Frank Guinan Executed For 2 Missouri Prison Murders

Frank Guinan was executed by the State of Missouri for two prison murders

According to court documents Frank Guinan was serving a forty year sentence for armed robbery when he would stab to death John McBroom at the Missouri State Penitentiary.

Frank Guinan would be convicted and sentenced to death

While on death row Frank Guinan would murder fellow death row inmate Robert Baker who was stabbed over fifty times

Frank Guinan would be convicted and given a second death sentence

Frank Guinan was executed by lethal injection on October 6 1993

Frank Guinan Case

Because January 25, 1981, fell on a Sunday, Sergeant Matthias was the only correctional officer on duty in Unit 4 of the Missouri State Penitentiary. He was located in a booth on the ground floor from which he could observe all cells. About 10:30am, the officer began to notice what he considered unusual and suspicious behavior on the part of several inmates. Inmates Sherrill, Cleveland and Hewitt had left the places where they normally “hung out” and had taken up positions where they could watch the officer. Frank Guinan and Zeitvogal made several trips to upper tiers and beginning at 10:55am, Cleveland made requests of the officer that he ring the buzzer for “mainline”—a term for the time when most inmates went to their noon meal. The request for “mainline” was considered suspicious by the officer because inmates were free to go to lunch before ‘mainline” sounded.

A few minutes after 11:00am, when the officer saw defendant and Zeitvogal go back upstairs another time and Cleveland made another request for “mainline”, Sergeant Matthias called his shift captain, Captain Borghardt, and told him something was wrong and he had the feeling he was going to need some help. Shortly after the sergeant made the telephone call but before assistance arrived he saw Guinan and Zeitvogal emerge from cell 36. Both men were covered with blood and each carrying a knife made from scissor halves.

During the flight and capture of Guinan and Zeitvogal, Sergeant Matthias saw inmate and victim McBroom come out of cell 36 covered with blood and bleeding profusely. He collapsed outside the cell and was taken to the prison hospital where he died as a result of massive blood loss. He suffered at least sixteen separate stab wounds, including three around the left eye which had penetrated into the brain, and others in the chest and back which had severed major blood vessels in the liver and right lung.

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Robert O’Neal Executed For Missouri Prison Murder

Robert O’Neal was executed by the State of Missouri for a prison murder

According to court documents Robert O’Neal was serving a life sentence for the murder of 78-year-old Ralph Roscoe Sharick. While incarcerated at the Missouri State Penitentiary when he would stab to death Arthur Dade

Robert O’Neal would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death

Robert O’Neal would be executed by lethal injection on December 6 1995

Robert O’Neal Photos

Robert O'Neal - Missouri

Robert O’Neal Case

On February 2, 1984 inmates from the Special Management Unit at the Jefferson City Correctional Center in Jefferson City, Missouri were released to lunch. During the inmate movement, correction officers observed inmate Rodney Stewart approach inmate Arthur Dade. Stewart was carrying an ice cream container such as those purchased in the inmate commissary. Stewart threw a liquid contained in the ice cream carton into Dade’s face. As Dade shielded his eyes from the liquid, inmate Lloyd Schlup approached Dade from behind and grabbed Dade’s hands. While Schlup was holding Dade, inmate Robert Earl O’Neal ran forward and stabbed Dade with an ice pick type weapon four times in the chest penetrating his hearting and lungs.

As correctional officers pulled Stewart off Dade, Robert O’Neal ran to a nearby window, broke the window pane and threw the weapon out the window. O’Neal then went to a nearby sink where he washed blood off his hands and arms. Dade ran a short distance from the scene where he collapsed and died. Before O’Neal’s arrest, correctional officers found blood stained clothing in a bathroom marked with O’Neal’s prison issued numbers. Blood stains were also found on O’Neal’s clothing, the broken window and the sink where O’Neal washed his hands. When arrested, O’Neal was observed to have a severe laceration to the hand he used to stab Dade.

