Kevin Underwood executed for murder of woman

Kevin Ray Underwood is scheduled to be executed Thursday, eighteen years after he brutally murdered his 10-year-old neighbor Jamie Rose Bolin in his apartment.

This story contains graphic descriptions of crimes committed against a young girl.

Oklahoma executed Kevin Ray Underwood on Thursday for killing a 10-year-old girl in April 2006. He is the fourth inmate executed in the state this year and the 25th in the country.

According to Kay Thompson, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, Underwood was executed by lethal injection on his 45th birthday. Underwood was pronounced dead at 10:14 a.m. local time, the Department of Corrections told USA TODAY.

Underwood was convicted of killing his neighbor Jamie Rose Bolin, whom he beat with a wooden cutting board, suffocated and later raped and mutilated in his apartment in Purcell, a small community about 40 miles south of Oklahoma City.

Underwood’s lawyers have spent the better part of a decade arguing in state and appeals courts that he is a “seriously ill man” who deserves clemency.

“I recognize that although I don’t want to die, I deserve it for what I did,” he said in a tearful two-minute statement at his clemency hearing on Friday. “And if my death…could change what I did, I would gladly die.”

Underwood was executed the day after Indiana executed Joseph Edward Corcoran, the first death row inmate executed in the state in 15 years.

Here’s what you should know about Underwood’s final execution – including his final words – the case and the victim.

What was Underwood’s last meal?

His final food requests, according to the Department of Corrections, are chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, pinto beans, a hot cross bun and a cheeseburger and fries with ketchup.

What was Kevin Underwood convicted of?

Underwood was convicted of murdering Jamie in 2008, two years after he acted on a recent desire to “kidnap a person, sexually assault them, eat their flesh and dispose of their remains,” a 26-year-old Underwood told the FBI -Agents an interview after his arrest.

Jamie had stopped by after school to play with Underwood’s white pet named Freyja and was brutally attacked while watching SpongeBob SquarePants. He beat Jamie with a wooden cutting board, suffocated her and sexually assaulted her before attempting to decapitate her with an ornamental dagger.

Local authorities searched far and wide for Jamie after she failed to return home to the apartment she shared with her doting father Curtis Bolin.

The “frantic” search for Jamie ended on April 14, 2006, two days after her father realized she was missing and 24 hours after local authorities issued an Amber Alert for the young girl.

Underwood agreed to a search of his apartment, where Jamie’s remains were located in a storage container in his bedroom as he sat down to speak to authorities about Jamie’s whereabouts. FBI agents also found a dismantled purple bicycle, a meat tenderizer and skewers.

“Go ahead and arrest me… She’s in there. I beat her and chopped her up,” Underwood said. “I will burn in hell.”

“Kevin has lost the battle against his mental health problems,” said the lawyer

Underwood grew up as a “social misfit” who was severely bullied and relied on friends and family to save him, according to court documents obtained by USA TODAY. He had close relationships with his immediate family and a few close friends, but mostly kept to himself.

Underwood could either be stuck at his computer or at a local grocery store, where he worked as a stock clerk alongside his father. He was unable to complete college because of panic attacks and debilitating anxiety, court documents show.

As his mental illness “further worsened,” he sought solace online and retreated “even deeper into his virtual world and fantasies,” according to court documents. He also kept a blog where he “complained” about his life, shared dark thoughts and previously joked about cannibalism, The Oklahoman reported in April 2006.

Medication, Underwood’s lawyers wrote in 2019, could have reduced the effects of his sexual urges, depression, social anxiety and obsessive thoughts.

“I pretty much only believe in God when I want to blame him for something,” Underwood wrote in a February 2006 blog post obtained by the Oklahoman. “Or, when I’m really depressed, I want to cry and beg him to make me better, to make everything wrong in my brain go away, so I can live like a normal person.

Various attorneys have asked the courts, and most recently the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, to consider his mental health, saying he suffers from “severe psychiatric illnesses” ranging from depression to schizotypal personality disorder.

“Other experts have simply said that Kevin’s problems go beyond what current psychology can diagnose,” Underwood’s attorney Brendan Van Winkle said at the clemency hearing, The Oklahoman reported. “Ultimately, we are here today because Kevin lost the battle with his mental health issues.”

The board voted unanimously 3-0 early Friday morning against recommending clemency, allowing state corrections officials to proceed with the execution.

The execution gives Jamie’s family “the isolation they deserve.”

In the eyes of Jamie’s family, the only just punishment for Underwood is death.

Several family members said in various victim statements before the execution that they had been waiting for justice for “Coppertop” since her murder.

“I believe that justice would be served if he served his sentence, including execution. “He did not consider the impact this had on all the families involved, the local people and even his own family,” wrote Don Fox, Jamie’s grandfather. “Many were forever changed by this murder and how many are still affected today.

Kevin Underwood executed for murder of woman

ByAmelia Journalton

By Amelia Journalton

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