JACKSON - Bobby Glen Wilcher, convicted of two Scott County murders back in 1982, is one of 70 Mississippi death row inmates.
I've written about all of them individually in the past. But Wilcher's case is the one I know the most about and the one most compelling to me - for I know the families of his victims and their friends.
Wilcher told U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate earlier this month that he wanted to drop all his appeals and have the state proceed with his execution.
Wingate granted Wilcher's motion. The state set a date for his execution of July 14.
But despite Wilcher's expressed wish to be executed, his attorneys interceded and have filed petitions with the state Supreme Court and U.S. District Court asking the Supreme Court not to reset an execution date while attorneys try to reinstate appeals for Wilcher in federal court.
Wilcher, 44, was sentenced to two separate death sentences in the March 5, 1982, killings of two middle-aged Scott County women - Velma Odell Noblin and Katie Belle Moore. After meeting the women at a Forest beer joint, Wilcher, then age 18, persuaded the women to drive him home and diverted them down a deserted road.
They gave him a ride because they knew his mother. Wilcher took the women down a deserted U.S. Forest Service road where he robbed them and then stabbed and slashed them over and over again. The medical examiner counted 47 stab wounds on the bodies of the victims.
In 1985, I interviewed Wilcher on death row at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. During that taped interview, Wilcher made a graphic, detailed confession of the crimes. Here's an excerpt from that interview:
Why did he stab the two middle-aged women? "It felt good," he said. "It felt good."
I can still hear the echo of his words on the concrete cell walls.
What were the mechanics of the crime? "(Victim No. 1) slapped me. When she slapped me, I came out with a blade and I stuck her in the stomach and she ran down the road," he said matter-of-factly.
"(Victim No. 2) came around the side of the car to see what was happening, and I stabbed her up close to the chest area. I kept stabbing until she wasn't moving anymore. (Victim No. 1) was down there screaming, 'she was dead, she was dying,' and I walked on down there," Wilcher said with no hint of remorse.
"I put the knife behind my back and told her, 'It was gonna to be all right, it was gonna to be all right.' Then I stuck her again. She tried to hit me with her shoes, but I knocked them out of her hands and stuck her a couple more times and pushed her off on the side of the road," Wilcher said in the dank holding cell where I interviewed him 21 years ago.
I've seen the coroner's photos of the crime scene. What happened to Moore and Noblin - between them the mothers of 14 children - is beyond the scope of any Hollywood special effects I've seen in fright films.
Wilcher's been on death row for 24 years. He's been on death row longer than he's been any place. Many of the relatives of his victims have died in the interim awaiting justice.
The absurdity of Wilcher's case is that even he's tired of waiting for a reckoning. Even Wilcher know that the revolving doors of the endless appeals process need to close.
But at 24 years on death row, Wilcher's a veritable rookie. Fellow inmate Richard G. Jordan, 60, has been on the row for 29 years for the January 1976 Jackson County kidnapping and murder of Edwina Marter, who was shot in the back of the head when she tried to escape.
Wilcher's family has suffered right along with the families of his victims.
It's past time that Mississippi either move forward with this execution or stop the ongoing death penalty charade in this state.
After 24 years of safeguarding Wilcher's rights, what about the rights of his victims and their kin?
Wilcher wants the needle?
Give it to him.
