He didn’t do anything to this state. He did it to us. My mother, and she forgives him. I truly believe in the bottom of my heart she forgives him, and I forgive him. And moving forward with this, I’d like a relationship with Jeffrey West and his family from here out. I don’t want this man to die. That man is Will Berry.
And the person he just asked the state of Alabama to spare was the man who murdered his mother. Alabama didn’t listen. On September 25th, 2025, Jeffrey Todd West was strapped to a gurney at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama. A gas mask was fitted over his face. The warden asked if he had any final words.
And in a moment, we’ll get to know exactly what happened in that chamber. What he said, what he ate, how he spent the last hours of his life. But first, you need to understand the full picture. Because this case is not what it looks like from the outside. Who was Jeffrey Todd West? What did he do? And why? Who was the woman he killed? And how do we end up in a place where her own son was standing on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol begging the governor to let the man live? That’s what this video is about. Let’s go back to the beginning.
To understand how we ended up in that execution chamber in September 2025, we have to go back nearly 30 years to Etowah County, Alabama. A small county, quiet roads, the kind of place where everybody knows everybody, and where that fact would eventually help solve a murder. The location, Harold’s Chevron gas station on the Cahaba Parkway.
The date, the night of March 27th, 1997, spilling into the early hours of March 28th. And the woman at the center of all of it, a 33-year-old mother named Margaret Parish Berry. Margaret had two young sons at home. She worked at Harold’s Chevron, an honest job, a regular shift. She showed up that night the same way she always did.
Clocked in, took her spot behind the counter. She had no reason to think anything was wrong. But here’s what she didn’t know. Two people were already driving toward that station, and one of them had already told other people out loud days before exactly what he planned to do when he got there. Jeffrey Todd West was 21 years old.
He was young, he was broke, and by his own admission years later, he and his girlfriend, Amy Pierce, were desperate for cash. West had worked at Harold’s Chevron before. He knew the layout. He knew where the money was kept. He knew the store’s rhythms. And he knew something else, something that should send a chill down your spine when you hear it.
Before he ever walked through that door, Jeffrey West had already told people what he was going to do. Not just rob the store. He told people he was going to leave no witnesses. That he was going to kill the person up there. He said it out loud to other people before he did it. That’s not a split-second decision. That’s not panic.
That’s not desperation spiraling out of control in the moment. That is premeditation. On the night of March 27th, 1997, possibly spilling into the early hours of March 28th, Jeffrey West and Amy Pierce drove to Harold’s Chevron. West walked unarmed with a .45 caliber handgun. He pointed it at Margaret Berry. She was behind the counter.
She didn’t fight. She didn’t run. She complied. West took $250 from a cookie can, the tin the store used to hold its cash. That’s what he came for. And then Margaret Berry, already on the floor, already face down behind that counter, was shot in the back of the head. She never stood up again. The store fell silent.
West and Pierce left. And somewhere across town, two young boys were still waiting for their mother to come home. She never did. The investigation didn’t take long to point toward West. Court records show that a store employee had spotted both West and another associate near Harold’s Chevron in the 24 to 48 hours before the robbery, which gave investigators a thread to pull.
From there, the case began to unravel quickly. Witnesses came forward. People who had heard West talk about his plans. People who knew him, who had heard the words leave no witnesses come out of his mouth before the night it actually happened. Amy Pierce, his girlfriend, his accomplice, was also taken into custody. She ultimately pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Jeffrey Todd West faced something far more severe. West trial concluded on June 1st, 1999. The jury convicted him of capital murder, murder committed in the course of a robbery, which under Alabama law is one of the most serious charges a person can face. After hearing arguments, that jury voted 10 to two in favor of the death penalty.
Not unanimous, but decisive. Etowah County Circuit Judge William Cardwell accepted the jury’s recommendation. He said, and this is worth noting, that it was difficult to impose the death penalty on someone so young, but he called the killing clearly deliberate and intentional, carried out execution style. And on those words, Jeffrey Todd West was sentenced to death.
