An Oklahoma death row inmate described as a “very evil monster” was denied a pardon on Friday.
Kevin Ray Underwood, 44, will be executed Thursday — on his birthday — at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-0 against clemency after hearing chilling excerpts from his confession that he killed his 10-year-old neighbor, Jamie Rose Bolin, in his Purcell apartment in 2006.
In an emotional two-minute statement, Underwood apologized for what he had done.
“I recognize that even though I don’t want to die, I deserve it for what I’ve done,” he said via video from prison. ‘And if my death could change what I did, I would gladly die.
“It’s true that I blocked out most of my memories of that day,” he also said. “When I think about it, it hurts me a lot. I can’t believe I… did those things. The person I was in the weeks leading up to that event is not who I am now or was before.”
Previously: Jamie Rose Bolin’s convicted killer seeks mercy as execution looms
The supermarket worker hit Jamie over the head with a cutting board and then choked her on April 12, 2006. He was 26 at the time of the crime. Two days later, the FBI found the girl’s nearly decapitated body in a plastic bathtub in his bedroom closet.
He confessed that he had spent months preparing to realize his sexual and cannibalistic fantasies.
In an excerpt from his confession played during the clemency hearing, he said the original plan was to cut off his victim’s head and put it on his desk “so it could look at me.” He said he wanted to keep the corpse in his bed, “sleep with it and have sex with it for a day or two” before butchering and cooking it.
He said he tried to have sex with the body but gave up his plan to cook and eat it.
Assistant Attorney General Aspen Layman told the board that Underwood chose Jamie because he thought she was “a latchkey kid that no one would miss … at least not right away.”
“He underestimated how much Jamie’s family loved her and would not rest until she was found,” the assistant attorney general said. “He was trapped, surrounded by the constant vigil of her father and other family members just outside.
“If it weren’t for the vigilance and unwavering love of Jamie’s family, Mr. Underwood would have gotten away with it, and he would have done it again.”
His lawyer told the board he deserved mercy because he had been bullied as a child and had lost the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality after becoming addicted to pornography.
The board was also told that he had been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder.
After the meeting, Attorney General Gentner Drummond said he was pleased the board “voted to deny clemency for this deeply evil monster and ensure justice will be served for Jamie Rose Bolin.”
Underwood will be the fourth inmate put to death in Oklahoma this year. The execution by lethal injection will begin at 10 a.m. Thursday.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Kevin Ray Underwood, an Oklahoma death row inmate, denied clemency
