Three Horrific Crimes, Three Final Journeys: De-ath Row Inmates Prepare to Face Execution as America Makes History With Triple De-ath Sentence
A paedophile who raped and strangled a five-year-old girl. A knifeman who stabbed a motel maid to death. And a murderer who shot his girlfriend in the eyes.
Although they live hundreds of miles away from each other, all three men are preparing to die by lethal injection on Thursday after spending years on death row.
If the planned executions of Jeremy Williams, Anthony Darrell Hines and Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez respectively go ahead today, it will be the first triple execution in 16 years in the US.
Williams, 42, is set to be put to death in Alabama for the 2021 rape and murder of five-year-old Kamarie Holland.
The child’s body was found in Williams’ basement with a rope around her neck, obscured by a car tarp.
Williams told investigators he had smoked meth and forced Kamarie to also consume the dangerous drug before sexually abusing her for more than an hour.
He subsequently strangled her to death in what he described as a ‘very rageful and sexually driven’ attack.
Williams offered the little girl’s mother $2,500 for the child to perform a sex act, according to prosecutors.
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Jeremy Williams, 42, is set to face lethal injection in Alabama for the 2021 rape and murder of a young Georgia girl
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Williams raped and strangled five-year-old Kamarie Holland after allegedly offering her mother $2,500 for the child to perform a sex act, prosecutors said
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Holland’s own mother is also behind bars, serving a 20-year sentence after pleading guilty to sex trafficking
He filmed the attack and kept her body to continue abusing her.
‘To see on video what he did to this baby, what a grown man could do to a child, it’s shocking, it’s horrible, it’s disgusting,’ Russell County District Attorney Richard Chancey said. ‘It’s just a level of evil.’
Williams was also a suspect in the 2005 death of his infant daughter in Alaska but charges were not filed until 2022.
Corey Holland, Kamarie’s father, said his daughter was an exuberant five-year-old who loved princesses and made people laugh.
‘She loved playing dress-up, all her little Halloween costumes and her princess stuff I got her. She liked anything girly,’ Corey Holland said.
It will be Alabama’s first execution of the year if it goes forward.
A nitrogen gas execution was halted in June after a federal judge ruled the method unconstitutional.
The girl’s mother is serving a 20-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to sex trafficking.
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In Tennessee, 66-year-old Anthony Darrell Hines is set to face lethal injection for the 1985 murder of Catherine Jean Jenkins, a motel maid he stabbed to death
In Tennessee, 66-year-old Hines is set to face lethal injection for the 1985 murder of 54-year-old motel maid Catherine Jean Jenkins.
Hines checked into the motel in Kingston Springs and brutally raped, robbed and stabbed Ms Jenkins to death while she was cleaning a room.
Her body was found wrapped in a bedsheet in one of the motel rooms with knife wounds, while her car keys and wallet had been stolen.
He eventually surrendered to police and was sentenced to death in 1986.
And in Oklahoma, 70-year-old Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez will die as punishment for murdering his girlfriend at their Oklahoma City home in 2003.
Olimpia Fisher, 43, was planning to leave the relationship when Cuesta-Rodriguez shot her in one eye, then waited eight minutes as she screamed for help before firing the fatal shot into her other eye.
‘He made her suffer because she dared to live beyond his control,’ Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond told the state’s Pardon and Parole Board last month.
Rodriguez has since said he regrets killing her and, last month, said that he didn’t want any clemency or mercy.
His attorneys had asked the board to recommend that he serve life in prison, saying he had a difficult childhood in Cuba and suffered from brain damage, post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression with psychotic episodes.
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In Oklahoma, 70-year-old Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez is set to face lethal injection for murdering his girlfriend at their Oklahoma City home in 2003
However, Rodriguez only attended his clemency hearing to apologise to his victim’s daughters.
Reading out a statement in Spanish, he said: ‘I know that nothing I say will be enough to erase your pain, to offer some kind of comfort or get her back.
‘But I do want to tell you that I regret it, and I am truly remorseful from the bottom of my heart. My time has come, and I want to leave, and I want to leave in peace… And if I am forgiven someday, well, I will be forgiven. But it’s time for me to pay for what I did.’
He is set to die by lethal injection at the state’s penitentiary in rural McAlester.
He would be the third person put to death this year in Oklahoma and the 20th under Republican Governor Kevin Stitt, who leaves office in January after eight years.
Eleven states carried out executions in 2025 in the US.
If the Tennessee and Alabama deaths take place, six states will have had executions in 2026.
The last time three executions were held on the same day was January 7, 2010 when Louisiana, Ohio and Texas put inmates to death.
Three executions were scheduled on the same day in 2018, but only one went forward after a Texas man was granted a reprieve and prison officials in Alabama had problems with the IV line.
