Kenneth Gentry was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Jimmy Don Ham
According to court documents Kenneth Gentry would escape from a prison in Georgia by driving a car through the fence. A year after the escape he would pick up Jimmy Don Ham who was hitchhiking. Gentry would murder the young man in hopes of assuming his identity and staying out of prison
Kenneth Gentry would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Kenneth Gentry would be executed by lethal injection on April 16 1997
Kenneth Gentry Photos
Kenneth Gentry Case
Texas death row inmate Kenneth Gentry has been executed by injection for a 1983 robbery-slaying in a north Texas park. The former Georgia prison escapee was pronounced dead at 6:24 p.m. Gentry’s brother and sister viewed the execution while five members of the family of murder victim Jimmy Ham watched from another room.
Both families declined to meet with reporters. Gentry appologized to Ham’s family saying, ‘I’m sorry for the suffering I put you through these past 14 years. I hope you can get some peace after this.’ Gentry fell still for some time after the chemicals were administered before saying, ‘Sweet Jesus take me home.’ Before leaving the viewing chamber, Gentry’s sister, Violet Ann Vineyard said, ‘I’m glad we didn’t live in Florida.’ Attorneys for convicted cop killer Leo Jones are attempting to block his execution Friday in Florida’s electric chair after it malfunctioned last month, igniting flames that shot from beneath the death mask of condemned killer Pedro Medina.
Gentry was the second condemned prisoner to die in Texas’ death chamber this week and the sixth this year. Texas has executed 113 convicted killers since the state resumed executions in 1982. Gentry was sentenced to die for shooting Ham Sept. 19, 1983 during a robbery in Denton County. Ham’s body was found in a park on the shore of Lake Lewisville near Dallas. Prosecutors said Gentry, who had escaped a Georgia prison in 1982, killed Ham in order to assume his identity. Gentry is from Bartow County, Ga. Two days after his arrest in Texas, he attempted to escape from the Denton County jail and in November 1984 he tried to escape from death row by jumping a security fence
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1997/04/16/UPI-Focus-Texas-executes-sixth-inmate-of-year/6382861163200/
