Necrophile’s Disgusting “Child Barbeque” Fantasy

Jamie Rose Bolan was born in Edmond, Oklahoma, on August 7th, 1995, to parents Curtis Lyn Bolan and Jennifer Anne Bolan. Jamie had bright red hair, blue eyes, and freckled cheeks with a gentle smile. Her family said that even though she could be shy, she was always interested in making new friends, and she only saw the good in other people. Her uncle said she was smart and sweet, and her dad said she was able to laugh at almost any situation. Her nickname was “Copper Top,” and her favorite color was green. Her classmates said she wasn’t part of any group, but she never had anything mean to say about anyone. Jamie was in the fifth grade at Purcell Intermediate School and had met her best friend, Carissa, at the beginning of the school year. They were both in Girl Scouts together and were very close. Carissa said, “I feel like she’s my sister. We would sit at the tables and eat breakfast together, we play at recess together.” Jamie liked playing with dolls and sewing. She enjoyed singing and dancing and had made up her own cheerleader dance that she liked to perform for her family. She liked being outside, riding her bike, and loved any opportunity to ride a four-wheeler. She loved spending time with her dad, watching movies, and beating him at checkers. Her dad said she was just starting to come into her own; she was becoming her own person.

Jamie’s parents raised her in the small town of Dibble, Oklahoma. She was around 2 years old when her parents separated and eventually divorced. Her mother went back to her maiden name, Jennifer Fox, and moved to Guthrie. After the divorce, Jennifer had a couple of serious relationships and two more daughters. Those relationships also ended. She decided to pursue her dream job as a truck driver. She left Jamie with Curtis and her younger girls with their fathers in order to make the long trips. To fill up her days alone on the road, she began using crystal meth, and she struggled with substance use for several years. But she finally got clean in 2005, and she was determined to stay clean for her children. Meanwhile, Jamie and her dad stayed in Dibble for several years. In 2005, they moved to Purcell, which is another small Oklahoma town. They moved into an upstairs unit at the Purcell Park apartment complex on North 8th Avenue.

At the apartment complex, Jamie met her new neighbor, Kevin Ray Underwood, who also had bright red hair. He rented the downstairs apartment just across the breezeway and had been living there for about a year and a half when Jamie and her dad moved in. Kevin was quite shy, spent a lot of his time at home playing with his pet rat named Freya, and posting online to sites like MySpace and Blogger. He had an online blog called “Strange Things Are Afoot at the Circle K.” He had worked at a nearby Carl’s Jr. for many years but had recently gotten a new job at a local grocery store. One of his co-workers at the restaurant, Ricky Woods, said Kevin didn’t have many friends. He said there were some people he would talk to, but 90% of them he would not. For about a year, Ricky and his 8-year-old daughter lived in the apartment above Kevin, but he said they rarely saw him except for when he was doing his laundry or getting his mail. Ricky said Kevin would go into his apartment, shut the door, and no one would see him for the rest of the day.

Kevin’s mother said her son was a hard worker and never got into any trouble. Once he received a speeding ticket, but he had no other contact with law enforcement. She said he struggled with social anxiety, and he had been on the anti-depressant medication Lexapro, but at some point, he decided to stop taking it. His mother said that near the end of February of 2006, he’d started taking the Lexapro again, and he was trying his best to improve his life. Even though he wasn’t friendly, many of his neighbors and co-workers thought he was a nice guy, just a little quiet and a bit of a loner.

However, when he was online, Kevin was a different person. Now, in real life, he didn’t have a girlfriend, but he had been in an online relationship with a woman named Melissa Kuster for almost a decade, and he told his mother he had fallen in love with her. He arranged a trip to California to meet her, but Melissa canceled the meeting and told Kevin she just wanted to be friends. According to his mother, Kevin was crushed by Melissa’s rejection. Without an intimate partner, he was frustrated and frequently used the internet to find stimulating images. Over time, those images got darker and more disturbing. Eventually, he found cannibalistic adult films and became obsessed with a fantasy of butchering a human body and eating it. In his online blog, he made a disturbing joke asking, “If you were a cannibal, what would you wear to dinner?” He answered his own question with a punchline: “The skin of last night’s main course.” In another entry, he wrote, “I really need a girlfriend. My fantasies are just getting weirder and weirder. Dangerously weird. If people knew the kinds of things I think about anymore, I’d probably be locked away.”

