Note: The following story contains material about disturbing crimes against a young girl.
Oklahoma death row inmate Kevin Ray Underwood is a day away from execution in the brutal 2006 rape and murder of a 10-year-old girl.
Underwood, 44, is set to be executed by lethal injection on Thursday for killing his neighbor, 10-year-old Jamie Rose Bolin. The little girl was beaten with a wooden cutting board, suffocated to death and later raped and mutilated at his apartment in Purcell, a small community about 40 miles south of Oklahoma City, on April 12, 2006.
Underwood is set to be executed after the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board unanimously voted 3-0 against a clemency recommendation early Friday morning.
Attorney General Gentner Drummond asked the board to reject clemency in mid-November for Underwood, whom he called a “child sexual predator and murderer who committed one of the most depraved and gruesome crimes in Oklahoma history.”
His attorneys have argued he is a “profoundly ill man” worthy of mercy. Underwood’s mother, Connie, and his attorneys say Underwood has always expressed remorse for the life he took.
“I recognize that although I do not want to die … I deserve to for what I did,” he said in a tearful two-minute statement Friday at his clemency hearing. “And if my death could … change what I did, I would gladly die.
“Kevin knows what he took away. He’s so very aware of it. It haunts him,” his mother says in a clemency video obtained by The Oklahoman, part of the USA TODAY Network.
Kevin Ray Underwood is set to be executed Thursday, eighteen years after his brutally murdered his 10-year-old neighbor Jamie Rose Bolin in his apartment.
Underwood’s execution would mark the fourth in the state this year and the 25th in the nation.
As his execution day approaches, USA TODAY is looking back at who Underwood is, the crime he was convicted of and what led him down a path that ended in the murder of a young girl.
On the outside looking in
Underwood spent his life on the outskirts, afraid to engage and unable to form meaningful or long-term connections with those around him, including peers and relatives.
“Mr. Underwood remained ‘odd’ and ‘different;’ he was a social outcast who was bullied and had to rely on friends and family to rescue him,” according to court documents.
Underwood’s relationship with his parents wasn’t much better.
His father, who “always hoped” Underwood would grow out his depression and anxiety problems, was tough on him, according to a March 2008 report by The Oklahoman, part of the USA TODAY Network.
Underwood “clearly felt that he would never measure up to his father, who was the real man,” and was afraid his father thought he was either gay or just a sissy, an expert psychologist testified in a March 2008 trial, as reported by the Oklahoman.
Larry “Beau” Underwood told jurors that he always wanted his son to become more than he was, but that he also always loved him. “More than anything,” the 30-year meat market manager said in a whisper, “I didn’t tell him enough.”
And his mother was prone to “episodic bouts of extreme violence” which made Underwood nervous. He worked at a local fast food restaurant and later as a grocery store clerk after he left college due to “panic attacks” and “debilitating anxiety,” court documents show.
As his mental illness “continued to worsen,” he turned to the internet for comfort, retreating “further into his virtual world and fantasies,” according to court documents. He also kept a blog, where he “complained” about his life, shared dark musings and previously joked about cannibalism, The Oklahoman reported in April 2006.
Underwood was diagnosed with a host of “major psychiatric illnesses” before and after the murder of Bolin, including Schizotypal personality disorder, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and sexual impulsivity disorder, according to court documents.
Medication, Underwood’s lawyers wrote in 2019, could have reduced the effects of his sexual urges, depression, social anxiety and obsessive thoughts.
“Pretty much the only time I believe in God is when I want to blame Him for something,” Underwood wrote in a February 2006 blog post obtained by the Oklahoman. “Or, when I’m really depressed, to cry and beg Him to make me better, to make whatever is wrong in my brain go away, so that I can live like a normal person.”
Clemency was last chance for reprieve after years of failed appeal attempts
Jurors found Underwood guilty of first-degree murder in 2008 and later sentenced him to death following a lengthy deliberation in Oklahoma state court. His conviction and sentence were affirmed in March 2011, as was post-conviction relief a year later.
In a number of appeals brought before state and federal appellate courts since, Underwood’s attorneys have argued his death sentence was the result of numerous trial errors ranging from ineffective assistance of counsel to improper jury instruction and selection.
A federal appellate court dismissed those claims in July 2018, siding with the lower court’s ruling. In January 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court denied another appeal attempt.
Underwood’s legal counsel has also spent the last few months contesting the constitutionality of Oklahoma’s method of execution statute in an effort to have his execution stayed. Now, they have implored the state Pardon and Parole Board to consider mental health issues and his background as they make their decision.
Underwood is set to be executed at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, about 100 miles southeast of Oklahoma City on Thursday morning, his 45th birthday.
“After a lifetime of abuse, Kevin realized he was slipping away, but he could not find himself help,” according to a copy of the clemency petition obtained by the Oklahoman. “Kevin ultimately cracked, and he decided to act on his worst fantasies, which were developed by spending the bulk of his life on the worst parts of the internet.”
“No one knows who Kevin could have been. But with a little help, we know he wouldn’t be who he is today,” the petition obtained by the Oklahoman states.
‘We deserve closure,’ relative says
Jamie Rose Bolin
Jamie, affectionally nicknamed “Coppertop” by loved ones, was usually left to her own devices after school due to her father’s work schedule.
She was a Girl Scout, who loved to “sing, sew, ride four-wheelers, watch movies,” the Associated Press reported in April 2006. Jamie also had plans to go Easter egg hunting with her mother the weekend after she brutally murdered.
That afternoon, on April 12, 2006, she played in the school library for a friend before she headed home and was “never seen alive again,” according to court documents.
Jamie’s family was torn apart by the news, struggling to go on after her death.
They shared memories with one another, keeping mementos from Jamie’s life and awaiting closure as they continued to live with the loss.
The only just punishment for Underwood, according to Jamie’s relatives, is death.
“You, Kevin Underwood, do not deserve clemency and we as a family deserve closure that the monster that ended a precious life can no longer walk this earth and hurt others, but will suffer in the eternal fires,” Lori Pate, Jamie’s sister, said in a victim impact statement obtained by The Oklahoman.
Young girl was a ‘convenient victim,’ court documents say
Jamie was a “convenient” victim, one Underwood used to fulfill a recent desire he had “to abduct a person, sexually molest them, eat their flesh, and dispose of their remains,” a 26-year-old Underwood told FBI agents in an interview following his arrest.
He then described in “considerable detail how he attempted to carry out this plan,” according to court documents.
Underwood lured the girl into his apartment that Wednesday afternoon, by inviting her inside to play with Freyja, his white pet rat. The young girl was watching “SpongeBob SquarePants” on his television when he began beating her with a wooden cutting board before he suffocated her to death.
In a police interview, Underwood revealed he sexually molested the young girl’s body before he moved her to the bathroom, where he attempted to decapitate her with a decorative dagger.
Underwood wrapped her up in a plastic sheet, stowing her body in a sealed plastic tub in his bedroom closet, according to court documents.
Efforts to locate the missing girl ended two days later, on April 14, 2006, when local authorities found and interviewed Underwood, who said he saw the girl and spoke with her the day she went missing. He also consented to a search of his apartment, where FBI agents found the tub, a disassembled purple bike, meat tenderizer and skewers, The Oklahoman reported.
“Go ahead and arrest me … She’s in there. I hit her and chopped her up,” Underwood said. “I’m going to burn in hell.”
Contributing: Johnny Johnson and Chad Previch, The Oklahoman
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kevin Underwood set for execution in Oklahoma girl’s brutal killing