He was in his mid-20s. He would spend the next 26 years on Alabama’s death row. 26 years is a long time. Long enough for a child to grow into a man. Long enough for a man to grow old. Long enough for someone to either harden completely or to genuinely reckon with what they did. Which one happened to Jeffrey Todd West? His case moved through the courts the way capital cases do. Slowly.
Appeals, counter appeals, procedural rulings. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed his conviction, sent the case back once for a corrected sentencing order, and then reaffirmed the death sentence. Further appeals followed. They failed. By 2025, West had run out of legal options. And notably, he didn’t try to buy more time.
He filed no last-minute appeals to halt his execution. His attorneys later put it this way. He came to understand the magnitude of his actions and the pain he caused. He sought forgiveness both privately and publicly. His remorse was sincere. Was it real? Or was it the kind of thing a man says when he knows the end is coming? Here’s what we do know.
Something happened on death row. Something unexpected that turned this case into one of the most quietly extraordinary execution stories in recent Alabama history. And it started with a letter. Will Berry was 11 years old when his mother was murdered. He grew up without her. He’s a father and grandfather now.
He said her death derailed his life in more ways than he can count. He credits his wife, Courtney, and his faith for getting him through the other side. Now, here’s the part of this story that most people don’t expect. Somewhere along the way, after decades of living with that loss, Will Berry decided to write a letter to the man who took his mother from him.
Not to confront him. Not to curse him. To offer forgiveness. West wrote back. He expressed remorse. They kept writing. Two men bound together by the worst night of both their lives, exchanging letters from opposite sides of a prison wall. And then Will Berry asked for something more. He wanted to meet Jeffrey West in person, face-to-face, before the execution.
He had a message he needed to deliver himself. He’d been rehearsing it. “I love you. God loves you. My mother would love you because we forgive you.” So, what did Alabama say? No. Prison policy bars contact visits between victims and offenders. So, the son of the woman Jeffrey West murdered, a man who had forgiven him, who had written to him, who had driven to Montgomery to petition the governor on his behalf, was told he could not sit across from West and speak those words to his face.
He was, however, welcome to watch the execution if he wished. The state would let him watch the man die, but not speak to him while he was still alive. What happened next was extraordinary. Will Berry didn’t stay home and grieve privately. He went public. He wrote an op-ed. He gave interviews. He joined death penalty opponents at the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery.
Climbing those marble steps and hand-delivering a petition to Governor Kay Ivey’s office. Standing outside the governor’s door, he told the staffer, “This is on behalf of Jeffrey Todd West. We have forgiven this man, and we want to move forward without his death. There’s enough death. We don’t want no more mourning, my family or his family.
” He said he wanted a relationship with this man. He said taking another life wouldn’t help his family. He said his mother, Margaret, would have wanted forgiveness, not revenge. “I don’t want a state to take revenge in my name or my family’s name for my mother,” he said. He wrote to Governor Ivey directly. “I believe that in seeking to execute Mr.
West, the state of Alabama is playing God. I don’t want anyone to exact revenge in my name nor in my mother’s. I believe life without the possibility of parole is just punishment.” Governor Kay Ivey replied in writing on September 11th, 2025. She said she appreciated Will Byler’s beliefs. She said it was her duty to carry out Alabama law.
The execution would proceed. Now, here’s something most people don’t think about when they think about executions. What does a man actually do on the last day of his life? On September 25th, 2025, Jeffrey Todd West had eight visitors come to Holman Correctional Facility. He made no phone calls. He was offered breakfast. He refused the tray.
He was offered lunch. He refused that, too. Dinner, refused again. Instead, throughout the day, he ate what he chose on his own terms. Skittles, sausage biscuits, coffee, V8 Splash drinks. And when it came to his formal last meal, the one the Alabama Department of Corrections records for the official log, he asked for chicken quesadillas.
The day before his execution, he had been confirmed in the Catholic Church, completing a conversion he’d begun earlier that year. His spiritual advisor, a man named Patrick Madden, would stand beside him at the very end. That same week, West gave what would be one of his final interviews, a phone call to the Associated Press from inside the prison. He didn’t deny what he did.