No one in Purcell knew about his online writing, though, and most people didn’t think he seemed dangerous. Still, a couple of his neighbors noticed odd behavior from him. The manager of the apartment complex, named Tim Bayer, said he sometimes noticed Kevin standing outside and watching the neighborhood children play. Another neighbor named Daniel Downey said he’d seen the same thing, but incorrectly assumed Kevin had a child of his own. He said, “I always see him looking at kids, so I thought he had kids.” At work, he was given the nickname “Zombie Kevin” because of his disturbing comments. For example, on one occasion, he pointed out a pretty customer to his co-worker, Michael Herner, and asked him, “I wonder what she would taste like.” Michael said he found the comments disturbing and worried that Kevin might kill someone someday.

Meanwhile, Kevin continued to talk to Melissa via online messaging. Though most of their chats were normal, his dark thoughts crept in sometimes. Sometimes it was through a joke, like in December 2005 when he told her he had to go shopping and pick up milk, eggs, bread, and human souls. In early 2006, his comments got more and more disturbing. In January, he told her he was going to kill someone if he couldn’t find someone to sleep with soon. Later that month, he told her normal intimacy no longer aroused him. In February, he told her he wanted to write an explicit children’s book… we will just leave it at that. He also admitted that he was fascinated by gore and death. He told her he was looking at online images of mutilated corpses. He’d become addicted to what he described as weird and gross erotica.

Though he was shy and didn’t talk to many people, Kevin seemed to go out of his way to befriend his young neighbor, Jamie. She was shy too, but young and trusting. Sometimes he would come out of his apartment with his rat sitting on his shoulder. Over time, Jamie got comfortable enough to pet the rat and talk with Kevin in the breezeway. They talked often, and she had been in his apartment several times, even though her father had told her she wasn’t allowed inside of anyone else’s apartments. One day near the end of March, Kevin was sitting inside his apartment watching cartoons with his front door partially open. Jamie noticed the open door and walked in, asking if she could pet his rat. After hanging out for a little while and watching cartoons with Kevin, she left.

On April 11th, Jamie’s dad told her to use the pay phone at the apartment complex to order pizza. Since they didn’t have a phone at their apartment, they often used the pay phone when they needed to make calls. Kevin said she could use the phone in his apartment, and she followed him inside, but she told him she’d get in trouble with her dad. So, she took the handset to his cordless phone out in the breezeway and placed the pizza order. And again, nothing bad happens. It’s easy to imagine that she just might have thought her dad was being overprotective with his rules.

The next day, on April 12th, Jamie got up, put on a pink shirt, and went to school. She’s looking forward to visiting with her mom, Jennifer, in a few days. Jennifer hadn’t seen Jamie since February, but they had plans to go Easter egg hunting over the upcoming holiday weekend. Best friend Carissa said they talked during sixth period and that Jamie seemed kind of happy. Her dad’s workday ended after the school day, so she usually spent a few hours alone in the afternoon. She stopped at the local library after school and played with a friend there for a little while. When she got home, she realized she left her keys at school. To make the trip quickly, she rode her bike to school, grabbed her keys, then biked back home. It was a hot day, and all the effort had made her sweaty, so she changed into a blue short-sleeve shirt and came back down to the breezeway. After that, she and her bicycle disappeared.

Her father, Curtis, arrived home from work and couldn’t find her. He got worried. He asked several neighbors if they had seen her and also asked the apartment manager if he had seen her. He had not. Tim volunteered to help look for her, and the two knocked on doors asking if anyone had seen Jamie. About 6:00 p.m., they knocked on Kevin’s door. Now, Tim said it took a long time for Kevin to answer. When he opened the door, he was still buttoning up his shirt like he had just put it on. Kevin said he had seen Jamie riding her bike outside earlier, but didn’t know where she went. He stayed outside for a while, telling Curtis that he’d keep watch in case she came home while he was out searching. Around 8:00 p.m., he told Curtis and Tim that he was tired and had to work early in the morning, implying that he was headed for bed.

