasped slightly as the lethal drugs began taking effect. He was pronounced dead at 6:20 p.m. CDT, eight minutes after the drug flow began.
“He fancied himself a serial killer par excellence,” Clay Strange, the prosecutor who convinced a jury to send the then 20-year-old to death row in 1994, said. “He wanted to be the greatest ever.”
Massey worshipped infamous killers Bundy and Manson and Henry Lee Lucas, whom he later shared shared time with on Texas’ death row, and sought the attention they received.
“I would have gotten better,” he once warned.
It was that attitude, backed by evidence at his trial, that prompted an Ellis County jury to take only 15 minutes before deciding Massey should be put to death.
“It’s impossible to assign a motive to a case like this,” added Strange, now an assistant district attorney in Austin. “I think he did it because it was pleasurable to him.”
Evidence showed Massey knew King and Benjamin, whom he flirted with, and arranged to pick her up in his car if she would sneak out of her house the early morning hours of July 27, 1993. He also told a friend in explicit language what he would like to do the girl. When she and her stepbrother subsequently were reported missing and their remains were found, the friend talked with police.
At Massey’s trial, testimony showed the former roofer loved to kill and mutilate and kept journals he called “Slayer’s Book of Death.” There were at least four volumes of the journal, discovered by a hunter who found them inside a cooler hidden in bushes in a rural area. Also inside the cooler were the heads of 31 dogs and cats, said Strange, noting that Massey kept statistics on how many people he would have to kill each month to reach 1,000.
“It was just playing with numbers and it all centered around killing, generally killing people,” Strange said. “But by far, his favorite targets were 11- to 13-year-old girls.
“It’s almost a miracle we caught him as quickly in his career as we did,” he added. “He’s as evil as anybody I’ve ever encountered. I’ve met a lot of people meaner, but no one more evil.”
“I’ve changed, and people do change,” Massey told the Ennis Daily News last month from death row. “As we grow, we change… I have a lot of anger about the stupid mistakes I made and at the same time I recognize anger is just an emotion.”
James King, whose son and stepdaughter were killed by Massey, said he was glad authorities nabbed Massey when they did and that would-be serial killer didn’t have the chance to act more on his fantasies.
“He’s the devil,” King told The Dallas Morning News. “He would have been worse than Ted Bundy… It’s a shame he started with kids.”
Massey’s execution was the first of two scheduled for this month. David Lee Goff, 32, is set for lethal injection April 25 for a 1990 robbery-slaying in Fort Worth.