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Stephen Wood Executed For Oklahoma Prison Murder

Stephen Wood was executed by the State of Oklahoma for a prison murder

According to court documents Stephen Wood was serving a life sentence for two murders when he would murder Robert Brigden at the Oklahoma State Reformatory in Granite. Robert Brigden was a former minister who was convicted of sexual assault against children

Stephen Wood would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death

Stephen Wood would be executed by lethal injection on August 5 1998

Stephen Wood Case

Stephen Edward Wood was executed by lethal injection early today for the 1994 prison slaying of a minister-turned-child molester.

Wood, 38, was pronounced dead at 12:21 a.m. at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.

He made no final statement.

He joined the growing ranks of Oklahoma death row inmates who chose death over several years of appeals. Wood became the second Oklahoma inmate executed this year and the 11th since the state resumed the execution process in 1990.

All of those have been by lethal injection

He was executed for the 1994 prison slaying of the Rev. Robert Bruce Brigden, a former Presbyterian pastor from Alva who was serving time for molesting girls. At the time of Brigden’s slaying, Wood was serving a sentence of life without parole for killing two transients in 1992 in Lincoln County.

Like three other killers since 1995, Wood chose earlier this year to waive his remaining appeals. At his competency hearing in May, Wood told a judge he had long supported the death penalty

“Just because it’s me… my feelings haven’t changed. As a matter of fact, it’s strengthened them,” he told the judge.

Stephen Wood’s decision prompted two groups that oppose the death penalty to question why Oklahoma has such a disproportionate number of death row inmates who choose execution over appeals.

Nationally, 12 percent, or 60 of the 472 inmates who have been executed since the death penalty was resurrected in 1976, were volunteers. With Wood’s execution, Oklahoma’s figure rose to 36 percent.

Among states that have performed 10 to 20 executions in the modern era, South Carolina and Arizona have the next-highest percentage of volunteers with 27 and 25 percent, respectively.

Officials with Amnesty International and the Death Penalty Information Center believe the conditions on Oklahoma’s underground death row building, called H-Unit, play a significant role in the volunteerism.

Since 1994, Amnesty International has been criticizing H-Unit, calling it a violation of American and international standards.

The building’s “extreme conditions” include “tiny, concrete, windowless rooms with no natural light or fresh air ventilation,” said Kevin Acers, president of the group’s Oklahoma City chapter. He said the large number of condemned inmates should be “a yellow flag.”

“We are not asking for a country club for prisoners. We demand, however, better than a dungeon,” Acers said.

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information in Washington, D.C., said he also thinks the building plays a factor, although he has not visited it.

Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson bristled.

“I don’t know what you could do to death row to make it so inviting that people would want to stay there longer. Prison is not meant to be attractive,” he said

For inmates who are locked in their cells 23 hours a day, choosing to die is one of the few things they can control. Edmondson said that could explain why some inmates waive their appeals.

However, he took issue with Amnesty International’s claim of a wide disparity in the appeal-waiver rate. Only four of the 145 inmates on Oklahoma’s death row have done so, he said.

“I don’t think that number is large enough to make any statistical conclusions yet,” he said.

Edmondson said changes in state and federal law could account for some inmates deciding to die early. He said increased restrictions on appeals make it more attractive for a prisoner to choose death sooner.

State corrections spokesman Jerry Massie said he couldn’t explain the statistical disparity, but said he doubts the conditions of H-Unit are much of a factor.

Father Don Brooks, who objects to the death penalty, offers another explanation. Brooks said inmates are packed in so tightly that they may decide to waive appeals because their fellow inmates are doing so

The number of Oklahoma inmates choosing that route troubles him, “partly for their sake, but partly for what it does to the justice system.”

Brooks, representing the Catholic Diocese of Tulsa, was outside the Oklahoma State Penitentiary keeping vigil Tuesday night with a small group of protesters.

Brooks said the appeals process is important to prevent innocent people from being executed.

Stephen Wood spent his final hours much as he had spent his six years in prison – quietly.

After spending part of Monday visiting his brother and sister-in-law, Wood saw a minister and his attorney Tuesday but declined TV and phone access.