After searching the complex and finding no sign of his daughter, Curtis reported her missing to the police. Since there was no evidence indicating that she had been abducted, police initially assumed the 10-year-old had run away or that they’d find her hiding with a friend or somewhere nearby. They gathered a team of police, firefighters, and volunteers to look for her. Meanwhile, Curtis called his relatives, including his brother Mark and his wife Linda. They came to the apartment complex to help search for Jamie and stayed with Curtis once he called the police. The family gathered in the breezeway outside while they waited for news. Linda said, “We were sitting outside on Kevin’s patio door the entire time.” Kevin stopped by to talk to Jamie’s father several times and expressed his concerns to the family.

Curtis also called Jamie’s mom, Jennifer, catching her on the road in Arizona, hauling a load of produce. She was driving 75 mph when the phone rang, and she didn’t even remember pulling over. She said, “When he told me, it felt like I stepped outside myself. I freaked out.” I think before she realized what was happening, she said her truck was half on the shoulder and half on the road. She rushed to Purcell as soon as she could, her plans of a happy Easter visit totally shattered.

Jamie was still missing after a day spent searching for her, so officers issued an Amber Alert on Thursday night, and the FBI joined the investigation. One of their first working theories was that Jamie had met a man online and that person might have convinced her to bike somewhere to meet him. But they had no sign of her bike anywhere either. On Friday, the FBI still had no leads. Following their child abduction response plan, agents set up four roadblocks and checkpoints on roads leading to the apartment complex at around the same time of the day they thought Jamie had gone missing, since many people drive the same route home from work every day. They were hoping one of the motorists they stopped might have seen something that would give them a clue about what happened to her.

Kevin’s dad was driving Kevin home after work when Agent Craig Overby stopped his truck at one of the roadblocks. Kevin’s dad mentioned that they knew the little girl was missing and that Kevin was her neighbor. Overby asked if Kevin would come talk to him in his patrol car. The FBI agent was soon convinced Kevin knew more than any other suspect he had talked to. During their conversation, Kevin pointed out that the Amber Alert on the news was wrong. It said she was wearing a pink shirt. When he had seen Jamie riding her bike that afternoon, he said she was wearing a short-sleeve blue shirt. This meant he had to have been one of the last people to have seen her before she went missing. The agent told Kevin he wasn’t under arrest, but he was a very important witness and asked if he could come to the police station a few blocks away to give a more complete statement. Kevin agreed, and during the interview, he insisted he couldn’t have been involved in her disappearance, telling detectives, “I could never hurt her. She reminds me of my sister.”

After talking for about an hour, Agent Overby drove Kevin back to his apartment and asked if he and the other agents could look around. Hoping to look innocent, Kevin agreed. Inside, they noticed what looked like blood in the bathtub, so they continued to search. They found a large gray plastic container in the back of Kevin’s bedroom closet that looked suspicious because it was sealed with duct tape. When Agent Overby asked him what was inside, Kevin told him it was full of comic books and he used the tape to keep the moisture out. The agent pulled up a corner of the tape and opened the container enough to see a blue shirt like the one Jamie had been wearing when she went missing. When the agent said he saw clothes inside, Kevin blurted out, “Go ahead and arrest me.” The agent then asked Kevin, “Where is she?” To which he replied, “She’s in there. I hit her and I chopped her up.”

Now, inside the container beneath her blue shirt, they found her. They arrested Kevin and obtained a search warrant so they could look for additional evidence. As they led him from the apartment, Kevin said, “I’m going to burn in hell.”

After a more extensive search, they found the frame and back wheel of Jamie’s bike shoved under Kevin’s bed and the rest of it in a duffel bag in his walk-in closet. In the same closet, they found a bag of adult toys and videos, along with a Barbie doll head with nails through its eyes. They found a hacksaw, a decorative dagger and other knives and swords, and several rolls of duct tape. They found a DVD box set of an A&E documentary about serial killers and a mug that they believed Jamie had brought with her. Kevin’s computer was seized to search it for digital evidence. They also found a wooden cutting board, barbecue skewers, and meat tenderizing powder. But those items wouldn’t make sense until agents talked to Kevin some more.

