Oklahoma executed Kevin Ray Underwood on Thursday for killing a 10-year-old girl in April 2006. Underwood was died by lethal injection on his 45th birthday, said Kay Thompson, a spokesperson for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, reports USA Today. He was convicted in the murder of his neighbor, Jamie Rose Bolin, who he beat with a wooden cutting board, suffocated to death and later raped and mutilated at his apartment in Purcell, 40 miles south of Oklahoma City. His attorneys spent the better part of a decade arguing in court that he is a "profoundly ill man" worthy of mercy. "I recognize that although I do not want to die … I deserve to for what I did," Underwood he said in a tearful two-minute statement last Friday at his clemency hearing. "And if my death could … change what I did, I would gladly die."
Bolin's family acknowledged the execution marks the end of a very painful chapter; one they will now begin to work on healing from. "This doesn't bring our Jamie back but it does allow the space in our hearts to focus on her and allow the healing process to begin," said her sister, Lori Pated. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said Underwood's execution brought Jamie's family and all those who continue to mourn Jamie a sense of closure. Underwood grew up a "social outcast" that was severely bullied and relied on friends and family to rescue him, according to court documents. He had close relationships with his immediate family and had a few close friends but mostly kept to himself.
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