He chose normal prison fare over a special last meal. Like others at the penitentiary, he was served a beef patty with onion gravy, mustard greens, buttered squash, mashed potatoes, bread and a fruit drink at 5 p.m

https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/1998/08/05/state-executes-molesters-killer/62273444007/

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Roy Roberts Executed For Missouri Prison Murder

Roy Roberts was executed by the State of Missouri for a prison murder

According to court documents Correctional Officer Thomas Jackson was attacked by a group of inmates. Roy Roberts would grab Thomas Jackson while another inmate, Robert Driscoll would fatally stab Jackson

Roy Roberts and Robert Driscoll would be convicted and sentenced to death

Roy Roberts would be executed by lethal injection on March 10 1999

Robert Driscoll would later be retried where he was resentenced to fifteen years in prison and was released in 2004

Many believe that Roy Roberts had nothing to do with the murder of Thomas Jackson and Missouri executed an innocent person

Roy Roberts Photos

roy roberts execution

Roy Roberts Case

Many death row inmates proclaim their innocence, but Roy “Hog” Roberts, a big man, loud and profane, was adamant. He was so adamant that in the waning days before his 1999 execution for the murder of a prison guard, he demanded a polygraph test.

Attorney Bruce Livingston looked at the results and walked into Roberts’ small gray cell at Missouri’s Potosi Correctional Center and told him the news: He passed. The test indicated Roberts was telling the truth when he said he did not hold down guard Tom Jackson while other inmates stabbed him.

Tears rolled down the big man’s cheeks. His voice grew unusually quiet. “When do I get out of here?” he asked.

Livingston remembers the heartbreak of explaining that the polygraph was of no real value unless it swayed the governor. It didn’t. A few days later, Roberts was put to death.

Back in the spotlight
Roberts’ case is back in the spotlight amid heightened scrutiny of the death penalty in Missouri — and a new investigation in a separate case into whether the state executed an innocent man.

In 2000, the anti-death penalty group Equal Justice USA released a national report citing 16 potential cases of wrongful executions. Both Missouri cases are among them.

“I think if I had to list all 16 I would put him (Roberts) first,” said Claudia Whitman, who wrote the report. “There was really nothing there to convict him.”

There has never been a known case of an innocent person being executed in the United States, and those on both sides agree such a determination would create unprecedented concerns about the death penalty.

Death penalty opponents are discussing the Roberts case now that St. Louis prosecutors are trying to determine if Larry Griffin, executed in 1995 for a drive-by killing in another case, was innocent.

So far, no one has asked the state to reopen the Roberts case. Whitman said that while her study raised doubts, it simply was not exhaustive enough to merit asking for a re-examination.

Griffin was the immediate suspect in the drive-by killing of 19-year-old drug dealer Quintin Moss, who was shot 13 times. Revenge was the suspected motive in the 1980 slaying: Weeks earlier, Moss was believed to have killed Griffin’s older brother.

Witness in question
The only witness testimony at Griffin’s trial came from Robert Fitzgerald, a career criminal from Boston who was in St. Louis under the Federal Witness Protection Program.

University of Michigan Law School professor Sam Gross, who spent a year investigating the case, said in his report that Fitzgerald “developed a reputation as a snitch who couldn’t produce convictions because Boston juries wouldn’t believe him.” Fitzgerald died last year.

Gross cited two other factors that shed doubt on Griffin’s guilt: The first police officer at the scene now says the story told by Fitzgerald was false. And a second shooting victim, who did not testify at trial, now says Fitzgerald was not present at the shooting.

Gordon Ankney, who prosecuted the case, believed Fitzgerald’s testimony. He also noted that an off-duty officer saw Griffin get in the 1968 Chevy Impala used in the shooting the day of the murder.

Still, Gross’ report offered enough new information that even members of the Moss family asked prosecutor Jennifer Joyce to reopen the case

“I don’t think there is a single prosecutor who wouldn’t take a second look at it,” said Joyce. “Hopefully (the investigation) will help protect the integrity of the system.”

Renewed scrutiny of death penalty
Missouri has executed 64 men since the death penalty was reinstated in 1989. By the mid-1990s, executions had become so common they drew few protesters.

But the Roberts case came at a time of renewed interest.

During a 1999 visit to St. Louis, Pope John Paul II asked Gov. Mel Carnahan to spare the life of convicted killer Darrell Mease, who was days away from execution.