After his arrest, Kevin asked to talk to Agent Overby again. And after making sure that Kevin properly waived his Miranda rights, the agent spoke to Kevin for several hours, during which he made a full and very disturbing confession. Kevin told agents that he had been planning to kidnap someone for a couple of months. He’d been interested in and fantasizing about cannibalism for at least a year. When he started taking his Lexapro again, his fantasies really ramped up, and he started to act on them. He said he wanted to know what human flesh tasted like. Thinking about it aroused him. He was so focused on the idea that he began downloading crime scene photos of dead bodies to fuel his fantasies.

According to what he called his “original plan,” he wanted to grab a local child, restrain them, make them watch an adult movie with him. He even considered that he might have to explain what was happening in the movie since the child might not understand, but he thought that he could teach them. After the movie, he planned to sexually assault, torture, murder, sleep next to the dead victim, and then finally eat them, leaving only bones to dispose of. In preparation, sometime in March, he purchased the hacksaw, the meat tenderizing powder, and the barbecue skewers. He found one of the heaviest items in his home, a solid wood cutting board, and brought it into the living room in case he needed to use it as a weapon. He also ripped off a length of duct tape and stuck one end to his entertainment system, letting the rest of it dangle so he could easily grab it.

He knew what he wanted to do; he had not settled on a target yet. He admitted he would stand outside and look at the neighborhood kids, considering them as possible victims. Now, he said that he did not identify as a pedophile, but he thought kidnapping a child would be easier because he could more easily overpower someone smaller. He said, “I kind of planned all along to probably get a kid, just mainly because they’d be easier to grab and easier to get rid of afterwards. Smaller and, you know, put up less of a fight.” This is a direct quote. He had his eye on a 5-year-old neighbor boy, at least one adult woman, and Jamie. On a few occasions, he almost went through with an abduction, but he said he became too excited. Afterwards, he said he felt sick and questioned what he was thinking. He told the agent, “I’d just be hit with disgust. I mean, like, my God, what am I thinking about? You can’t do that. It’s horrible.”

When asked about Jamie, Kevin told Agent Overby that he didn’t know her by name but had talked to her on several occasions. He said, “Well, I did kind of favor this girl a little. I had seen her and I was kind of like, well, I really like her. But then as I saw her more and more, I’d, you know, I’d think no, I can’t hurt her. You know, she’s nice and I know her too well.”

Kevin told the agent he had spent most of the day of April 12th with his family. He had taken his laundry over to his parents’ house, and his mom washed his clothes while he ran some errands. He stayed until his sister got home from school to help her with some of her homework before heading back to the Purcell apartments. When he got home, he messaged his friend Melissa several times, with the last message sent at 2:54 p.m. At around 3:30 p.m., he noticed that Jamie’s bike was gone, and he was slightly disappointed. If he was going to abduct her, he wanted to grab her when she got home from school. So it looked like she never made it home, and he felt like he missed his chance to do so. Just a few minutes later, she returned on her bike and told him she’d forgotten her keys, and they talked briefly about the weather. She said it seemed to get hotter in Purcell than it did in Dibble, where she grew up. She went upstairs to her apartment, changed her shirt, and poured herself a cup of iced milk. She came back down to the breezeway for a few minutes, and they talked a little bit more.

While she was making small talk about how refreshing iced milk was on a hot day, Kevin noticed that she hadn’t locked her bike up and thought if he hid it, then he could make it look like she had been grabbed by a stranger while out riding her bike. After a few more minutes of chatting, Kevin said she asked to come inside and see his rat. Once inside his apartment, she sat down on the floor next to the rat’s cage. An episode of SpongeBob came on the TV, and they watched it together, talking a little bit about the show. He said that she was in there watching TV for about 15 minutes while he debated putting his plan into action. He decided it would be better to knock her unconscious before restraining her, so he picked up the heavy wooden cutting board, but still hesitated over the next 5 minutes. He said he picked up the board and put it down several times.