He didn’t try to minimize it. He said, “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t regret it and wish that I could take that back.” He said he replays that night constantly, always wondering if there was a moment, some exact second, where he could have turned around and walked away. “I wish I had the opportunity just to swap places and let it be me and not her.
” And then he said something not to the interviewer, not to the courts, not to the governor, but to young people who might one day find themselves in the same desperate place he was in at 21. “If you don’t have nowhere else to go, go to church, find a priest, and just tell them everything. But just don’t do what I did, man.
You’ve got an option, even if you don’t feel like you’ve got an option.” At 5:52 p.m., the curtains opened. The execution chamber at William C. Holman Correctional Facility appeared in view. Jeffrey Todd West was already strapped to the gurney. He wore a khaki prison uniform. A white sheet was wrapped around his legs.
Heavy straps crossed his chest in an X. His wrists were secured. A blue-rimmed gas mask set over his face. He looked toward the witness room and gave a thumbs up to his attorney. At 5:53 p.m. a corrections officer began reading the warrant aloud. West was smiling slightly. The warden asked, “Do you have any final words?” West looked up. “No, sir.
” He shook his head. His spiritual advisor, Patrick Madden, approached the gurney with a rosary. At some point, it wasn’t obvious to witnesses exactly when the nitrogen gas began to flow. By 5:57 p.m. West’s eyes were closed. His breathing deepened. At 5:58 p.m. his hands twitched. His breaths became more rapid, then slower, then stopped.
Witnesses heard him gasp. Then there was nothing. The gas continued to flow for 5 minutes past the moment he flatlined. At 6:22 p.m. Jeffrey Todd West was pronounced dead. Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm told reporters afterward that this was the least movement they had seen in any of the state’s nitrogen gas executions.
He said things went just as expected according to protocol. It was Alabama’s fourth execution of 2025. It’s third by nitrogen hypoxia. West had declined to speak in the chamber, but he hadn’t left the world without words. He had prepared a written statement given to his attorney before the execution. And after he was pronounced dead, that statement was released to the media.
Here’s what he said, every word of it. “I am sorry. I have apologized privately to the family of Margaret Parish Berry and am humbled by the forgiveness her son Will has extended. I was baptized into the Catholic Church earlier this year and confirmed yesterday. I am at peace because I know where I am going and look forward to seeing Mrs.
Berry when I get there. I urge everyone, especially young people, to find God. Spend a few moments to consider the two possibilities. This was all a fluke or there is a creator and a reason for everything. Your choice will determine where you go. He said he was looking forward to seeing Margaret Berry, the woman he shot in the back of the head for $250.
Will Berry and his wife Courtney released a statement after the execution. There was no anger in it, no satisfaction, just grief for everyone. Please convey our condolences to his mother and the rest of his family. From what we understand, he acted out of character that night. People he grew up with said he was a good person who got off track.
We pray that he gains peace when he meets his maker. They were stunned that the execution had happened, but it had. Governor Ivey issued statement. Tonight, the lawfully imposed death sentence has been carried out. Justice has been served and I pray for healing for all. Attorney General Steve Marshall said it was a demonstration of the state’s commitment to accountability and somewhere two families, one who lost a mother in 1997 and one who lost a son in 2025, were left to sit in the silence that follows.
That night, the United States had carried out its 33rd execution of 2025, the most in any year since 2014, a number that is still climbing. Margaret Parish Berry was 33 years old. She was a mother. She had two sons. She went to work at a gas station and never came home. She was shot in the back of the head for $250.
Jeffrey Todd West was 21 when he did it. He was 50 when the state of Alabama ended his life. In between those two moments were 29 years of incarceration, a long string of failed appeals, a genuine seeming transformation, letters exchanged with a grieving son, a Catholic baptism, and a final thumbs up to his attorney before the gas took over.
Was justice served? Was it justice at all? When the victim’s own son stood outside the governor’s office begging for mercy and was told he could watch the man die, but not visit him alive? Was Jeffrey Todd West the same man at 50 that he was at 21? Does it matter? These are questions the criminal justice system rarely pauses to answer.
And they are the questions that Will Berry has been trying to force it to confront, not with anger, not with protest signs, but with something far more disarming, forgiveness. I’ll see you in the next one.
