Nick, I’m not This is the last time I’m going to say, “You have to kill Eileen Warren cuz she’ll kill again.” November 30th, 1989. Richard Mallalerie was trying to give a ride to a stranded woman, but by the end of the night, he was dead. 13 years later, six more bodies and one final black coffee. Eileen Wernos calmly walks to her execution.
But it was what came out of her mouth in the final 24 hours that truly shocked the world. Here are the final 24 hours of famous serial killers. We’re happy to report to the victim’s families and to the hundreds of people that his horror reached out to and whose lives were affected for all time that he is dead. May 9th, 1994.
John Wayne Gayy, the infamous killer clown, was living his last day on Earth inside Stateville Correction Center in Illinois. In just 24 hours, he’d be dead by lethal injection, finally facing judgment for the murders of at least 33 men and boys. Convicted back in March 1980, Gayy had run out of appeals. The clock was ticking.
But if you’d seen him that day, you might have never guessed he was just hours away from being executed. Despite everything, Gasey appeared weirdly calm, almost cheerful. According to his death row attorney, Karen Kanti, he was even jovial. There he was, chatting about the Chicago Cubs like nothing was happening. Just doesn’t care about the weight of his crimes nor the reality that he’s about to die.
He didn’t strike me as somebody who had a few hours left to live, Kanti recalled. Instead of reflecting on his crimes or victims, Gayy was laser focused on a lawsuit. Seriously, the state of Illinois was trying to seize the profits from his prison artwork. Yeah. Including his creepy Pogo the clown self-portraits to cover the cost of his incarceration.
Gasey wanted that money to go to his family. And it was this financial dispute, not his impending death, that seemed to dominate his thoughts. Later that afternoon, the prison allowed a rare gathering. Gayy sat down with family and close friends, including a few neighbors who still stood by him. On the menu was his chosen last meal. A bucket of KFC.
A nod to his past managing three franchises, 12 fried prawns, French fries, a pound of strawberries, and a diet coke. For his guests, the moment was heavy, traumatizing, some said. But for Gayy, he was warm, friendly, and even carefully steered conversations away from the execution entirely. As the evening set in, something shifted.
Gayy converts to Catholicism and gets his last rights from a priest. Outside, the mood was wildly different. Near a thousand people gathered at Chicago City Hall and around the prison itself. Some brought signs that read death to Gayy. Others carried 33 symbolic body bags, one for each confirmed victim, with mocking songs like goodbye Gayy ringing out.
There were chants, balloons, people cheering. felt more like a twisted block party than a solemn vigil. At midnight, May 10th, he’s taken to the execution chamber, but even his death didn’t go smoothly. A glitch in the IV line delayed the process, and the whole thing dragged on for 18 minutes, four times longer than it was supposed to.
And as for those infamous last words, “Kiss my ass.” Karen Connie later said it never happened, that Gayy in the end went out silently. He’s pronounced dead at 12:58 a.m. Afterward, his brain is taken out, handed over to psychiatrist Dr. Helen Morrison for study, and his body was eventually cremated with his ashes given to his sister.
[Music] Andy can reach out and snatch a kid out of any house today. He He snatched me out of my It snatched me out of my home 20, 30 years ago. January 24th, 1989. The clock was ticking on Ted Bundy. After years of mind games, escapes, and courtroom performances, death was finally closing in. By 7:00 a.m., Florida’s electric chair would do what no jury could. Shut him up for good.
Convicted of slaughtering college girls and a child, Bundy was officially tied to 30 victims. The day before, January 23rd, 1989, Bundy’s usual cold detachment began to crack. He was emotional, even introspective. He spent much of the day behind closed bars with his attorneys and investigators. Among them was FBI agent Bill Hagmire, the only agent Bundy seemed to open up to.
In a desperate attempt to stall the inevitable, Bundy confessed to 30 murders, each one darker than the last. That evening, Bundy gave this 45-minute interview to psychologist and Christian broadcaster James Dobson. He would cry as he blamed pornography of all things for his violent urges. But for many watching, it felt like just more manipulation.