He finally decided to act and smashed her on the head, but it didn’t work right away like it had in his fantasy. After his first blow, she jumped up and said, “I’m sorry.” Later, he told detectives that something that’s “you know, haunted me forever since it happened. She started yelling, ‘I’m sorry,’ which, you know, I’m like, what is she sorry for? She didn’t do anything wrong. It’s me, you know. I’m the one that should be sorry.” She tried to run away, and he hit her again. She started screaming, “Oh God, I’m sorry,” and told him, “Let me go, I won’t tell.” He hit her three to four times with the cutting board while Jamie fought for her life and refused to go down. He dropped the cutting board and grabbed her from behind, clamping his hand over her mouth and nose. He forced her to the ground until she was on the floor on her stomach, pinned beneath his weight.

Kevin thought he had killed her. When he loosened his grip, she tried to grab something from a nearby toolbox, and he had to trap her against the ground again. She went limp, and he held her that way for several more minutes. He turned her over on her back to make sure she was really gone, but 30 seconds later, she started breathing again, and he said he had to do it again. After holding her pinned for five more minutes, she went limp again and lost control of her bladder. He thought she was dead, but to make sure, he covered her mouth and nose with duct tape. Then he dragged her into his bedroom to hide her from view so he could go outside to grab her bike, which he then wheeled inside of his walk-in closet.

Back inside, Kevin sexually assaulted Jamie but said the position she was in made it difficult to do what he wanted to do. Now, in his original plan, he had wanted to drain the blood from his victim while they were still alive, like a butchered animal. So, he dragged Jamie into the bathroom. In his imagination, Kevin was able to move his victim with ease, but in reality, the 110-pound dead weight was too heavy for him. After much struggle, he was able to drape her over the edge of the tub. He pulled her hair back in a rubber band to keep it clean and then used the decorative dagger to cut her neck, but he was unable to sever her spine. He planned to collect the blood in a large white bowl, but he said the blood was already clotted and it didn’t look appetizing to him in that condition. So he tried to wash it down the drain.

Leaving Jamie in the bathroom, Kevin went to his computer to message his friend Melissa at 4:08 p.m. He didn’t tell her what he had done, but she said that he seemed significantly happier than he had been in a long time during their conversation. He also deleted the adult images and his collection of crime scene photos from the computer in case the police searched it. A little before 5:00 p.m., he saw Jamie’s dad, Curtis, arrive home from work. Kevin watched as Curtis walked around looking for Jamie with no sign of her near the apartment. Curtis jumped in his truck and drove around looking for her.

Inside his apartment, Kevin wanted to move her from the bathroom into his bed, but she was still bleeding too much and her stomach contents were now leaking from her neck. He was worried the smell of blood and vomit would travel outside his apartment, so he lit incense to cover up the scent. He also poured cleaners down his drain because he was afraid the clotted blood would back up the lines, possibly sending bloody water into nearby apartments. When apartment manager Tim and Curtis knocked on the door, Kevin made sure the bathroom door was closed tight. He got dressed and he went outside to talk to them. He later told the FBI that he talked to Curtis on purpose so that no one would expect he had anything to do with Jamie’s disappearance. He stayed outside pretending to look for Jamie until about 8:00 p.m., made an excuse to go back inside his apartment.

He tried again to move her, but there was still so much blood. He was disappointed that the reality didn’t match his fantasy. He told detectives, “At this point, you know, I was just disgusted. I was like, God, this mess. I guess I was already pretty upset, you know, can’t believe this. I wish I hadn’t did it, you know. I wish I could take it back.” He laid her on a tarp, wrapped her up in it, and covered the bundle with large black trash bags. He then put her in the large gray tub along with her clothes and a towel to soak up the blood. He taped the container closed and shoved it in his closet. He also took apart her bike and hid the pieces under his bed in a large duffel bag.