Carnahan, a Baptist Democrat, commuted the sentence to life in prison, citing “the extraordinary circumstances of the pope’s request.”

Roberts’ execution was set a few weeks later. Livingston suggested the decision to execute him was partly political, noting the governor was preparing to run for the Senate in 2000.

“Carnahan was still taking serious flack for the Mease case,” Livingston said. “It was Roy’s bad luck to be next up.”

Jessica Coakley was 19 when she watched Roberts die. Coakley’s mother was a lifelong friend of Roberts. Coakley recalled a gregarious man who sent her homemade birthday cards and even crafted a high school graduation gift from his prison cell.

A case of bad timing?
Friends of Roberts say bad timing was part of his life. He was convicted of a restaurant robbery to which another man later confessed.

While Roberts was jailed in 1983, a riot broke out and Jackson, a veteran guard six months from retirement, was stabbed repeatedly in the heart, eyes and stomach by two inmates.

Ray Newberry, who was chief investigator of the riot for the state, remains certain that Roberts was guilty.

“He was the one that held Mr. Jackson,” Newberry said. “Hog Roberts was a troublemaker. He was obese and he had a loud mouth, and he just caused problems.”

Roberts’ supporters doubt he had any role. They point out:

Initial reports made no mention of anyone holding the guard while he was stabbed. Roberts supporters wonder how the 300-pound man could have been missed. Three guards and an inmate testified against Roberts, though the inmate later recanted.
Another guard told investigators he was struggling with Roberts at the time of the killing, far from the site where Jackson was stabbed.
Roberts’ clothing was blood-free. The attack “was bloody, just awful, and Roy Roberts’ shirt did not have a drop of blood on it,” said Margaret Phillips of Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty. 

Roberts, true to his nature, remained adamant to the end. His last words: “You’re killing an innocent man and you can all kiss my ass

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna8841547

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Billy Tracy Texas Prison Murder

Billy Tracy was sentenced to death by the State of Texas for a prison murder

According to court documents Billy Tracy was being escorted back to his cell when he was able to slip his handcuffs and grabbed an iron bar which he used to beat Correctional Officer Timothy Davison at the Barry Telford Unit. Davison would die from his injuries

Billy Tracy would be convicted and sentenced to death

Billy Tracy Photos

billy tracy texas

Billy Tracy Now

NameTracy, Billy Joel
TDCJ Number999607
Date of Birth11/30/1977
Date Received11/15/2017
Age (when Received)39
Education Level (Highest Grade Completed)11th Grade/GED
Date of Offense07/15/2015
 Age (at the time of Offense)37
 CountyBowie
 RaceWhite
 GenderMale
 Hair ColorBrown
 Height (in Feet and Inches)5′ 9″
 Weight (in Pounds)174
 Eye ColorHazel
 Native CountyDallas
 Native StateTexas

Billy Tracy Case

A Texas prison inmate who was sentenced to death for the 2015 killing of a Barry Telford Unit correctional officer was denied a new trial Wednesday by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in a unanimous decision.

Billy Joel Tracy, 42, was found guilty by a Bowie County jury of capital murder in November 2017 and sentenced to death by 102nd District Judge Bobby Lockhart. Tracy beat Timothy Davison, 47, to death with a metal bar used to open slots in the prisoner’s doors at mealtime

Davison was escorting Tracy back to his one-man cell after an hour of recreation July 15, 2015. Tracy managed to escape his handcuffs and attacked Davison with his fists. Once Davison was on the ground, Tracy grabbed his slot bar, straddled Davison’s body and struck him repeatedly

The jury at Tracy’s trial watched a video of the beating and heard testimony from dozens of witnesses, including other Texas correctional officers, who had been targets of Tracy’s assaults.

At the time of Davison’s murder, Tracy was serving a life sentence he received in 1998 in Rockwall County for the beating and abduction of a 16-year-old girl. Billy Tracy was sentenced to 45 years for assaulting an officer in Potter County in 2007 and he received a 10-year sentence in 2011 for assaulting an officer in Jones County.

A date for Tracy’s execution has not been set.

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