Another twisted performance from a man who’d built his life on deception. Now later, Bundy prayed with Methodist minister Fred Lawrence, a stranger brought in to offer lastminute spiritual support. Lawrence had never met Bundy before, but now sat just outside his cell on Q-wing just steps away from the electric chair.
Then there were the phone calls. Two of them went to his mom, Louise Bundy, back in Tacoma, Washington. Each one raw and emotional. Bundy was expressing remorse, not for his victims, but for what he put her through. The pain, the disbelief, the shame. At one point, when Bundy realized the guard was listening in, he snapped.
He hated the reminder that he no longer had control. Louise, however, remained composed, but broken. She tells her son that she loves him even as the full way to his crimes hung in the silence. Later on, Bundy refused to choose a final meal. So, the prison gave him the standard. Steak, eggs, hash browns, and toast, which he barely touched. Appetite gone.
There was nothing left to distract him from what was coming. As the night dragged on, Bundy unraveled slowly. One moment he’s resigned, the next distressed, he cries off and on. At one point, he admitted to Hagmire that he’d probably take himself out, but decided against it. He didn’t want to give the state the satisfaction.
And by 1:00 a.m., Reverend Lawrence was back by his side as they spoke quietly. Bundy sat on the floor of his cell, cradling a pillow from his bunk and talked about his childhood. Then came the morning at 7:06 a.m. January 24th. Bundy was led to Old Sparky, Florida’s electric chair. He looked pale, lifeless, but when he saw attorney Jim Coleman and Reverend Lawrence among the 42 witnesses, he nodded.
His final words were, “Jim and Fred, I’d like you to give my love to my family and friends.” A black hood is placed over his head. Seconds later, 2,000 volts of electricity are tearing through his body. At 7:16 a.m., he’s declared dead. Outside, pandemonium. A crowd of nearly 500 people had gathered. And when the news broke, they erupted. They cheered.
They chanted, “Burn, Bundy, burn,” and lit fireworks. For them, this wasn’t grief, but closure, celebration, and definitely some justice. Bundy’s body was eventually cremated. His ashes scattered in Washington’s Cascade Mountains, as he’d requested. And with that, one of the darkest chapters in modern American crime came to a fiery, electrified close.
January 16th, 1936. Inside Sink Correctional, the man known as the Greyman, the Brooklyn Vampire, and simply Albert Fish was counting down his final hours. At 65, he’s not afraid. If anything, he’s kind of curiously excited. For a man who’d killed, mutilated, cannibalized children, death by electrocution was, in his own words, the supreme thrill.
the only one I haven’t tried. Convicted for the gruesome murder of Grace Bud, the fish had become a very grotesque figure in the press. In person, he was softspoken, frail, almost grandfatherly. But beneath that, man, his mind was obsessed with pain and darkness. As the hours ticked away, Fish sat in his cell writing what he called his final statement.
Pages and pages of handwritten notes. But these weren’t confessions nor apologies. According to his lawyer, James Dempsey, they were so repulsive, so filthy, he refused to release them. “I’ll never show it to anyone.” Dempsey said, “It was the most filthy string of obscenities that I have ever read.” Whatever Fish wrote that night is lost to time, either destroyed or locked away, but it left a haunting mystery behind.
What the hell does a man like that say when he knows he’s about to die? He ate his final meal, though no one’s quite sure what it was. And then he passed time with prison staff, his usual eerie calm, still intact. At one point, he even smiled while helping the guards attached the electrodes to his body. That’s how deep his relationship with pain ran.
This sick bastard once drove 29 sewing needles into his own pelvis. No joke. And during the execution, those very needles caused a short circuit, forcing a second jolt of electricity to finish the job. At 11:06 p.m., Albert Fish was strapped to the chair. Moments before the switch was flipped, he said, “I don’t even know why I’m here.
” Then 3 minutes later, 11:09 p.m., he’s pronounced dead, becoming the oldest person ever executed at Sing. His final 24 hours were not about remorse nor redemption. It was a Macob victory lap. The last twisted thrill for a man who lived and died in service of horror. And just like that, the nightmare ended.