The next day, he messaged Melissa, and he told her he had a difficult 24 hours. He said that he didn’t want the police to come and search his apartment. He must have thought he’d done a good job of cleaning up because he agreed to a search later that day. After his arrest, agents waited until Jamie’s family had gone inside before walking the handcuffed Kevin to a nearby patrol car.

Kevin was held without bond in the McClain County Jail on the charge of first-degree murder. Because there was so much media coverage, the trial was moved from McClain County to Cleveland County with the hope that they would find impartial jurors there. At the time of the crime, District Attorney Tim Kuykendall had been working as a prosecutor for 24 years, and he was horrified by Kevin’s actions. He said, “I’ve never seen a homicide quite as atrocious and heinous and cruel as what this little girl suffered. This does not appear to be a spur-of-the-moment crime of opportunity, but a well-thought-out, premeditated act with months of planning and preparation.” He thought Kevin should get the death penalty and was determined to take him to trial.

However, DA Kuykendall lost his election in 2006, and he was replaced by Greg Mashburn. The new DA considered offering a plea deal but ultimately agreed with his predecessor. This crime was so terrible that Kevin had to pay with his life. His jury trial began on February 19th, 2008, and it was presided over by Judge Candace Blalock. At the trial, the autopsy report was presented by forensic pathologist Inas Yacoub. He testified that Jamie’s official cause of death was asphyxiation and blunt force trauma to the head, and her manner of death was homicide. He detailed the many injuries that she suffered. She had bruises on the back of her head consistent with the blows Kevin had described. She had petechiae, which are burst blood vessels in her eyes consistent with being suffocated and unable to breathe. They found curved marks on her face caused by a hand being held over her mouth and nose and deep saw marks on her neck from an attempted decapitation. The doctors also found evidence of trauma to her private parts, including a torn hymen. Doctors were not able to tell whether Jamie was still alive when the assault occurred.

Though this evidence alone would likely have been enough to convict him, prosecutors also had something much more damning: almost 2 hours of a videotaped interview during which Kevin described everything he had planned and done in a step-by-step, matter-of-fact way. This interview, conducted by Agents Martin Magg and Craig Overby, was played for the jury on the tape. Agent Overby stayed calm and allowed Kevin to talk. He worked to build a rapport with Kevin, asking him about his job and his family and telling Kevin he was intelligent. As Kevin was comfortable, Agent Overby told him, “At some point, you realized you had to do the right thing and tell what happened.”

At first, Kevin seemed hesitant and had to be prompted with questions. Once he started talking about his plan, he seemed eager to talk and even seemed excited at times. He told the agents about his addiction to adult films and images and explained how his desires had gotten so morbid. He said he had spent the last 12 to 13 years surfing the internet for bizarre adult material. He said, “There’s a lot of weird stuff on the internet, so as the years went by, I just got desensitized to normal porn. I had to keep going after harder and harder core stuff until it finally got to this cannibalism point.” He told the agents he had spent months forming a plan to kidnap someone from the neighborhood, most likely a child. He said, “While they were still alive and gagged, I was going to drape them over the bathtub and cut off their head and then hang them and let the body all drain out. I was going to keep the body around for a couple of days. I was going to set the head on my desk so it could watch me and keep the corpse in my bed, sleeping with it, having sex with it for a day or two, and then I was going to start butchering them and cooking them.”

He told the agents what he bought as part of the plan and sometimes even remembered where he bought it. He got the plastic tarp and large container at Walmart. He planned to use the tarp to cover the couch while he assaulted his victim and cover his bed while he slept with them at night. He bought a hacksaw to cut open the head because he wanted to eat the brain. He bought barbecue skewers because he wanted to stick them through the cheeks and eyes of his victim and even told them where to find the Barbie doll head he’d practiced that technique on. He bought the meat tenderizer powder so he could eat every part of the body, including the organs.

Kevin didn’t seem ashamed of his actions, but he knew his mother and sister would be devastated when they found out what he did. He knew what he had done was wrong, but he also blamed Jamie for becoming his victim. He said, “She was a very trusting kid. That if it hadn’t been me, it could have ended up being someone else, cuz like I said, she just kind of wandered into my apartment. I didn’t, you know, force her in there or even ask her in.” At the end of the video, he threw it violently into the room’s trash can, which could have been a sign of remorse or a sign of fear because he had gotten caught and was going to jail.

