The question “What would your death row meal be?” serves as a popular topic for dinner party small talk, and even some podcasts. But it’s grounded in a grim tradition.
In countries which still uphold the death penalty, death row prisoners awaiting execution are allowed to request a final meal. While not mandatory, this request is frequently honoured in the United States, with details of final meals documented in public records related to executions.
This gives inmates one little action of autonomy their lives leading to some unusual choices and make their mark on history. In most states, inmates on death row get to pick whatever they want—within reason— for their last meal, but in Texas, there is no special last meal because one inmate in 1998 overordered – prompting local officials to argue it was a waste of money.
Recently, a list of bizarre death row meal requests has resurfaced online. The post, shared on the “Depths of Wikipedia” Instagram page, which shares obscure entries from Wikipedia, highlighted some of these strange inmate requests from inmates.
Here, the Mirror looks at the most strangest death row meal requests in history.
Lawrence Russell Brewer
Lawrence Russell Brewer, from Texas, was executed by lethal injection in 2011 for the 1998 murder of James Byrd.
According to a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Brewer ordered a feast of food for his final meal.
This consisted of two chicken-fried steaks smothered in gravy with sliced onions, a triple meat bacon cheeseburger with all the fixings on the side, a cheese omelette filled with ground beef, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, and jalapeños, and a large bowl of fried okra with ketchup.
He also ordered one pound of barbecue wings with half a loaf of white bread, three fajitas with toppings, a Meat Lovers pizza, three root beers, one pint of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream, and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts.
Despite the extensive meal being prepared for him, Brewer refused to eat it when it arrived, stating that he was simply “not hungry.” This incident led the state of Texas to stop granting last meal requests to condemned inmates. Senator John Whitmire expressed his concerns in a letter to the executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, arguing that it was inappropriate to grant such privileges to a person sentenced to death.
Odell Barnes Jr
In 2000, Texas killer Odell Barnes Jr. was sentenced to death by lethal injection for the 1989 murder of Helen Bass.
Bass, who was 42 years old at the time, was beaten, stabbed, and shot in her own home. There were also indications that she may have been raped.
Barnes Jr. was convicted based on forensic evidence and witness testimony that placed him at the crime scene, including traces of his semen. His clothes also had two patches of Helen’s blood.
However, serious questions were raised regarding his conviction after he was represented by two local attorneys, as the Wichita County Public Defender’s office was considered unequipped to handle the case.
Anti-death penalty advocates began to campaign against his conviction, gaining global media coverage.
Despite this international attention, Barnes was executed on March 1, 2000. For his final meal, he requested “justice, equality, and world peace,” but this request was denied as it was not actually a meal – so he ate nothing.
Robert Anthony Buell
Robert Anthony Buell from Ohio was executed in 2002 by lethal injection for the 1982 murder of 11-year-old Krista Lea Harrison.
In 2010, Eight years after his death, he was linked to the murder of 12-year-old Tina Marie Harmon in 1981 through new DNA evidence.
In the hours leading up to his execution, Buell listened to classical music on the radio, ate bran flakes, and drank a glass of milk. For his final meal, he requested a single black, unpitted olive. This unusual request has been made by several prisoners on death row in various U.S. states, as they hope that olive trees will grow from their graves as a symbol of peace.
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein was an Iraqi dictator who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 until his overthrow in 2003. In 2006, he was convicted by the Iraqi High Tribunal of crimes against humanity for his role in the 1982 Dujail massacre, which resulted in the deaths of over 140 Shia Muslims. He was sentenced to death by hanging.
According to The Times, he refused offers for a last meal that included chicken and shawarma rice, as well as cigarettes. However, other sources claim that Hussein did eat his last meal of chicken and rice and had a cup of hot water with honey.
Velma Barfield
Dubbed the Death Row Granny, Velma Barfield, from North Carolina, was the first woman in the United States to be executed after the 1976 resumption of capital punishment.
Barfield was an American serial killer who was convicted of killing her fiancé but eventually confessed to six murders in total. She poisoned several members of her family including her mother, Lillian Bullard, by arsenic poisoning.
She was convicted of the first-degree murder of Stuart Taylor in December 1978 and sentenced to death. However, she was the only female death row inmate in North Carolina, and there was no designated area for female death row prisoners to be held. So, she was imprisoned at Central Prison in Raleigh, NC, in an area for escape-prone prisoners and those with mental illness.
She became the first woman in the country to be put to death by lethal injection in 1984 .
The day of her execution at Raleigh’s Central Prison, Barfield apologised for ‘all the hurt I have caused’.
According to The Washington Post and The New York Times, she requested a final meal of Coca-Cola and cheese puffs crisps.
Philip Ray Workman
Philip Ray Workman was a death row inmate who was convicted in 1982 for the murder of police officer Lt. Ronald Oliver during a robbery at a Wendy’s restaurant in Memphis. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection and executed in Tennessee on May 9, 2007.
For his final meal, Workman, who was homeless and struggling with a cocaine addiction at the time, requested that a vegetarian pizza be donated to a homeless person near the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. Although officials denied his request, news of his final wish spread, prompting locals to come together in an effort to fulfill it.
They donated hundreds of pizzas throughout Nashville. Additionally, a woman named Donna Spangler organized her friends to raise over $1,000 (£783) to purchase even more pizzas. “Philip Workman was trying to do a good deed, and no one would help him,” Spangler said.
In response to Workman’s request, Ingrid Newkirk, the president of PETA, also took action by ordering 15 vegetarian pizzas to be sent to the Rescue Mission.