But the legend of Albert Fish never really did. Why on earth would you have hurt those people? Why did you kill those people? No comments. No comments. I I cannot answer it at this time. March 17th, 1985, a woman barely survived after being shot in the face by a stranger who whispered satanic chance as she bled.
It was one of the first public glimpses into the nightmare that would later earn him the name the Nightstalker. For months, Los Angeles was gripped by fear. Doors triple locked, windows barred, children worn not to sleep near open windows. And yet, decades later, the same man, Richard Ramirez, would die quietly, shackled to a hospital bed.
His once terrifying presence fading like a bad dream. June 7th, 2013, Marin General Hospital. Ramirez dies of natural causes. At 53, no headlines screamed, no final words echoed through the walls. His death came not with a bang, but with a whisper, a far cry from the chaos he once thrived in. His final hours were spent in a cold, sterile hospital room, heavily secured as protocol demands for death row inmates.
He’d been in San Quinton State Prison since his 1989 conviction, a staggering list of charges, 13 murders, five attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults, and 14 burglaries. This guy spent nearly 24 years waiting to die. But it wasn’t the state that claimed his life, but B cell lymphoma slowly breaking him down. combined with chronic hepatitis C and the long-term damage from drug abuse.
Man, his liver just gave out. There was no minute-by-minute breakdown of his last day, no watchful public countdown, no journalist camping outside. But what is known paints a lonely, eerie image. Ramirez was likely shackled to the bed, monitored by medical staff under constant guard. No friends, no family, no one there to care, just the sterile beeping of machines and the quiet hum of death.
This guy was transferred to the hospital in early June when his condition worsened, and the coroner’s report noted no signs of drug use during incarceration, pointing to the damage being done long before he got into prison. His body had simply been slowly self-destructing for years. When news of his death broke, Bill KS, a survivor of one of Ramirez’s attacks, expressed relief. But he wasn’t the only one.
Others, like the family of Peter Zazara, felt cheated. This man had tortured bladed and murdered and yet managed to escape the execution chamber. There was no state delivered justice. Back in El Paso, Ramirez’s family mourned quietly. No public statements, no interviews, just a plea for privacy. A sharp contrast to the man who once stood in court with a pentagram drawn on his palm, sneering at the cameras, whispering, “Hail Satan!” There were no final words from Ramirez.
Not officially, not even a whisper for the press to spin. But his attitude had always been crystal clear. His now infamous 1989 statement still lingered. I am beyond good and evil. In the end, there was no spectacle, no final smirk, no haunting last breath captured on tape. Just the quiet death of a man whose existence once sent an entire state into lockdown.
For LA, his passing closed a brutal, bloody chapter. Oh, but the legacy of the fear he left behind reshaped the city forever. This is the mummified head of the vampire of Dusseldorf himself, Peter Curtain. July 1st, 1931. Inside Cologne’s cling prison, Peter Curtin, the man the press dubbed the vampire of Dooldorf, was quietly counting down the hours.
No panic, no trembling hands, just an eerie calmness. After all, he’d already been denied a pardon. And now he’s simply waiting for the blade. Convicted of nine brutal murders and seven attempted murders. Curtain wasn’t remorseful. Not even close. He wakes up that morning like a man preparing for a strange kind of ceremony.
He wasn’t grieving his end, but studying it with morbid curiosity like sick. In his cell, he requested permission to write. The guards allowed it. Curtain penned apologies to victim’s families, though many believed these were just another performance. empty gestures from a man who’d long manipulated public perception. And he would also write a letter to his wife, Augusta, the same woman who had turned him in after he confessed to everything in 1930. Oh, he didn’t blame her.
In fact, he seemed to care about how this all looked more over than what he’d done. And by evening, Curtain requested his last meal. Wiener schnitle, fried potatoes, and white wine. He ate with enthusiasm and even asked for a second round which he got. That little indulgence fit perfectly with his personality, always seeking pleasure, even on the edge of death.
