NC killer's taunt: Death row means leisure

GASTONIA, N.C. — A death row inmate accused of killing three women and dumping two of them in South Carolina says in a letter to his hometown newspaper that he will spend many years getting decent care and enjoying frequent naps before he meets his end.

"Kill me if you can, suckers," Danny Robbie Hembree Jr. wrote in a letter to The Gaston Gazette. "Ha! Ha! Ha!"

The 50-year-old is on death row at Central Prison in Raleigh for suffocating Heather Catterton, 17, in 2009. He's also accused of the 2009 killing of Randi Dean Saldana, 30, whose burned remains were found near Blacksburg, S.C.

Hembree admitted to taking drugs and having sex with Catterton and Saldana the day they died, but he told jurors he did not kill them or dump their bodies. He is scheduled to go on trial in March for Saldana's killing.

"Is the public aware that the chances of my lawful murder taking place in the next 20 years if ever are very slim?" Hembree asked. "Is the public aware that I am a gentleman of leisure, watching color TV in the A.C., reading, taking naps at will, eating three well-balanced meals a day?"

"The state of North Carolina has sentenced me to death, but it's not real," he wrote. "You citizens of Gaston Co. should petition the state and force them to carry out my murder sentence."

Hembree also is charged with killing Deborah Ratchford, 30, whose body was found in a Gastonia cemetery in 1992.

No one has been executed in North Carolina since 2006.

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Latest Comments

Bring back the Hangman.

dmpaltman2
January 25, 2012 3:27 p.m.

Like I always said death row is vacation time. We work hard every day to survive while the killers just lay around and do nothing. Maybe being in jail is a vacation. We need to make them pay for what they did on the outside not pamper them because a liberal says so. Wake Up America.

barbstillkickin
January 25, 2012 2:08 p.m.

fayncmike Typical egoism, liberals love that superiorly, so what if "most" of the culture thinks one way. They are foolish and you know better. It is telling you do not want to "lower" yourself, it seems it more about you than what others consider to be justice. Also typical of liberals is to control what the media can or can't print. You don't trust the readers to discern for themselves, you have to edit it for us. You probably put down peoples religion because of their moral judgements but you make them and laud them over others who dare do the same. Underneath liberals is what they yell about, discriminating attitudes against people for their beliefs, their culture. You probably would defend cannibals for their culture but not one that would immediately slay someone who so casually snuffs out other peoples lives.

Misbegotten
January 25, 2012 1:15 p.m.

Republicans/Conservatives control the national congress and the state congress. They are involved at every level of government and law. Yet the clueless still want to wring their hands and blame liberals. It's a broken system that neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals are willing to fix.

"I don’t wish to be lowered to the level of murderers." - fayncmike

When it comes to low lifes like this dude, I'll lower myself any day of the week. Executions are not murder. They are punishment and justice, and LAWFUL. I sincerely wish we still had the gallows as a PUBLIC option of execution.

Lightfoot3
January 25, 2012 12:12 p.m.

“How does this make the socialists and the libs feel? boneymaroney13”

Personally I feel great that there will be no state sanctioned murder. I don’t wish to be lowered to the level of murderers.