James Edward Smith
In April 1990, James Edward Smith was executed by lethal injection for murder at the age of 37. Smith fatally shot insurance executive Larry D. Rohus during a robbery inside a second-floor cashier’s office near the Astrodome on March 7, 1983.
During jury selection for his trial in Texas, Smith attempted to escape by fleeing from the courthouse. He managed to run only a few blocks before he was captured and returned to custody. After being found guilty of murder, he was sentenced to death, but his appeal was upheld by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 1987.
For his final meal, Smith initially requested a lump of rhaeakunda dirt, which was believed to be used in voodoo rituals that he thought might assist him in reincarnation.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice denied his request, so instead he settled for a cup of yogurt.
Smith’s execution was originally scheduled for 1988, but it was postponed when lawyers filed for a stay of execution. Ultimately, he was executed in 1990.
John Albert Taylor
In 1996, John Albert Taylor became America’s first inmate in 19 years to be executed by firing squad.
Taylor, 36, was put to death at Utah State Prison, the only state that allows condemned prisoners a choice between lethal injection and firing squad. Taylor chose the firing squad because he believed it would be costly and embarrassing for the state, and he feared that he might “flip around like a fish out of water” if he received an injection.
He also hoped that this method of execution would support his claim that his death would amount to state-sanctioned murder. Taylor was convicted of raping 11-year-old Charla Nicole King and strangling her with a telephone cord in 1989.
During his sentencing, his sister, Laura Galli, testified that he had raped her three times when she was 12 years old. She had also tipped off the police that he might have murdered the child.
For his last meal, Taylor ordered an antacid medicine, a cigarette, and a large Ambassador pizza with a thin crust topped with onions, mushrooms, hot peppers, sausage, pepperoni, ham, and extra cheese.
Ricky Ray Rector
Ricky Ray Rector was an American murderer who was executed for the 1981 murder of police officer Bob Martin in Conway, Arkansas.
After killing Martin in a restaurant and fleeing, Rector spent three days on the run before he agreed to turn himself in.
After shooting Bob Martin, Rector attempted to take his own life by shooting himself in the head.
The bullet wound and surgery to remove the bullet from his head resulted in a frontal lobotomy (the loss of a three-inch section of his brain), leaving him mentally impaired.
In 1996 Rector was executed by lethal injection, however Rector seemed incapable of understanding his pending death sentence.
He left the pecan pie he requested for his last meal on the side of the tray, telling the guards who came to take him to the execution chamber that he was saving it ‘for later’.
Harry Charles Moore
Harry Charles Moore was an American convicted murderer who was executed in Oregon for the killings of his in-laws, Thomas Lauri and Barbara Cunningham in 1992.
Moore stated that he killed the couple because he believed they would move to Las Vegas with his estranged wife and infant daughter, and expose them to a life of drugs and prostitution.
He was the second person executed by the state of Oregon since 1978, and he remains the state’s most recent execution.
For his death row meal, Moore, 57, requested two green apples, two red apples, a tray of fresh fruit, and two two-litre bottles of Coca-Cola.
Mathias Kneißl
In the early 1900s, Mathias Kneißl was a German outlaw, and poacher.
From the Dachau district of the Kingdom of Bavaria, Kneißl was charged with two murders, attempted murder, armed robbery, and extortion. The court sentenced him to death for the murder charges and to 15 years in prison for the other offenses.
In 1902, he was sentenced to decapitation by guillotine. For his last meal, he requested six glasses of beer.
Thomas J Grasso
Thomas J Grasso admitted murdering two elderly people. His first victim was 85-year-old Hilda Johnson in 1990, who he strangled with Christmas tree lights, and in 1991 he killed Leslie Holtz, an 81-year-old man from whom he stole his social security cheque.
Grasso requested an extravagant last meal: two dozen steamed mussels, two dozen steamed clams, a Burger King double cheeseburger, six barbecued spare ribs, two large milkshakes, as well as a tin of SpaghettiOs with meatballs, half a pumpkin pie and strawberries and cream.
The length or complexity of his list seemed to confuse prison kitchen staff as he didn’t get all he asked for.
His last words were: “I did not get my SpaghettiOs, I got spaghetti. I want the press to know this.”
Ronnie Lee Gardner
Ronnie Lee Gardner was sentenced to death for the 1985 murder of attorney Michael Burdell, which occurred during an attempted escape from a Salt Lake City courthouse.
At the time of the murder, Gardner was in court facing charges for the killing of Melvyn John Otterstrom during a robbery at a bar in 1984.
After spending a quarter of a century on death row, Gardner, who was 49 years old, became the first man to be executed by firing squad in Utah in 14 years in 2010. He remains the most recent person to be executed using this method.
For his last meal, Gardner chose steak, lobster tail, apple pie, vanilla ice cream, and 7-Up. Following this, he began a 48-hour fast while watching The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.
George W Barrett
George W. Barrett, known as “The Diamond King” and “Bad George,” was an American car thief and convicted murderer from Kentucky.
In 1936, he became the first person sentenced to death by hanging in Lockport, Indiana. Barrett killed FBI Agent Nelson B. Klein in a shootout on August 14, 1935.
During the altercation, Klein managed to shoot back, hitting Barrett in the legs and crippling him. For his final meal, Barrett requested “the largest steak in town,” which was granted to him. However, when mealtime arrived, he did not eat it.
After his execution, a reporter who was present spotted the uneaten steak in the jail kitchen and decided to help himself to it.