After dinner, he smokes a cigarette representing one last taste of normaly before meeting the steel. Later that night, he meets with a confessor. It wasn’t clear whether certain wanted redemption or just more attention, but it was during that exchange that he revealed something truly chilling. he asked almost excitedly. Will I be able to hear the gush of my own blood when my head is cut off? That would be the pleasure to end all pleasures.
Yeah, that’s not just morbid curiosity, but sadistic poetry straight from the lips of a guy who killed for the thrill of blood. By dawn on July 2nd, he’s ready. No resistance, no lastminute breakdown. Curtains escorted calmly to the guillotine, set up in the prison courtyard. At exactly 6:00 a.m., executioner Carl Grropler did what the courts had ordered.
The blade fell once, clean and swift. Just like that, Peter Curtin was gone. They dissect his brain later, searching for clues or mal formations, something to explain his dark side, but they found nothing. In the end, there was absolutely no logic to Curtain’s evil. just a man who was really into blood, who was kind of cold, calculating, and obsessed with control right up to the very last drop.
Tim McVey was part of the group that wanted to declare war on America. The farright movement wanted to blow out the Mura building. June 10th, 2001, Timothy McVey, the man who turned a federal building into a graveyard, was living his last day. But you’d never guess it. No panic, no breakdown, just smirks and sarcasm over here.
And as guards led him towards the execution chamber, he’s cracking jokes about the cold shower being cruel and unusual punishment. And even with death an arms length away, McVey would stay cold right to the very end. He spent most of the day the way you might expect someone on death row not to. Lounging on his bed, watching CNN, eating ice cream, two pints of mint chocolate chip to be exact. He was napping. He paced.
But mostly he just waited. Although McVey said he was agnostic. He requested Catholic last rights 2 hours before his scheduled exeution. A prison chaplain comes in offering the traditional anointing of the sick. That’s a ritual that typically includes confession and reflection. No one really knows whether McVey showed any true remorse during that moment, but publicly he never apologized to him.
The Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people, was a calculated act of war, justified in his mind. His attorney, Nathan Chambers, visited for 15 minutes that evening. He later described McVey as pleasant, smiling, and completely unafraid. But that image may have been part of the act. A coroner’s report would later suggest McVey had shown signs of anxiety in those final hours, tossing and turning in his bed, restless, a contrast to the rigid stoicism he wore in public.
He refused any last words. Instead, he hands over a printed copy of William Ernest Henley’s poem, Invictus, a poem about defiance, control, and being the master of one’s fate. June 11th, 2001, 7:14 a.m. He’s laying on the gurnie, pale, thinner than during his trial, but still defiant.
His eyes scanned the room for witnesses, which included survivors, victims, families, and reporters. He didn’t speak. He didn’t flinch. He just stared. And the first federal execution since 1963 was over in minutes. His bodies cremated, his ashes handed to his lawyer. He once considered having him scattered at the Oklahoma City Memorial, but thought better of it.
Too vengeful, he said. In the end, McVey left exactly as he lived. The first time I killed somebody, it was such a rush and it was just like that shot of dope. Every time I did it, it was that rush again and I started chasing that high. April 3rd, 2014, Huntsville, Texas. One of America’s most twisted drifters.
The man who once claimed he’d killed more than 70 people, was about to die quietly on a prison in Gurnie. Tommy Lyn Cells, aka the coast to coast killer, was finally facing the one thing he couldn’t outrun, his own execution. Now, the morning before, Cells had woken up in his solitary death row cell at the Paluninsky unit.
The kind of place built for killers like him. Concrete, steel, silence. He already knew the clock was ticking. His execution was set for that evening, and he’d been through enough close calls to know how it worked. His lawyers make a lastminute appeal to the US Supreme Court, hoping to block the lethal injection due to concerns over Texas’s refusal to reveal where it got its pentobatital.