Following the video testimony, the defense rested without calling any witnesses. After hearing Kevin say, “I know what I did was wrong and I know I deserve to be punished for it,” there wasn’t much for his lawyers to say. They didn’t even try to prove he was innocent. Their only argument was he should be given life without the possibility of parole because he had mental illness and other mitigating circumstances. On February 28th, 2008, the jury took only 23 minutes to convict Kevin of first-degree murder, and on March 7th, the same jury sentenced him to death by lethal injection. Kevin showed no emotion when he found out he’d be put to death.

Prosecutor Greg Mashburn called the trial a “particularly troubling case to sit through.” We would agree. After the conviction, he was glad he no longer needed to keep the evidence in his office and instead put the crime scene photos, sex toys, and weapons into storage. He said, “I don’t have to stare at disgusting stuff that jurors had to look at anymore.” His family was relieved but also prepared for the long appeals process that usually occurs in a death penalty case. Her Aunt Linda said, “We know that’s going to happen, but this does create a lot of closure for us that we don’t have to come back for trial and don’t have to sit in the courtroom with him.”

In July of 2016, Kevin appealed the death penalty. This appeal he had a new reason: since his trial, he had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and several other mental illnesses. But his appeal was rejected. That judge noted in his ruling that Jamie’s murder was “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel.” Despite losing his appeal, Kevin stayed on death row for many more years because the state of Oklahoma wasn’t very good at executing people. Now, this is not my opinion, this is just what happened, and let me explain to you why.

Now, in 2014, after Kevin was found guilty but before his appeal process was done, the execution of another convicted murderer in Oklahoma went horribly wrong. Clayton Lockett, who had shot a 19-year-old woman and buried her alive, was given an untested combination of drugs for his lethal injection. Though he was supposed to be unconscious and paralyzed during the procedure, the drugs didn’t work. He moaned, moved around, and tried to get up, and he had to be held down on the table. When the doctor tried to place another line to give him more lethal drugs, he accidentally hit an artery, and the blood sprayed all over the execution room. The execution was stopped, but Clayton died 43 minutes later.

Then in 2015, Oklahoma had another issue carrying out an execution. They used the wrong drug to execute Charles Warner, who had assaulted and murdered the 11-month-old daughter of his girlfriend. Potassium chloride was the drug that they were supposed to use and what was logged in the paperwork, but potassium acetate was found in an autopsy of his body. His final words were, “My body is on fire.”

After these mistakes, the state placed a six-year moratorium on executions. They lifted the moratorium in 2021, and there was political pressure to quickly resume executions. A plan was established to execute 25 prisoners in the following 3 years, which would reduce the population of Oklahoma’s death row by 58%. Since then, Oklahoma has executed 13 people, but the Department of Corrections has struggled to keep up with the pace. Kevin was scheduled for execution on December 7th, 2023, but it was put on hold when prison staff asked to delay the time between executions from 60 days to 90 days. They claimed they needed time to avoid another botched execution.

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond supported the department’s request. He said, “I do not want as a chief law officer to oversee a failed execution. I am present with every execution. I look the defendant in the eye as he dies. I look the men and women that administer those lethal injections in the eye after they’ve administered it, and I have sympathy for the strain on them.” The judge overseeing the case had a very different opinion. He said they needed to suck it up and do the job they were hired to do. The time between executions was already extended from 30 to 60 days, and he rejected the new request to extend it to 90 days. He said, “We set a reasonable amount of time to start this out and y’all keep pushing it and pushing it and pushing it. Who’s to say next month you won’t come in and say I need 120 days? This stuff needs to stop and people need to suck it up, realize they have a hard job to do, and get it done in a timely, proficient, professional way.”

While they battle it out in court, Kevin is still incarcerated at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma. His new execution date has not been set as of the time of this recording.