They argued that it could lead to a cruel and painful death, but the court didn’t care. The appeal was denied just an hour before that needle was scheduled to go in. And with that, the machinery kicks into motion. Cells is transferred to the Huntsville unit, the site of all Texas. He’s offered a last meal, but no special request was made.
He ate what every other inmate did that day. If he had visitors, a spiritual adviser, the records don’t say, but he didn’t apologize. Not to the public, not to the families, and not even to that little girl who survived him because yeah, Crystal Surls, the young girl who escaped him back in 1999 and helped bring him down, was in the witness room that night watching.
Just before 6:00 p.m., Cells was strapped to the gurnie, silent and blank. He offered no final words, just a stare. And then the lethal dose began. He took a few deep breaths, let out what sounded like a snore, and within a minute, he stopped moving. At 6:27 p.m., he’s pronounced dead. Afterward, Terry Harris, the father of Caen Harris, one of Cell’s confirmed victims, said it best.
That was way more gentle than he gave out. And he was right. For a man who left a decadesl long trail of pain, terror, and bloodshed, Tommy Lindel’s death was hauntingly calm. [Music] Not because I was angry with them, not because I hated them, but because I wanted to keep them with me. November 28th, 1994, inside Columbia Correctional in Portage, Wisconsin.
Jeffrey Dmer, the man whose name had been synonymous with unspeakable horror, woke up for what would have been his final day. He didn’t know, of course. You see, to him it was just another morning behind bars. But for the world outside, that day would bring closure wrapped in blood. Dmer had been in prison since 1991, serving 16 consecutive life sentences for the murder and dismemberment of 17 men and boys.
His time behind bars had been strange, isolated, quiet, and full of contradictions. He claimed to have found religion and told interviewers he’s born again, remorseful, and resigned. But to some inmates, he’s still playing games, molding food into body parts, making jokes that no one actually found funny. That morning, Dmer’s assigned to a work detail, cleaning the prison gym’s bathroom, and two other inmates would join him.
Jesse Anderson, who’s in for murder, and Christopher Scarver, also a convicted killer. The three men were unsupervised, a normal setup for what was considered a low-risk assignment. But around 8:00 a.m., something snapped. Scarver, later claiming divine instruction, turned on Dmer. He pulls out this 20-in metal bar hidden beforehand and strikes Dmer in the head repeatedly.
Dmer didn’t scream, nor did he fight. And according to Scarver, this guy went down in silence and pretty fast. Then Scarver walks into another room and does the same to Anderson. By 10 after 8, guards found Dmer on the bathroom floor covered in blood, barely alive. He’s rushed to the hospital. Medical teams try to save him, but the dama
ge is done. At 9:11 a.m., Jeffrey Dmer was pronounced dead. His skull shattered by the very kind of violence he’d inflicted on so many others. Scarver, calm and matter of fact, returned to his cell and told the guard, “God told me to do it. Jesse Anderson and Jeffrey Dmer are dead.” He later denied premeditation, but admitted he’d brought the weapon with him.
Dmer’s death felt almost poetic to some. His first murder back in 1978, Steven Hicks was also committed by bloning. A circular ending to a horrific life. And though Dmer had once said, “I know society will never forgive me.” He likely didn’t expect society would be there quietly nodding when someone else delivered his final punishment.
Now, his body was eventually cremated and his ashes were split between his parents. In the end, Dmer didn’t die in infamy. He died in silence on the bathroom floor with no last words. Why do you want to be executed? Uh, I have to be. Uh, I will kill again. No, I would do it again. I’ve been molesting kids non-stop since I was 13 years old.
Over half my life. Uh, anything happened, I can guarantee I’d do it again and sooner or later I would kill another. January 4th, 1993, in a quiet corner of Walaw Wala, Washington, Wesley Allen Dodd, one of the most reviled child murderers in America’s history, was counting down the final hours of his life.
But unlike most on death row, this is what he wanted. With no appeals and no pleas, Dodd had insisted if he ever walked free again, he’d kill more children. And that wasn’t a threat, but a promise. Dodd chose hanging, not because the state required it, but because this guy wanted death to mirror that of his last victim, Lee Iseli, whom he’d hanged in 1989.