When officers told Curtis his daughter was dead, he collapsed in grief and despair. His brother Mark had to take him to the hospital where they sedated him. The family realized she had been dead inside Kevin’s apartment the whole time they had been sitting outside just a few feet away. Jamie’s Aunt Linda told reporters that their family was distraught and trying to come to terms with an immense loss. She said, “That guy took a life that had just begun. Her daddy is not going to walk her down the aisle. She’s not going to have babies. She’s not going to get married. I mean, it’s over for her. This guy is sitting all cozy in a jail cell eating dinner right now, and that’s the reality of it.”

The family was grateful to the police and investigators who found their girl, but they struggled with the horrible details of the crime. Jamie’s Uncle Mark said it was hard to hear what happened to her. He said, “Sometimes it got to the point where it hurt. This has been very, very, very rough on all of us. We’re in the process of grieving. It’s really hard on everybody.” The whole community struggled with the loss. Townspeople left balloons, flowers, and stuffed animals, and Easter cards at the apartment complex, and her school friends tied white ribbons to the trees on the street near the high school in her memory.

Her funeral was held at the Purcell High School gymnasium, one of the few places in the small town large enough to hold everyone who wanted to attend. Over 1,000 people joined her family at the service on April 20th to mourn her death, including members of her Girl Scout troop and officers and other first responders who searched for her. So many people came out to say goodbye that police closed off the roads in the surrounding two square blocks and arranged for golf carts to drive people from their parking areas to the gym. Dozens of balloons in her favorite color, green, hung behind her closed white casket, and a framed photo of Jamie sat on top next to a bouquet of flowers. They played her favorite song, “Jesus, Take the Wheel,” and other country music that she liked. They showed a video of images and clips from her life, including time she spent having fun with her fellow Girl Scouts. Pastor Dwayne Elmore spoke, saying, “Long after the cameras are gone and the headlines change, there will still be people in Purcell who love you.”

After the public service, she was taken the 60 miles to Guthrie in a white hearse, and her family had a smaller private service at her graveside in Summit View Cemetery. Without his little girl, Curtis couldn’t just stay in Purcell. He got a new job and moved to Guthrie. For a long time, he didn’t know how to keep on living without her, but eventually, he realized Jamie wouldn’t want him to feel that way. He said, “I know she’d want me to go on.” Curtis said he looked forward to reuniting with his daughter in heaven. When that happens, he said, “I’ll probably just give her a big old hug and tell her I miss her.” Her Aunt Tenia Lee said she tries to remember the good times. She said, “I don’t want her to fade away. She’s part of history and I want people to know that she really did exist.”

Her mother, Jennifer, went through dark times after her daughter’s murder. She had always dreamt of being a truck driver, but because of that dream, she ended up blaming herself for Jamie’s death. She thought she should have been home with Jamie instead of out on the road. She told a reporter, “I think about her all the time, to be honest. There’s not a day that doesn’t go by that I don’t think about her.” She was a year sober when Jamie died, but she soon fell off the wagon and it would be years before she got clean again. During her darkest time, she said, “Basically, I lost it. I called my mom up and I said, ‘Mom, I want to be with Jamie. I want to go where she’s at. She needs me.’ And that’s selfish of me to think that way cuz I’ve got two other girls I’ve got to stay here for.”

As the years passed, Jamie’s mom posted messages on her memorial page as a way to talk to her after she was gone. Jennifer took comfort in thinking about Jamie surrounded by other relatives that had passed and imagined her little girl all grown up. In February of 2014, she posted the following message: “To my sweet Jamie, I love and miss you so very much. With every Angel date, birthday, and holiday that passes, I go see you. When a breeze blows through my hair, I say hello Copper Top. I miss you so very much. I catch myself imagining what you would be like and look like now. I know you would be a gorgeous, loving, charismatic young lady.”

In May of 2020, she posted: “Hey Copper Top. Been thinking about you so much lately. Grandma Rose, Aunt Chris, and Gigi are there with you now. I know you are all happy. Just know we miss you all and love you very much. Love always, Mommy.”

That was the last message Jennifer left for her daughter. On October 11th, 2023, Jennifer passed away. She was buried at Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie next to her baby girl.