It was gruesome symmetry, and it made him the first person in the US to be executed by hanging since 1965. At 12:01 a.m., Dods moved into a holding cell just a few steps from the gallows. No TVs, no visitors, unless it was a clergy or his lawyer. A phone sat nearby in case of any lastminute legal miracle. But Dodd wasn’t hoping for one.
In fact, he’s pretty calm. Too calm, according to some guards. He tells reporters before that death was a relief, not a punishment. For his last meal, he kept it simple. We got broiled salmon and fried potatoes. No dessert, no drama. And as the day faded into night, Walaw Wala braced for history.
Outside the prison, protesters and supporters stood shivering in the snow. Some with candles, others with signs. A circus of opinion swirled outside. While inside, a dark ritual was unfolding. Just before midnight, media witnesses filed into the execution chamber. victims. Families like Juel Cornell, Lee Isiseli’s mother, and Claire Near, a father of Cole and William Near, sat silently.
Even the ACLU had a representative present, still protesting the method, though Dodd had silenced most legal challenges by asking for this very fate. At 12:05 a.m., Dodd stood on the trap door, hooded, noose around his neck, his voice oddly calm, echoing throughout the chamber as he said, “I was once asked by somebody if there was any way exoffenders could be stopped.” I said, “No, I was wrong.
There is hope. There is peace. I found both in the Lord. Jesus Christ.” The trap door slammed open. Dodd dropped 7 ft without any struggle. Just a slow, quiet spin. Some movement, likely reflexes, but nothing conscious. At 12:10 a.m., it’s over. His body sent for an autopsy in Seattle before it was then cremated.
With that, Wesley Allen Dodd, calculated, monstrous, eerily cooperative, had left behind a legacy of nightmares and an ending he chose. Nick, I’m not this the last time I’m going to say it. You have to kill Eileen Wars cuz she’ll kill again. October 8th, 2002, Florida State Prison. Eileen Wernos, dubbed America’s first female serial killer, was spending her last full day alive.
And she’d been on death row for over a decade, and her time had finally run out. But this wasn’t a woman broken by any remorse. Not exactly. What you may have seen in those final hours was something else. A storm barely held together by flesh and will. You see that morning, still in her cell at Broward Correctional, right in solitary confinement behind stark white walls, a black and white TV with a metal bunk and no real human contact except for guards.
Eileen’s mind had been unraveling for some time as she spoke about being by sonic pressure, claiming the prison was experimenting on her. She was erratic, paranoid, and just weeks earlier, Florida’s governor, Jeb Bush, had ordered a psychiatric evaluation, one that concluded that she was sane enough to be executed. Now, that afternoon, British filmmaker Nick Broomfield visited to film a final interview for his documentary, Eileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer.
The camera rolls for 35 minutes, capturing Wernos in a volatile state, wildeyed, seething, suspicious. She accused the police of letting her continue killing so they could brand her a serial killer. Society wants a monster, she said. And they made one. By the end, she cut that interview short, muttering half-formed conspiracy theories.
Broomfield later admitted that he was stunned she’d been declared of sound mind. Eileen refused a sedative that night. She wanted to be fully awake. At her own request, they woke her up at 5:30 a.m. and she’s strangely calm. Prison logs describe her as polite, even cheerful, and she declines a full last meal, just a cup of black coffee, and by 9:30 a.m.
, she’s escorted into that execution chamber. She was smiling right at the witnesses, a flash of that defiant energy that had defined her entire trial. When asked for a final statement, this woman gives a cryptic farewell. I’m sailing with the rock. I’ll be back like Independence Day with Jesus. June 6th, like the movie.
Big mother ship and all. I’ll be back. The drugs flowed at 9:41 a.m. By 9:47, Eileen Wernos was gone. Her death only the second female in Florida and the 10th in the US since 1976. It didn’t settle any debate. Was she a murderer or a traumatized survivor failed by every system around her? One thing’s certain, she never stopped fighting. Even as the end came quietly.
